Today we’d like to introduce you to Jacob Burger.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
My name is Jacob Burger, and I am from Dundee Michigan and currently live in Ypsilanti. I am the director of education for Peace Hair Co, work at Roya Beauty in downtown Ann Arbor, and I also offer house calls for hair extension work. I travel once a month teaching classes throughout the country as well as offering online education. I will turn 33 this year and have been doing hair for roughly 5 years.
When I was 19, I started working for the University of Michigan hospital in housekeeping and was also a student at Washtenaw community college. I finished my associate’s and kept working at the hospital. When I left ten years later, I was working in supply chain management mainly for the operating rooms. The job was fast-paced and mostly solving other people’s problems. I would check in high-value items for quality control reasons and email back and for with the people to find lost or high-priority packages for surgeries.
I didn’t hate my job, but I certainly did not love it. I was good at it, but I have always been one of those people who wanted to be the best at whatever I set my mind to. When I turned 26 in April of 2016, I realized I had been working at the University for almost 7 years. I had just moved back in with my parents because of a bad roommate situation and growing credit card debt. I got myself mixed up with the check n’go industry and was really struggling to make enough money to pay my bills. I was unhappy in both my work life and personal life but didn’t really know what I wanted to do. So, I worked the rest of the year while living at my parents’ house not really sure what I wanted out of my life.
I was working through the week and going out with friends on the weekend. Making enough money to support myself but not much more than that. I had no savings and to be honest if my parents wouldn’t have let me move back in with them, I am not sure where I would be today. In January of 2017, I got a DUI. At the time it was terrible, but it ended up being the best thing that has ever happened to me. No one was hurt, I didn’t get in an accident, but it was a terrible choice to drink and drive. One I will never make again, I don’t really want to get into the details of my issues with alcohol at the time because to be honest, it was much less of an issue with alcohol and much more me being in my 20s with too much time on my hands. I was unhappy with the direction of my life so going out on the weekends was a fun way to distract myself from the fact that I wasn’t living up to my potential. I do not have a problem with alcohol anymore, but I encourage anyone who is unhappy with their current life to reevaluate your relationship with substance use and decide if it is serving you well or not.
After getting arrested, I had a lot to think about. I could barely afford my current lifestyle and knew I needed to make some major changes in my life. I wanted to go back to School, work, and finish my probation all at the same time. My director at the time wanted me to go back to school and get a supply chain management degree so I could move up out of my current position. But I really didn’t want to. I always got good grades in high school, but college was really hard for me. I didn’t have trouble with the material, but the lack of structure was really hard for me. I was born into the generation of; if you get good grades, you go to college. So, it never even crossed my mind that going to trade school was even an option. I was diagnosed with ADHD in my 30s and looking back it makes sense to me why I had such a difficult time with going to college and working at the same time. I don’t blame anyone for the choices I made or how my life was going, but I knew the decisions I had been making were not serving me. I just didn’t really know how I would be able to go back to college while working and dealing with the requirements of probation. If I could barely get my associate degree finished, and I had already tried going back to finish my bachelor’s degree twice how was I going to make it work now?
I have quite a few friends that work in the beauty industry, and I had been teaching myself how to do makeup as a hobby for a couple years by then. I really loved drag makeup and everyday makeup alike and would sit at home after work and play around with it. I would do my friend’s makeup before going out sometimes and things like that. I had been thinking about trying to work for a makeup brand but knew I need a lot more training if I wanted to eventually be a professional makeup artist. The advice I got my friends was that if I wanted a career in the beauty industry becoming a licensed cosmetologist would open a lot more doors for me. That having a basic understating of both hair and makeup would be more marketable. Plus, the beauty industry has notoriously flexible hours and schedule. So, it could be something I could do on the side while working at the hospital. So instead of repeating the same, let me try to finish my degree journey, I decided to do something else. I got arrested for a dui in January of 2017, I toured the Douglas J Aveda institute in Ann Arbor later that month, moved out of my parents’ house March 1st and rented a room for $400 a month in Ypsilanti and started Cos school later in March.
