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Savvy salon KC
Rickey Leathers is redefining what leadership looks like in the beauty industry. As the co-founder of Savvy Salon, a Kansas City–based salon chain built for women with highly textured hair, Rickey has transformed a single location into a thriving, employee-powered business model that’s changing how stylists and barbers build careers. His philosophy is simple but disruptive: stop renting chairs and start building teams, systems, and legacy.
Rickey is the author of Booth Rent Is Dead: A Stylist’s and Barber’s Guide to the Employee-Powered Business Model, a bold and practical playbook that’s inspiring beauty professionals nationwide to rethink how they grow. His message cuts through the noise of “hustle culture” with proven strategies that turn creativity into structure and freedom into scalability.
Beyond the salon, Rickey serves as a Senior Business Services Consultant with the Missouri Small Business Development Center (SBDC), where he’s helped hundreds of entrepreneurs across industries secure funding, improve profitability, and scale with purpose. He combines that consulting expertise with over a decade of salon ownership experience to teach real-world business systems that actually work.
A former stylist’s husband turned business strategist, Rickey and his wife Lenora Leathers have built Savvy Salon into one of the region’s most innovative and respected salon brands—proof that the employee-powered model isn’t theory, it’s the future.
When Rickey speaks, he brings energy, truth, and transformation. He doesn’t just motivate—he gives salon owners and barbershop leaders a blueprint to grow teams, build systems, and create wealth through ownership.
Rickey
Leathers
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The booth-rental model was never designed to build wealth—it was designed to keep stylists independent but isolated. In today’s beauty industry, independence without infrastructure has become the biggest trap holding talented professionals back from true success.
In this high-energy, truth-telling session, Rickey Leathers, co-founder of Savvy Salon and author of Booth Rent Is Dead, pulls back the curtain on what it really takes to build a thriving, profitable, and purpose-driven salon or barbershop using the employee-powered model. Drawing from his decade of experience building one of Kansas City’s most innovative salons with his wife and partner, Lenora, Rickey breaks down the systems, leadership mindset, and culture shifts that turn chaos into consistency and stylists into thriving professionals.
Attendees will learn:
Rickey’s approach blends business strategy with beauty-industry realism—it’s not theory, it’s field-tested leadership from someone who’s lived every stage of the journey. As a Senior Business Services Consultant with the Missouri Small Business Development Center (SBDC), he’s coached hundreds of entrepreneurs through scaling pains, funding challenges, and team development. His passion lies in helping beauty professionals make the shift from hustling for survival to leading with structure, systems, and purpose.
This class is more than motivation—it’s a movement. Attendees will leave with the clarity, conviction, and tools to build businesses that work for them, not the other way around.
This class is complimentary with the purchase of your Premiere Orlando show pass! Get your show pass early and save. REGISTER NOW »
Need help purchasing your show pass? Please contact customerservice@premiereshows.com or call (800) 335-7469, 9am to 5pm ET, Monday – Friday.