Today we’d like to introduce you to Jaelyn Lepore.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I think I knew I wanted to do hair long before I ever actually admitted it to myself. I grew up dancing competitively for about 13 years, so I was always doing my own hair and makeup, and my mom was also a hairstylist. I was such a girly girl and loved everything beauty-related. By middle school, I was doing hair and makeup for my friends, their older sisters, and people getting ready for prom. Everyone around me always told me they could see me becoming a hairstylist, but I never really took it seriously because, deep down, I didn’t think that kind of career was achievable for me.
After high school, I went to the University of Alabama intending to study business and eventually work in sports management and marketing. About two months in, I quickly realized I had chosen a path that wasn’t right for me. I spent a couple of weeks sick in my dorm room, spending a lot of time on social media and really thinking about what I wanted my life to look like. One night, I came across a TikTok that said, “This is your sign to drop out of college and go to cosmetology school.” I wish I knew who made that video because I would genuinely love to thank them, but I took it as my sign. I moved home, and five days later, I started cosmetology school.
After graduating, I started building my career at a small salon in my hometown. Eventually, I spent some time working in Philadelphia because I knew I wanted more education, experience, and exposure to the industry. After a while, though, I became really burned out and started questioning whether I was actually good enough to be successful. I ended up leaving hair completely for three months. I registered for community college, planned to go to nursing school, got a job at a local hospital, and picked up another job in childcare. I genuinely thought I was done with hair and was already trying to figure out what my next life was going to look like.
Then, while I was working at my childcare job, I found out that I had been nominated for three One Shot Awards in 2025. I literally went into the bathroom and cried. I was overwhelmed by so many emotions, but more than anything, it felt like a reminder that maybe I wasn’t finished with this career after all. Around the same time, my best friend, Grace, had been encouraging me to come work with her at 11AM Salon. I was honestly terrified to give hair another chance because I was afraid I would give up again, but I decided to take the risk.
I started at 11AM in September 2025, and it really felt like everything finally aligned for me. I found a community where I felt supported, a clear structure for what success could look like, and an environment that pushed me to grow creatively and professionally. I didn’t have to force myself to love it again—I just did. In my first year, I’ve serviced more than 600 clients, been promoted twice, and become a senior stylist. I’ve also started building a presence on social media and developing relationships with brands that I hope will continue to grow throughout my career.
Looking ahead, I would love to eventually become an educator. I think I would really enjoy being able to teach newer stylists the things I wish I had known when I graduated from cosmetology school—from placement and formulation to photographing your work, building a clientele, and navigating the industry as a whole. There is so much that you learn once you’re actually behind the chair that you just can’t learn in school, and I would love to be able to give someone else the guidance I was looking for when I was starting out.
The biggest thing that changed for me throughout this journey was that I started believing in myself again. I had spent so much time looking for validation that I was making the “right” choice, especially when the traditional path seemed like what everyone expected of me. But I never really saw myself in a nine-to-five desk job. I’ve always wanted to build something of my own, be creative, work with people, and have a career that never looks exactly the same from one day to the next. I think it really took me taking a chance on myself and fully throwing myself into this career for my mindset to change.
If there’s one thing I hope someone takes away from my story, it’s that you don’t need everyone around you to believe in your dream. You need to believe in it yourself. I think we spend so much time looking for validation from other people to feel like we’re making the right choices, when at the end of the day, it’s your life and your story. You have to be the one writing it.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
It definitely has not been a smooth road, and honestly, I think the hardest part has been the pressure I put on myself. I have always felt like I owe it to myself to work as hard as possible and do my absolute best at whatever I’m doing. I wouldn’t necessarily call myself a perfectionist, but I have a really hard time doing anything halfway. I want the things I create, and the work I put out into the world, to be good, and hopefully impressive, and that pressure can get exhausting.
When I quit hair for those three months, a lot of what I was telling myself was that I needed something more stable. I convinced myself that I was never going to find financial stability in the hair industry and that committing to a career where so much of my success depended on me was too much of a risk. Looking back, I think some of it was also fear of putting my ego on the line. It is scary to commit to something that you are building with your own hands and have your success—or lack of it—feel so personal.
Social media has also been both an incredible tool for my career and one of my biggest challenges. I’m constantly seeing other stylists posting, growing, traveling, getting opportunities, and accomplishing amazing things, and sometimes it can make me feel like what I’m working toward is so much farther away than it actually is. It’s really easy to compare your everyday life to someone else’s highlight reel, especially when social media is such a huge part of my career.
The workload is another challenge that people don’t necessarily see. A typical day can start at 5:30 in the morning with the gym, then I’m posting on Instagram, working with clients from around 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., creating content at the salon, and editing and posting whenever I have a free second. I try to post two to three times a day, so when I get home, I’m often still working—planning content, editing, or figuring out what I’m going to create the next day. I love what I do, so it doesn’t always feel like work, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a lot.
