We recently connected with Erynn Timm and have shared our conversation below.

Erynn, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

The idea of salon ownership itself came to me very early in my career, back when I was in beauty school. I had an instructor who also owned a salon, and I felt so called to explore that after seeing how supportive she was for myself and my classmates. However, in the beauty industry you cannot just jump straight into ownership, you have to pay your dues more or less by working for other people while you build your clientele and so on.
So after school I spent 6 years working behind the chair growing a clientele that I became (and still am) extremely fond of. I left the salon every day feeling so fulfilled that I was able to spend my days with people I truly loved, and that I was the person they looked forward to seeing monthly. However during that time I started to experience all of the reasons so many stylists leave the industry. When we’re in school, we’re sold this idea of freedom and flexibility, but we aren’t prepared for the caveat that for many it take 5 or more years to reach that freedom. I worked in salons that required me to come to unpaid, mandatory meetings. They had very strict dress code rules that seemed arbitrary and pointless. I was micromanaged to the point that I truly believed I was “bad” at hair due to the criticisms of my boss, when in reality I had a booming clientele and wait-list. I was forced to take clients who were disrespectful, chronically late and never happy. I was not allowed to say “no” at any point no matter how uncomfortable I may have felt. I spent 3 years at one salon without a raise or price increase, even though I had brought the matter to my leaders attention multiple times.
Many in our industry experience burnout due to 12 hour work days, with little to no freedom around scheduling or taking time off. There are very few salons that offer breaks in the day for stylists to eat, use the bathroom or take care of themselves. If you surveyed the other professionals working “behind the chair” as we call it, you would likely hear stories of traumatic things that occurred in their salons. Many salon owners lack the emotional intelligence required to lead their team to success, and they see their salon as a cash cow instead of an opportunity to help others grow. Don’t get me wrong, we’re all in business for profit at the end of the day, but if your only “why” is the money, how are you helping your people thrive? The long and short of it is that I left my last commission salon at the end of my rope, and my options were to go work at another toxic salon with the same problems, or to go into business for myself. I realized the people in my industry deserve more opportunity than that. I spent 3 years working solo and fleshing out what would come next, and of course the natural answer was that I needed to open a salon that was different. A salon that benefited not only the clientele but also the team, a salon that provided a healthy and emotionally safe working environment so stylists could reap the rewards of the career we are promised at the start. I wanted to create a space that allowed me to help other stylists see all of the amazing benefits that doing hair can bring to their life. And so, Adorn was born.

Erynn, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I got into doing hair simply because I hated traditional schooling and at 17 years old had absolutely no interest in moving onto a university. It was not my passion at the time, although I did enjoy experimenting with my hair at home, I never realized it was an option career wise until my Mom suggested I check out the Cosmetology school down the street from where we lived. In high school, I was kind of the “weird girl” and never really fit in anywhere. When I joined Cos school, I knew I had found my people and for the first time in my life I felt a sense of belonging. Enrolling in Cosmetology school and working with clients also taught me that I truly LOVE people. I love hearing their stories, their wins and their struggles. It’s shown me that we really are so much more alike than we think.

After about 6 years of dabbling in a lot of different specialties within the industry I found that was I was best at was creating looks that enhanced my clients natural beauty. These days I specialize in “lived in, low maintenance dimensional hair color” for busy moms, corporate professionals and other women who want a high end look without being back in my chair every 4-6 weeks. I particularly love helping women come back to themselves through self care after periods of extreme burnout. In our day to day life, it’s easy to forget that our hair is our greatest accessory, but when a client walks out of my salon truly feeling themselves for the first time in ages, I know I’ve done what I set out to do.

Our salon features semi private styling suites with sliding doors to help minimize excess noise, and add an extra layer of relaxation for our clients. Instead of listening to your neighbors conversation, 5 different blow dryers, and a ringing phone at the front desk, our clients get their stylists all to themselves. We don’t double book either, our attention is fully on our guests during their visit. I personally don’t believe that we do our best work when we are bouncing from client to client, and of course we want to always be doing our best work as much as possible.

