Not just a Hairdresser | Presented by Ally from The Beauty Grail

Sheridan Rose Shaw left school at 14 and found her way into hairdressing after struggling to fit into traditional education. What followed was far from a straight line. Over the next decade, she experienced career highs and personal lows, including addiction, homelessness, recovery, and the challenge of rebuilding her life from the ground up. In this episode, Ally sits down with the founder of MAM...

Kirsty-Anne Sage comes from a long line of hairdressers. Her nan. Her auntie. And a school system that quickly realised traditional learning wasn’t going to be her path. With what she calls “crippling ADHD” and a deeply visual brain, she was sent to TAFE to try hairdressing. It clicked instantly. By second year, she was running a salon alone after the owner fell ill. Signed off early. Thrown in th...

Dom Pelli was born into hair. Not metaphorically. Literally. His grandfather opened a barbershop in Western Sydney after migrating from Italy. His father followed. So did the rest of the family. Hair wasn’t just a career path, it was the language spoken at the dinner table. At 16, after being told school wasn’t where his future lied, Dom left and stepped straight into an apprenticeship. But instea...

Three generations of hairdressers shaped Natalie Anne’s path. Weekends in her mum's salon. The smell of perm solution. The gossip. The glam. Hair chose her long before she chose it. She took the long road. An apprenticeship at Toni & Guy. Early assisting. Mentorship under strong, no-nonsense industry women. Then, like many ambitious 19-year-olds, she left too soon, started her own thing,...

What happens when you stop shrinking your work down to “just hair” and start owning everything you really are? In this very first episode of Not Just a Hairdresser , Ally sits down with Kaine and Ayden Vakai, the co-founders behind House of Vakai, for a raw, funny, emotional, and deeply honest conversation about what it actually takes to build a career and a business in the hair industry. Kaine ta...

You’re not “just” a hairdresser and this industry is anything but small. Not Just a Hairdresser is a podcast about leadership, entrepreneurship, and resilience in the hair and beauty industry, an industry that’s been overlooked, underestimated, and blazing a trail for decades. Hosted by Ally, founder of The Beauty Grail, the podcast features bold hair and beauty leaders who are building real caree...