Building A Salon, Healing A Life + Resiliency with Erin Mills (Part 1)

What if the bravest move isn’t to push harder, but to let go? We sit down with visionary salon owner and mentor Erin Mills to explore how profound loss reshaped her purpose, how she built spaces where clients and teams feel safe and seen, and why she’s choosing to close her first salon to protect her health, values, and future. Erin opens up about navigating a male-dominated industry—being asked for the “owner” or “husband” while she was standing right there—and the daily realities of gender bias in service work, from tip disparities to trust gaps. Her answer wasn’t bitterness; it was building a brand rooted in care, transformation, and nervous-system calm.

The conversation moves from inspiration to infrastructure. Erin shares how rapid growth to 55+ team members and seven figures in revenue exposed a hard truth: grit is not a business model. She breaks down the difference between momentum and maturity, how scaling too close to your first location can cannibalize focus, and why systems, standards, and pricing structures must come before expansion. When survival energy became the operating system, boundaries slipped, hiring compromised, and the mission strained. That’s when the decision emerged—close one location, consolidate, and rebuild on process, not personality.

We also talk about burnout that shows up in the body, the unraveling many high-capacity women experience, and the courage it takes to separate self-worth from outcomes. Erin offers practical insights on client experience, accountability, marketing habits, and leading through a down economy without abandoning your values. It’s a frank, hopeful roadmap for anyone who feels stretched thin by their own success and needs permission to choose alignment over ego.

The Quiet Gift: A Journey of Self Worth and Resilience is now available for download as an audible.  Check it out!

Transcript

Setting The Theme: Reignite Resilience

SPEAKER_01 0:06

All of us reach a point in time where we are depleted and need to somehow find a way to reignite the fire within. But how do we spark that flame? Welcome to Reignite Resilience, where we will venture into the heart of the human spirit. We'll discuss the art of reigniting our passion and strategies to stoke our enthusiasm. And now here are your hosts, Natalie Davis and Pamela Cass.

SPEAKER_03 0:41

Welcome back to another episode of Reignite Resilience. I'm your co-host Natalie Davis, and I am so excited to be back with you all. And joining me is Pam Cass. Hello, Pam. How are you?

SPEAKER_02 0:51

I am fantastic. We were just talking about funny things before we jumped. Oh my gosh, our culture date. Such as breakups and gnats flying around your house from readings below.

SPEAKER_03 1:03

Exactly. I don't know. Like there are certain things that are like extreme agitators to me. High winds, like over an extended period of time, extreme agitator to me. Like I just lose it. I don't know why. Like it just really gets under gets under my skin. And then gnats. I repotted some of my plants. No, I repotted all of my plants a few weeks ago. And the bag of soil that I got, I think had little gnat eggs in them. So now I have all of these gnats that keep coming up out of the soil. Like I can watch them come out of the soil, the roots of the soil. I got to the point where I put some of the pots outside and I PETA don't come after me. I was just hoping that the circle of life would just take care of themselves and they would leave my own. Oh my God.

SPEAKER_02 1:49

And those, you can't kill those. You cannot, you, I don't care how many times you go like this, you never see one. Oh no, I do. I you do Mr. Miyagi with the gnats. Are you kidding me? I think I mean me. Not me. I feel like I'm always like this. And it's always like from my fruit basket. Like I got or something that had nut eggs on it or whatever.

SPEAKER_03 2:10

No, because you know what? I like beef and I don't eat fruit. So I don't understand where they came from. And as we started that conversation, we're both like, wait, what day is it? What month, what year are we in?

SPEAKER_02 2:26

You know, it's just one of those weeks where it's Tuesday and it feels like the week has been lasting for like days.

Introducing Guest Erin Mills

SPEAKER_03 2:33

I'm like, it's Tuesday, but it's so good. It feels great. It's been a good week. It's been a good week. It's been a good week, and we have a fabulous guest that's joining us. So I'm excited to let everyone know who's joining us. It's it's not just Pam and I sitting here, y'all talking about gnats and bats and take a lot of.

