Returning to her roots

Alumna runs a successful salon – like the one that funded her CSUB education

By California State University, Bakersfield

June 10^th, 2021

This is one in a series of profiles of CSUB Alumni Association board members.

Next to the old pub in CSUB’s Student Union was a small empty space being offered for rent for $300 to $400 a month.

Leticia Velasquez, then a hair stylist working toward her English degree on campus, thought it would be fun to open a salon there. And so that’s what she did, working in clients around her class schedule with the help of an assistant.

“I kind of wish I still had it,” Velasquez said of the spot two decades later. “The vibe there was just so fun.”

That entrepreneurial spirit, and love for what she does, has characterized Velasquez’s entire professional life, starting as a child pretending to serve customers at her grandfather’s Mexican restaurant to today as owner of a downtown Bakersfield salon with plans to launch a side business specializing in hair extensions.

Velasquez’s career has taken several detours but she’s kept coming back to her first love, what she was doing all those years ago at CSUB – working behind the chair.

Always entrepreneurial

Velasquez grew up in Lamont. Her dad was a furniture store salesman and pastor, her mother worked in the fields before going back to school and then teaching at the David Head Center.

Entrepreneurship is in her blood. Velasquez’s grandfather owned a Mexican restaurant in Arvin called Super Antojitos (“Little Cravings”) and she loved spending time there.

“I used to pretend I was waiting tables when I was little,” she said. “They’d give me this little apron and I’d go all around.”

Velasquez’s mother stressed two things: the importance of education and following through on commitments. Velasquez and her brother, also a CSUB grad, always earned perfect attendance certificates at school because their mom made them go unless they were really, really sick.

“Something I learned from my mom is just to be consistent, to always do the right thing, to be there for people and to be kind,” she said.

Velasquez got her cosmetology license after graduating from Arvin High, went to work and immediately started making good money. She was so successful that she could only pursue college on and off, first at Bakersfield College and then Southwestern College in Chula Vista.

She’d wanted to do hair since she was a little girl. Velasquez not only loves the artistic part of her work but how women feel when she’s done.

“Once you do hair and have that connection with women, and you see how you can uplift them and make them feel good about themselves, it’s addicting,” she said.

Velasquez loves both the artistic side of doing women’s hair and the feeling of empowerment it gives her clients when she’s done. Here she is doing a woman's hair in her salon. — Velasquez loves both the artistic side of doing women’s hair and the feeling of empowerment it gives her clients when she’s done.

Back to school

Eventually, Velasquez felt she’d be taken more seriously as a professional if she earned her bachelor’s degree. So she moved back to Bakersfield and enrolled at CSUB.

Velasquez studied English because of a life-long love of stories like the novellas she watched with her grandparents and the bible lessons she learned from her dad. To pay for college, Velasquez worked in her campus salon on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and took classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

“Whenever tuition was due, you had a little grace period before you had to buy your books,” she said. “So, I remember clearing out my cash register, paying for tuition with like five dollar (bills)… and then saving all my money to go buy books two weeks later.

“The great thing about that is I don’t have any student loan debt. I never did.”

The degree has served her well, she says, when writing marketing materials and beauty curriculum.

"God gave you a gift to do hair and talk to women"

After graduation, Velasquez worked for Clinica Sierra Vista as a nutritional counselor, thinking she needed to turn her degree into a 9-to-5 job. But she just wasn’t passionate about the work and was making less money than she had been doing hair.

Her father assured her it was OK to go back to her roots.

“God gave you a gift to do hair and talk to women,” he told her. “And if you don’t use that gift, you’re just wasting it.”

Velasquez returned to the beautician’s chair in southwest Bakersfield and then was recruited to supervise stylists at the Western Beauty Institute in Lancaster. She promoted up to campus director there, overseeing the school and its second campus in the San Fernando Valley, teaching classes and writing curriculum.

While recruiting teachers, Velasquez saw that Sephora was opening a location in Bakersfield and needed a store director. She applied and, to her surprise, got the job. Over the next five years, Velasquez learned everything about running a business including hiring, forecasting, scheduling, customer service and marketing.

“They told us, ‘You are the CEO of your store, so you run it within these guidelines,’” Velasquez said. “And then we really had the liberty to do in our business whatever it took to get clients there.”

Velasquez excelled at putting the client experience first, “making sure every person feels special,” said Saul Martinez, who was her assistant manager and now is store director of Sephora in Beverly Hills

“You would never see her in the back office. You would always see her on the sales floor,” Martinez said. “She was always personable (saying), ‘Hi, my name is Leticia, what is your name?’ and talking to them as a friend. …And that’s how she built loyalty to the store.”

Velasquez calls her work at Sephora both the best and worst job she’s ever had, best because she learned so much and worst because it was stressful. She moved on from there to manage a medical spa, got married, took some time off and had an epiphany: she was happiest “behind the chair."

Velasquez celebrates the opening of her salon downtown in 2017.

'The voice of reason'

When Velasquez told her banker husband, Larry, she wanted to open her own salon, he cautioned her that 90 percent of businesses fail and those that do stay open take five years to break even. Velasquez pushed forward anyway and was profitable by year two, she says.

She opened Mix Salon and Touchup Bar Salon in March 2017.

Fellow businesswoman and CSUB alumna Raji Brar has been Velasquez’s client for 20 years. She first got to know Velasquez’s work watching women emerge from Velasquez’s workstation as she was getting her nails done.

“I’d watch woman after woman go in and come out looking like a million dollars. And not just their hair,” Brar remembered. “They were just glowing. I was thinking, ‘What was she doing in there with those people?’ It was so intriguing.”

Brar had Velasquez do her hair and makeup for her wedding, -- in the CSUB salon. Velasquez took the time to learn Indian makeup techniques for the big occasion, Brar said.

That’s one huge secret to Velasquez’s business success, Brar said. She’s incredibly thoughtful, a great listener and deep reservoir of good advice.

“She’s the voice of reason for many of us,” said Brar. “We share things with her that we don’t feel comfortable sharing with anybody else.”

Extending herself

During the pandemic, Velasquez kept her business going by selling color kits that allowed clients to touch up their own roots. She sent them supplies and how-to videos she produced.

She also came up with the idea to branch out into hand-tied hair extensions for women with thinning hair, something fairly new in Bakersfield. She practiced installation techniques on a mannequin, wrote curriculum with which to teach them to other stylists, and refined the lessons by teaching them to her employees.