We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Cassie Hamel a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Cassie, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s something crazy on unexpected that’s happened to you or your business

I woke to a phone call around 8am on October 30th 2017. It was my landlord. There had been a fire in my salon. He told me on the phone it wasn’t that bad but I should come down right away. I got dressed and my husband and I raced over. When I arrived, I instantly knew he was wrong. It was “that bad.” The windows were smashed out, there was broken glass, plants, furniture broken and blackened. I walked through the door sifting through the rubble, devastated, shocked, confused. Everything was black and there was water all over the ground. The fire department had been there and what the fire didn’t destroy they did. It was an electrical fire, the speculated caused was a hair vacuum we were using. We think it had been running while we were closed. The motor overheated and must have smoldered against the wall creating excessive smoke damage and ultimately a fire. Luckily, no one was harmed including the tenants that lived above the salon. I had only been open for 6 weeks. My salon was gone. Everything was gone.
It took 11 months to get it all back together again. In that time I questioned everything. Was this a sign? Should I even re-open? In the meantime, I rented a chair from a friend in a salon suite so I could keep my clientele. I re-branded, re-built and decided to come back even stronger. I had a long hard think in those 11 months and I did want this. In fact I needed it. I processed the whole experience as a sign to slow down. Don’t get ahead of myself, stay grounded and make this thing exactly what I wanted it to be. It was my first entrepreneurial patch. One of many, they just keep on comin,!

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 name is Cassie Hamel. I am the owner of Little Broken Things. An alternative hair salon and art gallery rooted in creativity, self expression, and community. I have two locations, my original is in the Logan Square neighborhood of Chicago and the newer location is in the Northwest Suburb of Palatine. I have been in the hair industry since I was 16 years old. I have worked at 15+ hair salons in my career from Chicago to Nashville to Los Angeles and back home to Chicago again. I knew I wanted to build something that not only encompassed all the things I was interested in but also provided a space to cultivate a community. So many salons only did one thing and I never totally aligned with that. We are humans with interests and stories and I wanted my clients to relate and connect outside of the salon chair.
I am proud of what we have built. I believe strongly in collaboration over competition. We will always get more done by working together. My team is such a big part of the things that we do. Not only are they talented stylists but they are creatives, artists, musicians etc. I wanted them to have a place to be seen and valued for everything they have to offer. Not just their skills behind the salon chair.
Our community is at the foundation of everything that we do. In Chicago and Palatine we get out in the streets and participate in art festivals, neighborhood fest’s, music fest’s, fundraisers and more. We want to talk to you we want to vibe, we want to bring people together. All of our merch and marketing materials are commissioned designs by local artists. We host rotating local artists, we have consignment for sale handmade by creatives in our communities. This year we are hosting our first ever fundraiser and market at tour Chicago location. Nothing is off limits, we pull together and make it happen.

How did you build your audience on social media?

I started the first Little Broken Things Instagram page back in 2017. I created a schedule. I posted hair, art and consignment on a rotation. Simple, minimal and to the point. I wanted it to be abundantly clear that we were more than just a hair salon. It was authentic. I wanted you to follow us because you lived near the salon and wanted a haircut or because you liked the artist we had featured at the time. Or because you made jewelry and wanted to sell it in the salon. I wanted to create something that people talked about and I did that through the only thing I knew. HAIR! Throughout the first few years our growth was steady but slow. I relied on customers tagging us, or sharing us. I would tag our artists and they would share our posts and we would get a follower here and there. Back then I never boosted or paid for anything. I couldn’t afford it. It was all 100% organic and it was working. Covid hit in 2020 and there wasn’t much to post. Besides updates about re-opening or sharing Go-Fund Me’s. When we finally got back to work, despite all the restrictions everything picked up pretty quickly. We were all glad to be back. I hired my first apprentice in 2021. I was still behind the chair 3 days a week and wanted to get someone trained so I could step back a bit. (I became a mother in 2020 as well.) My apprentice Maggie said we should start a TikTok. I said do it! So she did. Almost instantly we went viral. AND IT KEPT HAPPENING! These followers were turning into clients. They were coming from all over the place. Different cities, different states and they all wanted shags and vivid hair colors. I even did an interview with Crain’s Chicago Business titled “TikTok can be a boon to small business. It can also be a bane.”
My lease was up and we had outgrown our little 5 chair salon. So, in 2022, we moved into a bigger location. Tiktok was still going strong but we didn’t know if it would last. We continued to stay consistent with Instagram and our community events. In 2024 I opened my second location and we continue to grow and thrive.
For any new businesses starting out my advice is to be authentic. You can’t control the algorithm so don’t try. Don’t try to go viral, you’ll only be disappointed. Stay consistent and stay true and your people will find you.

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

In my experience as a small business owner, every day you have to pivot. Nothing will ever go exactly to plan and you learn to loosen up your expectations. It’s great to have goals and a vision but you have to make room for things to go sideways too. Your hvac will break when it is -6 outside, you will lose employees and it will never be ideal timing, you will get a bad review. You will survive and you keep going. So much becomes out of your control and you have to be okay with that. Remember why you started and trust in that.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://littlebrokenthingschicago.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/littlebrokenthings/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/littlebrokenthingschicago
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@littlebrokenthingschi?lang=en

Image Credits

Hector Hernandez