For our very first edition of Life of a Stylist, we spoke with JJ Savani, also known as Jeet A Savani about his newly launched video series, his talent for barbering and the essentiality of having full control over content creation.
What are his present roles?
I’m primarily an Editorial Session Stylist, but I also work in education and travel a lot doing shows, fashion weeks and judging international competitions. Alongside that, I do content creation for myself and other big brands as I believe this is key to building any brand nowadays.
How did JJ Savani incorporate content creation into his role?
After setting up my own studio a few years back, I was doing little bits of photography and videography on the side whilst trying to get the hang on instagram before its big boom but, as I started becoming more of an independent brand name, I wanted to have control over the campaigns and visuals for my brand. I find that Content creation and barbering go simultaneously hand in hand and work in unison especially now that we are such a social media driven industry.
What are the ups and downs of his roles?
When you’re a one-man band, that does hair, make up, styling, content creation at times it can be hard to manage all things together, therefore its always good to have a reliable team to help support me. For example when I have a concept I will brainstorm and plan and direct a shoot, but then I will hit up my boy Jayden, from Jbird Media who will essentially capture my vision and we will sit down and discuss how to edit this and go back and forth several times with an edit until we have the final cut. So when people are seeing the content on the gram, essentially they only see the finished product not the hours of team work that goes behind a specific image or visual.
So working to tight deadlines with not enough hours in the day can always be an issue, but for me and my team we always see this as a motivator and essentially it drives us to push ourselves to deliver faster, better and more efficient content, all in all helping to streamline our workflow for future projects.
What motivates JJ Savani?
To keep it plain and simple, its the drive to become better than I was yesterday, I simply am only in competition with myself and as long as I am better than I was the day before this is my only motivation. To become an improved version of myself, whether thats to do with work, money, health or family! Just remember do not ever settle for less and respect your work and time, if you do not, you cannot expect somebody else to respect you in the same way, it all starts with ourself!
What would he recommend to stylists who want to practice content creation?
Start off simple! You do not need to go out and spend thousands on camera equipment or editing computers etc. Yes they do help when levelling up your content game in the future, BUT some of my greatest and most interacted bits of content were shot on an iphone and edited using a mobile app! Just get practicing!
What are JJ Savani’s favourite Instagram accounts to follow?
Honestly a big game changer for me and somebody who I look up to in the content creation game is my bro Danny from @dannyandcobarbers although I work with him with the @getsquire team, seeing how this guy has brought up the barbering game due to content creation is insane!
What’s next for you JJ Savani and his career?
My goal every year is simple, be better than I was last year, create a few more collections and ultimately spend more time with family, as money will come and go, time will not!
