We recently connected with Jessica Santiago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Jessica thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you talk to us about your team building process? How did you recruit and train your team and knowing what you know now would you have done anything differently?
Building a team has been a journey, and I know I have much more to learn. I was the only employee for the first two years of my business, and hiring my first employee was a disaster. The following few teams were just as awful, and then I realized I was the common denominator. I knew I needed help, but I had no idea what to look for. I found several leadership programs and dove right in. The interesting part was what I didn’t learn. I learned many valuable tools to be an effective leader, but none of the programs I attended spoke about the self. I realized that work environments could quickly turn toxic if the leader didn’t have a great hold on boundaries and mental and physical health. I began to look back at all the failed attempts to have a strong team and decided I was the real issue. I needed to look at some of my beliefs and values as a human. I had a traumatic life and childhood, which I brought to adulthood. When a person has unresolved trauma, sometimes they don’t realize it. I was one of those people. I came from a culture where topics like mental health aren’t discussed. The belief was, “If you were alive, what do you have to complain about?” I dove deep into my trauma and worked on myself for two years. I still made many mistakes, including choosing people with a sense of scarcity. Even after mental health treatment, I found myself moving into old patterns. I chose a group of people out of a place of lack, but I immediately realized what was happening. With yet another team gone, I had to start from scratch again. This time, I cleared my expectations, boundaries, and, most importantly, my policies. I hired a manager who understands my mental health challenges and helps hold me accountable. Now I have a BEAUTIFULLY functioning team with loads of respect for each other. We learn about personal boundaries and continue to check in regularly to ensure everyone feels equitable.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Salon Benders empowers the lgbtqia+ community and allies by providing trauma-informed beauty and wellness services. We have the vision to help educate the greater hair industry to make getting a haircut more inclusive and queer/trans competent. We have created a bespoke beauty experience with the help of trauma therapists, somatic practitioners, and hair specialists to create a salon visit like none other. In many cases, it’s “the salon’s way or the highway,” but we take a more careful approach in our space. We take our guest’s sensory needs, physical needs (allergies/sensitivities), hair type, mental health, and lifestyle to ensure they are as comfortable as possible while getting their haircut. It has taken us five years to create our unique consultation methods, and we are constantly working to improve. With my 20 years of hair industry expertise and ability to collect data and implement feedback, I have come up with the ideal working environment. Benders’ employees are not independent contractors; they receive W-2s, which is rare in the hair industry. Being an employee is a significant benefit in the case of an emergency; they can easily take paid time off and collect disability, unemployment, and other benefits that come with being an employee. We also take a trauma-informed approach in the workplace and have systems for each individual that cater to their mental, physical, emotional, and sensory needs. Some trauma-informed practices include ensuring stylists are not overbooked, have quiet and clean workspaces, 4-day work weeks, personalized hours, health and education stipends, mental health, and menstrual leave. We also practice a low-toxic environment with little to no harsh chemicals. We go above and beyond to minimize our carbon footprint by using TerraCycle, which has found a way to reduce and recycle 95% of our salon’s waste. It includes used foils, remaining hair color, hair clippings (for oil spills), and more. We practice transparency regarding salaries and the business’s earnings, ensuring everyone is equally and fairly paid. We plan to expand our business by adding more services to our menu. The ideal situation would be to have a full-service salon and spa. We want to purchase a property someday. We dream of a safe and secure building that will always be our own. We want to enrich our community with our services for a long time, and with the help of this grant, we will be closer to realizing that dream. We hope to find a larger space in a safer neighborhood with plenty of room to create, have events and find sanctuary.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
After two decades of being a hairstylist on the autism spectrum, masking became nearly impossible for me anymore. I worked in dozens of hair salons in states all around the country. I always hoped to find my salon home, but all I saw were toxic work environments that encouraged unhealthy habits, little to no practice of ethical touch, gossip, and cliques. I found myself becoming more and more mentally and physically ill. I knew I couldn’t go on much longer. I was convinced I could not support myself without a college degree and barely graduating high school. But, it is all I had ever done and thought I was capable of. I met my partner shortly after and gave him a haircut. Being transgender, he’d never felt comfortable getting his hair cut professionally. He was so blown away by the experience and pitched an idea. What about a hair salon with a focus on the LGBTQIA+ community? I wasn’t convinced because I had challenging feelings about my sexuality and felt incapable of holding space for a whole community. I thought I needed to be at peace with my identity, especially concerning my mental health, before I could do anything further with my career. His encouraging words forever changed my life. He said if that remains the truth for the queer community, our youth will never have the representation they/we desperately need.
I began to think, if my best isn’t good enough for everyone, can it be at least good enough for me? I’m the kind of person who lives with integrity above all. My moral compass and my truth are what guide me. That truth challenges people, and I have some “haters,” Ultimately, I can only be myself and continue to find ways to become a better version of myself. I opened my hair salon to help people like me who may need extra care around being touched by strangers. You know, the people who are often misunderstood. Those are my people. I want to attract people who want to talk about subjects with substance, who want to be challenged, and who aren’t scared to deepen their knowledge and understanding of themselves. Essentially, I want a place where people can come as they are and leave a better version of themselves. If folks can’t hang with who we are/ WHO I AM, find another place to be.
As people, we have to unlearn ideas like, perfectionism and negative self talk. It’s imperative that we lift eachother up and normalize healing. I hope other queer people, especially queer women of color, read this and know that you can do this. Find your values, live by them, and open a company that represents your uniqueness. It’s not going to be easy, but, you’re brave, you’re strong, and you ARE capable of being happy in this life. Queer happiness is revolutionary!! Let’s show them how it’s done.
Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?
Be real. Be vulnerable. Make sure you know your personal values and use them as your North Star.
Contact Info:
- Website: salonbenders.com
- Instagram: salonbenders
- Facebook: salonbenders
- Linkedin: salonbenders
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