Good Morning! Hi y’all and how are you doing! Today I have an extra special article today as we have someone amazing in! Style superstar and business woman extraordinaire Traci Pinto! Come with me as we dive deeper into Traci’s life and how her wonderful nail journey came to be!
Well hello hunny! How are you today?
Doing great, thx! As I always say… ‘livin the dream’ 🤣
Before we get into nails, I want to give you a huge compliment and say I love watching your social media. You create a healthy work life balance and it amazing to see!
Thx! So important 💜 because at the end of the day, we all need to pay our bills, we all need to take care of our family, and we all need to enjoy life inside AND outside of work. Happy people are productive people!
I definitely agree, my extra curricular activities keep me going as well, you just roll it up, have your snacks ready and turn on cartoons! I must ask what got you started working in the nail industry?
I actually got out of high school and went to school to be a teacher and after two years and starting to substitute, I quickly realized it wasn’t for me.🤣 (However, isn’t it funny that I end up becoming an educator right away when I started doing nails, and I was a teacher of nails🤷♀️🤣) Ami, my sister had already started doing nails, her nail beginning was actually much more interesting than mine. Her senior year in high school we were helping my carpenter dad in the garage which was his woodworking area. At the time he was making train whistles. (He’s quite talented!)
Anyway, while we were helping him, Ami was on a tablesaw and actually zipped off half of her pointer finger. It was traumatic at the time and yes, she is still missing that half of her finger- but it certainly hasn’t stopped her from being the talented nail tech that she is!! (a veteran nail competitor!) I always say she can do a set of nails with her eyes closed . PERFECTLY. Long story short, after they tried to reattach her finger, and it didn’t take, the state of Florida disability program paid for her to go to any college of her choice for free. And she chose beauty school.. lol. So she started doing nails in a local salon, ended up moving into her own salon space and I was super unhappy in the public school system, teaching kids was NOT for me🤣
We jokingly said, “what if we did this nails thing, together”? I enrolled in a local nail school got my license and just as she was about to have her first baby I was able to take over her clientele and really get into the industry right away. And look at us now …we never looked back.! We started with just the two of us then we added one girl for overflow. Then one more. We now have 30 techs at our home store, and 10 to 15 at each our other 3 locations. We have relocated our home store four times , each time growing bigger. We have the best test market ever!
Wow! What a story indeed, I never knew you wanted to be a teacher, how striking! And I personally knew of her finger because I discovered it at Jill’s retreat and it became my favorite finger, my awkard little self loved rubbing it! I’m glad you discovered your grand future by taking a chance and going on a whim, thats very exciting! How is it working with your sister?
We literally spend every single day together, and I can’t imagine it any other way.. (sometimes on Sundays we grocery shop together 🤣) I work in the salon every day (I don’t do nails anymore. I just work at the front desk!) Yeah, we catch up every morning with coffee talk, (until I start to get so busy at the front desk she’s done with me😂) then she walks three doors down to the backstage office. We always have lunch together even if it’s only for five minutes so we can catch up on the days events and if that doesn’t happen, we’re on the phone after work .
I think we both realized what our strengths and weaknesses were, very early on, so major decisions would fall on the one that was strong in that area. I think it was a huge thing with us growing consistently, and not agreeing on everything every single day. Do we fight? Very rarely. Sometimes there’s a little tiff but we work through it pretty quick, and usually it’s because one of us is irritated with the other one that something didn’t get done. We don’t fight about the big stuff! 🤣
I have two sons and she has two daughters and they are each about two years apart. So we raised our kids together! And it is the best feeling in the world that our kids hang out together to this day. When the girls were really little, they used to play a game called ‘trace and Aim’ because that’s what we call each other🤣Her two daughters now are two of our top employees. Abbi does nails and Carli does lashes and she also works (manages!) in the backstage office. My son works in the office as well! We are so lucky we see each other every day💜
By the way, we have a brother.. pj.. aka, peej!, who is just a little bit younger than us and he also works in the office. (shameless plug- he fixes e-files if anyone needs that done !) We have a great relationship with him as well! Ha ha, we always gang up on him🤣 poor pj. Kudos to our parents who raised three very close siblings and are the true reason why this family is so tight knit! They are our biggest fans. My dad builds stuff for us and helps keep us organized! He has helped us design and build all of our tradeshow furniture . My mom comes in with lunch for everyone or is cleaning up after us🤣 -they also own our downtown Fort Myers location! It truly is an all in the family thing.
It really is a family business! Oh my stars y’all are like the mob family of the nail industry, just without the killings. Everyone is so included and so hands on. Wow, I’m too old to be adopted in, but I graciously accept. Do you ever find challenges or benefits?
It’s becoming increasingly more difficult difficult to vacation together (yet we still do it!), because then we’re both out of the salon and the office. lol. The benefits are that you always have someone to talk to that you can trust. Priceless! Every situation, every problem or good thing is always better when you don’t feel alone. And that is one thing we never feel. alone. We are so lucky!!
Can you tell me, how did Profiles Backstage start?
We are salon owners that were always looking to save a buck. So it started with our mentor Vicki Peters, helping us source our own files, buffers, brushes, art, pedi stuff, and eventually our own acrylic line. She helped us so much! Once we started to brand our own product for our local salons, we thought hey- why not sell this to other techs? At the time we were working for Young Nails and really enjoyed educating.
