The Studio Looking Good, Doing Good!

In 2005, Lisa Cochran started “The Studio”, a beauty salon in Laurel, MS. Lisa’s passion lends itself well to this chosen venture given her extrinsic and intrinsic care for her clients. The salon offers a complete beauty service catalog consisting of all elements of hair and body care. Lisa and her professional staff are qualified to provide the kind of total body service experience. Using the momentum garnered from the first location Lisa opened a second location in Hattiesburg, MS during 2007.

Lisa began her SBA journey by contacting the Small Business Development Center (SBDC), an SBA resource partner for help to develop an SBA Low Doc loan package to finance the business.

The SBDC assisted Lisa in developing a business plan to fund a second location backed by an SBA loan. Lisa continues her relationship with the SBDC by receiving business counseling and attending business workshops.

Lisa said, “The SBA, through the SBDC, gave us our start through the LOW DOC program, and will be our partner with our upcoming renovation in our Hattiesburg location. The resources and information we received through this partnership is an essential part of my reading material. I follow successful business models outside of our industry. Numbers tell stories and emotions cannot be trusted.  The SBDC can provide data and statistics to help me follow trends in business through its databases, and all I need to do is to read, and act with the indicators.

In 2020 during the Coronavirus (COVID-19), Lisa was able to obtain funding for her business under the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP Loan) and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) to sustain the business due to the loss of revenue.