We were lucky to catch up with Tasha Judson recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Tasha thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What’s been the best thing you’ve ever seen (or done yourself) to show a client that you appreciate them?

To me my clients are synonymous with my community here in Portland, Me. Without my community supporting me, my business wouldn’t be able to exist, so I try to show everyone how much I appreciate them by supporting in return. For me, that looks like supporting local businesses and artists by spending money with them, sharing their work/businesses on my socials and in my salon, as well as setting aside money monthly to donate to non profits and community aid.

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?

I’m a hair stylist working in Portland, Me who just really loves making people feel good about themselves! Writing about my brand is kind of my least favorite thing to do, maybe mostly because so much of what I do is about my clients, not me! But I think I can safely say that I’ve built a reputation in Portland for being a queer clown baby who loves lots of color and cuts that I lovingly refer to as artfully fucked up (coined by a dear client). I’m proud of building a space where people know they can come and show up as themselves with no judgement, and get dope hair in a place that they feel relaxed and at home. Also that I cut + color hair in a way that takes into consideration not only what a client wants to look like when they walk out of the salon, but how it’s going to look until they return, whether that be 6 weeks or 6 months. It’s been incredible to have people tell me that they never loved their hair until they met me. It’s also amazing that I get the space to be creative, and through creating hair collections have started to get into photography as well.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

I think by just being dependably and authentically myself! I’ve been doing hair here for almost 14 years, with a name for being the rainbow color gal, because I love color! I wear it myself, and always have. Before instagram, when it wasn’t as common place to do those types of color in the salon, I had my friends coming in and letting me go ham on them! I also spent a lot of time going out and introducing myself to people and hustling to get butts in my chair.

Have you ever had to pivot?

A few years ago I thought I wanted to do the big city thing and moved to LA. I thought I was going to love it and never look back, but I quickly realized that there was so much about Maine that I deeply loved and couldn’t get out there. The decision to move back meant getting really serious about what my strengths were and what I wanted my life and my business to look like. Coming back to Maine was such a great decision, I now own my salon, have a cute lil’ house and a cute lil’ fam. I have an apprentice and am getting to share my love of all things hair with her. It rules, even though there was a lot of feelings of failure and doubt when things in LA didn’t go the way I thought they would.

Contact Info:

• Website: Tashajudson.com
• Instagram: @tashadoeshair @rosyhouseofhairoddities

Image Credits
All photos taken by me