Description
In this powerful episode, we sit down with Kate Owens—a longtime cosmetologist, former salon owner, and founder of The Sensory Safe Solution, an organization dedicated to helping beauty professionals support clients on the autism spectrum and those with sensory sensitivities.
Kate shares the deeply personal journey that led her into advocacy, including the clients and experiences that opened her eyes to the urgency of sensory-safe practices within the beauty industry. She walks us through the gaps she discovered in standard cosmetology education, how she collaborates with autism specialists and behavior analysts, and the curriculum she helped develop to empower stylists everywhere.
Whether you’re a beauty professional, educator, parent, or advocate, this conversation shines a light on how small shifts in awareness, communication, and environment can transform someone’s entire experience in the salon.
Follow Kate and The Sensory Safe Solution on Social Media:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kateilovehair/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesensorysafesolution/
Show Notes
– Kate’s career beginnings as a cosmetologist and salon owner
– The pivotal moment that introduced her to sensory-safe practices
– The shocking absence of autism-related content in standard beauty textbooks
– How she partnered with autism specialists and behavior analysts to build sensory-safe curriculum
– Why sensory-sensitive clients often avoid salons — and how to change that
– Creating safe, predictable experiences for clients on the spectrum
– Advocacy, education, and influencing industry standards
– What every stylist can do today to be more inclusive
Links:
YouTube: https://youtu.be/DPd6Lw-pQ8U
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3SRjWe7eUBnsDQgOAZEd10?si=213960a7dc3e4434
Transcript:
We are here to make people feel good about themselves.
We really have to feel like we are a day maker for the guest.
“You’ve made my day.”
How great is that when you hear those words from your guest?
Hi, welcome to the Day Makers podcast with Coach University with my fellow host, Daved Dolce.
Woo-hoo.
Hello.
One of the things I love about our job is that we get to meet incredible people, so I am super happy to introduce you all to Kate Owens, who is with Sensory Safe Salons.
So, so excited to have you here.
I feel like we say that a lot with guests, but with you, I truly mean it.
Mm-hmm.
You’re, you’re just an amazing person and what you do for the industry is incredible.
So tell us a little about, little bit about you and a whole lot about Sensory Safe Salons.
Yeah.
Well, first I want to say thank you so much for everything you guys have done for what is now the Sensory Safe Solution.
Oh, name- Yes.
change.
Yes.
The
Well, the barbers came to me and they said, “That name is not inclusive.”
Oh.
And if we
If we’re not anything, we’re inclusive.
Yeah.
So
Exactly.
I love it.
And it really does
The name truly fits us now, ’cause we are the solution to the problem within the industry.
I agree.
So a little bit about me.
I’ve been behind the chair for 25 years.
I’ve been a salon owner for 14.
Mm-hmm.
And everything changed in my life when I had my 5th, Son, in 2013.
He was
I knew right away something was different about him.
And I asked everyone if they agreed with me and everyone said, you know, “It’s nothing.”
“You’re crazy.”
“He’s fine.”
And I was right.
And I watched them test him and they just played toys for a couple minutes.
And how was I to know that just them playing toys for a few minutes would change the trajectory of my life forever?
And they said, “Sit down.
Your son’s considered disabled for the rest of his life.”
He has right under severe autism.
And I remember thinking that my world was over, my world as I knew it, and it was in a lot of ways because my world’s completely different from what it was at that diagnosis.
Um, during that time, things were really hard with him, and I remember being in my bathroom.
I was locked in there.
He was banging on the door to get to me, and I was on the phone with my mom, and I remember saying to her, “If this is going to be my life, I don’t know if I want it, ’cause I can’t imagine doing this every day for the rest of my life.”
Mm-hmm.
And, you know, for a mom to hear her daughter say that, it must have been hard for my mom, but I was at that point that I didn’t know how much longer I could hold it together, ’cause it was so hard living that day-to-day-to-day.
I just felt like we were living in a recurrent hell over and over again.
And this, this little boy, the only time he was at peace was when he was sleeping.
That’s it.
It was just a meltdown, you know, from the time he got up till the time he went to bed.
And I made a decision in the middle of the night one night.
I, I kept, you know, whining about it and saying, you know, “Why me?
Why him?”
And the truth is really, why not me?
Why not him?
And sitting here on this couch with you, you know, talking about this, I know now why it got to be us, and I’m so grateful that I was chosen to be his mom, and that I was trusted enough to be gifted with such a precious gift, and that, you know, I was able to be tough enough to pull this all off.
And, you know, if it’s why not him and why not me, what am I gonna do about it?
Right.
And there was a doctor, and God bless her, she gave me a stack of referrals.
Mm-hmm.
And she said, “If you do these things, your life will be different.”
She didn’t say better.
She just said different.
And I w- I needed some
We needed something different, and I was desperate for that.