SPEAKER_02 2:50

All right. So today we have joining us Erin Mills. She is a visionary entrepreneur, multi-salon owner, an advocate for women healing and empowerment. Her mission is to create spaces where safety, growth, and authenticity thrive. After careers in real estate and hairstyling, entrepreneurship became a natural path driven by her passion for big picture thinking, leadership, and meaningful impact. Challenging the male-dominated salon industry, Erin built a thriving salon of 55 plus team members where clients and staff feel genuinely supported and seen. Her resilience was tested when she opened her first salon five months before COVID shutdowns and again after a devastating flood. Starting on savings and even selling her home, she rebuilt, became profitable, and surpassing 1 million in sales within a year. Now Erin extends her mission beyond business, helping women heal from trauma, grief, and limiting beliefs. Through meditation, tapping, and self-discovery programs, she guides others to reconnect with their truth and remember it's not too late and you are not too broken to begin again. Outside of work, Erin finds renewal in nature, running, and quiet moments with family, grounded in faith, movement, and the belief that healing happens when we choose to come home to ourselves. Welcome. We are so grateful for you to be with us today, all the way from Florida, where it's colder than it is in Colorado. We never get to say that ever.

SPEAKER_00 4:32

Thank you so much. I really appreciate being here. And yeah, that is hilarious. The one day of the year it will be colder than where you are.

SPEAKER_02 4:40

Yes. We'll take that, we'll take that one day. Yes. Share your story with us because that's quite a journey that you have been on.

Grief As A Catalyst For Purpose

SPEAKER_00 4:51

Yeah. So to give you a little perspective, almost seven years ago today, I lost a daughter that I was pregnant with in my second trimester, and I almost died. The doctors saved my life. And that was kind of my beginning of being cracked open. That was my life-changing moment. And I thought I'd had many before that, you know. And through that, I decided I had a great successful business that I loved. I loved doing hair because I really connected with people. I had the chance to make a difference in a small way with a lot of people. And when that happened, I realized I wanted two things. I wanted to be able to have a safe place where I felt safe and to give that for to other people as well, you know? And to help them do what I had done and greater. So I opened my first salon, and I have two right now. And I opened my first one, and there was so much grief involved with that, you know, it was such a like an amazing thing. But when you're still in that, I think you have to shut down a little bit of yourself. So it's taken me almost seven years to keep breaking through those layers. And every time, what do you know, when you do something in business, it feels very much like a for me at least, it's felt very much like spiritual or you know, healing, internal, like I've had a mirror to myself for seven years, you know, with the good and the bad and the shadows and all of it. So yeah. Wow.

SPEAKER_03 6:23

Yeah. When you get to look up and you realize, yep, that's me. All of it. It's all me. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 6:28

Exactly.

unknown 6:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:30

Oh my gosh. So going into first of all, I didn't realize that the salon business was a male-dominated industry. And so that's just my own naive belief system. So, I mean, tell us about like that space and showing up in that space and not feeling like you're drowning or just swimming upstream in that process.

Gender Bias In The Salon Industry

SPEAKER_00 6:51

Right. So, even let's say service industry in general, men get tipped a much higher percentage than women do. It is nuts. Their trustworthiness, I don't remember the percentage. I need to write that down. But the way that men are trusted versus women in serving them is completely different. So, with women, a lot of times we are serving a lot of women, a lot. It's the the salon in general is mostly, I would say it's less like haircuts and more like all-over transformations, extensions, wigs, color, all of the things. But the owners, the ones that are, you know, in charge, generally, two out of three are men. So yeah, too, and I've worked for many men actually in the salon industry. And it's interesting because they're automatically seen as like they know what they're doing, even if they don't, they are respected until proven wrong. Whereas with women, you have to prove yourself again and again and again, you know? It's interesting how our minds have done that. And I've seen it myself too. Like I've I catch myself, you know, trusting someone first or questioning someone else. And I'm like, why am I doing that? You know, what does that mean? So even when let's talk, like going through the build-out of both my salons, every time I had to work with a contractor, it was like, okay, well, let me talk to the owner. And I'm like, no, no, I'm the owner. And they're like, well, let me talk to your husband. I mean, so many times, you know. Wow. And I had to learn to like put my foot down. You know, you have to learn that, like, if you can't stand tall, even if you're dealing with the nicest person in the world, they're probably not going to respect you if you don't have the confidence to stand in your power. Wow. That's so interesting you say that.

