I Thought I Was Done Owning Salons But Here We Go Again

I disappear for a bit, and when I come back I’m not just catching up, I’m turning the page. After years of owning salons, I truly thought that season was behind me. Then a vacation in Curacao gives my husband and me the space to ask the big questions: What do we want the next decade to look like? What gives us purpose? And are we really ready to sit still just because we’re close to 60? 

What follows is an honest look at reinvention, entrepreneurship, and the hair industry after COVID. I talk through the doubts that creep in when social media makes hairstyling look effortless and you start wondering if you still belong. I also share why the answer keeps coming back to the same thing: I love making clients feel seen, heard, and confident when they leave the chair. That belief is pushing us toward opening a new hair salon in Williamsburg, with my husband stepping into operations and me leading as creative director, using everything we learned from owning four salons. 

We get specific about the niche and the mission: women over 40 who notice thinning hair, greying, and hormonal changes and want natural-looking results, real education, and solutions that make sense. I explain why gray blending takes skill and strategy, why client education should never feel like a sales pitch, and how I’m building a clear 14-week training program to help cosmetology school grads grow into confident, high-earning stylists. If you’re curious about salon ownership, building a salon from scratch, hair education, or creating a healthy salon culture, come along for the ride. Subscribe, share this with a stylist friend, and leave a review telling me what you want to see as we build.

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Transcript

Welcome Back And A New Chapter

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey guys, and welcome back to All About Hair. I know it has been a while. And if you've been wondering where I've been over the past few months, well, today I finally get to share what's been going on. So this episode is going to be just a little different. It's the beginning of a brand new chapter. Not just for the podcast, but for me too. So grab your cup of coffee and let's catch up. Welcome to All About Hair with Denise. This is where we talk about hair, confidence, and why a good hair day can seriously change your whole mood. It's like hanging out and chatting about life, feeling good, and loving your hair. No pressure, no perfection. So grab your coffee, settle in, and let's talk about loving your hair and yourself a little more.

The Break And The Curacao Reset

SPEAKER_00 0:53

Okay, so where have I been? Well, I did take the summer off. So I didn't intentionally mean to disappear. I didn't intentionally mean for my podcast to just stop going. However, in May, my husband and I went on vacation to Ciracao to celebrate my uh brother-in-law's 50th birthday. We were supposed to stay there a little over a week and we extended it five more days. We loved it so much. And guess what? We kind of needed the time to just to figure out where our life's going. I mean, we're almost 60. We're both 58 years old. And um, we both came to the conclusion that, you know, we still have a long ways to go. We're not dead. We're not going to be couch potatoes. He's going to be retiring here real soon. And it's been a minute since, you know, I've owned a business or had to manage a team or anything like that. Um, and so we started wrestling with a really big decision. Yeah. Possibly opening another salon together. Yeah. Yeah. I let me just tell you, this was not in the plans. I really was not looking to do that. Um, and it still isn't 100% yet, but uh because I have a studio in my basement and I do hair three days a week. It keeps my hands in it. It keeps me loving doing what I do because I do love hair. I love the industry, I love being a part of it. Um, and honestly, after owning four salons, I thought that season of my life was behind me. And then, you know, sometimes life has a funny way of bringing you back to something you thought were you'd already finished. I read a quote one time that sometimes you have to go back to what really makes you happy to be happy. And the hair industry really does make me happy. I love the people in it, I love making my clients feel good, I love teaching the craft, I love giving the opportunity to hairstylists to really make a career out of it and be proud of what they do. But I guess I was a little bit, I don't know, not scared. Scared's not the word for it, but apprehensive. I don't know, because since COVID and really the last four or five years, our industry has really, really changed. I I have been watching on social media, I've been listening to my colleagues that's still in the industry, and I've seen a lot of my industry friends sell their salons. And I'm like, what's going on here? Uh I feel like social media has made it really hard, or at least it it it makes it seem like being a hairstylist is easy. It's not. Or what am I trying to say? I'm trying to say, do I still belong? Am I relevant? Is what I do still relevant? Can I still teach? Do I still know? And you know where I'm going with that. Of course I'm relevant. I love to make people feel good. I love to make my clients feel seen, feel heard. I just want them to feel like they look their best when they leave the salon. That's all. I mean, that's it. And I want to teach stylists how to do the same if that's what they want to learn.

