Allow me to set the scene: It’s mid-2025 in Missoula, Montana. Salon owner Kitty Youngquist is juggling more projects than a stylist with triple-booked clients. In the span of a year, she took over Fabrik Salon from its founder (Lisa Gregory) in 2023, opened a second location (Mirror Mirror Extension Lounge) that fall, and even started laying groundwork for a training program she calls The Alchemy Project. Most people would consider that plenty on one plate. Kitty, however, decided to add one more bold undertaking: launching a podcast called “Beyond the Shears (in the 406).” And she didn’t just start a podcast – she actually converted a revenue-generating salon room into a podcast booth to make it happen.
Why would a busy salon owner sacrifice a station (and the income that could come with it) for a content experiment with no immediate ROI? The answer reveals a lot about Kitty’s leadership and the kind of marketing we believe in at Stigma Marketing & Development. Beyond the Shears (in the 406) isn’t a gimmick or vanity project – it’s a powerful, sustainable macro-content strategy rooted in authentic voice, networking, and local reach. Let’s dive into how Kitty’s little podcast bet is paying off in a big-picture way, and why it just might be a blueprint for other salons and service-based businesses looking to build real brand equity.
Betting on Real Conversation Over Quick Revenue
Walking into Fabrik Salon today, you’ll see a stylish, soundproofed room that looks a bit different from the typical hair station. That’s the podcast booth. To create it, Kitty gave up a space that could have been an aesthetician’s room. In pure dollar terms, that was a real risk – that room could be generating service revenue. Instead, it’s generating conversations. When Kitty and I first discussed this idea, this trade-off was front and center: were we crazy to prioritize content over immediate cash flow?
Kitty’s gut told her this wasn’t crazy at all – it was necessary. She needed content that targeted the people for The Alchemy Project and to keep demand up for her combo, salon threat in downtown Missoula. Authenticity has a value that doesn’t show up on a balance sheet right away, but builds something far more durable. By turning a salon room into a mini studio and bringing experts who can help her target customers, Kitty essentially said, “Sharing our resources and stories on a podcast is as important as cutting one more head of hair today.” It’s the kind of long-haul mindset that many business owners talk about, but few act on. Kitty acted.
Let’s be clear: making this move while simultaneously launching Mirror Mirror and building The Alchemy Project was not the convenient route. It took confidence (and maybe a dash of craziness) to commit to a podcast in the middle of so much change. Not to mention it took some pocket-change for the equipment and Stigma M&D’s help. But Kitty understood that this effort was part of a bigger picture – an investment in the salon’s brand community and credibility for years to come.
Launching “Beyond the Shears (in the 406)” in the Middle of Everything
On August 1, 2025, “Beyond the Shears (in the 406)” officially went live with four full episodes (and a fifth dropping shortly after). Kitty didn’t just quietly publish one pilot episode and wait; she launched with a mini library so listeners could immediately get hooked. The show is available on all the major platforms – YouTube (where each episode is posted in video form), Spotify, Apple Podcasts – making it easy for folks to tune in however they prefer. By launch day, she already had hours of content ready to roll.
Dropping multiple episodes at once was strategic: it signaled “We’re serious about this, we have stories to tell,” and it gave early followers plenty to binge on. The podcast’s introduction lays out the mission in Kitty’s trademark straightforward style. In fact, her launch announcement put it best: this series is “built for real stylists building real careers — not chasing burnout in disguise.” In other words, it’s about the authentic, sometimes gritty reality behind the beauty industry, not the glossy marketing façade. This is about providing real inspiration, help, connections, and community for hair and beauty professionals across Western Montana and nationwide. As Seth Godin put it, “Make your marketing worth paying for.”