Vision, Impact, And Safe Spaces

SPEAKER_02 8:33

And the fact that it's still today the exact same. And I just think it's those biases that, you know, we all carry that we don't even realize that we carry. Because I hear this all the time with women that are in positions where it normally would be a male that would be making the decisions. I just had a friend single just do a full remodel on her house and it was the same thing. Where's your husband? And she's like, I'm not married. And so, but they were so shocked that who are you to be doing this? And it's just mind-blowing to me. What made you decide to open a salon? So I'm assuming you were working in the industry, and it's not everyone's like, I think I'm just gonna open my own business.

SPEAKER_00 9:11

So when I was doing hair, so I have I have two children, I've been in this industry for 16 years now. I realized there was like a limit of the people that I could connect with. And there was a limit also to what my body could do as I got older. And I've always been someone that had really big dreams and looked for like the big picture of things. And in thinking that, I thought if I can open my salon and I can have my hand and my heart right now into 200 people, well, then we can turn that into thousands of people. You know, if I make sure that our mission is what I want it to be, then we can make a difference at even more of an impact, me with my team, us with our community. And then from there, you know, from even the smallest part of it, thinking about if we're the place that people go to, that they feel that they can actually relax, that they can actually be taken care of, feel safe and let their nervous system calm down and let their walls come down, then maybe that's the only place they have that month. You never know. You don't know what everyone's home life is like or what actually goes on behind the scenes. So if we can have a great place like that, then it's making a small difference planting seeds. And even if it doesn't return to me, it's gonna return somehow in the legacy of other people. Okay. Beautiful.

SPEAKER_03 10:30

It's so the bigger purpose, right? It's the impact, like that ripple effect that happens, the waves through the water.

SPEAKER_00 10:37

Yeah.

Growth, Expansion, And Hard Lessons

SPEAKER_03 10:38

Wow. And so I mean, just starting it now. You're successful, right? You're turning this into a million, multi-million dollar business. Like, what does this process look like for you in building? And was that your vision? I mean, the impact is one piece, but to actually see and have the profit and revenue is cut something completely different, right? You can fulfill your passion all day and be broke. Um yeah, yes, or negative. Yes, yeah, yes. So, so what gave you uh kind of that true north so that you understood I'm building this and it's going to have impact and profit?

Systems Over Sheer Grit

SPEAKER_00 11:14

Well, the first thing I'm gonna tell you a few mistakes I made. In general, when I first opened, I thought, you know, because I did this the right way, I saved, I, you know, I didn't have any investors. We did this ourselves. We had the cash that we'd saved to put down and put into it in a backup plan. And I didn't believe necessarily other salon owners when they said, like, you need to make sure that you protect your business also. Like you can't just make it all about the people that are coming to you. So when I first opened, I had a wait list of people, which was beautiful. I was like amazed and so thankful. And we were doing so well and blooming together so quickly. We grew and became like the number one salon brand in, you know, a year and a half, which is huge with how many salons there are here. And I was like, I just really feel like this means I need to open a bigger space. So not only did I look at and open a bigger space, literally half a mile down the road, I opened one double the size. So I actually tripled my salon. And when I did that, you know, I thought I've opened one before. So I know all the things are gonna happen. I know what to do. I've been through a flood, a COVID shutdown. We were shut down, you know, for 12 weeks and we still got through and had to take everything out and redo the floors, and insurance didn't pay for it, and all of these things. So I was like, I'm really prepared. I can do this. Then I'm like, we can make a bigger impact and all these dreams. And I pushed really hard and it was great, it was wonderful. And I'm so thankful that I've built both of those things. But what has happened is now I've been realizing and over the past year that nothing runs without me, nothing works without me. If I'm not 110 miles an hour, everyone's going five, everyone's going 10. And then if I'm not seen as working, I'm not actually working. So how I did it, I would do it completely differently because I relied solely on my motivation and my ability to just be a survivor. You know, I did not build the systems first, I built them later. So I would have built the systems, made my salon further from each other, literally not next door, because it kind of competes with each other. And if I would have had the systems and the right knowing of that, yes, I am great at what I do. Yes, I know I love my people, but I have to have the processes so that I'm not just running around like a chicken with my head cut off now that I have 50 people and I had 20. So I think the longer you do things, if you're able to, you can take some of those processes that maybe went wrong and learn from it, and you can become stronger. But man, wouldn't it be nice if we slowed down a little bit to like really figure things out? And sometimes the excitement can push us to do things, and then we just have to, it becomes a little bit harder, even if we were supposed to do it, it just becomes a little bit harder, you know?

