Salon Plaza’s Member Of The Month: Best Hair Salon In VA Beach
Introducing Salon Plaza’s
June Member of the Month:
Lance Van Auken
Owner of Blow A Salon
Best Hair Salon VA Beach
Meet the hairstylist who won GOLD TWICE – 2011 and 2012 – in the Virginia Pilot’s vote for “Best Male Hairstylist in Virginia Beach”
A salon industry professional for 21 years, Lance Van Auken, best hair salon owner in VA Beach, is a man of integrity and heart.
Let’s hear from Lance –
“In our industry, we may only see our clients every 4 or 5 weeks. In those repeated visits, we have a unique ability to positively impact our clients.
It’s our responsibility to prepare ourselves as cosmetologists to serve and affect them in a positive way. I stay focused on making clients smile, new ones and old ones. I take care of their needs and give them something new.
I do color – I do everything:
CUTTING – Women, Men, and Kids
COLORING – Color & Color Retouch, Glazes, Conditioning Treatments, Foils, Partial & Full
STYLING – Special Occasion Up-Dos, Makeup, Wedding Parties, and special Ladies’ Night
SKIN CARE
PERMANENT WAVE/RELAXER
Color and cuts go together
You can have a great color and enhance it with a great haircut, but they need to compliment the personality. I think about the person and how the style works for them.
If you give an extroverted-styled color and cut for an introverted person, you’ve wasted your time and theirs.
Hair should change with the seasons. Because we wear darker clothing in the winter, bright or bleached out highlights in the winter look brassy and awkward. You can still have highlights, just darker to blend with winter clothes.
Clients appreciate my ideas of how to change their look with the seasons. To stay current, I go to classes and shows and pay attention to celebrities.
Why My Clients Prefer My Salon Plaza Studio
When I opened Blow a Salon at Hilltop, Salon Plaza Virginia Beach, nearly all of my clients followed me here.
Why?
Because here I can give them an individualized, one-on-one experience. My clients appreciate this.
At the previous salon where I was employed, I shared the space with 10 stylists who often were attending to 2 clients each. Plus the support staff… it was hard for my clients to relax.
One of the things I wanted to accomplish is to create “get away” for my clients, their place to go to get away from the stresses of everyday living. I have brought that feeling back to the client experience.
You see, I grew up in the salon industry I started cutting hair at age 12. Back then it was trial and error, mostly clipper cuts, with no training. As a teen, I became a hair model for a family friend named Charles Payne. He was a Paul Mitchell rep. We’d go to hair shows and he’d do my hair on stage.
As a young man, I joined the Navy and served in the aviation community for four years. When I got out, I had to face the next big question…
What did I want to do with my life now?
One day when I cutting my godson’s hair, his father, my best friend, looked at me and said,
“Why don’t you just do hair?”
So I called Charles Payne and asked,
“Can you help me?”
That’s how I got started as his apprentice. I worked for him in an apprenticeship program for a year and a half.
Before getting my license I went to school three nights a week to learn the book side of being a cosmetologist. The other days I worked in the salon behind the chair.
I learned the majority of my skills in a salon vs. in school
In my mind, that’s the better way to learn. Apprenticeship takes longer, but the schooling costs less, you get you paid while you’re in school, and you have more of a working ability when you are done.
For many years I worked for American Crew and then for Graham Webb International as a rep for their product lines. I was as an educator for both. I would be gone Thursday to Monday for hair shows and to teach classes about the products.
Just before my son was born I stop traveling for Graham Webb and began working for a day spa in Virginia Beach at Hill Top.
What was the next step in my career?
I wanted to own my business and didn’t want to be traveling all the time. I’ll tell you all about how I came to open “Blow A Salon” in my next post.
I always welcome new clients. As a skilled cosmetologist, I believe I have been given this gift to do hair. It’s my mission and purpose to share this gift with my clients and everyone I come in contact with.
My door is open and my chair welcomes you!
If you are a cosmetologist who is PASSIONATE about owning a salon, before you make any decisions… See if YOU have the skills of Ameria’s highly successful salon owners!
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