As the owner of a busy salon, a mother of three children, and an educator with frequent travel plans, Heather Harris found herself juggling too much. “I’d fall asleep at night from exhaustion only to find myself bolting out of bed 30 minutes later, wondering, ‘Did I text them back?’” she says. “That was happening every day, and I started thinking this isn’t sustainable. I only have two hands, one brain and 24 hours in a day.’”

A friend of hers, who owns a construction company, suggested that she might want to hire a virtual assistant. “Originally, I thought that was great for him with all of his office work, but I’m doing hair and teaching classes, so I have to be in person. But after six months of him suggesting it,  I decided to give it a try, and hired a virtual assistant for 10 hours a week to manage our social media and respond to online reviews.”

The agency was based in the Philippines, and the virtual assistants were generalists who could assist with various tasks. But the more Harris’ assistant worked with her team, the more knowledgeable and valuable she became. The 10 hours a week soon became 20, and the virtual assistant started pulling KPI reports for one-on-one meetings and working on monthly budgeting spreadsheets.

“I was able to move my front desk team into more skilled projects and give them the time they needed to focus on guests in the salon,” says Harris. “Then, my salon director was able to take over some of the tasks I’d been doing, and with the additional bandwidth, I could focus on the bigger picture.” 

It wasn’t Harris's intention to start an entirely separate business, but as she told salon owner friends about her assistant, they wanted in on the action. “I had three or four people start using my assistant, until she said, ‘I can’t take any more work.’”

Harris started wondering if it was scalable. Could she build a virtual agency filled with team members trained on salon-specific skills? Harris asked her agent if she had any friends looking for work, and then she traveled to the Philippines, interviewed some people, and together, they put together a team. 

“It was rocky at first. I had no idea what I was doing, I don’t speak Tagalog, and I’d never run a virtual agency,” she says. “But as luck would have it, one of my best friends has about 2,000 employees in the Philippines doing call centers, and he thought my idea was genius.”

Harris’ friend helped her connect with a local bank and a lawyer, and he assisted her in navigating the culture. “I literally got my website put together before I first exhibited Spark Pro Global at Data-Driven Salon Summit in 2024.”

Today, Spark Pro Global counts more than 40 salon clients on their roster and a team of 60 virtual assistants and growing in the Philippines. When a new salon signs up, Spark Pro Global conducts a discovery call to determine the salon’s unique needs and the number of hours they wish to contract for, and then starts building out that salon’s team. 

While Spark Pro Global is an agency comprised of human experts who work virtually, many of its team members are technology specialists who excel in areas such as social media marketing, website development, SEO, and managing Google and Yelp platforms. 

“We help technology make sense for owners and their teams,” she says. “For example, my software has a lot of reporting, and it’s great, but it isn’t always sexy to look at, so our virtual assistants help make it visually compelling, and it’s much easier to use with individual employees.”

Harris says her team is constantly surprising her with their abilities. This year, she went to Premiere Orlando and shot some video with the intention of creating a reel. “I gave it to the team, and they used AI to create a voiceover with my voice. It was just incredible.”

Praise: “My advice to any salon owner is to get yourself an executive assistant and hand off the tasks that pull you away from your leadership role, and you’ll see your KPIs improve across the board,” says Bobbi Neilsen, owner of Allure Beauty Bar in Grand Junction, Colorado. “You’ll have more time to focus on leading, and those tasks will actually get done better by someone who specializes in them.” 

To learn more, visit sparkproglobal.com.