In this episode of High Velocity Radio, Lee Kantor interviews Erin Mills, founder of Theory Salons in Orlando. Erin shares her journey of launching her salon just before the COVID-19 pandemic, overcoming multiple crises, and building a debt-free, thriving business. She discusses her focus on community, innovative client engagement, and team development through a career playbook. Erin also reveals plans for expansion and franchising, emphasizing the importance of maintaining company culture. The episode highlights resilience, leadership, and sustainable growth in the salon industry.
Erin Mills is a visionary entrepreneur, multi-salon owner, and advocate for women’s healing and empowerment, driven by a mission to create spaces where safety, growth, and authenticity thrive.
After exploring careers in real estate and as a stylist, entrepreneurship always felt like a natural progression for her, fueled by a passion for big-picture thinking, leading teams, and making meaningful impact. Determined to challenge the male-dominated salon industry and its often unsafe environments, she built salons of 55+ team members where both clients and the team feel welcomed, supported, and uplifted.
Known for a unique ability to find solutions where others see roadblocks, she sees opportunity in everything and inspires those around her to reach their highest potential. That mindset was tested when she opened her first salon just five months before COVID shutdowns, only to face a devastating flood weeks after reopening.
Despite starting on savings and even selling her home, the outpouring of community support helped the business not only recover, but thrive—clearing debt, becoming profitable, and surpassing $1M in sales in its first year. This resilience reinforced Erin’s belief in focusing on impact as the key to lasting success.
Beyond the salons, she is committed to helping women break free from limitations imposed by trauma, grief, and societal expectations. Having personally experienced the transformative power of creating true safety—internally and externally—Erin teaches that healing begins when we can sit with ourselves, listen to our bodies, and embrace both pain and joy.
Through initiatives like a new meditation and tapping program, she guides women through the difficult but necessary journey of rediscovering who they were called to be, offering tools, support, and a reminder that no one is too broken to begin again.
Outside of work, she finds strength and renewal in nature, running half marathons, and spending quiet moments walking at dawn or dusk to stay grounded and connected to family. Whether on the beach or through music, she draws inspiration from faith and the natural world. Erin’s core message remains powerful and clear: It’s not too late, and you are not too broken to create the person you want to be.
Connect with Erin on LinkedIn.
What You’ll Learn In This Episode
- From crisis to $1M: The entrepreneur who lost everything—then built a profitable salon empire rooted in impact
This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.
TRANSCRIPT
Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.
Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here. Another episode of High Velocity Radio and this is gonna be a good one. Today’s topic is from crisis to $1 million. The entrepreneur who lost everything then built a profitable salon empire rooted in impact. Today’s guest is founder owner of three salons, Erin Mills. Welcome.
Erin Mills: Thank you so much for having me, Lee. I really appreciate it.
Lee Kantor: Well, I’m excited to learn more about your journey. Uh, first off, tell us about three salons. How are you serving, folks?
Erin Mills: Yes, well, we are we have two locations in Orlando, Florida. We have been around for six years. And, uh, what sets us apart is how you feel when you walk in the doors. You immediately feel like you are welcome there. This is a place I want to be, and we focus more on the small details than the big details. We have about 54 people that work between both of our locations and we’re growing every day.
Lee Kantor: So what’s the backstory? How’d you get involved in this line of work?
Erin Mills: Well, I’ve been in the hair industry for 16 years, and it had been a goal of mine to open a salon, and I just happened to choose to open a salon four months before Covid started. So, as you can imagine, it wasn’t exactly the best time to start short term. But long term. Man, I sure learned a lot of lessons. When we opened, we ended up having to close for two months straight. And you know, when you’re self-funded, you’re opening a brick and mortar business that can be devastating. 80% of salons closed within the first two years. So to keep open through that was monumental. As soon as we walked back in, we came back in excited to serve our customers. We had a salon flood and actually had to close down again. So that first year was just crisis after crisis and the community really rallied around us. We raised some money to help us get through that time. And man, within that first year, not only closing for a fourth of it, we ended up being within one year, completely debt free. So it was an incredible, hard, wonderful learning year.
Lee Kantor: So what were you doing to kind of build the community and get everybody on board about the mission and what you were trying to accomplish that year?
Erin Mills: We decided, well, if they can’t come to us, we’ll come to them because, you know, say they can’t get the services they normally get. Well, I can still provide the things, some of the things that they need at home. So five days a week I was building packages to bring to clients within an hour of our salon. And I would anything that they needed, I would bring to them. We gave them the ability to buy gift cards at a huge discount, and then through those gift cards, I would pay my team. So our community knew that we were reaching out, coming to them, giving them the ability to come back in a in a discounted way, and that if they did those things, then my team was going to get to continue to get paid while we were closed down as well. And then we would have monthly community outreach lives on Instagram. So we would talk about their concerns and try to still continue making an impact in a small way, virtually. So in person and virtually, we tried to stay as connected as possible to the people around us.
Lee Kantor: And then what kind of in what way were you staying connected? Were you texting? Were you using social media or email? Like how were you actually kind of, um, making those types of connections.