So I dedicated my life to improving the quality of his, and we did all the therapies.
We did, um, speech therapy, behavior therapy, music therapy, art therapy, play therapy, swim therapy, equestrian therapy.
Mm-hmm.
You name it, and we did it.
And I did the math one day and we were driving 700 miles a week- Wow.
just for therapies.
Wow.
And everything else I
Everything else in my life was secondary.
My salon, you know, the girls that had been there for me for a long time, I said, “Here it is.
Please don’t let it go under.”
My big teenagers, I said
There was 4 of them at home.
I said, “Choose hugs, not drugs.
Don’t play with matches.
Please don’t kill each other.”
I
This is all I’m gonna do.
Mm-hmm.
I have to help your brother.
I have to.And I would do it again in a second.
I would do it again times 10.
Because in one year
You know, at his diagnosis, he had a 10% quality of life.
He was highly aggressive, targeting me, and could not tolerate leaving our house.
So if we were leaving, I was dragging him, screaming and attacking me just to go to a doctor’s appointment.
How hard.
It was.
And there wasn’t a time when I wasn’t all beat up, scratched up, bruised up, bit.
That there wasn’t plywood over a window.
There w- there was never a working TV, because all of those were smashed.
It was hell.
But in one year, after all those therapies, he went from a 10% quality of life to an 80% quality of life.
And I like to say I prayed too hard to hear his voice, because he has not shut up since.
He is everything, and I can’t imagine if I didn’t get to meet that personality that’s in there, ’cause he’s everything.
At that time, his life got good, my life got good, and I was able to take a deep breath and look around.
And I didn’t like what I saw.
None of his peers looked like him.
I don’t know if you guys know this, I learned how to cut hair in a barbershop.
So, Waylon had a skin fade.
He had a p- hard part.
He had a red pompadour that he says, “Do it whiff gel.”
“Don’t fix it, do a whiff gel.”
“Okay.
No, no, fix that right there.”
“Okay, boss.”
None of those kids had haircuts like that.
Th- it was the haircut
Th- their, their haircuts were the kind that curl your toes, that you know were done at home, that aren’t great, if there was haircuts at all.
There was one young man in particular, he had hair all the way down his backside.
And the next time I saw him, my breath was taken away.
I said, “What happened?”
His head was shaved.
And from here to your, all the way down to your backside, to a shaved head, to a number one, what happened?
Mm-hmm.
And the therapist that was standing next to me giggled, because she’s seen it for years and years, something I never saw, and she said, “You didn’t know?
That’s the official haircut of autism.”
Wow.
I was horrified.
I was horrified.
What?
That’s the best our industry can do?
In the words of Waylon Owens, when he says
When I say something he doesn’t like, he says, “Wrong.”
I’ve seen how talented we are.
Mm-hmm.
There isn’t a more talented industry than us.
Right?
I like to talk about- It’s true.
my first show at IBS.
A woman walked by me in a bikini.
Glittered head to toe.
And she had long hair, and it w- they made her hair into a perfect cowboy hat.
But we can’t do better than shave someone’s head?
Wrong.
Wrong.
That’s crazy.
So that was all it took for me.
And I was like, “My shop is a safe space.”
We opened it up.
Come one, come all.
Sensory differences, autism, anything, you’re welcome here.
And we didn’t know what the heck we were doing.
But we knew that these families that were told, “Get out.
We can’t help you.
Sorry.
No, we don’t cut individuals with autism.
I don’t even know what that means.”
Come to me.
And we collected 5,000 hours worth of sensory cutting data.
Mm-hmm.
And I don’t talk a lot about this piece, but I’d love to tell you guys how I met my autism specialist, if that’s all right?
Yeah.
Um, so the shop was open for A Safe Space and my dad had passed really suddenly in 2020.
And I found out he left me an inheritance.
I wasn’t expecting it.
I was like, “Whoa, really?”
“Okay, great job.
Great job, Wes.”
Yes.
And the very first thing I did with that money, the first thing, was I had to hire an attorney and I had to file a due process on my school system because that quality of life that I invested so much time and effort in, in Waylan was just plummeting, and they weren’t fi- following his IEP and what had happened was I hired that attorney and, oh my gosh, so quickly, they were like, “Okay,
here’s anything you asked for for him.”
Unbelievable.
Things I had asked for for like five and six years that once I had paid this attorney they were like, “Here, he can have everything that his IEP says now.”
And I thought, “Wow, thank you.
That’s great.
But you kinda just made me mad because-” Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
” what about all the other families that maybe don’t have what I have?”
So I helped other families fundraise so they could sue our school system too.
That’s unbelievable.
And we were, they were able to change district policy because of Waylan.
Mm-hmm.
And I was invited to the capital of Florida, to the House and the Senate.
And while I was there, I met this woman and she looked like a hairdresser, but she wasn’t.
