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

Joi, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

I had always been the one in my family that liked to play on everyone’s hair. It wasn’t until I started cosmetology school that I realized there was an actual science to it.

So it’s 2011, I have been in college for two years and I loved where I was to the point where I wanted to stay there. But there was no space for me to be able to professionally do what I already did on the side. In college, the best way for me to get money as student without compromising my study time was to do hair and haircut. the local barbershop in the area required licensing, and the closest place I could go to get a barber license with Sacramento. But that was three hours away.

I really love School, I love the environment of being in college and being able to converse about the subjects that I was passionate about, but I couldn’t see myself doing psychology and peer counseling for the rest of my life. It was too heavy and I didn’t know how to separate myself from it And leave the Work at work. So I made a decision to go into beauty school and get a license to do the things that I was already doing. I wanted to be a barber since I was a kid, but it wasn’t all the way setting phone for me until I was staring down the barrel of 10 Years of school.

Graduating beauty school was the first step to becoming a barber because in my city there was no Barber School. So I focused entirely on cutting. Graduated in 2013 and I hit the ground running and I haven’t stopped since. When we moved out to Vegas, I started saving immediately to be able to go to Barber School, and I graduated Barber School in 2021.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

This is a hard question 😅 only because I struggle with talking about myself and my “whys”.

In 2011 my cousin started school at * Milan Institute of cosmetology. He told me about it and it sparked something in me, because I was staring down the barrel of 10 years in school in order to do what I wanted to do. I was studying psychology and social science. With a focus on human behavior. That was my interest since I was about 10 years old. My mom was a rockstar scholar, she worked day and night to get her degrees. She had hundreds of books in our house. And I was never one of the kids that sat and watch TV all the time. I was outside, or I was in a book. I admired that about her, and I thought that I had to follow her footsteps to honor her.

On the other hand, my father worked virtually for himself. He was a car salesman in Reno, but he was the most sought after car salesman in Reno. There were companies that would call him and offer him anything to come and work for him because he could sell water to a whale.

I remember one year I saw his tax returns, and when I realized how much he was making every year, I immediately went and thought about it. My mom does social work. She does really good work, but being a person for the community does not pay you as much as it should.

So here I am looking at what I want my next 10 years to look like. I already had my two sons, I was a single parent, and the work that I was doing was minimum wage, and I wanted my own stuff.

So when my cousin has started beauty school, I had to think, do I want to be in school for 10 years or, do I want to do 18:00 in this vocational program graduate go work in a shop somewhere and make more than the minimum wage I’m making right now while I’m in school.

I made the decision to sign up that day.

Your first couple of weeks or months in cosmetology school is spent in phase one. What that means that you’re doing bookwork and you’re getting the fundamentals of your business.

Bookwork was never a problem for me. I actually love to know why something works the way that it does. I love to know how things go from being one thing to another. Science was always my highest core scurrying grades in school since I was in kindergarten. Because why is my favorite question how is my favorite follow up.

When I understood that hair is science, there’s nothing that you can do in here that does not require a scientific understanding, that is where my discipline came from. I needed to understand why hair melts when you add one thing to another. I had to understand why the stylist in my city were so scared of different textures of hair, I had to understand Why when girls would get braids. They would have bald spots when they take them out. I had to understand why my hair grew the way that it did in one season and why it didn’t and another. And more importantly, I had to be able to teach my sister how to take care of her hair if I’m not around.

As a result of being the crazy obsessive nerd that I am with anything that I want to spend my time doing, I’m able to provide services on any texture of hair and create a plan, dedicated to a person‘s specific hair type.

I think that is what sets me apart from a lot of other stylist and barbers is my dedication to quality and customer service. I don’t spend a whole lot of time trying to standardize my services. Every service if you need to that person.

The thing that I am most proud of is how I have been developing as a brand. My entire focus has been quality in customer service. I believe that the only way that you can create quality is knowing the wise and house. Knowing how hair is going to respond to anything that you do learning, the hair in all of it stages is the only way that you master it. My focus has been on mastery since I stepped foot into this industry. And I watch and I listen to the people who have been here Longer than me, and I take what they do great and I apply it to my self. But I’ve been watching a lot of that, and I immediately put that on the list of what not to do.

This is a business, and if people do not treat it as such, they don’t go far. My father taught me to develop myself as the brand because without me this does not move. So I need to take myself more seriously, and not get caught up in the hustle. He also taught me to know my value and not negotiate my value with anyone. That is what I am very proud of. Is that I won’t compromise my brand or my core values as a service provider for anyone.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

What can the public do to help support the business professionals in the beauty world. I think it is way past time for consumers to treat us as business professionals instead of people who do this for a hobby. This is the business that pays our bills and provides food for our families. It should be respected as such.

This is the only business that I know of that you can spend eight hours on one thing, and people think that you’re only supposed to get paid $100. And I just think that’s crazy. We’re expected to be on call at all times, we’re expected to drop everything and answer questions throughout the day. People are upset with needing to pay deposits, but it’s because people are flaky.

When you go in for a teeth cleaning with the people who professionally maintenance your teeth, you pay a no-show fee if you don’t come in. You call and you book appointment ahead of time with the office. You follow their booking practices without question.

Why wouldn’t you treat the people who maintenance your hair for you the same?

I personally think more beauty professionals would change how they see our business, if the consumers would also change the way that they see our business.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

To leave something for my children to build on. My goal is to create generational wealth in my family. My father, while he was a wonderful businessman, he didn’t set anything up for the future. I don’t want to be struggling with retirement and Social Security when I get older, and I don’t want my children to struggle either. The mission is to get them started off in life Better than I had it. Without spoiling them and making them to entitled and privileged. I want a three tier family business so that my children will always have work without having to depend on some other company for their resources. I want to teach them that it’s possible to have something that is just yours and make it great.

My goal is to have something along the lines of the school and franchise Barbershops. I want my children to have a skill that nobody can ever take away so that they’ll always be able to make money.

But more than anything I have been in a constant mission my entire life to better myself. If you ever ask me who I’m in competition with, I’ll tell you the version of me that went to sleep yesterday. I want to Better myself. And be the best version of myself when it’s all said and done. So I did a really clean set of braids yesterday, how can I make it better the next day? So I did the cleanest haircut I have ever done today, but I bet I can do better tomorrow. I have succeeded in making this person, skin glow, and I removed all blemishes, but how can I do better for the next person tomorrow. I’m great brand today, but how can I Be seen by more people tomorrow?

I draw a lot of inspiration from the Paul Mitchell brand, Sam Villa, Deion, Sanders, LeBron James, and Kobe Bryant. How did Paul Mitchell get to be the brand that it is? How did Sam get to be a brand ambassador and educator for Paul Mitchell like he is? Deion, Sanders, LeBron, James and Kobe Bryant are three of the most disciplined, most talented athletes, and you have to start thinking what separates them from everybody else. And it is their discipline and their dedication to their craft.

I set out to be something like the avatar in my business. But my only competition is myself.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: Iam.jmartin