SPEAKER_03 14:20

Not impossible, just a little bit challenging. Yeah. Yeah. And Aaron, I think that advice is not industry specific, right? We see it, I think, in any industry, if you are diving in head first or both feet and not thinking or placing the importance that you need to on the systems and the processes, you can still have success. It's just probably gonna be a little bit more against the grain than had you had those systems dialed in.

Survival Energy, Burnout, And Boundaries

SPEAKER_00 14:44

Yes, exactly. And we don't have to, you know, I'm 42 and I'm going through perimenopause. And, you know, how interesting that there's like an unraveling with that. And all of a sudden, sometimes if you are the one that was always like not necessarily proving your worth, but proving you could do it and proving you could succeed, and maybe the breadwinner and maybe a lot of things that you will hit a wall and you have to decide like what's important now. And if you're running on survival energy, that runs out, you know, it doesn't last forever. So that clarity of first you have to like break down inside and you have to sometimes actually you don't have to, sometimes you just do because you can't like your body just like, okay, I'm done with this. I don't want to do this anymore. We have a life to live. And your mind is like, no, no, no, no, no, no. I have to keep going. So your body is finding your mind, you know, and then your body's like, well, we're stopping, so we're not doing this.

SPEAKER_03 15:46

You're not listening, so I'm gonna stop. Exactly. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 15:52

And how often do we see that? I think, especially probably more so with women. I think, like you said, it's that's this belief that we have to prove ourselves, like we deserve to be in this industry that's male dominated. And so we feel like we have to work harder, be more, do more than other people. And it leads to the hitting of the wall and just burnout and all of these other things.

The Courage To Close A Business

SPEAKER_00 16:18

Yeah. And I know that my capacity for reaching that point is maybe higher than some others. You know, we all have different capacities depending on what we've been through. You know, anyone I think who's they say has gone through childhood traumas, like you're level, someone's level 10 and someone's level one, who knows? But I really thought I could like push through anything. And I think maybe I could, but it would have cost me myself. Yeah. You know, it would have cost me who I actually am inside. So I did really well. I was doing really great in my salons. And then I had to start compromising how people showed up. And then I had to start compromising the type of people I was hiring, and then I had to start compromising my boundaries, and then I had to start compromising how much I paid people. And every single thing that I was agreeing to, I had to start compromising. But then I had to start working more and more and more, you know? And right now I am in the process of closing my first business. And nobody knows this yet. I tell my team this next week. And that has been such a hard internal thing to let go of because it needs to happen for the greater good. It needs to happen for my business and for me. For a long time, I didn't think that I mattered as long as everyone else was happy. And that's shown itself in so many ways. But through going through this healing process, it's like it's asking me, Erin, do you really matter? Or are you gonna let yourself go through this and become small and become a shell of yourself again? Or do we want to say, no, you matter and I matter? All of us matter. So I'm having to shut down the first one because mentally and financially, I just can't hold on to both anymore. I I can't. But I can see that talking about this and letting myself be vulnerable, I think is the point. And I think it's also being able to look at myself still in the mirror and say, I still love you, you're okay. Even when I feel like the biggest failure, you know?

SPEAKER_02 18:24

Absolutely, which is hugely courageous and the process of healing as well. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:30

Aaron, when did you go down this path in realizing that you needed to close the first salon? And what was that like? Because it's not just the business piece. I feel that there's also the spiritual journey piece of it that is running parallel. Where were you and how did this all come to be?

SPEAKER_00 18:48

Well, it's been almost a year that it has been a struggle just to like keep my head above water. Like if I'm working on the back end of things because processes need to be fixed, then I'm not working on the culture. And then I run back to work on the culture, and then these things get behind. It's been a year of that, and then a year of the economy being down. And then when the economy is down and people are losing clients, the first thing they look at is everything around them, not inside, right? So they start looking at everything else and start blaming. And I understand that. Like as a human being, I understand that. But as someone who's succeeded in this industry and a leader, I know all of our change starts within. All of our change starts with our habits. It changed with our client service. And it changes when we decide that we are going to do what we said we're gonna do. You know, you all know you have to market yourself. You have to reach out, you have to, when things are tough, you have to have even better service than before, right? You have to make yourself so connected to your clients that they want and need to come see you. And when crisis happens, the economy, you know, is tough, people get scared and they're looking for other things that can just, well, maybe this will fix it. So that has happened over and over and over in this last year. So it's been like I'm struggling and then someone leaves, struggling, someone leaves while I've been starting this healing journey, you know. So it's like it's felt very much like one step forward, three steps back. But I'm choosing to see outside of myself that I know I know that everyone has to have their own journey. And I know for whatever reason this is part of mine. It just so happens to be where everyone can see it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:38

