From salon assistant to She-E-O of 7 salon concepts, a bridal agency, and an event space, Dana Fountain shares the scrappy, strategic moves that helped her build a beauty empire from the ground up.

In this episode, she breaks down how to calculate your financial needs, grow without debt, choose the right business partners, and turn relationships into real opportunities—all while staying true to your vision

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KEY TAKEAWAYS:

🔅Start Small, Grow Smart: Dana began by renting a tiny space with four chairs and scaled slowly, ensuring each move was financially viable before expanding.

🔅Understand Your Break-Even Point: Dana emphasizes learning how to calculate your true financial needs, using tools like her Your Beauty Blueprint workbook to plan realistically.

🔅Partnerships Require Clarity: She advises establishing aligned goals and mutual benefit before entering any business partnership—and always recommends formal agreements.

🔅Diversify Revenue Streams: Dana’s empire includes salons, bridal services, and venue rentals—demonstrating how to blend passion with profitable business models.

🔅Relationships Are Everything: From clients to collaborators, Dana stresses that relationship-building has been key to every venture she’s launched.

🔅Utilize What You Have: She maximized her network and client base to build capital, including personal loans and non-traditional funding approaches to start owning property.

🔅Get Business Literate: Her success is grounded in learning to run the numbers—she advises stylists to treat their careers like businesses, not just a craft.

👉Follow Dana on Instagram

💡Check out all of Dana's platforms from Your Beauty BluePrint and her salon concepts, to her bridal agency and event space HERE

The Hairdresser Strong Show is all about Salon Owners, Rising Stylists, and Seasoned Stylists sharing their experiences, successes, failures, and advice to inform, educate, and empower their Fellow Hairdresser. We won’t stop until we are all: Hairdresser Strong.

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The views and opinions of our guests are theirs and important to hear. Each guest's views and opinions are their own and we aim to bring you diverse perspectives, career paths and thoughts about the craft and industry so you can become Hairdresser Strong! They do not necessarily reflect the positions of...