Elaina Read­nour’s Nail Busi­ness for Col­lege Stu­dents

For Maryville stu­dents look­ing to get their nails done at an af­ford­able price, Elaina Read­nour can help with that. She has a nail busi­ness that mostly spe­cial­izes in gel man­i­cures, but she of­fers other ser­vices as well, such as nail ex­ten­sions.

Read­nour’s nail busi­ness started more re­cently. It be­gan with her learn­ing how to do her own nails dur­ing the COVID-19 quar­an­tine. Like many other peo­ple, she liked to get her nails done, but of course was not able to dur­ing that time. So, she or­dered her own sup­plies on­line and did man­i­cures on her­self.

Af­ter learn­ing and prac­tic­ing on her own nails, she later de­cided to start of­fer­ing nail ser­vices to other peo­ple. She talked about what her early ex­pe­ri­ences with that were like.

“The first time I did an­other per­son’s nails, they loved it, and they were pleased with how they turned out. That was pretty cool,” she re­called.

Read­nour or­ga­nizes every­thing on a spread­sheet, cal­en­dar, or chart be­cause she al­ways has var­i­ous ideas on her mind and does not want to for­get things. While she is me­thod­i­cal, she also said that her cre­ative process is color, with her try­ing to paint lines. “Like a re­verse col­or­ing book,” as she put it.

Some­thing that has been chal­leng­ing for Read­nour is get­ting the word out about her busi­ness to bring in new clients. It is dif­fi­cult to build a con­sis­tent clien­tele. But she finds her work re­ward­ing, along with the fact that it is more con­ve­nient for peo­ple.

“I en­joy do­ing nails, it’s my side gig/​hobby, and it’s re­ally re­lax­ing. I’m also able to help out col­lege stu­dents who want to have nice nails but don’t want to pay a ridicu­lous amount to get them done,” she said.

Read­nour’s busi­ness has grown since she first started do­ing nails. She has a lot more sup­plies now and she con­tin­ues to im­prove as she learns more about work­ing on nails. Her short-term goal is to find a solid clien­tele and book con­sis­tent ap­point­ments.

In the fu­ture, she wants to gain more skills and per­fect the ones she cur­rently has. Her goals keep her mo­ti­vated to con­stantly grow and be the best that she can be.

She sug­gests that any­one want­ing to start their own busi­ness should do some­thing they en­joy, be­cause you are more likely to put in the ef­fort to make things work. Her other piece of ad­vice is to start small and slowly grow.

“It’s a marathon, not a sprint,” she said.

If you are in­ter­ested in Elaina Read­nour’s nail ser­vices, you can reach out to her and sched­ule an ap­point­ment.