RANDA

Countless times hairdressers are described by clients as “my hairapist”. We don’t take this lightly either. Hairdressing is one of the few remaining industries where we physically touch people, and because of the amount of time and frequency of visits it allows insight to the intimacies of most of our clients lives. This an unbelievable opportunity and privilege. It gives us a finger on the pulse of the community. It also gives great responsibility to stay current on the trends, create an impeccable experience for each guest, to stay inspired and consistently educated in order to earn trust. Every day transformations are so inspirational, and there is a constant desire to figure out a way of communicating how beautiful the process is. As a team, we had never filmed anything ourselves, and only had one video under our belts. The process was slightly intimidating, but we also live and breathe for that feeling. It started by brainstorming on how we all individually create trust with our clients behind the chair.

Low and behold- its all about the right questions. We sat down and got deep and then came up with # questions… It was so fun, because as the questions came up, we asked them to each other to confirm the depth. A lot of time was then spent researching and learning how to get good audio and the tools that were needed. Shot lists were constructed, and re-planned. We learned about frame rates, lived on YouTube and didn’t sleep much. Then, the hunt started for someone who wanted to cut their hair and was willing to be transparent to the world wide web.

Randa is a ridiculously talented stylist that moved from California to Colorado,  and started over because she wanted to work with other like minded people. She is still building at the salon, so she had extra time and was willing to be our first. Chelsea began Randa’s interview in the basement. After the nerves shook out, it was so beautiful because it simply felt like friends talking and sharing. “It was such an amazing process because I was already so in love with Randa, and it’s not often you get the opportunity to be able to just really listen for an hour, nor have the honor of hearing the depth of what she was saying.” Chelsea explained.

The filming took a whole day. It was the first time setting up lights, or even using a tripod for our cameras. In hindsight, there were so many mistakes in terms of lacking batteries, getting in each others shots, and because we’re all so close, there was a little bullshitting. It was so fun though, and it happened very organically. The talented women behind the cameras caught the process perfectly. All of our hearts were pounding out of our chests, and Randa looked so beautiful as she pranced around the salon with the most gorgeous smile of life!

Then came the editing. Our editor should win the award for the most patient, loving man on the planet. Being so emotionally connected to the project, we had no idea what we had gotten ourselves into, and were slightly surprised he didn’t kill us. It was tough because there were so many important or tear jerking messages in that hour of audio, but ultimately had to have a clear and concise message. It took 3 long days of living in Ben’s basement to cut up the audio, and when that was finished, we knew we had only just begun. There were countless late nights, and sometimes we would come home to sleep for a few hours, only hear Randa’s voice on repeat.

When it came time to release the video, again with no prior experience of how to do so. When it was uploaded it to YouTube, it received two views. We decided to then share the YouTube link on FaceBook since Chelsea has a decent following. After posting it from her account- sixteen likes… “I post that I farted and get more likes than that!” she said. We were so bummed, because we loved the message so much. Chelsea received a call from a client who is in the marketing industry and she said, “Dude, what are you doing? You have to upload the video NATIVELY to FaceBook.” “What the BLEEP does that mean…?” replied Chels. Needless to say, through a process of trial and error, it ended up with roughly 12,000 views. And just like that- faith in humanity was restored. Overall, it was such a learning experience,  and sooooo much fun. This endeavor lit a fire inside of us that we couldn’t have ever dreamed of.