Crain's "If I Knew Then: Evangeline Leah Rookey, Owner, Artistic Hair Salon LLC

IF I KNEW THEN...

In this ongoing series, we ask executives, entrepreneurs and business leaders about mistakes that have shaped their business philosophy.

Evangeline Leah Rookey

OWNER, ARTISTIC HAIR SALON LLC

By Laura B. Hayden 

@lbhayden

SMALL BUSINESS

Background:  

As a 12-year-old, the smell of a salon caught Leah Rookey’s attention. “How cool is this?” she thought, and thus began her journey, first as as stylist and then as the owner of Artistic Hair Salon in Windsor Locks, Conn. Her 37-year career has led her to travel the world to learn the latest trends of hairstyling, manage a business, and more recently, look deep into herself as a work in progress. 

The Mistake:

As much as I loved to style hair, I needed to do less of that and learn how to build the salon by honing my business skills and investing in me.

When I was going through a divorce I had an epiphany. Up to then I didn’t need to work full time. I had a tiny little business. Life was great! When I realized I didn’t want to be married anymore I thought, “How am I going to live?”

I went from working three days a week to full time and now trying to hire an employee. That was a game changer. For over 25 years I had worked alone in the salon. Besides stylist, I had been my guests or clients’ therapist (behind the chair). Business was very busy but when my clients came into the salon, they liked the one on one. Some clients found it challenging when staff was brought in, but I had to keep my eye on the bigger picture.

I looked for answers and that’s when I found the Summit, a salon consulting company.  The Summit gave me direction. It taught me I needed to understand my numbers. I needed to understand my P&L (profit and loss). I didn’t even know what that was because my mother did my books. Bless my mother.

So I began to get the numbers end of it. Next came learning how to brand and market with social media to build the business. That is still a work in progress. Yet I realized something was still unbalanced. It was my spiritual side.

I‘m learning how to find the balance. My mother died last year and my 93-year-old father moved in with me. In the last few years I’ve committed all of “me” to my parents and the salon.  I realized I had to get back to the gym, which I did, and I hired my trainer back, two changes I’m really happy about.

Then I found Passion Squared, an online school for small business owners, because I needed more business coaching. And it’s through my Passion Squared seminars that I began questioning. "Do I really need to learn more about how to cut a straight line? Do I need to understand how to put bleach on a different way?" Yes, I’ve done a lot of that but there’s a part of working on “me” I’ve never done. Passion Squared connected me with a spiritual coach to help with that.

Fixing a problem is way harder than continuing to live with the problem.

The Lesson:

If I am not centered as a person, no business technique or social media is going to build my business successfully. If I’m not whole none of that is going to matter. And that’s with anybody in anything. It took me six years to find two really great stylists that understand this, and I’m still searching for more. Just like learning about how to run a business and how to invest in myself—it isn’t easy. If this was easy, everybody would be doing it. But when it’s not easy people walk away or they say, “Oh you’re just a hairdresser.”

People let themselves stay in bad situations—business and personal. I see it everyday in my chair. People quit trying to fix themselves and stay in their unhappy lives. They quit and stay in their jobs. They quit life but stay in the insanity, and then they get stressed. I said that to a guest the other day. Fixing a problem is way harder than continuing to live with the problem. That’s why people don’t get out of bad relationships. Because when you get out—you’ve got you. If you can’t get along with yourself, how can you get along with anybody else? You know what I mean?

I can actually say I love my career. Moving forward, my passion is to help coach young stylists to help them develop their individual talent behind the chair. I was very lucky to discover my career as a hairstylist at such a young age.

Photo courtesy of Evangeline Leah Rookey

Crain's If I Knew Then: Rhona Free, USJ President

In this ongoing series, we ask executives, entrepreneurs and business leaders about mistakes that have shaped their business philosophy.

Rhona Free

PRESIDENT, UNIVERSITY OF SAINT JOSEPH

By Laura B. Hayden 

@lbhayden

EDUCATION

Background:  

For the 50 years since Radcliffe merged with Harvard, fueling the trend for women’s colleges to become coed, the University of Saint Joseph has remained an all-women’s institution. President Rhona Free talks about how she came to realize it was time for USJ, founded in 1932 by the Sisters of Mercy, to open its hallowed halls to male undergraduates. Connecticut’s last all-women institution of higher learning will begin admitting male students to all full-time undergraduate programs in the fall of 2018.

The Mistake:  

Applying a mission statement too narrowly

When I started here in 2015 I loved the idea of being at a women’s college and I interpreted the mission as a women’s college. After being on the campus for about a year and a half, I kept thinking of things I would like to offer to the women students and realized that the constraints were in many cases not financial. It wasn’t that we didn’t have the funds to create any program or another co-curricular activity, but rather that we did not have enough interested students.

To achieve the dynamic undergraduate experience I envisioned, we needed more students than were interested in coming to an all-women institution. Research indicated only 2 to 4 percent of students who take the SAT say they will consider a single-sex institution. Those statistics surprised me. I didn’t expect that it would be very high, but 2 to 4 percent was much less than I anticipated.

How could we open our door to those other 98 percent of students headed for college? Was I thinking too literally, interpreting that our mission was just for women undergraduates? 

Before approaching the board of trustees with any recommendation, we created a task force with twelve different working groups. Each of those working groups looked at what would be the impact of becoming coeducational and how it would relate to our mission. Would it push us too far from our mission? Would it allow us to support the mission?