The Space That Changed Everything

SPEAKER_00 4:39

Okay, so how did this come about? There's been this retail space that is in the perfect location. Perfect location. And to tell you the truth, I've looked at it like two or three times. And when I was talking to my husband when we were on vacation in Curacao, he was just saying he's exhausted. He's exhausted with his job. He's got a very stressful job working in IT with the banking industry, and uh he's got hundreds of people that report to him, and he's on 24-7. If something goes down, like you know, one of their uh programs, payments, Zell, whatever, he's on a call at one o'clock in the morning, and it might last 12 hours. He's just tired. You know how that feeling is, right? Doesn't mean that he doesn't want to have a purpose. And then I I started talking to him. I was like, well, when I had Xana do, when I had my salon, he really did help me in so many ways. Uh we would get up at five in the morning and we'd sit side by side on our computers. He helped me write a, or he did it, a program for color inventory. We called it Color Buddy, and that was really one of the first of its kind. And we just used it in our salon. Uh, we did meet with a few companies about marketing it, but uh we just decided that we didn't have the energy to do that, and we didn't really know where it would go. But we used Color Buddy in my salons, and it really was a color inventory tracking system. And so he ended up learning all the ins and outs about our industry just by osmosis, I guess, synergy, sitting right beside me, going to events with me, things like that. He's not a stylist, and he doesn't want to be, but he does see the excitement that's in our industry. So we started talking. Hey, what if maybe he could retire a little bit earlier and we do this together? He could be the operations manager, I could be the creative director, and we can make this whatever we want it to be. And we learn from all the mistakes or all of the experience we've had in the past 30 years of owning four salons. I know. We're more mature, we have more experience, we know the market, we know what we'd be after. We don't have to invent it as we go. We could do it right from the get-go. We can have a career path that actually makes sense, that we're not making it up as we go along. Not that I did that before. I mean, I did do that before, but not with my last salon. Uh, you know, I kind of uh I did kind of make it up as I went along, and I probably disappointed a lot of people. So this time, you know, have it all, have it all mapped out. Have have the career path mapped out, have the education notebook all mapped out, have what how we're going to train new stylists that just get out of cosmetology school, have it all mapped out. I've created a 14-week program that a stylist can come straight out of cosmetology school, get into our program, and be on the floor within three months. Yeah. It's a thing. And start making really good money. Okay, so that's that's kind of how this thought process came to be. My husband and I said, hey, we're both gonna be retiring. We still need something to do to get us up in the out of bed in the morning. I mean, we can't just sit around and stare at each other. So what are we gonna do? And we both decided that that's something that we both enjoy doing. And it would be really fun to have the same goal and work really hard for the same thing. And we make a really good team. We're complete opposites. I always say he's black and white because he's very analytical, and I'm every shade of gray because I'm very creative, but somehow or another, it has worked. I mean, we've been married for over 30 years. I wanted to say 34 years, I think. So something's working. Hasn't been easy, and it's not easy, but it's working.

