FXBG Neighbors Podcast
Fredericksburg Neighbors Podcast
FXBG Neighbors Podcast
EP #146 The Judgment Free Wax Studio
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She built a jungle themed waxing studio where the rule is simple: no judgment, just care and confidence. Amanda Doolittle from Bare Necessities Body Waxing joins me to talk about what full body waxing is really like, why first timers often fear it more than they need to, and how a great waxer can feel like part therapist, part hype person, and part artist.
Amanda also shares the turning point that pushed her into entrepreneurship. After losing her mom, she quit her job, took a leap of faith, and started her own business without a perfect plan, then wished she had started sooner. We get practical about what it takes to grow a service business in Fredericksburg and Locust Grove, from earning Google reviews (she hits 99 in one year with no advertising) to building repeat clients who come back every four to six weeks.
We also talk about the less glamorous side of small business ownership: the risk, the stress, and the reality of becoming your own marketing team, bookkeeper, and manager overnight. Amanda explains how she leaned on tools like ChatGPT to learn terms like SOPs and profit margin, and we cover her jungle themed skincare products including her “Jungle Juice” body oil moisturizer plus where you can find her locally.
If you love local business stories and practical growth lessons, subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review so more neighbors can find the show.
Amanda Doolittle
Bare Necessities Body Waxing
barenecbodywaxing.glossgenius.com
amanda@barenecessitiesbodywaxing.com
+1 540-220-6418
This is the Fredericksburg Neighbors Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Dori Stewart.
A Jungle Themed Wax Studio
Speaker 2Welcome back to another episode of the FXBG Neighbors Podcast, where we share the stories of our favorite local brands. I'm excited to introduce you to my guest today. We've got Amanda Doolittle joining us. She is with Bare Necessities Body Waxing. Amanda, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for having me. I've been I was very excited about this. Well, I'm very excited about this and excited to learn more about you and your business. So let's start there. Share with us what is Bare Necessities Body Waxing?
Speaker 1Well, for one, it's a little jungle, as you can see. Um, I specialize in full body waxing, mainly women. Uh, I don't discriminate against men. I do just I do uh I opt out of going below the belt on men. I'll just say that. So um fast Brazilian semi, I want to say painless, but none of it's painless. Semi-painless is what I say. Judgment free space where women just come and I should be I should get two salaries, one for being their therapist and one for um waxing, even though they're my therapist too, to be honest.
Speaker 2I love it, I love it, and I love your branding. Um, so we're both uh recording audio and video. So if you're listening to the audio version right now, she has a whole jungle theme and she's got an animal print top on. It's just it's your branding is perfect and so much fun. I love it. Thank you.
Speaker 1It's just like womanhood, it's wild. It's wild. That's part of it. It's wild.
Grief Sparked A Leap Of Faith
Speaker 2So I want to learn more about you. Tell me about your background, tell me how you got into this.
Speaker 1Well, how I got into waxing itself, I'm extremely hairy. I'm sorry, I'm a hairy beast. That's I thought, oh, I can learn how to wax myself and other women and help them feel like I like to feel and make money, right? Sounds great. It was a great idea. So then I started. I love what I do, but I'm still hairy. Because by the time I'm finished with everyone else, I don't feel like waxing myself. Um, I did I worked at the wax center for three and a half years. I loved it there. I love the people that I worked with there, but I just needed more. Um, how I started my business, if to just put it plain out, um, my mom died, I quit my job and I started this business. I had no plan. It was just a big old leap of faith. I said, I don't want to do this anymore. I just want to do it myself. I just figured life is too short. And why aren't we all doing just whatever we want to do anyway? And that would that's what was gonna make me happy. So at least I thought. And now that I'm into it, I wish I would have done it sooner. I could have I wish I would have listened to my mother and just gone out and just started the business and just did it. I have a whole army of women that have followed me that have been with me through some rough times in my life, and they're still with me three years later after all the shenanigans in my life. So it's um I've also branded a skincare line, it's a white label, and that is also jungle theme as well. The body oil moisturizer that I carry is jungle juice, is what I named it. And there's all different scents for it. It's an all-natural skincare line. So I've done that as well.
