How to Bootstrap and Run a Lean Small Business, From NYC Entrepreneur
Martha Ellen Mabry remembers getting her hair cut as a kid at the local salon one of her neighbors owned.
She would flip through the lookbook for inspiration and select “whatever I thought really stood out or was different,” the South Carolina native told Business Insider. “I really used my hair growing up as a way to express myself.”
Today, Mabry is the one running the show, helping other women home in on their style at her two Brooklyn, New York-based salons: Headchop, which she launched out of the basement of a residential building in 2011 on a shoestring budget, and Lil’ Chop, which opened its doors more than a decade later in January 2023.
The original location grew organically, from one chair that shared the studio space with a clothing business to occupying the entire 1,700-square-foot basement. The bustling boutique salon is by appointment only, and clients typically must book three to four weeks in advance.
Lil’ Chop, which Mabry describes as the “express version” of Headchop, is nearly double the size and accommodates day-of walk-in appointments.
“I think there’s always been a little bit of a naiveness in me,” said the small-business owner. “From the beginning, I never thought about it as, ‘Oh, I’m opening a business.’ I looked at opening Headchop as, ‘I am getting a space, a personal private studio, to see my clients.’ I didn’t know I was going to be opening a full-scale salon eventually.”
Mabry skipped college, moved to NYC to cut hair, and never looked back. Alisha Wetherill
Mabry, who was 21 when she started Heachop, added: “Looking back, I was not prepared. I didn’t go to business school. But I did know hair.”
At 34, she manages six full-time and three part-time employees. After being diagnosed with cancer in late 2020 and going through chemotherapy in 2021, she’s taken a step back from working behind the chair to focus on growing her business while maintaining the level of quality that’s gotten her where she is.
Here are two principles the entrepreneur followed that helped her build two thriving businesses without a business or finance background.
1. Stay lean: Keep your upfront costs low, DIY when you can, and only expand when necessary
Mabry’s initial setup — a single salon chair — was small, which helped keep her main startup costs low.
She leased a basement space with her boyfriend at the time, who owned a clothing line. The monthly rent for the studio in 2011 was $1,300, about the same amount they were paying for their shared apartment.
They decided, “You pay for one, I’ll pay for the other,” said Mabry, meaning she was spending about $650 a month for the shared Williamsburg space.
Her other upfront costs included equipment, products, and supplies.
Mabry launched her basement salon Headchop on a shoestring budget. Martha Ellen Mabry
Even as she expanded and added more chairs, “I didn’t buy anything new,” she said. “All the chairs were vintage that I had gotten off Craigslist, or I’d find out about a salon closing and go over and get something.”
Mabry didn’t spend a dime on marketing Headchop. Her client base grew thanks to word of mouth and creating a neat, artistic space in the heart of a trendy neighborhood.
“We made a presence,” she said. “We had the music bumping. We would put signs out encouraging people to come down. It was very artist vibes, which was the draw in the beginning. It didn’t necessarily draw your high-ticket client; we were drawing the artistic, creative Williamsburg-type, so it really worked.”
Mabry was careful to hire only when necessary. She brought on an assistant in year one when the phone started ringing off the hook, and she was slammed with back-to-back appointments. Her number of employees grew as her chairs did. She expanded to three chairs in 2012 and five in 2014. By 2016, her salon occupied the entire basement space.
Even though she has a bigger budget to work with today, she still prefers to do renovation and upkeep projects herself.
“I’ve never been one to be like, ‘Yeah, just bring in a bunch of painters,'” said Mabry. “I can paint the wall, I have a drill, I do pretty much all of our updates myself, and only hire people when it’s absolutely something I can’t do.” The latter doesn’t happen often, she noted. “That’s the beauty of YouTube. If I don’t know how to do it, I probably can figure it out.”
2. Offer and maintain a high-quality product by hiring carefully
Mabry spent years refining her skills as a stylist before opening Headchop.
As a high schooler, she took cosmetology classes from a vocational school and graduated with a license to cut hair. From there, she moved to NYC for a six-month hair and makeup program, where she learned the ins and outs of the industry, developed her technical skillset, and started building a portfolio.
In her late teens and early 20s, she worked at DevaChan, a popular SoHo salon specializing in curly hair, and also under the tutelage of stylist and salon owner Michelle Iorio.
“She taught me everything I know about color and helped me home in on my skills with all hair types, not just curly. I started really perfecting my work with her,” said Mabry, who started seeing private clients and styling their hair either in her apartment or theirs before leasing her own studio space.
Mabry’s second salon, Lil’ Chop, is nearly double the size of Headchop. Hayley Carloni
To maintain high-quality service as Headchop grew, she personally trained each stylist that she hired.
“What makes a business truly work for a long time is the care that goes into it,” Mabry said. “You have to care as an employer — about your employees and your clients and everyone’s experience. The experience all around is No. 1, along with the quality of the work.”
She wants the experience to feel intimate and personal.
Clients are “greeted warmly when they come in, they’re given a coffee, you talk through everything before it happens,” she said. “We really care about the work. If someone calls and says they’re upset and they don’t like their hair, it actually affects us. It hurts for someone not to be happy with the work that you do. You’ll do anything to rectify that. So that care has always been there from the beginning.”
