THE HAIRPOLITAN MAGAZINE VOL 6 MAY 2017

Leo Salon & Barber, Westlands Branch
people out.” A testament to this is that her longest
serving staff member has been with her for 16years.
As we chat, Leo’s staff members are moving around
expertly tending to the clientele. They call her Aunty
Agnes, a testament to their view of her as their
mother.
Agnes is trained Economist, and was a lecturer in
Economics & Research Methods at the University of
Nairobi for 8 years. She quit to take up consulting
and at the height of her consulting career she was a
CEO of the firm she worked. She was earning Kes.
80,000/= per day, choosing jobs, living the good
life, traveling extensively and shopped at high-end
stores.
Then 7 years ago she started to notice she had
trouble pronouncing some words, but laughed it off
and concluded that she was suffering from dementia.
Her eyesight was also deteriorating but she got
spectacles to take care of that problem. Eventually
it’s the constant headaches that took her to seek
medical attention.
want to go through that process be it chemo or
radiation.” With the permission and support of her
husband and an American Neurosurgeon she opted
to go the natural route, which she had come across
out of interest a few years earlier.
She took 3-months to learn as much as she could.
In the interim she changed her lifestyle and started
to juice her fruits and vegetables in earnest. For
120days she lived on 8 glasses of juice a day. Her
research took her to Spain, Britain and South Africa
to benchmark on natural healing remedies. While in
the Mediterranean country she was challenged not
only about her diet; but also what she applied to her
skin, the largest organ on her body. She then started
to explore natural ingredients that would work well
with her skin.
I ask her if her hair was natural before she was
diagnosed with cancer. She responded that she had
a perm and retouched every month. She shares that
going and living natural, as a salon owner was a
struggle to her. She wondered why she was applying
chemicals to clients but not to herself. “Three years
ago I almost sold Leo, until God told me that my
task was to create awareness and help people to
make informed choices.” Today, Leo hairdressers
advise clients to have breaks as long as 4 months
before retouching. This mitigates the amount and
frequency of chemicals entering the body. She also
declines to apply a perm or retouch anyone under
the age of 14.
“I think I might have contributed to that cancer. My
lifestyle wasn’t ok. I wasn’t resting enough. I was
flying like crazy, and feeling good about making
money. I was stressed up; something so small would
stress me! I wanted to be perfect. I needed to present
myself perfectly to the world. So in that fight to be
perfect I really stressed out. Now I’ll still feel that
that’s not ok but we shall sit and talk about it. It
doesn’t have to affect my day, or how I am feeling
or my emotions.
I ask Agnes what advise she would give to a young
mother who wants to open a salon business. She
advises that as a woman one should develop a
healthy life philosophy of. It’ll help you instead,
you create time and interact with people that
matter most in your life. Do not take mothering as a
weakness; communicate when you need to focus on
your family. “Create time for your children,
should surround themselves with good people that
you can pass the knowledge to. “The people that
you are working with, empower them, trust them,
and incentivize them. Make them feel important
about themselves, that they are doing something
great for you. It’s ok to be vulnerable.”
Finally, she says if you are married or in a relationship,
find a way to balance the marriage vs. the business/
work. At the end of the day the business, money
and success will come and go but it is important to
have someone by your side. “Being friends with your
husband is an important thing.”
Agnes just turned 55 in April and while she used
to check the tumor every 6 months, she hasn’t in a
while. “I am so grateful to God. I don’t tell people
not to go to hospital, as this was my own personal
choice. But whatever you decide, I think changing
your lifestyle, not just food, but also your entire
lifestyle. From the sense of stress, to your sense of
rest, to what I eat, to my rhythm and to what I put on
my skin & my hair. I really guard my emotions now;
you won’t push me. I devised a saying, ‘No one can
annoy Aggie apart from Aggie herself.’”
LOCATION CONTACTS:
Leo Salon & Barber
Garden City Mall
0708440797
Leo Salon & Barber
Victoria Court, Westlands
0701299296
Leo Salon & Barber
Two Rivers Malls
0715815441
Social Media Pages
Facebook: Leo Salon and Barber
Twitter & IG: @weareleoske
She was met with the news that she had a golf ball
sized stage two tumor in her brain. Her options
were either surgery or surgery but her heart told her
otherwise. “Once they remove such, people don’t
go so well. I told myself that if I die let me die the
way I am. I wasn’t afraid of death, I just knew I didn’t
Do not think that money is everything, “When I
started to relax about looking for money, I realised
that it started to look for me and I started to get a
healthy attitude towards money.”
In regards to hiring, she would advise that one
Agnes explaining the function of the
carrier oils and essential oils
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