Erin Mills: So we would market our social media through email and let them know exactly when our lives would be so that they could come on and join us. But all of our interactions, besides being delivering the items in person, would be virtually through Instagram. Instagram is really where our focus was, because doing a live there is so easy and people can just join right in and you can send them save the dates. So you would send out save the dates. We would send out inspirational messages through text and email, but we would meet virtually on Instagram lives.
Lee Kantor: So when the salon opened up and people were able to come in person, did that change anything in terms of how these relationships were kind of being nurtured?
Erin Mills: Yeah, it’s almost like, you know, when you have a connection with people, a lot of that connection you don’t realize is with your facial expressions. So when we came back in the salons, everyone was wearing masks. There was a little bit of a weirdness that some people felt coming in there. But the ones that stayed connected to us. I mean, man, they were so excited to be back and support us. And it felt like a reunion after reunion for all the people that we got to see over the next few months, because they, as much as we were trying to make a small and big impact on them, they were really trying to make sure that we survived this because they knew being a new business, it was not it was not guaranteed that we would still be there when they returned. Um, so I think it was became a mutual, a mutual foundation of, oh, I hope that we can all do this together. And it brought us really close together.
Lee Kantor: Now, were you able to kind of leverage those relationships to move them virtually to in person, to then them kind of referring their friends and family, were you able to kind of, you know, close the loop in that way?
Erin Mills: Oh, absolutely. I think because we focused on the impact and connection. I mean, that year we had, Um, I think the number was 582 new clients, which is a huge number that I don’t think we would have been able to get if it weren’t for focusing on the things that we could focus on, because it would have been easy to just do nothing and be scared. But instead we made sure that that connection didn’t stop. So then that entire year, everyone that came to us before referred their friends, referred their, their community. And we we still six years later, have people that come to see us from out of state because of those connections.
Lee Kantor: So, um, what led you to this second salon?
Erin Mills: Well, we quickly I think because of that impact, we quickly grew out of our small location. So I, I had a wait list of about 50 something people that wanted to work there, we couldn’t fit any more clients in. It was getting to the point to where either I opened up a bigger location or a second location, so I did both. I opened up a second location twice as big right down the road, and that enabled me to to make our impact even bigger. And within two years, that second double the size location, we were able to be debt free there as well. And we now are still making an impact. We are still connecting with our community. And now my focus is on outside of outside of our Central Florida location and hoping to expand even further throughout, um, going further up to hopefully Tennessee, Atlanta, things like that.
Lee Kantor: So when you’re, uh, kind of growing your business, obviously at first you’re trying to get clients into the door. How have you been able to really, uh, enlist your the people working at the salon to be true team members and and feel the mission as well, and want to kind of invest this much time and energy in the growth of the salon as a whole.
Erin Mills: That’s a great question. I believe communication and culture are the absolute non-negotiables that I’ve had to focus on. So for my teams, I have created a leadership team within both locations so that I am constantly feeding in from the top. And then we’re also focused on growing from the bottom up as well. So we have people that are nurturing from the top up, and then we’re growing our lowest position so that they can learn how to be leaders from the very beginning. And the mission is something that we reiterate in every single one of our team meetings, our team outings. We try to I try to bring home how important it is that how we make people feel, and the impact we make means so much more than hair. It has everything and nothing to do with hair, so it’s a continual reminder and a a teaching that not only is our mission, it’s not just words, it is ingrained in every single thing that we do, from the lowest role to the most important role.
Lee Kantor: Now, how do you give them the kind of the career path that that makes all of that effort and emotional investment and, you know, time investment kind of feel like they’re going to get their ultimate dream coming true as well as yours.
Erin Mills: Ah, that’s a great question as well. We I developed a career playbook for my team so everyone knows where they’re going. And that means from the assistance, they know exactly how they’re going to get to being a hairstylist, to get to be on a commission, being an employee based team member to one day, being an independent team member. Everyone has a level system and a career path built into that playbook. So not only is it something that they’re just having aspirations to hopefully do one day, they their levels are built in to from the beginning. They come in there, they know exactly what they need to do to reach each new level. And I also built in two days a week. I have one on one meetings with anyone on my team who wants to meet with me, and we go over what they’re doing well, what they need to do better, and they break down by the day, by the hour, exactly what they’re doing well and what they’re missing in those levels to to keep moving forward. So it’s written out. We come up with it, we have the playbook. And then I go through them individually weekly to make sure that they’re they have what they need.
Lee Kantor: Now a lot of entrepreneurs struggle with attracting and retaining talent. Do you mind sharing a little bit about this playbook? How did it come about, and what are kind of the must haves when you’re putting together your own playbook?