I was sentenced for my DUI in April of 2017 just a few weeks before my 27th birthday. I sold my car just before sentencing; I would end up doing 5 days in jail instead of 100s of hours of community service. The judge gave me the choice do 3 weekends in jail, be able to work and finish school or find time to do tons of community service too. I just knew it would have been impossible. So, I took the L and for 3 weeks in a row in July of 2017, I would get on a 7 am bus to work from 8 am-4 pm then school from 4:45 to 10 pm then get home from the bus at 11:15 pm everyday Monday Friday. Then I would get up at 6 am on Saturday morning and go to the local jailhouse for the weekend, getting out Monday morning at 6 am. That was the hardest 3 weeks of my life. I am currently crying having to remember it. I told almost no in my life about it. I couldn’t tell work or school I was on probation because no one wants to help people who are in the system. Sure, your boss will give some leeway to the person in school but need to leave early for probation? Good luck with that. At school, I didn’t want to be dubbed the guy who was in trouble, so I told no one. Also, the same thing at school, if I would have told them they wouldn’t have shown any mercy and I know that. It was the right decision to not tell anyone at work or school, but it was the hardest thing I have ever done. To be honest no personal or professional goal seemed unachievable after that 3-week stint.
From March of 2017 to September of 2018, I worked 8:00 am-4:00 pm Monday Friday and went to school from 4:45-10 pm. I took a bus both ways which included a 15-minute walk to my house. I also had to test once a month randomly, so each morning I would have to call to see if my letter was called. If it was, I had to decide if I was going to be late to work or school that day. Twice I had to leave work without telling anyone and just hoped for the best and went and did my testing. I never got caught, but that is the reality of someone who is trying to improve their life while living with all the restrictions probation creates. I also had to schedule off my court dates, those were every other month and prescheduled, so they were easy for me to take off. On the weekends I had to attend AA both Saturday and Sunday because it was a requirement of probation, and I did not have time during the week.
In September of 2018, I finished school and was fully licensed by October. I was also released from probation the same month. The judge said congratulations on your license and released me from probation 6 months early.
I started my first job at Annekes Downtown hair co in Ann Arbor. I worked both at the hospital part-time and at the salon. I worked there 6 months and just kinda realized the salon was dying. It was a great place for me to get my feet wet and make tons of mistakes. I learned a lot from both the owner and the really talented and kind stylists there. I was the youngest stylist there by 20 years. Which was amazing for learning, but I could tell the salon wasn’t going to be there forever. It has sense closed and all the stylist have went their separate ways and I believe some of them retired.
In April of 2019, I started at IVEY in downtown Ann Arbor. It seemed like the right fit, but the owners were truly terrible to work for. This is their second salon, and not a single stylist they hired at open for either is still working for them. I won’t go into details, but it was not a good environment for me or anyone else for that matter. I ended up leaving that salon in November of 2019. I had quit my job at u of in July of 2019 just after my 10-year anniversary there. I was now jobless but had two jobs lined up starting December 1st.
I started working at Go Blow, which also is no longer around. They closed recently but were a great company to work for. It was a blow-dry bar similar to DryBar. Where you come and just get washed and styled. I took this job because it paid well hourly plus you got tips. I also started working at my Currently Salon Roya Beauty at the same time. I took my first extensions class the first week of March 2020, and I cried after because it was so hard. I worked for go blow and Roya for a few months, and then March of 2020 happened to all of us.
At this point, I almost quit doing hair. I was loving my jobs for the first time since hair school, but then I was out of work because of covid. I contemplated going back to work at the hospital, and they even reached out to ask if I was interested, but I said no and stuck to my guns. We waited out covid, and then I went back to work when I could. Roya opened as soon as we were allowed, and I started working 3 days a week there. Go blow wouldn’t open for a few more months and I did end up working there for them until the end of 2020. I just didn’t need the extra money anymore and got sick of working so much.
I wanted to get into doing extensions more because I loved the look of them. Covid was making people lose hair, and I seen what extensions could do for people with hair loss. I started focusing on education for both color and extensions. In 2020 I took so many online courses. I wanted to learn, and it was a weird time for our industry. No one was doing things in person, so I just sat at home and practiced on mannequins all evening. I think I took 12 extension courses in late 2020-2021 and took so many models I can’t even recall how many. I would learn something online then try it on a mannequin head, then a person. In 2021 as soon as brands started offering in-person certifications, I took them, and I also shadowed a couple stylists I really admired.
I spent all of 2021 and the better part of 2022 taking as many classes as I could. Then I would promote myself on Instagram and TikTok and focused only on posting extension work. I caught the attention of lots of potential clients, models, salons, and even some extension companies. I got a couple job offers that I didn’t even apply for but never really felt like I aligned with the companies I had talked to. In the spring of 2022, I was starting to have issues with the brand of hair I was primarily using at the time, so I started branching out and tried other companies. That summer I seen a woman on Instagram had started her own line of extensions. She was also a hairstylist and to be honest I don’t know what attracted me to her, but I could see how genuine she was. I tried out the hair and loved it.
