We were lucky to catch up with Joy LaMay recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Joy, thanks for joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

With almost 20 years in the salon industry and as an educator for a major color brand for 6 years, I’ve witnessed the highs and lows of this career. Many talented artists start off hopeful, only to be discouraged and pushed down by others. Stylists struggle, feeling successful only when burned out, and salon owners fight for financial freedom.

Years ago, I dreamt of opening a different kind of space… but how?! After visiting countless salons as an educator, I saw a need for something new. I heard about a coaching program called Destory The Hairdresser and signed up as a student. Through coaching and embracing a new approach, I created The Ministry Salon to benefit stylists, and give them a place where they can see their full growth potential encouraged. It’s a place where stylists are free yet supported, combining the best of commission salons and booth rent. My staff call it the “hairstylist rehab.”

I am so proud of the work we are doing at The Ministry Salon, and I love being able to coach other salon owners to do the same now that I am a coach with DTH.

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?

Hello! My name is Joy LaMay and I am a Salon Owner and Business Coach for other salon owners. I am obsessed with the beauty industry and more passionate than ever about the people in it.

I started much like any other hairdresser… totally by accident! I had started doing “kitchen hair” having absolutely no clue what I was doing… and then a friend saying they were going to go sign up for beauty school and I was like…. “wait… thats a thing? I wanna do it too.!” During the first weeks of beauty school I knew I had found my thing.

Through health struggles, moving cities, and starting a family I never wavered in my pursuit of this industry. But boy o boy was it hard. This industry is not for the faint of heart, and as much as I wanted the system to work for me, I couldn’t get past the feeling that I was never going to arrive.

And guess what…. I was right. I wasn’t going to arrive using old standards and outdated practices. I had to align with what my goals, my values, and my visions were telling me.

I opened The Ministry Salon with the desire that stylists would find a community of like minded stylists who are striving for growth, and not just typical salon benchmarks of growth like product sales, but personal growth to be our higher selves. My goal is to elevate the salon industry through one hairdresser at a time. We do this by offering complete freedom of schedule, freedom to specialize, freedom to promote yourself however you’d like, and with the removal of tipping to remove the service provider status of the hairdresser.

Being vegan and earth conscious myself, I knew that The Ministry Salon also had to be different from other salons in that we only use clean beauty products free from the typical toxins found in beauty products. We also use low toxic and organic hair color.

Any advice for managing a team?

I think every salon owner has aspirations of creating a utopia of salons. Everyone is happy and supported, nothing but 5 star reviews, stylists stay until they retire and not a bad word is ever said. Unfortunately the reality is that as a salon owner you are responsible for a lot of personalities and emotions, but it starts with taking responsibility for your own.

Salon ownership has taught me that it all starts with me. I have to stay in a constant state of working on myself. Why do I make the decisions I make? Are they out of fear or abundance? How can I support my staff while allowing them the space to create their own path.

It starts with me, and that is the only part I have control over.

How did you build your audience on social media?

Social media is a beast, and I don’t think anyone out there disputes the positive and negative sides to it.

Over the years I’ve had to fight my battles with it, and ultimately I learned something about myself, and I hope this can help you too.

Social media, and our relationship to it has to serve us and us alone. When we align ourselves with our higher self, and use it as a tool to connect with others, it becomes a lot easier. It gets hard when we get into the spiral of comparison, trying to be someone we aren’t, or conform to other peoples standards.

Align with who you are, and speak to the people out there who are looking for you unique brand of magic.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.destroythehairdresser.com/joy
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joylamay/
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/the-ministry-salon-los-angeles
• Other: https://www.theministrysalon.com

Image Credits
Bella Glickman