August 2024 Hair & Skincare Grant Awarded to Hollywood Hair Witch

Congratulations to Julia McAlee, founder of Hollywood Hair Witch for being the WomensNet $10,000 August Business Specific Grant recipient in the category of Hair & Skincare.

Recently, WomensNet Advisory Board member Marcia Layton Turner sat down with Julia for an exclusive interview. You can listen to their conversation and view the transcript below.

Video Transcript

WomensNet: Hi, WomensNet Community. Welcome to a conversation with our grant winners for August, 2024. Today we have the pleasure of chatting with Julia McAlee of Hollywood Hair Witch, who’s our business specific grant winner. Earlier this year, WomensNet decided to increase the number of monthly 10,000 grants that we give from one to three. So that’s why you’re seeing three lovely faces on the screen here. The business specific monthly grant is for a company that operates in that month’s category. And in August, that category was hair and skincare. I’m Marcia Layton Turner. I’m one of several women’s net advisory board members, and I have the great pleasure to learn from all of our winners. So thank you all for being here, I appreciate your time. Julia, could you tell everyone a little bit about your business and where the idea to start it came from?

Julia: I’m Julia Mackley, and my business is Hollywood Hair Witch, and I specialize in boutique custom hair services for the creative community in Los Angeles- a lot of people in the entertainment industry. Specifically I do cutting and coloring. And basically, the idea came because of some issues that are very widespread in the industry, specifically like, at a lot of salons people don’t even get lunch breaks or anything. And there’s also like illegal gendered pricing that is more common than not, honestly. So I wanted to address some of those issues for myself and my clients. 

WomensNet: Excellent. So let’s talk a little bit about any resources that you three turned to or came across that you found particularly helpful that you think other women business owners might also benefit from. Did you come across anything that you think other people might benefit from?

Julia: Absolutely. I have my little list here because I wanted to make sure I said everything! So initially Google, Reddit and chat GPT for research. Especially with chat GPT, take it with a grain of salt and make sure to crosscheck. Those were really, helpful-there’s just so much information on the internet! For legal help I used LegalZoom to form my LLC. So I definitely recommend LegalZoom for a lot of a lot of services. Some things you can do yourself, but for that it was super helpful for me.  Joining the local Chamber of commerce, for me the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. It is kind of interesting because they are different from most chamber of Commerce’s because they own the Hollywood Walk of Fame and they also own a big part of the rights for the Hollywood sign. But anyway, they’re great! I joined them and that really helped my online visibility because if you get quality link backs to your website, it really helps with SEO, and the networking was really good too. So that was great. I leaned on my own personal network-if you know people that’s super helpful in all kinds of different things. People who have similar businesses-like if you know an attorney who will just talk to you, and give you some advice, that kind of thing. And then one person who’s specific to my industry is Britt Seva, and she does a podcast that’s really great and she also has an education company called the Thriving Stylist. So I definitely recommend her for beauty professionals.

WomensNet: Wonderful. I love the variety, that’s great. So I think you also touched on marketing and PR publicity a little bit. So, so let’s shift to that. What are some marketing strategies that you used or are looking into that you found work really well or that you’re going to try because you’ve heard good things?

Julia: For me, organic social media marketing has worked well. Reaching out to people online and just having a presence and having your portfolio up there. It depends on your business of course, but for me, that’s what makes sense. And then creating and being findable on Google, Yelp, all those things. People are searching for things, and you really have to be findable in that way. And then providing people with a really great service, a really good experience, and then that old school word of mouth thing. When people have a great experience, it really works a lot. Of course it takes time but building those relationships really makes a difference. I’ve used targeted social media ads a little bit, but you really have to understand what you’re doing because you can burn money really fast. So, I’ve used it a little bit. In the future, I want to get better at it so that I don’t waste money because it’s very powerful, but it’s also kind of complicated. So that’s something I’m going to do in the future more. I’m also exploring writing opportunities to establish myself as a featured beauty writer for publications. That would majorly increase visibility and SEO and all that kind of stuff. So those are some things that are going to be happening in the future.

WomensNet: Excellent. So what’s one thing that the Women’s Net community can do to show support for your company?

Julia: Pretty much in the same vein. If you want to connect on Instagram, I am Looks by Julia, just L-O-O-K-S-B-Y-J-U-L-I-A. And we can like each other’s stuff and share each other’s stuff if it’s relevant and inspired. My website is hollywoodhairwitch.com, visit that too! That would be great.

WomensNet: Well, thank you so much for sharing your stories and your advice with the Women’s Net community. And congratulations again on being our August winner!