Today we’d like to introduce you to Elizabeth Faye.
Hi Elizabeth , thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I was a troubled teenager. From twelve to sixteen, I attended a different school and lived with a different family every year. Hoping to get kicked out of school, I dyed my hair a wild color with a stolen box of hair color. My plan worked and I was expelled. While I waited for my dad to pick me up, a woman handed me the business card of a local hairdresser. That hair appointment changed the trajectory of my life.
My hairdresser saw a kid who needed love and mentorship. He started trading me free hair appointments for report cards with better grades, and for the first time, I had someone who was really invested in me. At sixteen, I walked into his salon without a report card and told him I had dropped out of school. I expected a lecture. Instead, he offered me a job.
That was the beginning of everything. I became a hairdresser, and the beauty industry became home. It was the first place I truly felt heard, seen and loved.
I worked in salons from Las Vegas to Chicago, became a Learning Leader at Paul Mitchell the School, opened my own salon and started creating education for other beauty pros. I was a young single mom, editing my first course on iMovie in my closet so the light wouldn’t wake my son. That first course flopped, but I kept going. My workshops began spreading by word of mouth, and in 2017, I became Redken’s first global ambassador. From there, I built Hair Love University, an education and community platform for beauty pros, and in 2018, I launched the Hair Love Retreat.
From the outside, it looked like I had built the career of my dreams. But my body was telling a very different story. Years of pushing, producing and taking care of everyone around me had turned into burnout, chronic pain, migraines and anxiety. I had built this beautiful career, but I wasn’t well enough to fully enjoy the life that came with it.
In 2019, I finally started talking openly about what I was experiencing. By 2020, I was training as a life coach and somatic practitioner and rebuilding my health from the ground up. My health crisis became a healing journey, and wellness went from something I incorporated into my work to the heart of it.
The more I learned and the more beauty pros I worked with, the more I realized my experience wasn’t unique. This industry is filled with incredibly talented people who spend their careers making others feel seen, cared for and beautiful, often while sacrificing their own wellbeing in the process. I began to see that we didn’t just need more conversations about burnout. We needed better systems to support the people behind the industry.
In 2022, I released my award-winning documentary, Hairstylists Change the World, as a love letter to the industry that had changed my own life. I wanted to shine a light on the impact beauty professionals have far beyond the hair they create, and the unique way they make people feel heard, seen and loved. That message continued to grow, and in 2023, I took it to the TEDxStGeorge stage. My talk went viral, reaching more than a million people. That same year, Pivot Point asked me to build a wellness program specifically for beauty schools. And that opportunity became The Vitality Project.
We launched The Vitality Project in beauty schools in the fall of 2024, expanded into salons in 2025, and on October 26, 2026, we’re launching our new app to bring this work to even more beauty professionals.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Not even close. I was a high school dropout who spent years believing I was “too stupid” to do anything else. I built my business while my marriage was falling apart, and eventually became a single mom and the breadwinner with a toddler on my hip. When I decided to host my first retreat, I won a $10,000 grant that covered the deposit on the venue because, honestly, I couldn’t have afforded it otherwise. And plenty of the things I launched flopped before anything really worked.
But the hardest struggle was my health. I pushed past burnout for years until my body eventually forced me to stop. I was dealing with chronic pain, migraines, inflammation and panic attacks, with very few answers about why I felt the way I did. At the same time, my now-husband, Derek, was going through a serious battle with depression.
Then 2020 shut the world down. At the time, I owned a salon, coached hairdressers and hosted in-person retreats, which were pretty much the exact businesses you didn’t want to be in during a global pandemic. It was an incredibly difficult season, but it also forced me to reevaluate what success actually meant to me.
I started asking myself a question that ultimately changed the direction of my work: What good is building the career of your dreams if you’re not well enough to live it?
Everything I’ve created since has been shaped by that question. When The Vitality Project began taking shape, I knew I was turning everything I had learned through my own experience into something that could help an entire industry. In 2024, I put my savings and retirement into bringing that vision to life because I believed so strongly in what we were creating.
As you know, we’re big fans of The Vitality Project. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
The Vitality Project is the beauty industry’s first workplace wellness program, built specifically for the people who spend their careers taking care of everyone else.
Beauty and wellness professionals create safe spaces for human connection, build confidence and often become pillars in their communities. Yet the people who spend their careers caring for others have historically had very little structured support for their own wellbeing. I knew from my own experience that burnout was a real problem in our industry, but research from Pivot Point International showed just how much bigger it was. Their research found that 91% of licensed, actively working beauty professionals reported facing at least one wellness-related challenge and one in four are considering leaving the industry entirely. It became clear that this wasn’t just an individual problem. It was an industry-wide need. The Vitality Project was created to address it.
What started as a wellness program has since evolved into an entire workplace wellness platform and app designed specifically around the way beauty professionals actually live and work. At the center is what we call our Culture Operating System. Through surveys and monthly check-ins, salon and spa owners can understand how their people are really doing and turn those insights into clear, actionable next steps. Members also have access to guided monthly mini retreats, an on-demand wellness library, coaching, practical tools and a community of beauty professionals who truly understand the realities of the industry.
In beauty schools, we provide a turnkey wellness curriculum for students, along with training and resources for educators. Our program is used in schools including Tricoci University, Ogle School, Bellus Academy and Taylor Andrews Academy right here in St. George. We’re also a SalonCentric partner, bringing our Mini Wellness Retreats to beauty professionals in stores nationwide.
What makes The Vitality Project different is that it was built for beauty professionals, by beauty professionals. I’ve experienced the burnout myself, and this work is the culmination of more than a decade spent learning, listening and creating experiences alongside this industry.
What I’m most proud of is the impact. Our work has now touched more than 30,000 careers, but I still believe we’re just getting started. My hope is that wellbeing becomes a standard part of building a successful career in beauty, not something we turn to only after someone is already burned out. Beauty pros are in the business of changing lives. We’re in the business of changing theirs.
Do you have any memories from childhood that you can share with us?
My favorite childhood memories are camping in the mountains with my dad. I think that’s where a lot of my connection to nature began. He would also take us to rendezvous where we would gather with people from all different walks of life and trade things people had made, food, candy, and all sorts of different goods.
Looking back, I think those experiences shaped me more than I realized at the time. There was something really special about people coming together, sharing what they had, trading, giving and connecting with one another. A lot of those same ideas have found their way into the communities I’ve created today. Gathering, collaboration and giving have always felt really natural to me, and I think some of that started in those moments with my dad.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.jointhevitalityproject.com/
- Instagram: business: https://www.instagram.com/jointhevitalityproject; personal: https://www.instagram.com/heyelizabethfaye
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabeth-faye-126aab1a3
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@HeyElizabethFaye
