After her first waxing experience, Kyla Dufresne fell in love with the art of hair removal. She noticed the lack of online booking and the inability to rebook as a major flaw. On Vancouver Island, Kyla recognized a gaping niche market. She saw a need for a quick, inexpensive, and enjoyable waxing location on the island. Kyla’s entrepreneurship journey and the founding of Foxy Box were inspired by this idea.
The team at Foxy Box delivers exceptional service and is dedicated to removing the discomfort of hair removal by creating a welcoming and accepting atmosphere.
In her interview with Success Pitchers, Kyla Dufresne shares how she is pouring her heart and soul into building the business and empowering women so they can celebrate their uniqueness.
Describe who you are as a person, inside and outside of the workplace.
I am a hard-working, self-proclaimed hustler who was destined to carve my own path. I am a step mom of two very intelligent and charismatic boys as well as a full time mom to two giant, drooly bullmastiff beasts. My family and my friends fill my heart. I am a consignment store connoisseur, an explorer of new lands, a nature enthusiast, and I could spend forever getting lost in books.
Describe your background and what did you do before you founded Foxy Box Wax Bar.
From a young age, I found myself unfocused and unmotivated in a school setting. After dropping out in Grade 10, I entered the workforce as a server and began my journey. I eventually completed the courses I needed to obtain my GED, and they used my work history as credit towards this completion as well. Armed with this in my pocket, I put myself through the Mental Health Worker Certification program at Camosun. I worked with young boys with behavioural disorders for about a year before making the tough decision that this wasn’t the path for me.
I went back to serving and bartending in the restaurant and nightclub industries, but found myself unfulfilled with having a limit to my successes. I’ve always been inspired by entrepreneurs, so I decided to start my own business.
My first attempt at entrepreneurship was a clothing line called LYRIK. I came up with clever designs to put on bright coloured tees and sold them at markets, music festivals and a couple of clothing stores in Victoria. After two years of hard work and not a lot of payoff, I figured I had no idea how to build and scale a clothing line.
What has been your biggest learning since becoming an entrepreneur?
There are too many to count.
- Trust your gut. You know your business better than anyone, and your gut will never steer you wrong. I lost about 30k by not listening to my gut, but alas, the lessons I learned from that mistake are still probably cheaper than Harvard.
- Surround yourself with people who are smarter than you. All of my team bring such critical, invaluable pieces to the Foxy Box Support Puzzle, and I have no idea how to do any of them myself. Find your weaknesses and then fill that role with someone who thrives there.
How do you motivate people to go the extra mile?
By creating and cultivating an awesome culture within the workspace, I don’t micromanage my team; I delegate to elevate. I found rock stars that excelled in their roles, and I let them fly. I treat my team like my family, and although we can get at each other like siblings at times, it’s this freedom and flexibility that makes my team wants to show up and shine.
What sort of characteristics in employees contribute to success?
Loyalty and drive are huge factors in contributing to success. But more importantly, happy, engaged staff members will drive an organization’s growth. Treat your team well, show them respect and recognition, allow them to flourish in their areas, and in turn, this will create loyalty and drive.
What is the best way to build a great team?
First and foremost, find out what your brand DNA is. What makes your organization tick? What is the feeling you want your end user to feel? Once you have these questions answered, you can figure out what qualities in a person leave an end user feeling this way. From here, you can build your team confidently and effortlessly.
We dove deep to find out what was important to Foxy Box and to maintain our culture from the ground up. To be a part of Foxy Box, our employees must have 3 qualities: a positive attitude, empathy, and self-responsible. We have ways to test for these attributes in our trial shifts and training processes, and if they don’t have any one of these three qualities, they are not a good fit for our organization.
What does “performance culture” mean to you?
We were featured in BC Business magazine as experts on systemizing culture. Taking the tools from my above answers to find out who you’re looking for will make it easy to scale and not lose your culture. Also, creating hell Yes funnels will make decision making seamless as you scale. One of the questions in our decision making funnel is ‘does it make us and other people feel good?’
What gets you up in the morning? What motivates you?
My mother owned a bakery for about 15 years. I would watch her get up and work 12 hours a day every day for most of her life, only to get by. My mom gave her life to her business, but I’m not fully sure if it fulfilled her. I know it drained her a lot of the time, emotionally and financially. I’ve always admired business owners like rockstars, and now that I’ve had the opportunity to run successful businesses of my own, I want to give this recipe and help foster the dream of successful entrepreneurship to women around the globe.
Kindly describe how you will specifically know what success looks like for you.
Success looks like waking up and loving what you do. Myself and my entire team work so hard, I just said the other day, “I’m exhausted… Can you imagine if we didn’t enjoy what we did for a living?” Success, to me, is about being happy in life. I love my family, I love my job, and I go to bed knowing that tomorrow is going to be a good day.
What are your future plans to sustain Foxy Box Wax Bar success?
“To continue hiring awesome talent.” We are in huge growth mode right now so it’s exciting planning for the future and the next hires. We’ve got 10 stores open with 2 more under construction and the team that I have are all geniuses in their own way that bring an inspirational and critical cog to this mechanism to keep it moving forward and support the infrastructure.