The consensus from those groups was that there have been enough incremental changes at the University of Saint Joseph, so that becoming fully coeducational would remain within our mission. Men have attended the graduate school for almost fifty years and live in the graduate residence hall. Men are enrolled in the part-time program for adult learners and also attend classes on campus as part of the eleven-college Hartford Consortium for Higher Education. For example, students from Trinity College who want to get certified as teachers come to USJ to take Education courses.

You can’t interpret mission too narrowly or be too tied to the history and traditions.

The Lesson:

We came to realize our mission really focuses on educating a diverse student population to meet society’s needs, with an emphasis on developing the potential of women.  I think I (and others) had first thought, “Well that means undergraduate women,” but obviously when you read it more carefully, it doesn’t say to the exclusion of men. It just says that you will keep—and we will keep—that focus.

Changing from Saint Joseph College to the University of Saint Joseph a few years ago indicated that the board understood that you can’t interpret mission too narrowly or be too tied to the history and traditions. What if someone had said 50 years ago that this institution would be starting a school of pharmacy offering a doctoral degree? I think many people would have just said, "Oh no, that is not what we’re here for."

By opening this sense of what the mission is and not interpreting it too literally, the University of Saint Joseph remains consistent with the vision of its Founding Sisters of Mercy. We will have more resources and more students that will support activities. Right now our undergraduate enrollment is about 770. We’ll possibly go up to 1,000 but we probably won’t go beyond 1,000.

I’ve learned to keep a sense of what an institution’s mission is and allow for enough flexibility to respond to change in the markets and in external conditions, but at the same time not be so loose with interpreting the mission that you get steered into directions that are not ideal for the institution. The University of Saint Joseph has always had a pretty high level of expectations for student performance and preparation and that’s a part of sticking to the mission and the history that we didn’t want to change. 

Follow the University of Saint Joseph on Twitter at @USJCT.

Photo courtesy of Rhona Free.

Crain's If I Knew Then: Rob Ruggiero, TheaterWorks Producing Director

• http://www.crains.com/if-i-knew-then/rob-ruggiero/theaterworkshttp://www.crains.com/if-i-knew-then/rob

In this ongoing series, we ask executives, entrepreneurs and business leaders about mistakes that have shaped their business philosophy.

Rob Ruggiero

PRODUCING ARTISTIC DIRECTOR, THEATERWORKS

By Laura B. Hayden

Background:  

Doubters warned that bringing a big Broadway musical to as intimate a stage as Hartford’s TheaterWorks would be risky. Yet, on June 26 Rob Ruggiero’s spring production of "Next to Normal" earned five Connecticut Critics Circle Awards for best musical, director, actor, debut performer and lighting. Affiliated with Theaterworks since 1993, Rob has been its producing artistic director since 2012. He said the theater is  “extraordinarily supportive, which is rare to find.”

The Mistake:

Listening to others when my gut tells me otherwise.

I’ve directed big and small musical plays all over the country. One of the critical aspects of being a director is knowing how to cast the show, putting the right people around you. There have been times when I have been talked into or pressured into casting somebody I felt innately was wrong for the role. And I’ve always regretted that decision. It always has resulted in diminishing the impact of a show.

Other times I’ve been told I had to have a particular designer. Or told we had to use someone who was on staff or resided in the city we were in at the time. For the most part, when I have had a strong feeling that this is not a good idea, I would say 80 to 90 percent of the time it has not worked out.

There have been other projects where I’ve thought, "Oh we have a lot of budget strain this year, do I think this is wise?" And then I go on to choose a smaller scale project thinking, this’ll be good because I know that we’ll be risking less and it feels a little more responsible. Then the project ends up actually not doing as well as I thought it would.

Doing "Next to Normal" terrified me. I took a big risk with that. There were people who reminded me TheaterWorks doesn’t generally do musicals.  Some of the subscriber base asked, ”Oh why are you doing that?” Still, I knew the Pulitzer Prize pedigree would help the cause. And it’s not a musical with dance numbers. It has a strong profound story, so we made our production about a family struggling with the impact of mental illness. To me, it was just a play with music.

As it turned out, we had the largest subscriber turnout ever for an individual production – even more than "Relativity," which starred Richard Dreyfuss (in 2016). "Relativity" probably had the most single ticket sales, but they were neck and neck. They were both really successful productions for different reasons.  And now my audience trusts that there are musicals that fit our mission at TheaterWorks.

I would rather fail because of my choices than because I followed someone else’s lead.

The Lesson: 

A lesson I have learned over and over again is to trust your instincts. Sometimes advice, however well-intentioned, can be very limiting, especially fear-based advice. There have been times where I’ve made a choice because it felt a little safer and secure and it ended up actually being just the opposite. I’ve learned to be braver and trust my gut and believe in a project—and to trust our audience.

Ultimately, as an artistic leader you chose to lead.  And not everything pays off, but I would rather fail because of my choices than because I followed someone else’s lead.

Also, one of the things I think you learn as a leader is to make sure you get all the information and that you hear everyone’s side of the story before you take a risk or make a judgment. There are a lot of reactions around you—emotions around you. There are those times when I’ve had a reactive response, and usually that lacks a complete global view of what has happened. Now I try to always take a breath and talk to everyone involved and try to hear what the different perspectives are so I can make a really smart, informed decision. My decision doesn’t always please everybody, but at least it’s informed. 

Follow TheaterWorks on Twitter at @TheaterWorksCT.

Photo courtesy of TheaterWorks.