Erin Mills: I think when you are putting together your own playbook, you have to look at what has worked well for you and go based off of that knowledge. Because if you try to create a playbook based on something you don’t know, then it’s not teachable from your perspective. You also have to look at the people around you and the climate. You know, the climate with our industry, everything in the last five years has has gone up 400 times in price just for us to do our normal job. So when I made the playbook, it was a lot different than what it is now. And once a year I go back and evaluate everything that I’ve put in there. But it comes from my own experience. It comes from doing everything that I’ve told them to do and creating a really successful career before I ever opened the salons. Um, it comes from experience. It comes from consistency. Consistency is the number one one of the number one core beliefs as well. Second to communication and culture. Because if you’re consistent in your daily small actions and they consistently follow these things, then there’s it may take more time than they want, but it will happen if they continually follow the plan.
Lee Kantor: Now, do you find that most of the people attracted to your industry, are they looking for kind of a secure job situation where they know they’re going to get paid every week? Or are they kind of like you, an entrepreneur that’s looking maybe to take some risk and to kind of go out on their own in some form or fashion?
Erin Mills: It’s a mixture of both. There are people who have been entrepreneurs who want to come back to security because they’ve been entrepreneurs for the past, for the last 10 to 15 years, and they are really looking to move differently in the next phase of their life. Going back to having a W2 is something that I continue to hear a lot, because you don’t realize as when you’re younger, the the benefits that that can bring you going back to possibly having a 401 K, going back to having team support, a lot of entrepreneurs have been going back to stability because as you go out through your career, I’ve noticed this in people who are in their 40s and 50s stability is something that if you haven’t had that you really crave. And then the second part is people that are wanting more and they are wanting to grow more. So it’s two different people. It’s people that have had freedom and they want to come back to stability and still be excited and grow. And then the other team is people who have not been able to grow yet in their career, and they’re looking for someone to help them do that.
Lee Kantor: So when they work with you either path, you give them a way to go.
Erin Mills: Oh, absolutely. I believe. You know, I think commission salons are great when they are ran really well. I also think that most people want to know that they are not limited in their growth. So there are options for both of those in my salons. I don’t think I would never want to be limited in my own journey. I don’t I personally don’t want to do that to anyone else. But there is a structure and there is a way to go about it. So, you know, in theory salons, everyone is supported and guided. And the more that you put into it, the more that you’re going to get out. But the freedom is always going to be there and stability is our foundation.
Lee Kantor: Now, when you’re working in an environment where the the person that’s doing the work on the client is has an opportunity to develop a really good relationship with that individual client, how do you kind of keep the brand at the forefront so that to remind them that they’re in a theory salon, that’s not, you know, Mary’s salon, it’s its theory salon. So you know that they don’t feel like, oh, I’ll just go with Mary if she moves down the street.
Erin Mills: Yeah. Well, to be honest, a lot of people do leave when their when their stylist leaves, but then a lot of people come back. And I think the reason is, is because how when they, how they feel in the salon, how they are treated. I mean, we the eye contact, the luxury service, the way that they are provided for is not something that most people can do when they go out on their own. So even if they left with the stylist who left and maybe got their hair done a few times, a good majority come back because they were missing that all inclusive luxury feeling experience. And most people, when they spend a lot of money, want to feel taken care of. They don’t just want to, you know, go in and get something done and and be one of the second or third clients in a small room. They truly want to feel like they are the priority. They are getting an experience, and that’s what they come back for.
Lee Kantor: So you mentioned kind of growing outside of the borders of Orlando or Central Florida. Is there? Um, so what what’s kind of on the roadmap are you looking to franchise, or are you looking to just kind of have your current crew, um, if they have intentions to move or go somewhere else to let them kind of be the boots on the ground in these new locations. What’s kind of on your growth roadmap?
Erin Mills: Well, I have someone now that I’m working with to open up her location. I can’t say where yet, but, um, she has been with me for since I ever even opened the salons. And she will be the first one that will be in, uh, in culture franchise, and I’m very excited about that for her. And that will happen in the next two years and other locations. We’ve had some stylists move, and they have been wanting to open a theory where they have moved, and so I’ve built the processes to be able to replicate that. And the, um, I’ve been working with someone to franchise it, but our franchise will be in house only for this time being. So we are going to be working only with people that have worked within the theory systems to be able to ensure that the culture is the same no matter where we go.
Lee Kantor: So what do you need more of right now and how can we help right now?
Erin Mills: Oh man, I, I’m just excited to branch out into different places beyond the salon world because, you know, as an entrepreneur, you realize although it’s it’s it’s a brick and mortar business, a lot of our foundations are the same. So I’m looking for like minded people who would love to talk about what they’ve learned so that I can grow and then be an asset to any other person who has opened a brick and mortar, or who is in charge of 50, plus more people who would like some guidance, possibly in how to continue building their culture and their brand.
Lee Kantor: So if somebody wants to connect with you or learn more about theory, what is the website? What’s the best way to connect.
Erin Mills: The website is theory. Salon.com. And personally, they can reach out to me on Instagram because I will love to connect there and all of our links are there as well. And mine is at Aaron Mills and I would be happy to connect with anyone there.
Lee Kantor: Well, Aaron, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.
Erin Mills: Thank you so much, Lee. I really appreciate that.
Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on High Velocity Radio.