Why Williamsburg And Why Now

SPEAKER_00 9:15

Why another salon? Why not a different business? Well, because, like I said, we need something. And I I don't have restaurant experience. I mean, I was a waitress when I was like 18 years old, so I don't really want to open a wait a restaurant, I don't want to open a coffee shop, I don't want to work at Lowe's, even though, you know, that'd be kind of fun to do, knowing me because I like DIY stuff. But no, I don't want to work for somebody else, especially after being an entrepreneur. I want to work really hard when I want to work really hard. I just know me. I just don't want to punch a clock. And why Williamsburg? Well, Williamsburg is where we live. And I have looked around and I have studied the other salons out there, and there is no one specializing in women over 40 who just want to look and feel their best. They don't want anything unnatural, they don't want extensions down to their waist, they just want to feel seen, they want to feel beautiful in their own skin. They just want somebody to say, Hey, I see you. I am you. I've been through the hormonal process, I've been through thinning hair, I've been through graying hair. Here's what I found that helps. I think that's really important. Most of my clients that I do at my home studio are my age or older. And I guarantee you, 90% of them have said, no one has ever spent this much time explaining my hair to me. No one. So if you're a hairstylist and you're listening to this, that is a light bulb moment, right? You need to be explaining to your guests how to do their hair, why their hair is doing something that it shouldn't be, educating them on what products really do work. Don't just sell them something. And it's always been my dream to help women at this stage of the game. I just love it. And maybe it's because I'm at that stage of the game, you know, I'm 58. And I know when I go into a hair salon, sometimes I just tell them I do hair, sometimes I don't. But I always leave there disappointed. Always. I think there's only been one time in my whole life that I loved what a stylist did to my hair. The other times I have to come home and rewash my hair and style it to see if I even like the haircut. Because they either don't know how to blow dry my hair, they blow dry it really, really flat so I look like a drowned rat. Or maybe they don't even blow dry it because I don't know how. What? I mean, this salon's gonna be different. I don't want to recreate what I've had in the past. I don't want to recreate a salon that I've already done, and I don't want to recreate what's already been done. I want something

Healthy Hair And Gray Blending Focus

SPEAKER_00 12:20

completely different. I want to create a salon that I always wished I could build. And I have this opportunity to build it from the ground up. I don't have to build it as I'm working in it. I want a place to that people can come and learn about healthy hair. Really, what is healthy hair? How do I get my hair healthy? I want to talk to women over 40. Now it doesn't mean we won't do younger college-age uh clients. We will. I mean, everybody's got hair. We will do men, but our main focus will be women over 40 who have noticed that their hair has changed and they don't know why. They just want some kind of solution to their problem. We're gonna focus on gray blending. There, that is like the you know, new hot topic, but it it really does take a certain technique, a certain eye, and it's not just putting demi-permanent color over your hair. It is actually, there's three or four different ways you could do gray blending. It just depends on what people want to see on their head. I want to give our clients confidence. I want to give our stylists confidence by learning new techniques. And I want to be a mentor to them. I want to help stylists get out of beauty school and create a six-figure career that they could be proud of and maybe go on and open their own salon space. I want to create a culture that is wonderful and fun and welcoming and um education-driven and has integrity and I want education to be the base of it all: educating our clients, educating our team, me being educated and continuing education. I just want this to be a different type of salon. And I don't see that out there. I've studied the salons in our area. People are doing hair, they're doing there's some that are doing really nice hair. It's it's about more than that. It's about giving solutions, solving problems, finding those um pain points that people are having and really giving them solutions.