They were an amazing company to work for! I feel like we grew up with them! So when we started doing our own line, we began attending trade shows with our OWN booth, training people how to use our products. We both really shine in this area because we just enjoy people, we enjoy showing people how to do things, and we love the social aspect of our industry. Plus we loved to travel!
Your company is one that really stands out to me, as its family operated, and even the techs you have in your salon are all seen and respected as family too. You run a really healthy business, so much applause to you and your sister.
Ty!! We do love what we do. We are 25 years in and no end in sight! When our girls reach 10 years with us, we give them a custom white gold and diamond ‘P’, and I know we’ve had at least 15 of those made! We only have about a one percent turnover, so our work environment is amazing! Have there been a few bad apples, of course! But they seem to weed themselves out. There has been a few that have gone out on their own of course, too. We definitely are not immune from this part of the industry. I will tell you it is the biggest bummer about owning a large salon. Getting them all trained and booked and then they leave for ‘greener grass’ . (That’s a whole notha interview hunny! 🤣)
I will 100% say our success has been a direct result of having such a talented, loyal, and active staff under us. There’s always somebody that can do the thing you need, whether it be educating, cleaning, training new staff, testing product, or just busting out a ton of clients in the salon, we have an extremely diverse staff. I know it’s cliché to say.. but.. tis true. our employees are like family, they truly, truly are. We all vacation together we share birthday celebrations, weddings, sadly even a funeral or two, and now even their kids hang out together ! (future Rockstars?! ) I love how they help each other without me asking anymore. Or when they all ban together against me.. kinda like kids against a parent🤣. It makes my heart happy.
Awww yup! I’m coming over, I’ll bring my potluck dish, noodles and hot dogs, get ready for some fancy eating! But seriously I truly love that for you all, you’ve created a wonderful work environment on and off the stage (pun intended) and it’s so beautiful to see. As a nail brand what made you start a monthly subscription?
When we started the Backstage brand I think we were on a road trip..(it’s where we got so much of our talking done! Great ideas for business and such), and we came up with a monthly membership, the idea started out just as education. we had so many people that approached us about how we did things in the salon, how we learned our techniques, how we charge how we came up with our pricing, down to what chairs we sat on, lol. We realized we were a wealth of information for people because we were ahead of the curve between the salon and now the backstage product.
It was education and information that we started our backstage membership with. And then we thought… why don’t we send them a glitter every month too?… which eventually evolved into more products. With a tutorial because this is what people want! We started with small sample sizes and then we again evolved into the regular size products! our first member is still a swag member! We started with just 10 and now we have hundreds of swag that go out every month. Learned a lot along the way and now it is a well oiled machine. We always have extra hands at ‘swag time.’ To get everything out fast.!
Ya know in your free time, I want you to look up the story of Milton Hershey, and how we have Hershey chocolate bars, it is extremely similar to your story on swag. I won’t even go in detail because I want the surprise there of just how similar you two are. May I ask, what are your views on the direction of our industry, is it going in a positive direction?
Ahhh.. one thing is for sure it’s changing. I just think there’s always gonna be positive and negative in this industry and in any industry. I think people focus too much on worrying whatever everyone else is doing, when they should be doing what they do well and building a clientele. Yess, you have to be aware of what’s going on in the industry, and it’s definitely ever-changing.. you just have to realize what you can change and what you can’t change and do your best job keeping your clients happy! We definitely want to stay in the know about things that are happening in the industry… Pricing and products and such, but know your area, know your clients, know your services. Specialize, and do it well.
Number one is always have great customer service and people will forgive a nail chip or a broken nail even. Word-of-mouth is still a powerful thing in this industry. There is a lot of negativity I see online.. and I think to myself, if this person has this much time on their hands to post negatively on every single nail post, blog, picture etc. they must not be a very busy tech. 🤷♀️ Geez people have so much to say sometimes. Know it all keyboard warriors I call them. And I definitely think that has gotten worse over the years with social media being such a presence in our lives. The world needs more love.💜
I completely agree. Social media has given the cowardly, a sense of bravery, and so negativity is being spread quicker than jam on toast these days. May I ask, what is next for Profiles Backstage?
Just keep growing! I love so much the friends we have made in the nail industry and the connections and the professional people that we work closely with !! And we have such a great organic base of customers that we have built for the last 10 years and I hope that relates to longevity and loyalty, to continue to buy/learn from us! Newest? I love that we were able to open a storefront for local shoppers. In addition to our online shoppers so that’s been great! So we have our home base salon, backstage warehouse, and now beauty supply storefront.
I love that, definitely keep growing, it’s so beautiful to see! Thank you for joining me today, how can nail techs get in touch with the profiles company?
website: http://www.profilesbackstage.com
local phone to text/call: 239-955-7327
email : Profilesgirl@mac.com
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Traci thank you so much for joining me today! I have truly enjoyed your time here immensely and you are such a pure soul. I can’t wait to see more amazing things you and your sister do. I see nothing but greatness. Absolute greatness! And for you all, be sure to check out Profiles Backstage! They are a fabulous company with great products. If you haven’t already subscribed to our articles be sure to, to stay up to date on upcoming posts. Until then, I’ll see you later sweets!
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