She was trying to get me to use a product called a genius weft and I ended up really liking them. They are a type of weft that is a bit different than the traditional machine or hand-tied weft. I came up with my own method for sewing it in, and I wanted to share it with other stylists. I had this secret goal to be an educator but didn’t feel experienced enough to pull it off. I couldn’t decide on what brand I wanted to apply to educate with because I just felt like none of them were a good fit for me, so I put it on the back burner.
In July of 2022, I had a client want me to travel to Mexico City to do her hair extensions for the launch party of her business there. I said yes and started offering travel services. Now I will travel to anyone who is willing to pay for it and will take clients in other cities when I travel there. Katie, the owner of Peace Hair Co noticed. Her and I started talking regularly through Instagram, and I wanted to share what I had done with genius wefts with other stylists. We decided to try an online zoom class tougher where I would show stylists how I do the sew-in genius weft method. It went really well, and she asked if I would come on as her director of education.
I accepted and immediately started creating certification courses for the brand. Currently, I am traveling once a month to teach other stylists and train regional educators. I also shoot a digital course once a month that is available to stylists to purchase and complete on their own time. Right now, I work behind the chair at Roya Beauty 4 days a week, do roughly 2-3 house calls in Michigan a month, travel once a month to teach in person, and record one course per month. In addition to that I run my social media platforms, I stay busy, but I love my career and have found a well-balanced life and have a career I am wildly passionate about.
I have a lot left on the list of things I want to accomplish, but we are creeping up on the 5-year anniversary of me starting hair school, and if you would have told me in 5 years, I would have accomplished this much I would not have believed you. I feel blessed to have so many supportive people in my life that have helped make it possible to tell my story. Without the supportive friends, co-workers, and family I have, there is no way I could have pulled something like this off.
I am scared as hell to tell my real story, but I want people to hear it. If I can pull myself out of slump in my late 20s, so can anyone. My great-grandmother went to college in her 70s after her husband passed. After that, she worked as a historian for many years. My mom went to nursing school in her 40s. It is never too late to start over or to follow a new passion. Years of doing something is not the only thing that can make you an expert. The reason I have been able to create a successful platform for myself is not because I have done hair for 15 years. It is because I have 15 years of work and life experience with a focus on self-education. Each job and each obstacle I have overcome has created my successful career. It is never too late to change everything.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Not having a car! (I bought one again in June of 2022) Probation
Self-doubt
Making mistakes
Finding a good salon
Thanks – so, what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
Director of education for peace hair co Stylist/extensionist at Roya Beauty, Ann Arbor
Teaches Extension classes once a month in person
Digital education for hair stylists with a focus on extensions
Content Creator
Travel stylist
Where do you see things going in the next 5-10 years?
I believe my industry is rapidly changing. The newer school stylists are being offered so much education that is it not taking as long to gain the skill set needed to be a great stylist. They also see the importance of marketing themselves and are building clienteles quickly with social media. Stylists and clients alike are seeing the value in specializing and not trying to offer every single service. I think we are moving into a more open and collaborative salon environment. Where stylist work together to create looks for clients. I also believe that being a travel stylist is going to be huge in the next decade. Clients are going to love that stylists are working in multiple cities. I and stylists like me offer looks that are an experience to both receive and wear. Looks that people enjoy traveling to someone to receive. The extension industry is growing year over year, and it is becoming more normalized every day. Stylists who decide to specialize in them will have a long and successful career as long as they are willing to put the work in and set their business up in a way that creates long-term value and success. My mission is to teach the entire industry how to do just that!
Pricing:
- Extensions are by consult only. My average client spends over $1000 on their first appointment with me.
- Extension maintenance varies on method and client as well. Maintenance is usually lower than their fist appointment with me.
- I offer cut and color services but primarily to extension clients
- For specific pricing go to royabeauty.com
Contact Info:
- Website:theweftnerd.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/theweftnerd
- Facebook: facebook.com/thehairnerd.mi
- Twitter:tiktok.com/@theweftnerd
- Youtube: youtube.com/@theweftnerd
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/the-weft-nerd-ann-arbor?uid=Yg9gSj6Meu6moE4V8ry5_g&utm_campaign=www_business_share_popup&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_source=(direct)
- Other: https://linktr.ee/theweftnerd
