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Female Founders: Elizabeth Faye of Hair Love University On The Five Things You Need To Thrive and Succeed as a Woman Founder

An Interview With Candice Georgiadis

I always joke that a lot of entrepreneurs just have a lot of wounds. They have a lot of abandonment issues, scarcity issues, they don’t feel safe with money, they have control issues. I’ve just worked with a ton of entrepreneurs and almost every single one of them has these things and that’s what swung them into wanting to build this empire where they could be safe, they could be protected, and they could call the shots on their own terms. Other people have a big mission and vision placed on their heart. I think a lot of entrepreneurs are both. You almost have to be a little crazy to want to risk and play that big or you are super conscious in wanting to trust yourself and go for it.

As a part of our series about “Why We Need More Women Founders”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Elizabeth Faye.

Elizabeth Faye is a certified business coach, trauma informed life coach & breathwork facilitator. She is the founder and CEO of Hair Love University, which is a conscious education company that helps beauty industry entrepreneurs & educators. She has over a decade of experience and has served thousands of entrepreneurs around the world step into their personal power & create massive impact & wealth in business through her coaching and world class retreats.

But what she believes most, is that you were called to make an impact & abundance is your birthright.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?

Born in Las Vegas, Nevada, I was a troubled preteen who was sent to a different school every year of middle school and then lived with different families throughout highschool until I eventually dropped out. In this shuffle of schools, I was sent to a strict Christian charter school in seventh grade. In an attempt to get kicked out, I often stole box hair color from Walmart, destroying my hair and dyeing it crazy colors that went against school code. After getting expelled, I was sitting on the curb waiting to be picked up when a woman handed me a business card from a hairdresser, encouraging me to reach out to them so they could fix my hair. Looking back, I feel like this was a sign from the universe guiding and showing me the way.

Soon after, I made an appointment at the salon, got my hair fixed and got to experience a hair salon for the first time. I remember looking around and seeing the diversity of hairdressers in the salon and thinking “These are the coolest people ever”. I was in awe of the diversity of their outfits, hairstyles, and the way they freely expressed themselves. I absolutely loved the experience and bonded with my hairdresser. My dad was so upset with the expense of the hair treatment and said that I could not go back again, but I knew I had to go back, not just because of the cut or color, but because of how I felt there. I felt seen, heard, loved, and cool, which was something I had never felt anywhere else besides the hairdresser’s chair. After paying my dad back for the hair appointment, I saved my money for 6 months until I had enough to go back again.

When I went back, I put all the money I had saved on the counter and asked “What can I get for this much?”. He told me he would make a deal with my dad. If I got good grades on my report card, he would style my hair complimentary. Looking back on this, it was such an impactful and motivational act of kindness that changed my life. From then on, he would expect me to bring my report card where in return I would receive a complimentary session with him. When I dropped out of highschool at the age of 16, I no longer had a report card to present to him, which led to my first job offer as an assistant at the salon. Later in the week, dressed in all black, I showed up for my first shift, ready to start. What first started as serving clients wine and folding towels, ended with me becoming a hairdresser. I believe I am living proof that hairstylists change the world and that they can have an impact on others.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company?

When the COVID-19 pandemic wiped out the hairdressing industry. My job was to help hairdressers make money at a time when they couldn’t work. It was illegal to host events, open up the studios, and carry on with our jobs during this time. Not only was I supporting this community of women out of work, but I also have a hair salon myself. This experience taught me how to heal, how to step into my role as a CEO, and validated that the work I was doing was what I really wanted to do. So many things changed, my business was revolutionized, retreats and events became digital and that sense of connection through business and mindfulness changed everything for me. In a time of chaos and change, it is important to remember who we are as leaders, and that we have the opportunity to step into power.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

I think the funniest mistake I made was thinking that planning a retreat would be easy. There are so many logistics and legal issues that could have gone wrong that luckily did not. If you’ve seen the Hair Love retreat it’s a wild, festival-like hair show, mixed with a business conference and a retreat that I had not seen existing anywhere else. Doing the event was the only way to show my vision to my team. Between the event planning, the caterers, and all the moving parts, we did not sleep the first night. Everything seems so seamless to the retreat attendants but it was one of the hardest things we’ve ever done. Maybe if I had known how difficult it was going to be, I wouldn’t have been so naive to jump into it but it was a great experience.

