Market Meets: Jamie Nelson with Ember Beauty & Barbering

Women everywhere are still trying to figure out “how to have it all.” I’m no different. Here was my dilemma: How could I feed my desire to own my own business, maintain a work/life balance, be a present and available mother and wife and continue to work on my passion as a hairdresser?

I’ve always been a girl who knows what she wants and goes for it. It’s almost to a fault because I don’t stop to think before I jump. Graduating from beauty school, I knew I wanted to work at a salon on Pearl Street. That is where I envisioned myself and a few short years later, that is where I ended up. I was blessed to work for three of the most amazing mentors around. They were all stylists, they were all women and they were all just who I wanted to be in the industry. The salon culture was based around leadership and life-happiness. Instead of having product reps come into the salon to teach us how to sell more product, they had leadership coaches come in to teach us how to be happier. This created a better work environment – and what I noticed – higher sales and a more team-based environment (which you don’t always see in salons). I quickly saw what was happening and I jumped all over it. I invested my own time and money to work individually with the leadership coach. At the time, I thought I was simply preparing myself to be a manager one day. Little did I know, this self-development would put me on the path that led me to do other great things in my life.

Being a stylist in commission-based salons led me to want to do something different. I had maxed out at my dream salon, and I had added being an educator for an international production company to my plate. Yet I still found myself getting bored. I needed the next step. It was time to open my own salon. The first rule in business is to be able to give people what they want. You have to fix a problem for them. I wanted to fix the problem for hairdressers. Hairdressers are constantly leaving salons and starting over. Why? They get bored, there is no more potential to grow, they decide hairdressing is not a career or they lose their passion for hairdressing because they burn out. I wanted to do something different. So, I asked myself, what could be done that hasn’t been done before and give experienced hairdressers a chance to feel enlightened again? Instead of an answer, I got a question: “What do I like best about hairdressing?” The answer is: “People”: The connection I feel with others. The power of touching their hair and becoming a part of each other’s lives. The ability to mentor other stylists and help them see things in themselves that they are afraid to see. But let’s not forget the one thing that also keeps people going: the money. This led to other questions: How can I use my skills as a hairdresser to connect with my clients on a deeper level? How can I use my leadership to mentor other like-minded stylists? How can I make hairdressing a career, instead of a job, for so many who have a passion for it? So, I created a mobile hair salon to bring something different to the beauty industry and as a way to train and mentor other stylists and honor their creativity.