She was, uh, an autism specialist.
She was an RN.
She was fluent in sign language.
She was a board certified behavior analyst.
And she said, “I’ll help you write the curriculum.”
Incredible.
But first she said, “Kate, tell me what’s in your, in your textbooks for this.”
I said, “There isn’t anything.”
And she didn’t believe me.
She didn’t believe me.
And I was like
And then she said, “Okay, well then show me what other people are teaching.”
And I said, “There isn’t any.”
Why?
And she didn’t believe me about that either.
And we, we wrote it and I’ll tell you, when I showed up to Orlando Premiere in 2023, I remember driving to that hair show and I called my best friend and I was like, “They’re all gonna laugh at me.”
I said, th- “I’m telling you, these hairdressers, they’re not go
What if they don’t want it?
What if they don’t like it?
What if they don’t think we need it?”
The stories that people told me.
This industry does need it.
Yes.
Those families need it.
And maybe these stylists that are, um, specializing in this need to know that it’s there too.
So since then I’ve hit the ground running.
And that’s where we met you.
Yes.
So
Yes.
And
Because Kim had her shoes off.
Yeah.
And you, and you, and you gave Michelle Hale your little ballet tickets for her to collect all your
My luggage, my Louis.
It’s just like you may not wanna give me this.
I was absolutely a pirate.
However, you know, it changed our trajectory within our organization because we knew immediately when we worked with you.
I’m getting emotional when you tell those stories because one of my children has autism.
He’s on the spectrum.
And in that, same battles with schools, same battles with
His was more self-harm but there was the occasional where he’d lash out against one of us.
You know, and that’s really hard as a parent.
You know?
‘Cause he’d go from these loving moments to these rages and, you know, all my kids are around the same age so just trying to be able to explain why things were different for him, um, “I broke my phone, you’re not replacing it.”
Taf- Caleb’s broken 5 TVs.
You know?
What’s the difference?
And trying to get them to understand that it’ll, you know, “I’ll treat you all fairly.
I can’t treat you equally because of this.”
You know?
So hearing those stories was incredible to me, that we face that with people being on the spectrum at our schools.
So from a student level, and you were gracious enough to immediately say, “I’m here for it.
What do you need?”
And you came to our Beauty Blitz last year.
You came and certified our school, our staff, our students.
You’re doing the same thing this year at our Beauty Blitz.
So tell us what Beauty Blitz
first of all, 2 part question.
How you feel the relationship with Tafroggi is from your side but also what do you get out of the Beauty Blitz piece of it?
Those are great questions and thank you for asking me them ’cause, boy, do I have an answer for you.
This experience has been like nothing I’ve ever experienced before.
You know, I go into a lot of schools, a lot of schools, and you feel it when there’s something there.
And you guys have that, and it’s really something so special.
But what it’s been like for me, for the relationship on my end, you’re an answer to prayer.
This is what I prayed for.
I prayed for anyone to see how important a sensory-safe solution is.
And, you know, getting to go
I prayed for school tours, and to be living my dreams.
The only thing I can tell you is thank you.
Yeah, thank you.
I wish the word
I wish thank you was enough to describe how grateful I am to be able to spread the message.
Because I know even if it’s just one student that I get to certify, just one, how many safe spaces is that one student gonna create for their entire career?
How many do you think?
Yes.
Just infinite a- amounts.
And now let’s times that by how many people we’ve certified together over the past one year.
Yeah.
It’s crazy.
Well, just this week alone- I know.
with the commission.
I mean-
I got certified.
I know, I know.
Like 1,200 people.
It’s, it’s been everything.
And it’s been so
It’s been an answer to prayer.
And Beauty Blitz, I’ve gone to shows.
I’ve been to ABS, IBS, premiere here, premiere there, premiere over there.
I’ve been in this industry, I’ve been going to shows for 25 years.
I’ve been to hair schools for 25 years.
Mm-hmm.
When I sat
first of all, I didn’t know what to expect coming to Beauty Blitz.
And the first thing I can tell you is that was the first time I’ve ever ran out of things at my vendor booth.
That’s how busy our table was.
So the line never ended from 8:00 AM till infinitum and beyond.
I don’t
We just kept looking at each other like
We, we had to move you, because you were creating a roadblock.
Yeah.
I know.
I remember.
It was awesome.
So I left.
I left my booth, left Maddie in charge, to go to stores 3 times.
Wow.
I didn’t know that.
Did
You didn’t know that?
No, I was running around all wild.
3 times.
I’ll tell you what, Dollar Tree didn’t have a lash set left.
Yeah.
I took the whole display.
I was taking displays of stuff-
and I went back 3 times.
00:18:59,5.999999999767169 –> 00:18:59,145
Unbelievable.
That is never
I’ve gone
I’ve done the expos.
I’ve done the shows.
