Fond du Lac Business Spotlight – Stel & Shay Collective with Sarah Sippel

Introduction

Adam: Becca, this WiLL Cast was with
Sarah Sipple of Stelle & Shea Salon. You’ve known Sarah for some time,
right?

Becca: I’m trying to do the math in my
head. Twenty years. Probably longer. That’s not a comfortable thing to say. But
yes, she’s a local business owner.

Adam: Part of our mission at Wisconsin
Lighting Lab is to promote and honor people that design and build things. Part
of building things is building her business. Her husband is in the construction
business — I think they did all the remodeling on their own.

Becca: That’s their second remodel.
She was affiliated with a different salon in town, decided to set out on her
own, and they remodeled a different space on Main Street more towards the
downtown area — a very beautiful space. Then as she built out this wellness
collective that extended beyond the salon services, they needed more. They had
this new building that they acquired. Her husband Nate is crazy good at that
kind of stuff. It’s a really unique space that’s bringing a really new dynamic
to the Fond du Lac community.

Adam: It was great to have her come in
and chat about starting out in the industry and going out on her own and
building it out. Small businesses like that really embody the culture we like
to develop here at Wisconsin Lighting Lab and promote within the community.

The Salon & Wellness Collective

Adam: Are the salon and the collective
part of the same operation, or did one come before the other?

Sarah: The salon came first. Then we
kind of added in a few other entities while we were at the first space. Word of
mouth just happened — people were reaching out saying they wanted to be a part
of what we were doing. I was like, I can’t say no to this. But we quickly
outgrew our first space, so we built one.

Adam: You guys built the space?

Sarah: It was built in the ’60s
initially — it was the old Social Security building for many years. It needed a
facelift. This time last year we started demolition. Nate was looking back at
the pictures and said, if I would have known then what I know now, I don’t know
if I would have done it. Once you tear the walls apart, there’s all kinds of
fun things you find.

Adam: What does it look like right
now?

Sarah: One half is open-concept salon
space with five stylists and two students right now. The other half is where it
starts to go more into the wellness category. We have a lot of holistic
treatments, an infrared sauna, a salt room. We also have a boutique that’s new,
and a retail space. Technically right now, we’re full.

Adam: Is this a common business model
in salons?

Sarah: Not the way we do it, and not
in Fond du Lac. Typically, a spa setup with hair styling would be an
employee-based model. We are all independent, but we’re kind of a hybrid. We
really function as a cohesive space. The average customer coming in would not realize
that we aren’t one overhead business.

Infrared Sauna & Salt Room

Adam: I actually have an infrared
sauna at home. I use it five or six times a week for the last three years. Is
there a lot of interest?

Sarah: It’s building. It’s just
educating people on all the benefits. And you’re doing it right, because
consistency is key.

Becca: I am now addicted to the salt
room. That was amazing. I could have taken a nap in there.

Adam: What’s the theory behind the
salt room?

Sarah: Sarah Lynn, the girl who runs
it, likes to say it’s anything from the lungs up. It clears out all those
passageways. The salt is granulated, so you breathe it in and it just goes
through. I kind of think of it like exfoliating your insides.

Becca: It’s hard to get sick on the
beach. That’s what I tell people — you know how great you feel on the beach.

Sarah: She has a machine that diffuses
the salt into the air. All of a sudden you can feel it. You see it. It was like
the Halls commercial where you’re sitting in the sauna and you can breathe
again.

Becca: I bought a five-pack. Ally and
I one day did it over lunch — popped in, did the salt room, almost took a nap,
then popped into the boutique. Sarah’s just taking all of my money these days.

Sarah’s Origin Story

Adam: Can you give your origin story?

Sarah: If we really want to go back —
I was going to school for criminal justice at UW–Fond du Lac right out of high
school. I got a part-time job at CoBella as a receptionist during that time.
One day my boss pulled me aside and said, you either need to go to beauty
school or you’re fired, because you’re always watching the girls rather than
doing your job. I was in my politics classes at the time and I was like, yeah,
I hate politics. So I dropped out and went to beauty school instead.

Adam: Where did you go to beauty
school?

Sarah: Here at the tech college, which
is a great education. I highly recommend it. Then I worked at CoBella for 16 or
17 years. A lot of it towards the end, my boss was a big educator with Davines,
one of the brands that we use, so she was gone a lot. I really learned the
business end during that time, and that prepared me to run my own.

Adam: Do you typically get partnered
with a particular product line?

Sarah: Most nowadays we’re kind of out
of the Aveda thing where you were a full-concept salon and signed a contract.
Davines — I’m very loyal to them. They treat me well. I’ve been an educator for
them. We don’t bring in anything that would compete with that, but if there’s
something they don’t offer, we can bring it in. They’re very sustainable,
Earth-friendly, good ingredients, innovative. I’ve never felt the need to look
elsewhere.

Independent Contractors & Culture

Adam: What led you down the direction
of having independent contractors versus taking everybody under the same
entity?