Those first episodes set the tone and scope of what “Beyond the Shears” would be about. Kitty didn’t make it the Kitty Youngquist Show all about herself; she made it a platform for genuine conversations with the people who make the local beauty scene tick. Within the first five episodes, she sat down with a variety of guests who each brought a different perspective:
- Her own team members: In Episode 2, Kitty welcomed Meg Hansen, Fabrik’s in-house “skincare queen” (lead esthetician). That chat dove into how great skin and great hair go hand-in-hand, and what it takes to create a cohesive client experience. By featuring her staff, Kitty instantly showed that this podcast isn’t top-down PR – it’s a team effort where everyone’s voice matters. (How many salon owners hand the mic to their employees? This move alone spoke volumes about her leadership style.)
- Industry partners: Another episode brought in Anna Myers, a representative from Salon Services (the salon’s product distributor). Together, Kitty and Anna geeked out over something you don’t often hear on a salon’s social media: the nitty-gritty of education and training in the beauty industry. They discussed Montana’s apprenticeship programs and the future of cosmetology education – topics that might sound “wonky,” but are actually crucial for the next generation of stylists. As Anna noted during their conversation, “our industry is art, and art never stays the same”. Trends change, techniques evolve, and continued education is everything. By tackling these substantive topics, Kitty’s show immediately set itself apart from fluffy salon content. It’s positioning Fabrik and Mirror Mirror as hubs of professional dialogue, not just pretty hair photos.
- Local collaborators: In upcoming Episode 6, Kitty chatted with Jenna Nord, a Missoula-based luxury boudoir photographer (and a former Stigma M&D client, as it happens). At first glance, a photographer might seem a bit outside the hair salon realm, but this conversation uncovered deep common ground: empowerment, confidence, and the client experience. Jenna shared how her intimate photography sessions help women see their own beauty, while Kitty reflected on doing the same from behind the stylist’s chair. The crossover appeal here was smart – it tapped into another corner of the beauty and self-image world, introducing Jenna’s audience to the podcast and vice versa. More importantly, it reinforced a theme: this show is about real people in our community uplifting others, whether through hair, photography, or any craft.
- Mentors and legacy: One especially meaningful episode had Kitty sitting down with Lisa Gregory, the woman who founded Fabrik Salon back in 2013 and was Kitty’s mentor before literally handing over the keys. Lisa has been a prominent figure in the industry since the ’80s. Their conversation wasn’t just nostalgia; it was about the passing of the torch and what it means to carry forward a legacy in a changing industry. For Kitty’s clients and followers, hearing her honor the past (and the person who gave her a start) was powerful. It showed humility and continuity. For other business owners listening, it’s a reminder that innovation doesn’t mean ignoring what came before. In that episode, Kitty got to publicly thank her mentor and glean wisdom on leadership and longevity – a savvy way to deepen her credibility by aligning herself with a respected veteran of the trade.
And the guest list goes on. By Episode 4, Kitty brought in Jennie Loney, her right-hand woman and best friend (who also manages the salon). That one was a fun, behind-the-scenes peek at running a salon day-to-day, with two friends bantering about the chaos and rewards of entrepreneurship. It’s the kind of genuine dialogue that makes listeners feel like a fly on the wall at the salon after hours, listening to the team swap stories.
The key thread in all these episodes is authenticity. There’s laughter, there are maybe a few “oops” moments (Episode 5 famously had a technical glitch midway, which Kitty just owned and joked about on air). There’s no slick scripting. It truly feels like hanging out in the break room with a bunch of passionate beauty pros, rather than some corporate PR thing. That vibe is by design. Very early on, Kitty and I agreed: if we were going to do a podcast, it had to be real. No perfectionism paralysis. No over-engineering. In fact, our very first strategy session included a pact to “get past perfectionism” and just start recording. We set a goal to get 20 episodes recorded relatively quickly, before we even judged whether the podcast was “worth it.” Why 20? Because many folks give up on content projects after 3 or 4 episodes if they don’t go viral. By committing to 20, Kitty was in it for the long haul, giving the experiment enough runway to actually catch wind. It was about consistency over flashiness.
