And before I start sharing what happened…. don’t skip reading this because of the word “salon” in the title or you will miss everything.
My Timeline and some history:
1992– I entered the beauty field because when I was only a little girl in 1978, I knew that I wanted to be a hairstylist because I opened a hairstyling book. Yes, an actual book.
1994 – I got married & still am.
1996 – My husband gifted me my first cell phone was the size of a brick and. It cost .35 cents a minute to talk on it.
1998 – I started volunteering at industry trade hair shows because the energy and education were electric!
1999 – Rented my first booth as a hairstylist
2001 —-Keep reading
2002 – Became a Redken Haircolor Educator & taught all over the country. Worked on Celebrity shoots, fashion week.
2006 – Discovered through a hair extension class I could make $1000 to $4000+ per client
2008 – Crash of 2008 but my blogging & SEO journey start (My hair extension business took off)
2009 to date – I taught myself Google Analytics, Heatmaps, SEO ( I was going to make that “hair extension” money
2013 to 2018 – Our businesses suffered eminent domain from a major bridge project
2015 – My husband asks me for help and says, “I don’t know what you do with that computer…but can you help me?”
2019 – I start reading on “How to become Debt-Free.”
2020 – Covid and my hair extension business were forced to shut down for 3 months. I reopen and have the best month of my career…and there’s more about this keep reading….. I start researching “How to create residual income.”
2023 –
>I find my “all-in-one” software platform that replaces all of my other software, make friends, start offering consulting because I have decades of experience.
> Pay off our house and personal debt.
2025 – We pay off our commercial debt, and businesses are fully automated, where it best suits our business needs to help with efficiency.
2026! – I have 34 years of experience. Entering my 20th year of providing 4-figure makeovers, with 25 years of a REAL LIFE use case of stacking automation.
Deciding To Choose Self-Employment – 1999 and still currently thriving to talk about it.
1999 – We signed the mortgage in March of this year… on our house, and then I told my husband I wanted to quit my job and work for myself….
I CHOSE SELF-EMPLOYMENT AND NEVER LOOKED BACK…EVER
On May 23, 1999, was the last day that I would work for a very burnt-out middle-aged hair salon owner who would only talk about her clients in the back room on a daily basis and said that I would work for her long enough so she could get a facelift. I left to go rent a booth…when renting a booth was looked down upon.
My logic : I was getting paid 50% commission and if I lost 50% of my clientele if my customers didn’t follow me, but 50% of them did…then my gross pay would be the same, and the rest of it…. I WOULD JUST MAKE IT WORK
2001 – What wasn’t invented yet and What was happening….
- 9/11 happened. Massive economic and psychological shift mid-year.
- No smartphones. No apps. No push notifications.
- Internet = dial-up or early DSL. Slow, fragile, not always on.
- Websites were brochure pages. Mostly static HTML. No WordPress dominance yet.
- No SaaS as we know it. Software was installed, not subscribed.
- No cloud tools. Data lived on local machines and servers.
- Email existed, but automation meant rules, autoresponders, and duct tape logic.
- CRM was enterprise-only and wildly expensive. Small businesses improvised.
- Online booking was rare and often custom-built or hacked together.
- Marketing was print, referrals, phone, fax. Google Ads barely existed.
Let’s Talk About 2001 – It was a sh*t-ton harder to build a business….
A few things happened in my life this year that also led me to consider automating my business, even though it wasn’t the “cool” thing to do…
This is what 2001 looked like for me as a “hairstylist”:
- I was pregnant.
- My caring husband had shared that he would prefer that I not work full time
- I still wanted to “have it all” with being a mom and having a career
What caused me to implement online booking 25 years ago????
Truths about myself as a human… I value my independence above everything in my life, then and now.
What I won’t tolerate is being told what to do or else…and so how I wound up becoming curious about automating my salon in 2001 was from a client giving me an ultimatum.
She told me that I was to get online booking or she was going to leave me.
READ THIS AGAIN …because this was 25 years ago!
If you are still using a pencil with an appointment book…then you are truly doing a disservice to your business, your future, and your retirement years.
Stop whining that business is slow if you are too stubborn to adopt tech
What happened next?…. Automation, Blogging and Self-Taught SEO
I fired her because I don’t believe in clients telling me how to run my business if they are being rude.
But because of them, I got so curious about the idea that I researched online until I found an affordable option, because back in 2001, any type of “business software” was not for salons, because salons & hairdressing are not “seen” as a viable profession for tech.
I found a company called “Client Magic” for my online booking software at the time, and I didn’t stop there!
Keep reading. ….
2006 was a Game Changer – “You can make $1000 to $4000+ per makeover client.”
Seriously? is what I was thinking when I stepped foot into my first hair extensions class when they said that I could make thousands of dollars per client literally….back in 2006.