Speaker 2That's amazing, and I think that it's such a good lesson for everybody listening. Anyone who's thinking about starting a business, the the best time is right now, right? Why wait?
Speaker 1Yeah, yesterday. The best time was yesterday. Don't wait because how do you know? You don't know until you do it. And so what? If you do it and it doesn't work out, go back to whatever job you had before and go try again. Yeah, keep trying because nothing changes if nothing changes. Right, right. I love that. That's that's huge. I'm trying to teach my teenage daughter that nothing changes if nothing changes. If you don't change it, no one's changing it for you. What if I get her to a mods and trying to, hey, I wasn't always like that. I wasn't. I made bad choices in my life in the past, and we all learn. But now it's different.
Speaker 2Well, it's a lesson for her to see your growth, you know.
Speaker 1Yes, it's really important for me to see her, for her to see me go through all of these different stages and see all the trials and tribulations that I have gone through because it's been an emotional roller coaster the past year and a half or two. So she's seeing it.
Hitting 100 Reviews Without Ads
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah. No, that's that's that's really great for her to watch you persevere and reach for the stars and and you know hit these milestones. And she's she's watching everything you do. So um I love that. And you have um reached a milestone. Tell us tell us about the significance of today.
Speaker 1So today is the one year anniversary of me going out on my own. So I left the Wax Center on the 31st of March of last year, and I went on April 1st. The next day I started taking some clients out of a friend suite that she was letting me rent from her until my spot was available. And and my goal was to hit 100 Google reviews by today. And as a blessing, I had 99. So today's not over yet, though.
Speaker 2It's not over. Well, congratulations. That those are both really, really big milestones. And 99 reviews in one year. I mean, that is yeah, really outstanding.
Speaker 1And it really is great because people are really quick to complain about people in businesses, but a lot of people don't take time out to go and say the nice things. Yeah, it's so true. So true. So I'm glad that my ladies love me that much to do that. Yeah, I appreciate them so much. They've been my advertising because I haven't done any advertising.
Speaker 2Wow.
Speaker 1And I've gotten I think 18 new clients since the first of January.
Speaker 2Nice.
Speaker 1So if it wasn't for my clients, I wouldn't be this far. I wouldn't. No better compliment, right? Exactly. I also do pop-up events too, and my products are also in Deep Roots Home and Garden in Locust Grove, Virginia. It's off of uh Route 20, Constitution Highway. And they're they're opening a second location in Culpepper, and my products will be in there as well.
Speaker 2Nice, nice. I love that. Do you find that there are any myths or misconceptions about your industry or about your business?
Speaker 1Oh, yeah, so many. Well, one misconception is how painful it is. A lot of first-timers come in and they think it's gonna be like the death of them. They're gonna leave here crying and screaming and never come back. And I just tell them that they're acting ridiculous, and I just wax them and we talk and chat, and they schedule and come back. Nice. So don't knock it until you try it. You should try everything once, twice if you like it. That's my point.
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean you have to, you have to. What is the um time period between waxing? So, in in terms of um business, like one client that you get through the door, you're expected to potentially see that client multiple times throughout a year, right?
Speaker 1Every month. Oh, every normally every four weeks, four to six. Some clients are really lucky and blessed and come every other month, every eight weeks. Um, but normally it's four to six weeks.
Owner Life Risk And AI Help
Speaker 2Gotcha. Okay. And so switching gears a little bit, you're clearly have been very busy running your business, especially the first year, is always wild and crazy. So when you're not working, what are you doing for fun? We need to know. I don't do much, Dori.
Speaker 1Now, if you were to ask me that a couple years ago, I would have said, Oh, I'm at the gym, because I was in the gym five days a week for a couple hours a day. That was my mental health for my mental health as well. And then life happened and I stopped going and now I need to get back in there. So hopefully, if we chat again in a month or so, I'm gonna say gym. But as of right now, I deal with my teenage daughter. That is very time consuming. Yes, and it's very exhausting being a free personal Uber for teens. Yeah, I don't even get tipped, okay? Nothing.
Speaker 2Soon, though, so that's good. Nice, nice. There is relief ahead. It's rough, it's very rough. Well, and I understand, you know, when you're it's it's a lot different when you're an employee versus a business owner when it comes to your free time, right? When you're a business owner, you're excited to continue growing the business. And so you find yourself a lot of times in your free time doing business related things because you're so excited about growing the business versus when you're an employee, you get off work, you go to the gym.
