Today we’d like to introduce you to Mckenna Whaley.
Hi Mckenna, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I think a lot of hairstylist can relate to the origin story starting as a little girl who always just knew this is what she wanted to do. To a degree that was true for me except it wasn’t hair it was makeup and nails.
Something in my soul just knew that I wanted to make others feel beautiful.
I grew up in California so in high school i remember finding a pamphlet about Cosmetology School and from that moment on it was decided.
I moved to Utah my senior year so my plans had to change a little bit but I was still 100% sure that I still wanted to go to cosmetology school. I started 3 weeks after high school graduation. I was 17 years old and feeling so ready and excited for this next chapter. I had even submitted an essay that got me enough scholarship money to add on a course that would certify me in makeup.
I quickly learned that the main focus wasn’t makeup or nails but hair. I fell in love with all there was to know about the intricacies of color and the science behind it all. Every fiber of my being confirmed I was on the right path and failure was never going to be an option.
As the eldest daughter who moved out not under great circumstances I had to succeed. I had to prove that I didn’t need “regular college” like my dad wanted me to do just in case hair didn’t work out. I wasn’t going to drop out like my mom thought. No I was on my own with only my boyfriend at the time to support me.
I was 18 with 3 months left of school when I found out I was pregnant. My world was flipped upside down but failure wasn’t an option so I pushed through the intense sickness and graduated. I took my written test right away and passed and after I had my daughter I took my practical test and passed. I was licensed! Now what? I had a newborn baby and was newly married. We were 19 years old and could not afford daycare so I became a stay at home mom and put my dreams on hold.
Turns out my soul still knew I was meant to be in the salon and staying home was making me stir crazy so I applied to work part time when my husband was home from work at Mastercuts when it was in the Layton Mall. I found out I was pregnant with my son right before my second interview.
You can probably imagine how much foot traffic we actually got there. I wasn’t doing much hair but I got really good at product sales. It’s not what I wanted though. I was there about 6 months or so before I moved on.
I worked at a Supercuts, then a commission salon, then a Fantastic Sam’s, and then a family salon called Blown Away before I ended up starting my own business and moving into my very own studio in 2021.
Every salon taught me something different about myself and about how each structure worked. Franchise’s vs. family owned, Commission vs hourly only… I learned the pros and cons of each and how each system was designed to harbor growth and sales. In those years before moving to my studio I worked hard to improve not only my skills behind the chair but I started taking a marketing and business program and I was hooked. Growing a clientele was no longer just about doing good hair it was intentional and psychological. The information I was learning had me outgrowing every salon I was in because I’d hit the glass ceiling and couldn’t grow further in that space.
Now before I get to the version of me that started her own business it’s important to note that 2020 brought major changes for me and not just because the world shut down and I wasn’t allowed to work for 3 months. I was 25 I had 3 kids and was going through a divorce. I had come into an opportunity to do hair and makeup for a boudoir photographer and took it because any extra money was going to be crucial as a newly single mom. All of a sudden I was surrounded by women who came to their shoots feeling insecure and full of self doubt. They didn’t see a beautiful woman in the mirror like I did. Every completed makeup session I watched these women transform ever so slightly into a more confident version of themselves. I could relate to these women, and overtime something shifted in my own mind that if I could see how amazing these women are and how beautiful inside and out they were then what was stopping me from seeing how amazing I was. My confidence grew exponentially to the point where even my clients could tell the difference in how I showed up to work and how I carried myself in my day to day.
With all of the knowledge and growth I had from pouring myself into learning more about the business side of my industry, combined with my newfound confidence I grew out of another salon.
I knew there was only one option for the next part of my journey, and that was to be my own boss.
In January 2022, I officially opened up M.H.M Studio.
About 90 to 95% of my clients followed me to my studio and with the freedom to implement all of the business tactics and marketing that I had been learning it took off and away that I wasn’t expecting. Of course I knew I wasn’t going to fail because as stated before failure is never an option in my book, but to have the freedom and control to run my business, using all of my experience and knowledge in the way that I felt made the most sense for me and for the clientele That I already had and was continuing to build, I quadrupled my income in that first year.
In January 2023 something unexpected happened and I went viral on TikTok for a video showing my in depth consultations and a transformation on my sister‘s hair that each got millions of views. All of a sudden, my little TikTok page that I never truly intended to be a business tool be became one in a matter of four days I went from 200 followers to over 10,000 followers and found myself eligible to now earn more income through social media.
The majority of my new clients started coming from TikTok and I continued to build a business that not only was successful financially, but was successful in the sense that I had wanted to create space where anyone who sat in my chair felt safe, seen, and heard. They weren’t just getting their hair done….They were getting an escape from a world who was so quick to throw judgment for being too much, too loud, swearing too much, being too emotional, not fitting the mold that this State tends to make for women.
For 3 1/2 years, I built and grew my business in that studio. Unsurprisingly, I found myself in a position where my soul knew it was meant to do more, and I was outgrowing that space.