I was already indoctrinated about “work smarter not harder” by working with Redken as a newer business owner and as a Redken educator but would hair extensions be my “golden ticket” to really be able to “have it all” because remember, as you are reading this historical timeline I was a new mom, and did not want to work on the weekends.
I truly wanted it all.
Because one thing that I forgot to mention was the very first thing I did when I worked for myself, in 1999, was I STOPPED DOUBLE BOOKING and I STARTED CHARGING FOR CONSULTATIONS.
The only immature mistake I made was thinking that, back then, if I took an expensive hair extension class, women who wanted long hair would bang down my door and pay me lots of money… it doesn’t work like that, ironically.
. (Screenshot shows that I ultimately figured it out and can share what has worked…)keep reading)
2008 Email – “Want to make $1,000’s of dollars online blogging
I started blogging back in 2008,for my salon, and so when I see young stylists want to give up within 10 seconds of joining the industry ….internally I struggle with being empathetic to screaming “get over yourself and MAKE SOME CONTENT”.
This morning, I’m working on a piece of content because this year marks a milestone in my 34-year career. I AUTOMATED salon 25 years ago.
Why Blogging helped rank my websites….CONTENT!
If that email was true about making thousands online with blogging and if content attracted customers then this would be a “no-brainer”…..
Over my 34-year career, and both my personal & professional journey of building income through creating content online, never have I experienced “getting rich quick”.
The true story is you have to put in the reps.
You need to do the reps during the good times, and especially during the hard.
You have to have GRIT, or I will tell you know….”play it safe and go work for someone else, but then you will never know the freedoms of having to truly own, creating your own future like that of those that work for themselves, because, in my opinion…being self-made is priceless.
The only one who can be given any credit for your success of “making it” will be yourself.
What I mean is that the raw ownership of the fundamentals of the following when you are working for yourself is a very tall stack of skills that you need to OWN in the sense of if your “name is on the door” then you better be ready to be skilled in these versus if your are working for someone else, and you maybe be assigned to maybe just one of these:
For myself? I have been self-reliant in all of these areas, and I can share with you that my early of adoption of automation and technology helped me hone these skills because…… I wanted that “hair extension money”
✅ Customer Acquisition
✅ Nuturing
✅ Consulting
✅ Closing
✅ Fullfillment
✅ Follow-Up
✅ Reputation Management
✅ Retention
2009 – Ohhhh…look, I can see what people are searching for!
Making “analog” content was work…there was AI to cheat or move faster.
Search Queries! …… Oh, and now my story gets juicy because I learned the “how to” and what a Google Analytic tracking code was…. I was off to the races because this gave me the data to start making content that truly mattered to my website visitors!
The first thing that needed to be done was to open a Google Webmaster Account and then from that point on…blogging was my blueprint to working definitely “smarter and not harder” because what was true back then about adding value is still true today.
Search Queries are what people are searching for and then how they may find your website if you are lucky. 😉
Tip:
I would look for the queries that were what’s called “longtail” questions. Such as “Do hair extensions damage your hair?”
Next, I would write a blog article that would answer those questions….. and over time, it was and still is CONTENT that HELPS the consumer that converts.
And this whole time, remember… I didn’t go to college because I was hairstylist. I do have to admit that I was fascinated with Sci-Fi movies since I was a kid and still am to this day.
(Actual Screenshot dating back to 2009 on my hair extension salon)
I wanted to learn everything I could about how the internet worked, and even to date I haven’t stopped learning.
From Page #1 to Hacked…..What would you do?
One of the most crushing parts that happened along the way while I was bunkering down to make content was this…7 years down that content road, I was hacked so badly that I lost 14 salon websites and 7 years of blogging.
Did I cry?… wouldn’t you? Because when it comes to SEO….CONTENT MATTERS, and you can lose your ranking fast.
Just like that saying, “There’s no crying in baseball.”
I rebuilt. It took me 9 months to rebuild and repair my SEO, but I did it.
And if this post has your attention, then just wait for my next article. 
What and Where will you find me now?
To date, you will still find me practicing what has worked for the last 25 years! After a quarter of a century of tested and proven trials & successes, I can confidently share with you that it’s imperative to have a business operating system to automate your follow-up.
My self-taught interests in technology helped “bridge the gap” between the creative, service-based industries while I was actually fulfilling of the services.
My very unique point of difference that I can help inspire you with is that as I AM AN AGENCY owner… I have literally decades of hands-on experience of testing what has failed and what has worked.
Start your agency or automate your business….just start!
I keep things SIMPLE because I want you to succeed faster than it took me.
GET FREE PLAYBOOK Estimated reading time: 12 minutes
Yes, absolutely.