Speaker 1Yeah, and then you go home and relax, and then you don't have to worry about anything, right? Right? Yeah, so that was part of the reason why I was skeptical, and I think part of the reason what held me back for so long of leaving and going on my own was not thinking that I couldn't do it, because I know I can do it, all I have to do is try, but it's um I can't sorry, I forgot what I was gonna say.
Speaker 2Well, you're taking on the risk, you know.
Speaker 1Yes, huge risk.
Speaker 2Yeah, you are no longer, you know, guaranteed income from someone else, you're taking on all the risk of the company, and everything is up to you. And that extra, you know, stress and and responsibility can weigh heavy, especially when you're in new business.
Speaker 1And you go from being a waxer to being a marketing and advertising, a business manager, an accountant, a bookkeeper. And I don't know how to do any of those things. And that's partly what that was the main thing that held me back. I didn't want all those responsibilities. Yeah, that's what I thought. So I don't want that headache, and I would see what my manager would go through all the time. I was like, I would never want your job, and that's how I felt for a long time. But then I don't know what happened, something shifted after my mother dying, and I just I just did it. I don't even think I really thought about it, I just did it, and then I started thinking, like, what am I doing?
Speaker 2How am I gonna do that? And now you're getting the reward of it too, yes. And so as an employee, you don't take the risk, but you also don't get the reward. So as long as you are um, you know, continuing to learn how to do the back end of the business and you're growing your business, then you're gonna be way better off than the employee.
Speaker 1Yes, and I will be completely honest, if it wasn't for Chat GPT, I'm gonna be honest, if it wasn't, I don't know what I would do. At least in the beginning, all of this when I was like SOP and profit margin, what right I didn't know about all that stuff, granted, I do now, but it was also new. Chat GPT, AI made it better. It's scary, but it's true.
Speaker 2It's very helpful, very helpful. What is something that you wish the listeners knew about Bare Necessities?
Speaker 1It's not scary, it's fun here. We we are here judgment free, no judgment. I get vulnerable with the women, especially some of the older women, they come in and they're you know feeling subconscious about their body and their stretch marks on their stomach and things like that. And I said, listen, don't let this little frame pull you because I have tiger stripes all over me, and I'll even show them my stomach to make them feel better because there's no reason to be embarrassed, or I'm not judging. Waxers don't care about those things.
Speaker 2Yeah, we just want to remove your hair and make you feel better. Yeah, and I I can tell, and I imagine you know, this is why you're so successful. I can tell just you know, by meeting you this one time that you are a no-judgment kind of person, and who's like fun.
Speaker 1Yeah, am I to judge anyone?
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1It's all of our first time being here. None of us have done this life stuff before. We should really give each other a little more grace, absolutely, to be honest, and stop being so judgy. I'm trying to teach my teenage daughter that, yeah, but she's 16 and they're very judgy.
Speaker 2It's hard, it's a hard lesson to learn at that age, isn't it? My dad said it's my payback.
Speaker 1I said, Oh, I don't like that. No, I'm very thankful. She's a pretty good girl. She's good. It's just the mouth sometimes, you know, but that's a teenage thing.
Speaker 2That's a teenage thing. Yes.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2So if the listeners, if they want to, if they want to meet you, if they want to learn more from you, if they want to come in and get waxed, what how can they meet you?
Speaker 1Uh, they can go to my booking link, which is bare necbodywaxing.glossgenius.com, or they can call the phone number or email. But I do um appointments only. So we do same day appointments as well. So people call and come right in the same day. But so I'm in a little salon suite type situation. There's three other salon professionals here. There's a um a hair braider, another waxer, and uh another aesthetician that does facials and things. So it's like a one-stop shop if you like getting the hair braided facials. I have some ladies that come in and they go to a couple rooms in one day. Nice. So that's something to know. And we're located right next to Clearwater Grow and Locust Grove. Amazing.
Speaker 2Amanda, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today and sharing bare necessities with us. Thank you for having me.
SpeakerThank you for listening to the Fredericksburg Neighbors Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to FXBG NeighborsPodcast.com.