Owning a mega salon was in Onna Via Santin's tenure plan.

But when a golden opportunity presented itself to take over five salon spa in New Jersey

sooner than

Ona had prepared for, she relied on her training and her faith and got ready.

Learning how to manage personalities, profit and loss, and manage everything that comes

with evolving from employee to employer. Then, the pandemic hit, and Ona's business and her

faith was tested again.

Now the curl expert and celebrity hairstylists and client-appointed Hair Saint

shares how her humility, her obsession with restoring hair's integrity,

and her trust in God has shaped her success.

Thank you for doing this.

Oh my God. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

Ona, you grow up in salons because your mom owns four of them.

What is your earliest memory of being inside one of those salons?

Oh, my, probably, definitely was a toddler, maybe two, three.

There's one picture that I can remember seeing of me in my mother's chair.

I remember that. I can remember being at the salon watching my mother do her clients and how many people waited for her. People wanted to just chat with my mom. And the people that were sitting in the next chair

with other stylists were talking to my mom and then talking to their stylists and then the stylist

talking to each other and then the clients talking to each other. So I remember vividly how that

made me feel, number one.

I felt like I was on the inside of something, you know, listening to these women talking

about their life or an amazing recipe that their mother shared or their husbands or their

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