Sarah: The industry was really going
in that direction. Everybody wants to make their own hours, make their own
money, follow their own rules. We had the work-from-home thing with COVID — it
just kind of hit every corner of every industry. I knew if I wanted longevity
with my team, I needed that flexibility for them. But I also didn’t want to
give up complete control. I think I’ve found a pretty good balance. Our culture
is very strong. I will protect that at all costs. That’s most important to me.

Adam: Has it also increased the
variety of providers?

Sarah: Yeah, definitely. It gives
people the freedom to branch out and get educated on other things they’re
interested in.

Business Lessons & Advice

Adam: What are some mistakes or big
wins you’ve made the last few years? If you had to do it all over again, what
do you wish you could tell yourself?

Sarah: There’s a reason you should go
to business school to run a business.

Adam: Is it the accounting side? The
HR?

Sarah: Accounting. Definitely. The
product is the fun part. The culture is the fun part. It’s all the admin and
the necessary evils.

Adam: Do you do your own accounting?

Sarah: My husband is my bookkeeper. He
built the building and he’s the accountant. We meet once a month and he’ll
either say, hey, you’re doing really good, or he’ll say, cool it.

Becca: You only talk to Nate once a
month?

Sarah: Sometimes a little more. What’s
awesome about having the independent model is it’s just my finances. I’m not
keeping track of everybody else’s. I get a rent check essentially. That
simplifies the business considerably.

Adam: Any other advice?

Sarah: Learn everything you can as
young as you can. Gain those experiences. Ask the questions. Develop those
relationships. Learning people and personalities is so much of the battle. I’ve
made mistakes and will make a few more. But learn from those. Be honest with
yourself. If there’s a problem, look to yourself first. Own it. Learn from it.

Adam: Being open to feedback is huge.
Whether it’s a customer — at the end of the day, customers are the most
important people to give feedback. And then it’s the people interacting with
the customers. We’re fortunate as a small company to have a direct line of
communication to a lot of our customers. In your case, the customer’s sitting
in a chair right next to the provider.

Wellness Education & Cross-Training

Adam: How much education has been
required on the wellness side? There’s a lot of skeptics in the area.

Sarah: Huge. Our service providers are
very educated individually on what they do. That’s one of the things I look for
when I bring people on — are they passionate, and are they always learning? If
someone’s been in the industry a really long time and they’re kind of stagnant,
that’s just not going to work for me. But one thing we’re learning as a group
is meeting up and giving each other education about what we do, because the
clients are going to ask. We need to be able to give a good response. We’ve met
a couple of times and done short spurts of education on the sauna, the salt
room, allergy food testing, lymphatic drainage — we try to at least have a base
knowledge as a group.

Sarah: We’re really lucky. Marsha is
our injectionist and aesthetician — she still works for Froedtert as a
hospitalist. And Sarah Lynn is a nurse who worked in OB for a long time and
also got certified through the Wellness Way. They have some medical knowledge
mixed with their newer holistic knowledge. The way they bounce things off one
another and come up with good solutions together is amazing.

Adam: I think ever since COVID,
there’s been a big push for taking better care of ourselves. People are
searching for alternative and preventative care — getting ahead of their
wellness to hopefully keep them out of the doctor’s office.

What’s Next

Adam: When are you building the next
building?

Sarah: I really want to be done for
probably ever.

Adam: You’re full though. If you had
to pick one more service?

Sarah: We don’t have a massage
therapist. I do have a space I could renovate for that if I found the right
fit. There’s some potential for growth. I have room for stylists too — my two
students are set to graduate in August and September. I’m committed to one of
them for sure, and I like the other one very much. It’s a question of whether I
can support two of them with enough clients right off the bat.

Adam: Do you have people coming in
from a pretty big geography?

Sarah: Mostly Fond du Lac,
Campbellsport, Eden. But Oshkosh is a huge market we could tap into. We could
definitely expand.

Adam: Has the grand opening brought in
new clientele?

Sarah: I don’t ever hear complaints
about anybody not being busy enough. Everybody is as busy as they want to be. A
lot of us are moms, so the flexible hours are needed. They work as much as they
want to pay their rent and make the amount of money they want.

Becca: Sarah’s always there. I’ve
never walked into the salon and she’s not there. She’s a machine. And she’s
usually doing three people’s hair at the same time. It’s unreal.

Sarah: Some nights I don’t leave till
10:30. I still cut hair — at least 40 hours behind the chair, and probably
another 10 just on other things.

Sarah: The biggest thing I want people
to know — we don’t have a full-time receptionist, so general inquiries tend to
pile up. The best thing people can do is go to our website and download our
welcome packet. That will give you every single piece of information you need —
who to contact for what services, descriptions, pricing, how to book. If you’re
looking for a quick response, that’s the route to go.

Adam: Well, thank you very much for
coming on. It was great to have you.

Sarah: It was a lot of fun.