One Podcast, Dozens of Content Assets (The Macro-Content Machine)
Now, let’s talk strategy. The beauty of a long-form podcast (especially a video podcast) is that it’s a macro-content engine. One hour-long conversation can be repurposed into a whole ecosystem of smaller content pieces. From the outset, we knew we wanted Beyond the Shears to be more than just a show you listen to once and forget. We designed it as the cornerstone of Kitty’s marketing content for the foreseeable future – essentially, content infrastructure for her brand.
By using modern tools, like AI tools, we can use these videos to create a cascade of other content both easily and quickly. With a bit of automation and work, we can build a massive marketing engine from this podcast alone. Rather than using AI to create lazy, general, and shallow content, this model flips the script, uses AI to help us create, and then takes what we’ve created and makes it do even more. As Ethan Iyer, an ex‑Google engineer, points out, using AI is fine as long as it’s “responsible augmentation” — speeding research and drafting- but layered with voice, accuracy, and human oversight.
Here’s how a single episode feeds into multiple marketing channels and assets:
- Blog Posts & SEO: Each episode is transcribed and can be turned into a blog post on the salon’s website (or featured on Stigma’s blog as you’re reading now). These transcripts, loaded with local and industry keywords, become SEO gold over time. For example, that discussion with Anna on Montana’s apprenticeship program? That’s now a searchable article on “Cosmetology Apprenticeship in Montana” living on Fabrik’s site, ready to attract aspiring stylists or curious clients via Google. We’re not writing hollow, generic articles for SEO; we’re letting genuine conversations do double duty as searchable knowledge.
- Social Media Reels & Quotes: From every episode, we clip 30-60 second highlights – the juiciest soundbites or emotional moments – and turn them into video reels for Instagram and Facebook. When Kitty and Jenna Nord shared a laugh about overcoming self-doubt, we grabbed that snippet for a feel-good Reel. When Meg dropped a quick skincare tip (“Don’t forget your neck, ladies!”), that could become a bite-sized video pro tip. Each of these micro-content pieces drives people back to the full episode and keeps the salon’s social feeds lively with original, human content (as opposed to the usual hair selfie or quote graphic).
- YouTube Channel Content: Aside from being on the audio podcast apps, the video recordings are on YouTube, essentially kicking off Kitty’s YouTube channel. This provides another discovery avenue and a more visual experience for those who prefer it. In the YouTube descriptions, we include local tags and detailed summaries, so someone searching “Missoula hair stylist advice” might stumble upon these videos. Slowly but surely, Kitty is building a library of evergreen video content that lends her salon credibility. Months or years from now, someone could find the episode with Lisa Gregory and decide, “Wow, I want to book at Fabrik Salon – they really care about the craft.”
- Email Newsletters & Beyond: Great anecdotes or lessons from the podcast can be shared in the salon’s newsletters. Kitty can riff in an email to clients like, “Last week, Lisa and I talked about how much Missoula has changed in 10 years – it got me thinking about how our clients’ needs have changed too…” This turns a marketing email into a conversation continuation, rather than a sales pitch. Moreover, as the content library grows, Kitty can compile the best insights into an ebook or a “Year One of Beyond the Shears” recap – further cementing her thought leadership.
In essence, every episode is a content mine that we can extract value from repeatedly. This is the opposite of one-and-done marketing (like a paid ad that runs and disappears). It’s a living archive of the brand’s story, expertise, and values. Yes, it takes more upfront work to produce a 45-minute podcast than to slap up a Facebook ad. But the return on authenticity is exponentially greater. One podcast yields 5, 10, 15 pieces of content over its lifespan – and each of those pieces carries the genuine voice of the brand. This is, of course, on top of the networking and exposure her show will bring in.
This is what I mean by an authentic macro-content strategy. It’s playing the long game. It’s also incredibly efficient in the long run. A salon owner like Kitty only has so many hours in a week; sitting down to record a conversation actually maximizes the output she gets from an hour of her time. Rather than agonizing over a perfectly worded blog or constantly trying to brainstorm Instagram captions, she just talks with people – something she already excels at. The marketing content then flows from that naturally.
