Over at “Wait, What Is That,” the sister podcast from A Little Beacon Blog, we mixed it up by conducting the podcast out in the wild - from the chair of the hair salon Total Beauty Salon (formerly Salon Dae). Two powerful self-made stories were waiting to be told from inside the salon: the story of how Tahira Willis dug in to make a change in her career, leaving the world of childcare settings to pursue her life-long passion for hair and beauty styling. Known for her braids of the children’s hair at Beacon’s Rose Hill Day Care Center, Tahira left after the pandemic to work at Walmart, one of the only jobs available then. In that time, she was pulled hard by her friends to pursue her hair styling for real.

That’s when she came to Total Beauty Salon as a stylist who rents a booth. As does former owner Danielle Pitts, who bought the salon 10 years ago, rebranded it to Salon Dae, and sold it last year to one of her stylists, who rebranded it to Total Beauty. Danielle has just stepped out on maternity leave for the birth of her third son, so that she can enjoy early motherhood period, and pour her visions into her recently published children’s book, Hair, Hair Everywhere.

Listen to how they both did it in this episode - how they made purposeful creative career moves with intention to style.