WELCOME TO THE SMALL TOWN STYLIST PODCAST
The Small Town Stylist Podcast is LIVE! This has been a project in the works for the past 6 months and I’m excited to finally have it released to the world.
If we haven’t met yet my name is Casey Taylor, also known as @caseytaylorstylist on insta. I am an enneagram 9, also known as the peacekeeper, a wife and dog mom, I am a hairstylist and salon owner as well as an educator specifically for small town stylist. I live in a small town in East Texas with a population of just over 6000 which might sound tiny or kinda big depending on wherever you’re from.
To give you just a little bit of a backstory as to why I chose small town stylists specifically: when I was in cosmetology school 10 years ago I had an instructor say to us that we at we would never be successful if we stayed in our small towns. She believed that the small towns in our area were too over saturated with salons and not enough clients to go around, that somehow small town clients couldn’t afford luxury services and wouldn’t be willing to pay as much, and from her perspective success was reserved for stylists in a big city.
As you can imagine as a cosmetology student who did not have any frame of reference for what my career as a hairstylist would look like it was discouraging and made me believe I needed to move to a bigger city in order to find success. My parents already believed I was throwing my life away by becoming a stylist because I was “ too smart and needed a college degree” (and I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s parents had the same fears) so I was determined to prove them wrong and that I was making the right choice for myself by becoming a hairstylist. I gathered all of my resources, put my efforts into moving to the city, I tried to get hired for an assisting position so that I could learn and grow because everyone said that was the true key to success, but all of those plans fell through and ultimately failed.
I found myself stuck in my hometown before I ever got started, and I’ll skip over all of the details for now about the first few salons I worked at and how miserable those experiences were, but less than a year into having my cosmetology license I was self employed, renting a chair at a tiny two stylist salon that was essentially a shack down tow, maybe 5 clients to my name, and I was faced with a choice. My career was either going to become everything they said it would be, just another small town struggling stylist, or I was going to make it work and find a way to create the career I had dreamed about in my hometown town, and the second option is exactly what I did.
Now I own a beautiful and successful 4 chair salon in the same tiny (but growing) town, and this podcast is dedicated to sharing some of the stories and lessons I’ve learned along the way so that other small town stylists can feel inspired and empowered to chase after your own version of success without feeling limited by your hometown. I want you you be able to learn from my mistakes so that you can avoid them in your own business, laugh with me through some crazy salon stories, and maybe even cry a little as I share some personal journeys about toxic family dynamics, anxiety, and depression, because I’m a big advocate that your business health is directly correlated to your mental health.
If you relate to that in any way, I would love for you to hit the subscribe button so that you can get the new episodes that will be dropping every Monday. And send me a DM on Instagram letting me know what you think about the podcast as well as any topics you want me to cover in the future.
I have an idea that I want to end every episode with a positive affirmation, because in my experience it’s a lot easier to start believing it yourself when someone else has said it to you. So on that note:
I hope you have a great rest of your day and remember that you are worthy and capable of achieving the success you dream of.
- Casey Taylor