We had planned a hike for the retreat days and as we were shuttling people out to Zion National Park. We had not kept a record of who was hiking and which retreaters were out in the wilderness on their own. We ended up losing the retreaters and my dad had to drive around the national park picking up retreaters and shuttling them in and out of the park until we found everyone. Luckily, everyone remembers it being a funny experience from the trip.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

I have so many people to thank. Over the years, I have worked with over 20 incredible mentors, from consultants to spiritual mentors. It’s hard to pick just one considering they’ve all revolutionized my life. I love this quote from Ram Dass who said “We’re all just walking each other home”. All of my mentors have unlocked beauty, healing, and awareness in me and I wouldn’t be who I am without them. Investing in mentors and mentoring others has deeply changed my world perspective.

Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. According to this EY report, only about 20 percent of funded companies have women founders. This reflects great historical progress, but it also shows that more work still has to be done to empower women to create companies. In your opinion and experience what is currently holding back women from founding companies?

There are masculine and feminine energetics that we all have within us that act as the yin and yang. The feminine includes flow, creativity, magnetism, feelings, and intuitions while the masculine is the linear, logical , structured, protective, and “get it done” energy. These spiritualities are a part of all of us and are polarities that create balance and energy. We are unbalanced in our world and, between these two, we want to find balance.

Women have not been taught wealth and business building skills. Most women that I have worked with have been under-resourced, whether that be financially, in knowledge, in proximity to the knowledge, or in access to the resources and connections that can get them into the room. These resources are gatekept and can only be accessed past obstacles like proximity, wealth, and connections. One of my friends runs an incredible community that is all about diversity and inclusion.

Back to energetics, I help people step into conscious leadership. This is leadership that is soul led, gut led, and intuition based. I talk about the keys of conscious leadership. The world is craving a different type of leader. We are craving leaders, not bosses, not gurus, not “I have all the answers”, but leaders who are leading by example and are embodying what the world needs more of. We talk about awareness and being self-led. We want to be conscious, self-aware leaders that look within, and that are aware of other people’s feelings and care. The next key is purpose driven. We’re in a world that’s so logical, so linear, so hustle, so “go, go, go. Do, do, do”. This type of hustle is being labeled as toxic and it’s making people sick. Conscious leadership is being heart and soul led, and coming from a place of purpose and mission. The next key of conscious leadership is “honors living in alignment”. This is being gut led and listening to your stomach and your gut telling you what to do. Does your life feel good or does it just look good? When we put alignment before the dollar bills and the check boxes in to-do list, everything else will fall into place. This is part of my conscious leadership talk and I think this is part of the issue is that we are leading in this wounded, masculine energy. The healed masculine energetic is healthy, protective, beautiful, “get things done ‘’ productive energy. But the wounded masculine is addicted to hustle and productivity. Their worth is in the doing. We’re seeing this as a society at large. That’s why so many people are waking up to consciousness, mindfulness, meditation, doing things differently, and getting back to nature. This is on purpose. We need the yin and yang imbalance to come back to homeostasis. We’re seeing people being more authentic, more raw, talking about home-life, work-life balance, honoring alignment, and being more heart and soul led business owners.

Can you help articulate a few things that can be done as individuals, as a society, or by the government, to help overcome those obstacles?

Both masculine and feminine energies are good, but we just want them healed and unionized. Masculine energy is very linear and the feminine energy is cyclical. When you think of a woman, she has a womb, and every month she has cyclical energy. She’s not able to ride quite that linear energy and keep her energy up. A lot of females are trying to fit into a masculine mold of success and trying to fit the mold of “Well this is how men have done it. This is how this has been built. This is how this has been created”. I tell women to try to honor their cyclical energy, bursts of creativity, and all the energy that is natural with your cycle. As women leaning into leading differently and honoring our cyclical energy, we are really proving to ourselves that even though we feel more aligned being different, we can yield the SAME incredible results. And that gives other female leaders permission to lead in their divine feminine energy as well. It is a rise of honoring our own energy and unique feminine gifts rather than deeming them as too much or not enough. What if your sensitivity, intuition, femininity and softness was your edge and magic?! P.S — it is!