Another element we focus on at Adorn is making sure our clients feel comfortable letting us know if anything is less than satisfactory. We are happy to make a small adjustment or tweak if needed, and we value our clients feedback more than anything. So many clients feel embarrassed or bad about asking their stylists to change something at the end of their appointment, but our team understands that hair is an imperfect art that requires client and stylist communication to really “get it right”. Our stylists would never, ever gaslight a client by saying “well, this is what you asked for!”, because at the end of the day we just want our guests to lose their hair and their experience with us.

I’m proud to say that we do things a little differently, and that we are always working to do things the modern way, instead of the antiquated and outdated ways of the past in the salon world. Things are changing! And while it may take awhile to get to a place where all salons are doing things this way, we are excited to be at the forefront of change.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

For some context, in the beauty industry oftentimes the top 5% of service providers are incredibly beautiful, trendy and wealthy. Oddly enough, for a very long time they were almost entirely men. I think this is probably true in many industries.
Thankfully that has started to change in the last few years, but I still had to unlearn this feeling I had that success doesn’t happen for “people like me”. For people who aren’t in the inner circle, or who have felt like the weird kid in every group. For years I was made to feel less than in social circles within the beauty industry because I would rather own 3 pairs of the same jeans than put together a “cute” outfit. I was told more than once that I would need to change who I was to grow a business, and at first I did.

When I opened my first business, a solo salon suite, I put on a very “business professional” facade. I tried wearing heels to work, I had very corporate brand photos taken, and hid a lot of who I was personally away from my clients. What happened after proved to me that that wouldn’t work. I certainly met a lot of new clients, but I felt exhausted pretending to be someone I wasn’t all the time. I couldn’t talk about my interests because the clientele I attracted had nothing in common with me.

I learned that it is OKAY to be yourself, and that the clients who resonate with that will find you and adore you and subsequently never leave. When you lean into your true self and start letting people see who that is, you find YOUR people. Work got a lot more fun after I took off the “ultra professional” mask. I also learned that I can be an incredibly professional business owner and still be myself. I still hold my clients and team accountable to our salons policies, I still have hard conversations when I need to and set boundaries. But I also get to talk about the podcasts I love, wear the clothes I’m comfortable in and crack jokes the way I want to.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

I firmly believe that managing a team effectively starts during the hiring process. Building a team that works well together means being selective with who you allow into your business. It’s like inviting someone to your home.

Outlining your core values as a business owner, and then the core values of your business will help you eliminate candidates that aren’t a good fit before they step foot into your business. For example, one of our salons core values is Teamwork, so I wouldn’t move forward interviewing a stylist that struggles with helping others or asking for help. Some may argue, “well ,you can train them to get better at that” and while that may be true to a certain extent, wouldn’t it be easier to move onto a candidate that already had what you’re looking for?

My team really started to thrive when I finally had the right group of people who all wanted the same things and had the same mission, to help their clients feel amazing.

I also believe that servant leadership is key. Leadership requires you to show up for your chosen people, and that holds me accountable to a higher standard than when I was working solo. I am here to help my team members in whatever way I can. Sometimes that means I need to step in and close a gap in knowledge or training, sometimes it’s as simple as being someone they can vent about a difficult client to.

Knowing you can come to your boss with anything and that you will feel seen, valued and heard is huge. I personally never felt like that.

Here is an example: at a previous salon I struggled with a client who was never happy with her hair even though I had gone above and beyond to accommodate her and make her happy. She was often late, and still demanded I squeeze her in. My salon owners response was to “make it work” at all costs, because this had been her client prior to raising her own rates. I had repeatedly met with my salon owner about this client specifically, and was made to feel that this clients behavior was my fault somehow. I did not feel seen, heard or valued and soon after stopped voicing my concerns, having learned that I would just have to figure it out on my own.

I never want my team to feel alone in their journey. I want them to feel that we can find solutions together when they are struggling. I am here to support and coach, and while sometimes that means I need to let them stumble a bit to find their footing and learn lessons, I would absolutely never “throw them to the wolves” so to speak.

Being a good leader requires you to put your personal emotions and reactivity to the side, so you can focus on helping others. When you invite others into your space, it really isn’t about you anymore. To put it bluntly, if you’re the type of person to explode on someone when they annoy you or make a mistake, you will not be an effective leader.

I believe when a team feels truly supported morale remains high because they value my leadership as much as I value their place in my business.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.adornhairartistry.com
• Instagram: @the.hairbestie + @adornhairartistry

Image Credits

Amanda Vick – Moon and Wolf Co