Flipping the Marketing Funnel: Development-First Approach in Action
The philosophy driving all of this comes from Stigma Marketing & Development’s core belief: marketing should start with developing what’s real and working, then amplify it, instead of starting with gimmicks and working backwards. I often talk about flipping the marketing funnel or using an “upside-down marketing engine.” In traditional marketing, businesses often pour money into ads, catchy campaigns, public perception, or AI-driven quantity-over-quality strategies, hoping to grab attention and then maybe deliver substance later. With Kitty, we intentionally did the opposite. We focused on building substance first – real conversations, real relationships, real content – and trust that these will organically attract the right audience over time.
To put it plainly, we reject the fake and forced approach. If Kitty had wanted, she could have paid someone to churn out twenty 500-word blog posts full of SEO keywords about “best fall hairstyles” or “top 10 hair care tips.” Or do another overhaul on her website, which isn’t a priority (she’s already ranking well). But would these have built a genuine connection or differentiated her brand? Maybe, if she got a client from it. Those tactics might get a short-term click bump, but they don’t build a community. Instead, Kitty’s investing her time in content that is inherently un-copyable and attractive: her and her team’s unique voices and stories. It’s content that actually means something to her listeners.
This development-first approach is slower, yes. It requires patience and consistency. But it’s far more sustainable. By creating long-term content hubs (like a blog and this podcast) and repurposing them across platforms, the marketing becomes almost algorithm-proof. We’re not at the mercy of the latest Facebook algorithm change or Google SEO update, because we’re not trying to game the system – we’re just putting out valuable stuff that people will seek out. As Stigma’s own philosophy page puts it, “Instead of relying on ads and gimmicks, [our] approach builds value-based content, authentic engagement, and practical strategies that businesses can actually maintain.” That is exactly what’s happening here. Kitty can maintain this podcast strategy because it’s an extension of her everyday work and passions, not a flashy add-on she has to force.
There’s also a brilliant side effect to this strategy that Kitty and I hoped for: it attracts like-minded people, not just clients, but potential team members. In the beauty industry, recruiting top talent is always a challenge, and keeping booths rented matters to the bottom line. Salons often resort to the usual avenues: social media posts saying “we’re hiring” or word-of-mouth. But think about what Beyond the Shears is doing on that front. A stylist from elsewhere in Montana might stumble on the podcast or one of its spin-off content pieces and think, “This salon owner cares about education, community, and the bigger picture. That’s the kind of environment I want to work in.”
But, and cooler, by showcasing the salon’s culture and professional depth, Kitty is essentially conducting an ongoing marketing campaign for growing stylists, which is perfect for another project she’s working on…
Long-Tail Impact: Credibility for Future Ventures
The podcast just launched, and it’s just starting to show up in Fabrik Salon’s marketing, but it’s already showing results. The long-tail potential is massive. Kitty isn’t just a salon owner – she’s becoming a local thought leader in the beauty space. That status opens doors.
Consider The Alchemy Project that Kitty is simultaneously developing. While I won’t spill all the beans here, it’s something geared toward advancing the craft and business of beauty professionals, perhaps an educational program or creative venture to elevate stylists’ skills. A podcast like Beyond the Shears (in the 406) is the perfect platform to seed interest for such a project. By the time The Alchemy Project formally launches, Kitty will already have an audience of stylists, salon owners, and beauty technicians who trust her voice and are eager to learn. The podcast episodes touching on education, growth, and industry evolution have essentially been priming the audience for what’s coming next. It’s a lot easier to fill seats in a workshop or get sign-ups for a program when people have been listening to your insights for hours on end and feel personally connected.
Similarly, Kitty has mentioned dreams of eventually developing her own hair color line or specialized products. This might be a few years down the road, but every authentic conversation she’s putting out now is like a deposit in the bank of brand credibility. When she approaches a manufacturer or business partner, or even the customers for that future color line, she’ll have tangible proof of her expertise and passion. “Go listen to my podcast and you’ll understand my philosophy on color and care” is a pretty powerful statement to make. It sure beats saying, “Look at my Instagram feed of pretty hair shots.” The depth is just incomparable.