Which brings us to current day… where I now own a booth rent salon in Clearfield called Nyvaria Beauty where I can not only curate a space that feels safe for clients, but also a space that feels safe for other industry professionals who are looking for somewhere that allows them to grow with no glass ceiling and to have unwavering support in that growth, even if it ends up not being in my space.
So while my journey to where I’m at took longer than I initially thought it would when I was 17 going into beauty school, every step of the journey molded me and taught me lessons that I would’ve only learned by experiencing it the exact way that I did. Every different type of Salon, every different type of Salon owner showed me, knowingly or not, the things that worked and didn’t work and how much change was really necessary in this ever changing and ever growing industry.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I don’t think the road to success is ever smooth! In my experience, growth never comes from things being easy. It always comes when things are hard and you have to challenge yourself and step out of your comfort zone.
I think two different experiences from two different Salon owners were key in pushing me to where I’m at today. I had a choice to roll over and take it or not. I chose not.
The first Salon that really pushed me towards researching more about the business side of things was the commission Salon I worked at after I left Supercuts.
I ended up having to look into the labor laws while at that salon because I had a set schedule I had to be there, like any employee does, but I was only getting paid if I had a client in my chair but I would have to be there for set times regardless if I was booked. If I didn’t have a client in my chair, I was cleaning the salon or answering phones at reception… still working but not getting paid.
I had two very young kids at home and was pregnant with my third and it hit a point where my intuition told me something doesn’t feel right about this… How am I being told to be here and working but not getting paid. Turns out I was being missed classified. On paper I was a 1099 contracted stylist but the system that I was supposed to be following was that of an employee.
As you can imagine that Salon is no longer in business, but the real tragedy is that in my industry, it is not uncommon for Salon owners to try to have the best of both worlds and either find gray areas to get around the laws or are just running their businesses illegally whether they know it or not. It’s been crazy for me to learn how many people in our industry truly don’t know those laws so no one says anything because they just don’t know any better.
The next owner I worked for after that experience honestly started amazing! As I started to really learn more in the business and marketing program I was doing, Thrivers Society by Britt Seva, that’s when things started to go south.
I was trying to grow my clientele and really learn and implement the strategies I had been learning about but It started creating distance from me and the coworkers who wanted to show up and just do hair. Which in hindsight is totally fair because I think a lot of stylist hope that as an employee, the Salon owner is the one taking on the brunt of the work to market and run their business in a way that brings clientele into the salon.
Unfortunately, it created contention. i was “doing too much”. I could already tell that I was outgrowing that Salon, and that I was going to have to move on if I wanted to continue to grow.
The part that altered me in a way that I wouldn’t realize till later was before I left that owner told me that I would never be successful in this industry and when I did leave, threatened to sue me if my clients followed me. It was an ugly side of the industry that I had never experienced in that way before and later found out that it is very common when stylist quit and move on from a salon that things get weird and ugly and that you should never plan on actually finishing out your two weeks because 9 times out of 10 you will be asked to pack up you things and leave the day you put in your two weeks.
I was under the impression that I was going to finish my 2 weeks but at the end of week one they handed my a garbage bag to put all my expensive tools in and had me turn in my key.
Physically, those weren’t really struggles, but mentally at the time navigating that was definitely a struggle, but ultimately what led me to want to create a different type of space for industry, professional professionals to work in.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
When I started my business, I knew that I needed to stand out from the rest of the very saturated industry that I was in. I felt like everyone specialized in blondes or vivid color. At that point in my career, I had really learned to love working on darker hair and challenging myself to learn different ways to do brunettes besides just caramel highlights.
I also had a lot of clientele that were busy career women and also busy moms that really didn’t have time or wanted to come in super often to get their hair touched up so I had to learn how to achieve results that would last.
That’s how I became a brunette specialist who focused on lived-in hair color.
That has since grown into something much deeper. I feel like my specialty isn’t really just about color that you can grow out for a year without needing it touched up, it’s seeing women for more than just the hair on their head. It’s giving them confidence and having how they look on the outside, harmonize with who they are on the inside. I specialize in seeing women as a whole, beautiful soul and helping them feel and see that for themselves.
We’d love to hear about how you think about risk taking?
Absolutely, I’d argue that being an independent business owner is a risk in itself because every aspect is in your hands.
The surface level answer is that if I don’t market and I don’t do the back end of business I don’t have clients that come sit in my chair and if I don’t have clients who sit in my chair, I don’t make money.
I feel like for my industry It’s even deeper than that because I’m not selling a product… I’m selling myself. Statistics show that 20% of why a client will return to you as a stylist is because of how well you actually did their hair. That means 80% of why they choose you is because of how you show up in your business and the experience that you give them. It’s being vulnerable and relatable and putting yourself on the line and hoping that it’s enough for people to want to continue to come back and share that energy and pay you for it.
Every single day is a risk when you are working with people’s images and exchanging energy that closely.
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