O U R L O V E S T O R Y
"If we wait until we're ready, we'll be waiting for the rest of our lives."
- Lemony Snicket
This is a story about how we didn't wait, we went for it.
I knew Erica in college, we ran in the same circles but we weren’t having sleep overs or anything...yet (can you sense some foreshadowing:). I always thought ‘man, she’s so cool’ ….she always had great hair and great halloween costumes.
I moved away to NYC at the end of college and when I moved back she became my hair dresser and my close friend. Sidenote: while I lived in NYC Brady brought Erica to NYC to propose to her so I hung out with her the night they got engaged (hehe…if that wasn't some foreshadowing into our future I don't know what is). I always thought of her as my ‘dreamer’ friend, always dreaming up ways her life could be more true to what she envisioned for herself. Part of that was owning her own salon, creating a place that felt like her, so she could give her clients a well thought out experience. While she was dreaming about her salon, I was planning events and making jewelry from home (I am horrible, I repeat horrible at the whole WFH thing) so I decided to look for a space to work out of. We decided it would be way more fun to go to work together instead of alone and started looking for a space that could work for the both of us.
Well what we found was a 500 square foot store front so I thought ‘well, I dreamt I would own a shop in 20 years or something so why not put some shelves up and do it now?!’ And so The Social Club was born. The salon was a one-chair salon (a really rad old brown leather barber chair in fact) and my retail was an 8’ shelf (which had a sliver of an office behind it). We quickly took over the space next door to us. We used a u-haul to hang our first sign. Yes, we stood up on top of the truck to hang it because we couldn’t think of another way to get high enough. We did everything ourselves at that little shop on Crawford. We didn’t entirely know what we were signing up for or what these next 10 years would entail but work wives, a little club that would continue to grow and change, 4 kids, 9 houses later, a pandemic and a different zip code are all a part of our love story.
We spent a year and a half in our Crawford shop and shortly before Seth and I moved to LA in 2014 we also moved the shop into a 2700 square foot space on Main Street in Norman. Those 4 walls took lots of different shapes over the 7 years we were there. Our favorite moments being art walk nights and one-on-one moments with our clients. I can say ‘our’ clients because I went to hair school in 2016 (after we moved back from LA) and became a barber working behind the chair at The Social Club, something I honestly had no idea would happen when we started this thing in 2012 (but am so happy it did, cheers to the beautiful clients that have sat in my chair, it is one of my favorite things about what I do).
This is supposed to also be our love story so I feel like I should throw in some details about Erica and I. While I lived in LA, Erica found every hair class she could take and would come and visit (hello sleep overs). I road tripped across the country multiple times and racked up some major Southwest points going back and forth. Thousands of miles couldn’t keep us apart. Through all the woahs and wows that are small business one thing that became super important to both of us is that we don’t get so wrapped in business that we forget to check in on our happiness because more than business partners and work wives we were friends who cared deeply for each other. One understanding that we have is that our love for each other and our happiness in life is a priority, even more so than our first baby, The Social Club (sorry folks but that’s true and tbh exactly how it should be). Not everyone is lucky enough in life to find two partners (our husbands AND each other). But somehow we did and bless our stars we did because what would our lives be if we hadn’t?! No social club?!?! My brain can’t comprehend that!!!
In 2016 we started talking about wanting to have an OKC location. Thank God for Erica and her brain and her dreams, pushing us to think bigger. It took us a long time, a lot of late nights figuring out all the things (SBA loans, floor plans, plumbing, etc) but also lots of fun meetings dreaming up what our OKC club would look like. We opened OKC in December 2019, celebrated our grand opening in March 2020 and then...promptly closed for the pandemic. We had plans for Norman that Covid changed dramatically, so we made some hard decisions (crying was definitely a part of these business meetings) which included closing our Norman location (still crying about this).
But here we are, on the other side of the pandemic (numbers are still weird, but we are so thankful for the vaccine which has allowed us to quit holding our breath and settle back into our business). We have both moved our families to the city and we are loving getting to be a part of this community. Our kids call each other brothers and we take vacations together. If you want to follow your dreams I can’t recommend doing it enough with a person who you cherish dearly.