This is the beauty (pardon the pun) of doing marketing the hard but honest way. It accumulates. It compounds. Each piece of content builds on the last. Each relationship nurtured yields new opportunities. It’s not about instant virality or making a quick buck – it’s about laying a foundation that will support all of Kitty’s future growth.
And importantly, she’s enjoying the journey. One thing I admire about Kitty is how game she’s been to just dive in and learn. The first few recordings were perfect as they are, and we’ve improved already – she’ll be the first to tell you she had some what of a learning curve and has grown on it (she said so on the podcast…I’d know). But with each episode, her confidence as a host grew. We’ve watched her find her voice in a new medium, which is going to make her an even stronger communicator in all aspects of business. It’s personal development meeting marketing development, which is exactly the intersection Stigma M&D lives for.
An Authentic Blueprint for Salon Marketing (That’s Not Just for Salons)
Kitty Youngquist’s podcast experiment is a case study in trading short-term comfort for long-term reward. It flies in the face of what most small business marketing looks like, especially in the beauty industry. No paid ad campaigns yelling about a “New Client Special!!” No generic blog drivel churned out just to hit SEO numbers (Stigma M&D makes sure she gets those numbers too). Instead, it’s a human being choosing to show up consistently with her real voice, spotlight others in her community, and create content with substance.
For other salon owners, or really any service-based business owner, there’s a valuable lesson here. You might be thinking, “A podcast sounds like a lot of work. Can I really do that while running my business?” The honest answer is: you won’t know until you try, but if you do, commit to the long haul and make it authentically yours. Maybe for you it’s not a podcast – maybe it’s a video series, a local meetup event, a detailed blog or newsletter, or some platform where you can speak to what you care about. The medium matters less than the message and consistency. The Beyond the Shears approach can take many forms, but the common thread is treating content as core infrastructure, not an afterthought.
When you invest in content that is infrastructure, you’re really investing in relationships with your audience, your peers, your team, even with yourself (as a growing leader). Those relationships, unlike the latest social media trend, never go out of style. They translate to trust, and trust translates to business in ways that are more meaningful and resilient than any quick marketing hack.
Kitty’s journey so far should inspire any of us who are tired of the hamster wheel of chasing algorithms and trends. There is another way: slow down, be real, and build something brick by brick. Flip that funnel upside down – start with what’s already true and great about your business (your people, your expertise, your story) and amplify it. It might not bring in thousands of followers overnight, but the ones it does bring in will be the right ones. They’ll stick around. They’ll tell others. And you’ll actually enjoy the process because it won’t feel like “marketing” – it’ll feel like sharing your passion and connecting with others, which is likely why you started your business in the first place.
Let’s Talk – A Real (Human) Call to Action
If Kitty’s story has you thinking about your own business and how you might create something similar, let’s grab a (virtual) coffee and brainstorm. Seriously. I love helping fellow business owners find their version of an authentic, long-game strategy. In fact, I offer a free brainstorm session – no pitch, no pressure, just a conversation to spark ideas. Maybe you’re envisioning a podcast, or maybe something completely different. Whatever it is, if you’re excited by the idea of building a sustainable content engine and brand legacy (instead of just running ads until your budget dries up), I’d be thrilled to hear about it and help you sketch it out.
You can book a free brainstorm with me (Paule at Stigma M&D). We’ll talk through your goals, toss around some ideas, and figure out what a development-first approach could look like for you. At the very least, you’ll walk away with a clearer vision and maybe a cool idea or two to run with on your own. And if it makes sense to partner up, well, we can explore that – but the initial chat truly has no strings attached.
In a world of templated marketing plans and cookie-cutter “solutions,” I’m more convinced than ever that the path to success is unique for each business and rooted in the human stuff – your voice, your story, your courage to try something different. Kitty took a courageous leap, converting that salon room into a podcast studio and sharing herself with the world. The rewards are already unfolding, and I have no doubt they’ll keep compounding in the months and years ahead.