Yeah. So you know, but a great message for people to hear. Yes. Cause if you're going through it, there's other people that are going through it that maybe not have need to hear the message that you're sharing. And it seemed like it was you started to get unaligned with the business and it just started peeling away or picking away at you.

Economy, Culture, And Accountability

SPEAKER_00 20:57

Yeah, that is exactly it. And I tried so hard to like not let that happen and to grasp on, you know, I re-signed my lease last year and don't want it. My first one, it was all external. I didn't want to let anyone down. And my ego, I didn't want to feel like a failure. I couldn't handle that, you know. Yeah. And it's interesting that when other people have what would be considered as failures, I'm like, yes, failure is the best lesson. Failure is so great. We we can learn so much from this, you grow from this, this is incredible. But with me, I'm like, nope, nope, that makes me unworthy, you know, and then all of the rabbit hole of that. So it's like I have to take my own advice and let myself feel the grief and the pain and the aloneness of it. And I have said this year that I will choose the brave path over and over. So I have to also talk about how hard it is. And when I'm in it, like allow that to be part of my story that doesn't add shame to myself, you know, and choose to see this as when I'm looking around and I see this that I'm failing, it makes me feel like no one else is failing. It makes me make all these stories up in my head. And the few people that have gone through similar in any way, like I was talking to one of the girls in this group that I'm in that has this incredible business. So incredible. She was able to take her whole family and do world school for five years. But do you know her first business failed so badly that they didn't think they would recover? And because of that, they built their second and their third. And hearing that, I was like, thank you. Thank you, God, thank you, universe, for showing me someone who has been through the bottom and has still gotten out and done more and still is an amazing person inside.

SPEAKER_02 22:48

Yeah. Well, I think we see this in so many instances, you know, people that stay in relationships that, oh, this is I know I'll be a failure if I go through a divorce. I won't be worthy if I do this. What will people say about me? Jobs that they stay at that they that are picking away at who they are. And I think if you can have the courage to step out of that, sometimes the best thing is on the other side of it if you have the courage to just do it, to walk away.

Failure, Ego, And Realignment

SPEAKER_00 23:17

Yeah, you're so right. And I think the older we get, the more we are seeking comfort also. And then when yeah, and the expectations that are put on us, you know, there's a lot of expectations for how women are supposed to live. And yeah, with leaving a relationship, I mean, I men can do it as much as they want. And, you know, someone might be like, well, that's crappy for a minute and then it's over. But women, you have to deal with all the repercussions, especially if you have kids. Yeah. Yeah, there have been many times where I have felt like I've given everything I've got and I'm still not seen. You know, I've given everything of me financially, emotionally, and it's still seen as never enough. So if I'm doing more than enough, and it's seen as not enough, and it's financially is not enough, and I'm being crushed under the weight of it, I don't think that it's ever going to be aligned. Now, can it be in a different way? Yeah, but how it is now is not what it is. This is not it. And I can't keep clawing to something when it's saying, Aaron, this is not it, that I didn't want to listen because I didn't want my ego to take a hit.

SPEAKER_02 24:24

Yeah. Yeah. So we don't follow our gut or intuition. We just up here, no, no, no, you'll be a failure. Don't do it. Don't do it. Just hang on. Work harder. It's gonna be fine. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:36

All the while, like in this performative, like, I've got to prove it to everyone else.

SPEAKER_01 24:41

Thank you for joining us today on the Reignite Resilience podcast. We hope you had some aha moments and learned a few new real life ideas to fuel the flames of passion. Please subscribe on your favorite streaming platform, like or download your favorite episodes, and of course, share with your friends and family. We look forward to seeing you again next time on Reignite Resilience.