Lems enjoying challenges of salon ownership

After growing up in Hamilton County, cosmetologist Hannah (Mead) Lems has taken the lead on creating her own business in Harrisburg, S.D. -- 1888 Hair + Co.
Though she attended Nebraska Christian for school, Lems still felt at home in the Aurora community.
“There are great experiences from small-town Nebraska,” she started. “Going to a school outside of the community, our summers were where we really spent our time in Aurora. Growing up on a farm, I enjoyed running our produce stand and got to know a lot of people through selling sweet corn.”
As a high school student, Lems found herself enjoying the sport of running.
“I ran cross country and track,” she explained. “I liked the independence of the sport. You get out of it what you put into it. I like teamwork, but I’d say that I’m more of an independent person, so I liked being in control of my own fate in that way.”
Post-high school, the business owner knew she didn’t want to go the traditional route. Going through years of school did not appeal to her, so she decided to pave her own path. 
“I wanted to do something where I could own my own business and work for myself,” she voiced. “I also didn’t want to go into something that required years and years of college, so I knew I would get in and out pretty quickly and start working.”
She attended Paul Mitchell Cosmetology School in Lincoln straight after graduation, and immediately knew it was the path for her. Lems stayed in Lincoln for a few years after graduation from cosmetology school in 2016 to find her footing as a new stylist.
“I worked for two commission salons collectively for about a year trying to build up my client base a little bit,” she recalled. “I felt like I was just stuck in a rhythm of not making much money and just doing the same thing.”
Knowing she wanted a change for herself, Lems made the leap to start a salon on her own.
“There was a salon built on the southeast part of Lincoln,” she explained. “It was a brand new building and most of the girls there were already pretty established with clients. I was the young one, so they said to come and they’ll send clients to me. I probably only had a fourth of a clientele, and just made the leap to rent a studio on my own.”
Though her first year started off slow, Lems soon found her business exploding with new customers.
“Within a year, I was hardly taking any new clients,” the stylist voiced. “Instagram made my clientele pop quickly. I learned the importance of documenting my before and after photos well, as people love to see those visuals. Instagram really played the largest role.”

COVID impact
Her journey wasn’t without challenges, however. With the outbreak of COVID, she found herself unsure of the future.
“I had actually been overseas in the Middle East with my mom,” she said. “I was in Israel when all of it started in March, so I had already been off for a couple of weeks, and we’re unsure we’re even gonna make it back into America. So we made it back and then I had to quarantine for a couple of weeks.”
After her quarantine period, the cosmetologist was eager to get back, but she wasn’t able to.
“I had one day left of quarantine before I was about to be able to go back and then we had to shut down because of city regulations,” Lems explained. “It was difficult. I ended up being out for almost 12 weeks.”
Lems’ next feat was tackling the wait list of clients that she had accumulated during the shutdown. 
“I remember having a wait list of almost 250 people,” she said. “I was very overwhelmed on how to even approach getting these people back in. We had some rules on how many clients we could see in a day, so we just slowly chipped away. I did have some clients that had to go elsewhere for a time, but then found their way back.”

The move
After four years at this salon, a new opportunity made its way to Lems and her husband, Jay, who is involved with managing his family’s farm and properties.
“My husband and I got married in January of 2021 and lived in Lincoln for just a few months after being married,” she said. “Then he had a job opportunity with family to move to Sioux Falls with their family business. We moved in May of 2021.”
The idea of owning her own business brought about the control and flexibility that Lems was looking for in her future.
“We hope to have a family someday, so that flexibility with making your own hours was enticing to me,” she explained.
With her move to South Dakota, Lems ended up leaving behind the client base that she had built in Lincoln.
“I walked away from all my clients,” she explained. “I came here and the only person I knew that would come to me was my mother-in-law. That was difficult. I worked for five or six years in a city and built up a reputation, and then just had to completely start over.”
This didn’t hold the business owner back. She once again branched out and rented a space of her own to start building once again.
“I rented a studio in a pretty high-traffic salon in the south part of Sioux Falls,” she said. “It cost $900 a month.”
During the early months of this new studio, Lems saw another slow start to her client base.
“I had to take a few just kind of random call-ins and walk-ins,” she said. “The first few months were a little slow, which was difficult emotionally, so it was hard.”

A new start in Harrisburg
Refusing to back down, Lems and her husband bought a house in Harrisburg, a suburb five minutes outside of Sioux Falls. 
“Harrisburg is the fastest growing community in the entire state of South Dakota,” Lems explained. “That’s when we found out that there was no salon in Harrisburg. I was about eight months into renting that studio, but that’s when we made the jump to build a salon.”
Before the salon construction was even finished, Lems already had other stylists interested in renting studios from her.
“I was prepared that until we found renters, that all the money I would make behind the chair for the first six months to a year would maybe go back into the building,” she explained. “But we actually ended up finding three girls before the construction was even done.”
Now, Lems is excited for the future of her salon and grateful for all the experiences she’s gained from her journey.
“Educating my clients is something I’ve grown a lot in, not just letting people walk all over me,” she said. “Working in customer service teaches you that if you give someone an inch they’ll take a mile. Setting boundaries is something I wasn’t great at when I was 19 and just starting out. Now I set my schedule and book my clients around that, instead of creating my hours around what works for my clients. If someone wants to make it work, they will.”
Though there aren’t any future plans set in stone, Lems enjoys the fact that neither she nor her salon aren’t boxed in.
“We’ll start with six studios and just see how it goes, just to see how much time we have to put into it and if it’s something we really enjoy,” she said. “I don’t think we’ve really put a box around that yet. There’s actually an empty studio right next to us. We thought, if it’s still open six months or a year from now and everything is going well and there’s a demand for what we have, we might have to see about that.”
Lems is the daughter of Steve and Debra Mead of Aurora.