While driving through town one day, my boyfriend and I noticed a new nail salon had opened up. From the outside, it looked big, well-lit and really nice. The following weekend, I made an appointment.
Walking in, I was impressed—the color theme inside was pristine white, black and crystal. They looked to be full-service - hair, nails, makeup, the works! Every nail station was occupied, and a good number of the massage chairs for pedicures had a content customer seated, receiving their seemingly much needed ped pampering session.
A few minutes after signing in for my appointment, I was called to a station where I met one of the co-owners, named Peter, who was also happy working in the salon as a nail tech. After talking with him for a little bit, he learned that I’m half Vietnamese and could speak broken Viet. He, elated with this situation, began telling everyone around him about me and a relationship was formed. One of my appointments, sadly was not with Peter, but with a woman named Nicole with whom I would soon develop a different relationship—a working relationship.
Peter, his wife, and Nicole were working on a very important project: their own line of dip powder, a new, but popular, product in nail salons. They needed a designer to help with social media ads to promote Emchi (Vietnamese for little sister). In talking with Nicole, I told her what I did for a living and she asked for my phone number. I left her with a personal business card and from there we took off.
I designed the ads for every demo day, holiday, trade show, convention and anything they needed visual content for. These layouts went on their Instagram and Facebook to alert people of what, when, and where and it seemed to work for them because they kept emailing me back.