Something else I didn’t fully understand before entering the beauty industry was how competitive it can feel. You hear people talk about the competition before you get into the industry, but I don’t think you realize how much of the time it can feel like everyone is building their own little business and looking out for themselves. Thankfully, I’ve also found some really amazing friends and people in this industry who have completely changed that perspective for me and reminded me that you can build your own success while still genuinely supporting the people around you.
I’ve gotten much better at handling criticism and people doubting me as I’ve built more confidence and have more of a leg to stand on. At this point, I feel like my work speaks for itself. My success speaks for itself. I don’t feel the same need to convince everyone that I’m capable because I’ve started proving it to myself.
The biggest lesson I’ve taken from all of this is that I’m only really in competition with myself. There will always be someone who is doing something I’m not doing yet, and there will always be someone further ahead in one area of their career. I can either let that make me feel behind, or I can use it as motivation while remembering that my only real job is to keep becoming better than I was yesterday.
If I could go back and talk to the version of myself who was struggling and questioning everything, I would tell her that she doesn’t have to have all the answers. You don’t have to know exactly where your career is going or have every step mapped out. You just have to show up, work hard, and trust that the rest will come together along the way.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I specialize in blondes, lived-in color, and extensions, but I’ve always tried to take a really well-rounded approach to my work. I’ve been lucky enough to learn from so many incredible people in this industry and take a lot of different classes, and I honestly feel like I’m a product of all of those experiences. I take little pieces from everyone I’ve learned from and figure out how to make them my own, which has really shaped the way I approach hair today.
I’m most booked for extension transformations, lived-in color, and big color transformations. One thing I think sets my work apart is that I don’t believe in having one placement or one formula that works for everyone. Every head of hair is different, and I really take that into consideration when I’m creating a look. I’m thinking about everything from the way the hair sits around someone’s face, their length and density, their natural texture, how they typically wear their hair, and even how they want their hair to look when it’s up. I want the finished result to make sense for the person sitting in my chair—not just look good in a picture.
Extensions have become a huge part of my work, and I absolutely love them. I wear extensions myself, so I’ve experienced firsthand how much they can change the way you feel about your hair. I think there’s still a misconception that extensions are only for someone who wants 24-inch, waist-length, platinum blonde hair, when they can really be for anyone. Sometimes you just want more density, a little extra length, or that extra boost of confidence. My goal with extensions is always to make them look and feel as natural as possible, whether that means custom coloring, custom placement, or adjusting the installation to fit someone’s lifestyle.
But the hair is only part of the experience I want to create. I genuinely feel like I’ve built real friendships with a lot of my clients. I always have someone texting me, sending me a funny TikTok, or telling me about something going on in their life. I’ve always joked that I used to get in trouble at school for talking too much, and now I think it’s probably the best problem I could have as a hairstylist. I want my clients to leave loving their hair, but also feeling like they just spent a few hours hanging out with an old friend.
My social media is another extension of that. I want to show people that I’m more than just a small-town hairstylist. I use it to share my work, education, behind-the-scenes moments, my day-to-day life, and the things I’m learning along the way. I want people to see the person behind the chair, not just the finished hair.
Ultimately, I think what I want to be known for is a combination of things: a luxury experience, beautiful and intentional hair, and a really good laugh. I want someone to leave my chair feeling confident in their hair and like they genuinely had a great time while they were there. For me, that combination is what makes the experience feel like me.
How do you think about luck?
I think the luckiest thing that ever happened to me was going to cosmetology school at the same time as Grace, my best friend. That’s where we met, and I truly don’t know where I would be without her or the role she has played in my career. Looking back, I don’t think finding 11AM was necessarily luck as much as it was fate. Grace had started working there while we were still in cosmetology school, and it ended up being the only salon she had ever worked at. When I was given the opportunity to join her, everything just seemed to fall into place exactly how it was supposed to.
I do believe in luck to a certain extent, and I definitely have moments where I think, “Wow, I’m really lucky.” But sometimes I think I forget just how hard I’ve worked to get to where I am. It’s easy to look at someone’s career from the outside and see the opportunities, the nominations, the growth, the social media, or the exciting things happening and think they’ve just been lucky. And while I have been lucky in a lot of ways, there is so much work that happens behind the scenes that people don’t see.
Being a hairstylist is incredibly rewarding, but it’s also really hard. There’s a lot of time, pressure, creativity, education, and sacrifice that goes into building a career in this industry. I don’t necessarily need recognition for all of that, but I do think it’s important to remember that luck can create an opportunity, but it doesn’t create the career for you. You still have to show up, work for it, and make something out of the opportunities you’re given.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hairbyjaelyn_/