This might be intuitive to you as a woman founder but I think it will be helpful to spell this out. Can you share a few reasons why more women should become founders?

Speaking from an energetic perspective, in spirituality we learn about the concept of polarity and how we have both masculine and feminine energetics. These are magical to learn about in general but when it comes to female founders we have a real edge and gift if we can lean into our DIVINE FEMININE energetics and leading differently. This requires you to lead differently than maybe society and hustle culture has shown you is the “direct path to millions and success”. The gifts of the divine feminine are intuition, creativity, collaboration and magnetism. Wow! I think about how this could really help any CEO go from business owner to CONSCIOUS LEADER and major authority figure. Being in touch with your intuition would help you make choices, lead and feel guided…which is priceless! Creativity would allow you to think abstractly. What if the answer or solution just requires a creative perspective? Collaboration is key to community building and leading a team of leaders. Think of women’s circles and how you gather together to share and move a mission, idea, or project further together. And greater magnetism would unlock marketing & sales power in your business, social media and calling in soulmate clients. So yes, I would say female founders are the future of conscious leadership, especially by leaning into their divine feminine gifts. We need more female founders because feminine energy is magnetic, collaborative, and trusts their own intuition. I want to show other female founders and leaders what it looks like to be the CEO differently than we’ve been taught, programmed and shown what success looks like.

What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about being a founder? Can you explain what you mean?

A myth is that founders always know what they’re doing. We are all evolving beings of learning and unlearning experience the spectrum of life and we do not have it all figured out. As soon as you feel like things are flowing and good, you’re gonna go through a new evolution of self, upgrade, and want something new. The journey is all we have so let’s enjoy it.

Is everyone cut out to be a founder? In your opinion, which specific traits increase the likelihood that a person will be a successful founder and what type of person should perhaps seek a “regular job” as an employee? Can you explain what you mean?

I always joke that a lot of entrepreneurs just have a lot of wounds. They have a lot of abandonment issues, scarcity issues, they don’t feel safe with money, they have control issues. I’ve just worked with a ton of entrepreneurs and almost every single one of them has these things and that’s what swung them into wanting to build this empire where they could be safe, they could be protected, and they could call the shots on their own terms. Other people have a big mission and vision placed on their heart. I think a lot of entrepreneurs are both. You almost have to be a little crazy to want to risk and play that big or you are super conscious in wanting to trust yourself and go for it.

I think if you’ve come from a family that is big into entrepreneurialism then you could feel like you have the capabilities to do whatever you want. It’s also about what role you want and what you value in a role, which is something to be not taken lightly and is something to consider. Now that I’ve done a lot of healing work, I could happily work for someone else if that says anything. I do think I could be happy working for someone else if I aligned with their mission and vision.

Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started”.

  1. You can be successful and not sacrifice your health, your wellbeing, your family, and the things that matter most to you.
  2. Balance and harmony are not a pipe dream. They’re 100% real and very important to you enjoying and having a good healthy life.
  3. Your wellbeing is not just what you eat, and how you move your body. It is spiritual and emotional and all of that ties together.
  4. Always have mentors and proximity to power. Get yourself into rooms and places.
  5. Play and have fun. All of my best ideas have come during times where I am living and enjoying life.

How have you used your success to make the world a better place?

Healed people heal people. As I heal and my consciousness grows, I share it with other people and I help them. Every time I learn something as a business owner, from systems, to structure, to management, to leadership, to money, to all of it, I just turn around and give it back.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good for the greatest number of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

I just made a documentary called Hair Stylists Change The World. The global message is that YOU change the world. It’s waking people up to their own power, their own consciousness. That’s where our community’s going. It’s continuing to grow in that way and we’ve helped tens of thousands of people do it. Your spiritual and emotional wellbeing are so important.

We are very blessed that some very prominent names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.

I would love to have a private breakfast with Brené Brown…I would freak out. I also think Gabby Bernstein is really cool. Either one would be really, really cool.

Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.

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Female Founders: Elizabeth Faye of Hair Love University On The Five Things You Need To Thrive and… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.