So that was the first thing that I was like, “We’re gonna need a bigger boat.”
Mm-hmm.
But then the most amazing part for me and for Maddy, Maddy Erickson, she’s one of our board members, she was with me here last year, and she’s so sad right now that she’s not back.
Aw, she’s not making it.
She had to, she had to do that work thing, boo.
So, our seat was right at the end of the stage.
And I started to see during the day, like, all this amazing work walk by that I’m looking, “Are those candies glued all over their face?
Like, how did they make hair that big?
Like, what is actually happening here?”
Yes.
And I didn’t
You know, as a hairdresser, I don’t know where to look.
There’s so mu- there’s so much happening.
The décor is beautiful.
The
All of it.
The work that people put in, I was blown away.
But then to be at the end of the stage and see the different schools fighting for school spirit- Yes.
talk about be covered in goosebumps from head to toe.
I cried.
I- They went rushing in and we opened the doors, it made me cry.
E- Every time we open those doors, I get emotional.
Just seeing the energy and the passion, the whole purpose of wa- watching them walk in, how excited they are, it never gets old.
It’s unbelievable.
You know, I don’t, I don’t even maybe like to say where I went to school.
Don’t tell anybody.
But I’m not like
I never felt like that- Mm-hmm.
about hair school.
Typically, what I hear from people just graduating, they’re saying, “My school is this, my school is that, this, that and the other.”
Yeah.
I bet.
Not y’all schools.
That’s awesome.
Not y’all schools.
And then that show?
How are those students?
I know, right?
And then the instructor, I just
There’s nothing like it.
I’ve been to shows, never like your show.
Yes.
That’s the truth.
Thank you, thank you.
We’re- Right now, I think it’s one of the largest in the country.
That’s what- It really is.
And it’s hair schools.
I know.
Yeah.
We, we’ll probably have 1,500 to 2,000 students this weekend.
And then spectators, their friends, their families out to support them, and being able to have a space to invite all of those people just to show them all of that support, it’s just, it’s great to be able to host you guys, our favorite people, like it’s just wonderful.
It is.
You would have made me such a better stylist when I saw your videos at the beginning of your presentation of these kids pinned down to the ground, like dad’s knee, and like gave me flashbacks to situations I have been in as a stylist in those exact same situations.
Me too.
These kids are sweating, they give them a sucker, there’s hair all stuck on the sucker now, and it was traumatizing for me as a stylist because I didn’t want to hurt nobody.
Yes, sir.
But you go to bed thinking, “Great.”
It’s- “I just traumatized a baby.”
It’s nuts.
And my nephew, he’s older now and he can get his hair cut, but he, um
Well, he’s my, my cousin’s kid, but we call him my nephew.
Mm-hmm.
They were like, “You will never cut his hair.
He can’t handle it.
He’s autistic and on the spectrum.”
And she said, “I have to go to a different salon every single time for a haircut because I’m so embarrassed to bring him back to where we just previously took him.”
And I like could have really made it a, such a impact just on that haircut for their kid, for kids in the future that I had in my chairs.
It’s nuts.
We’ve, you’ve been touring with us.
I have not gotten feedback from any guest speaker we’ve ever had in my 10 years with Tricoci, people that have been working here 20 years.
Miss Flo don’t lie, she don’t make up stories, and she said, “You are the best thing that Tricoci has ever brought into our campuses.”
That she has seen and she’s heard and her girls were all estheticians and were just enamored with you and everything that you had to say.
And I thank you from the bottom of my heart for being a part of this.
Um, there’s one big question that we like to ask all of our guests, and I really want to hear it from you.
What does being a day maker, what does that mean to you?
Everything.
Yes.
Means everything.
Yes.
Because you are a day maker.
I hope you know that.
Thanks.
I don’t know if one or any of my ex-husbands would agree.
I’m sure at some point they thought so.
Oh, yes, they did.
Would you doubt that for a second?
Yes.
And I love, and I love sensory safe solutions.
I like that better because I really think it, it’s great that we have that in our industry now and I hope we’re able to spread that throughout the industry, but I think that a lot of other places need it, being- Absolutely.
as you’re well aware.
You know, I feel the pain with your nephew because even at the dentist, I try to find a different dentist each time.
I try to find a different, you know, conis- So you fit there too.
There’s a lot, there’s a lot there.
And there’s so much, like you said, the, the shame that these parents are feeling and what if one of them is having the day that I had when I was locked in that bathroom?
Right.
What if that’s the, what if- So that’s why you’re a day maker.
And we appreciate you so much.
Uh-huh.
Oh, Mac.
So thank you for being with us.
Always.
The, my thanks go to you guys.
So- Thank you for the opportunity.
We appreciate you so much.
We do.
Appreciate you guys back.
Aw.
Thank you, Kay.
Thank you, guys.