Doubts Spreadsheets And Buildout Reality

SPEAKER_00 14:33

Why are we doing this? You might ask. Yeah, because we don't have to. Trust me, I've had doubts. I have a lot of doubts. We've questioned our questioned ourselves. I've questioned myself, again, I think I told you, um, am I still relevant in the hair industry? Uh, I've reached out to peers that I've uh, you know, other salon owners. And yeah, all I have to do is step out of my comfort zone. We all know that. It's real, real easy to hide in your house and hide behind this microphone, hide behind a camera, hide in my basement studio. It's really hard to put yourself out there. And so, yeah, I've questioned myself. My husband's questioned the financial part of it. I always say, you know, build it and they will come. Um, I've never, ever, ever questioned the financial part of things before. I just I just work really hard to make it successful. And then he's usually surprised. But like I said, he's the analytical one. He has to see the spreadsheets. And not that I I'm not saying that that's not important. We have to have forecast it out and make sure we're making intelligent financial decisions. We don't want to put all of our personal savings and you know, waste it. But but we have looked at the spreadsheets. We have looked at the forecasts, and we've looked at the construction costs. Holy cow! Holy cow. At first we thought, yeah, we'll just get a construction company, a commercial construction company to do it all. Do it right, you know, because my last couple of salons, we've done a lot of it ourselves. You know, we've put in the flooring. Heck, the whole team. Ordered pizza and beer and we put in the whole flooring. We've painted the walls, we've um smeared over the brick, we've built ponywalls, we've um tiled tiled walls. We we've done it all. And I love doing that. Love it. But then my husband was saying, why don't we just get a construction company to do it so we could work on behind-the-scenes stuff. Well, those construction companies want a lot of money. So we have had to look at different ways of, okay, what can we do? You know, we could do the painting. It might take us longer, but we'll do the painting. You know, we could build the front desk. I know how to build cabinets. I've done it here at my house. We could do the tile, we could, you know, we could do that. But the biggest down is we keep saying, are we crazy? What are we doing? Why are we taking something at 58 years old when most people are like calming down and you know, traveling? And why would we be revving back up? And it's just like, because we have the energy and we have the desire and we have the passion, and we're not done. I don't want to just sit on the couch watching Netflix. To me, that's pretty boring. Yeah. And we've we've looked at each other and said, do we really want to do this again? Because I remember the heartache I had when I sold my last salon. I just really felt um, I really felt like uh what I did didn't matter anymore. It was it was really a sad time in my life, and it took me a long time to get over that. And I was really, I don't know, hurt, crushed, misunderstood. I don't know, that's a whole other story. But it did take me a long time to get over that and to, I guess, pull up my big girl panties and say, hey, it's all good. It's not about you, Denise. It's not about you. And um, who am I to think that that it is about me? Everybody moves on, everybody has their own paths in lives.

Bringing You Along For The Ride

SPEAKER_00 18:24

Why I'm thinking about bringing you guys along on this ride? Well, I realized something. I have been documenting everything, I've been taking pictures of everything, I've been saving all my floor plans, all my design ideas, I've saved all my contractor visits, all the estimates, uh, picking out design like the stylist chairs and the stations, and we've gone round and round on lease negotiations, and then it hit me. Oh my gosh, why am I keeping this all to myself? This is things that people want to know. I've spent over 30 years in this industry, and maybe, guess what? Maybe one of you who are listening have dreamed of owning your own salon. Or maybe you're a stylist who's wondering what's next. I don't know. Maybe you might learn from this, or maybe, wow, maybe you're just simply fascinated by seeing something built from the ground up and you just want to come along for the ride. Well, so let's do this together. I am going to make sure that every week my podcast is going to kind of be just my thoughts and my rambling, if you will, about what has taken place this week. My my YouTube videos will actually be touring of the space, design decisions. You'll you'll see it, the contractor meetings, maybe even interviewing stylists, education, going through the whole process, right? The mistakes, the wins, even opening day, things like that. But here on the podcast, I'm going to tell you really what the emotions were behind that. You get to go whether you want to hear it or not. You don't have to. I don't know. I yeah, I just think that somebody out there probably is thinking the same thing. They maybe they want to open a salon. They don't know what it would take. They don't even know what steps to take. I do have some videos, YouTube videos in the history. I might pull them up and rename them and maybe put them part of this, you know, like picking wall colors, um, lease negotiations, things like that. That those are older in my video library on my YouTube channel, but I've got them. Like I said, I'll I'll put this them in this series. But this podcast is just gonna be my heart to heart, how I'm feeling, my um decision making, my rambling, if you can keep up with it. I don't know.

Next Week Inside The Empty Salon

SPEAKER_00 20:56

Anyway, thank you for sticking around and thank you for giving me this just the space to step back a little bit and figure out what I'm doing. I'm excited to be back. I'm excited that you've stuck around, that people are still out there listening. Next week, I'm going to take you inside the empty salon, and I think you'll start to see why I've fallen in love with this space. So, until next time, remember when you know better, you do better.