We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Bonnie Bentley. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Bonnie below.

Bonnie, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today So, what do you think about family businesses? Would you want your children or other family members to one day join your business?

I now own my own rental hair salon Joy and Lilly after 17 years of being a hairstylist. The name is in reference to myself (Joy is my middle name) and Lilly (my grandmas nickname). It’s located just behind my husbands vegan restaurant Die Pie. I think the reason we’re able to work together so well, is because we both respect each others craft. Neither one of us steps into each others business unnecessarily. This can also be incredibly helpful when you need an outside perspective of the business without the emotion. Being a family business, you tend to understand the painstaking hours and sacrifices that will need to happen in order to survive, specifically in the post Covid environment. I think sometimes people assume the owners are done when they leave. But that absolutely isn’t true. Small business ownership is 24/7. There’s no 9-5 if you hope to succeed. There’s also a level of passion and commitment to owning a small business that can be hard to understand if you’re not an entrepreneur. The pitfalls would be that because everything ultimately falls on the owners, there’s little room for sick days, mental health days and sacrifices towards special occasions you’ll most likely miss out on as those tend to be the busiest times of year for us. We also have two beautiful daughters who spend a lot of time at the space with us. It’s something they really enjoy, and we like to show them our work ethic as well. I think going through the pandemic has made us think more strategically. We also have had to navigate curve balls constantly. This I think has made us more adaptable and less caught off guard when it comes to surprise situations, which if you’re a business owner, you know those will always happen. That being said, we couldn’t imagine working for someone again. The freedom that comes with creating the businesses you want is is soul food for us. We love being able to live a life of art and creativity. As well as supply jobs for staff who love to be apart of our vision. Those sacrifices are worth it to us being able to come to a business you love everyday.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My love for hair began as a small child, watching my grandma ever so carefully placing pin curls in her hair before bed. I can’t explain why I’ve always loved it, but it’s just apart of my fibre. From that point, I would cut, colour, and style anyone’s hair who would allow it. At 12 years old, I would call the L’Oréal hotline on the colour box and ask them questions about why the colour did X, Y or Z. It fascinated me. 17 years ago, hairdressing was not as glamorous as it is today. As all my siblings went off to university or college, I didn’t even think of hair as a career because it didn’t seem as legitimate. So I worked random retail jobs, meanwhile I kept doing all of my friends hair for fun. My dad finally said to me, you don’t need a university degree or a giant loan to be successful. Goto hair school. Next thing I knew, I was enrolled at Marvel College and immediately knew this was what I was meant to do! I dove straight in and entered competitions. I eventually got my first salon job and took in every shred of information my senior stylists would share. You have to remember, 17 years ago there was zero social media to learn from. You got your education from big brand education classes and other hairstylists around you that were willing to share their knowledge. Eventually my partner and I decided to move from Edmonton Alberta to Vancouver Canada. This was the where I was a small fish in a big pond. I absorbed everything I could from stylists who came from all over the world. I ate, drank and slept hair at that time in my life. It was everything to me. It had hard learning curves, but made me a much stronger hairstylist. Throughout this time, I did classes as often as I could. I was fortunate enough to work with phenomenal hairstylists who were as passionate and excited about the industry as I was. Eventually social media began and that completely transformed the industry. Before social media, clients relied on the salon name and reputation. Once stylists were able to create content, it made it possible to showcase who you are as an individual and attract likeminded clientele. As someone who specializes in colour, this allowed me to attract the clientele I wanted to mainly focus on. Something I would say I’m most proud of is my integrity to my clients and their hair. I will always give 110% because their trust in being in my chair means the world to me. Allowing and trusting me as your hairstylist to be apart of the image you want to feel and present is sacred and special.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

The biggest pivot in my career was choosing to have children. I think this is something that needs to be touched on more for women in business. I was a self proclaimed workaholic before kids for 13 years. 10-12 hour days were the average for me behind the chair. You needed me as a client, I was there! Once I had children it completely shifted my work life balance. I was in the throws of post partem and trying to keep the same pace as before. I quickly realized that wasn’t going to work for me anymore. In the beginning I was devastated to lose clients due to my limited schedule. But what I came to realize was how precious my time really is and where I want to spend it. I also learned to slow down and not be living on autopilot for the business. It’s allowed me to create healthy work boundaries for myself as well. While my children are still young, I am making a conscious decision to work less and absorb these special years. I think once they’re in school, I would love to reassess where I want to invest my time. This was a big reason I decided to open a salon. Having chair renters has allowed me a little bit of flexibility as far as how much I need to work in this season of life.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

I found out I was pregnant with my first child 2 days after they shut the world down in March 2020 for the Covid pandemic. My husband also owned a restaurant, so we basically were temporarily jobless with a mortgage and a baby. Between unpredictable closures of the city, we worked as hard as we could whenever we could. I gave birth in November and we unfortunately lost the restaurants by December 2020 due to the pandemic. I made the difficult decision to go back to work in the new year only 2 months after having our baby so we could survive financially. This was hands down the most difficult time in my entire career. I was navigating motherhood in a pandemic as well as working in such a bizarre time. So much unknown, uncertainty, and political unrest. When we decided to have another child, I immediately knew we needed to plan as well as we could as small business owners. I decided to open my chair rental hair salon. This would allow me to be able to take some time off for post partem this time around. As well as create some financial stability with having chair renters. Fast forward to 2023, with some blood, sweat and tears my husband and I banded together and opened our own space with his restaurant reopening and my hair salon.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: joyandlillyyeg
• Facebook: Bonniedoeshair