I Make a Living

Alli Webb was always interested in beauty, starting from her roots as a curly-haired kid growing up in South Florida. She says that going to beauty school was “one of the best decisions I ever made,” and Drybar, her ultra-popular chain of hairstyling studios, definitely proves her point. While she says she spent her childhood as a people-pleaser—”a wallflower, if I’m honest”—she’s grown into herself as a business owner and service expert.Alli spent her 20s in New York City, doing PR and styling hair until she met her ex-husband and pivoted to the stay-at-home-mom gig. “I thought it was the coolest thing ever: I get not to work? I thought I had hit the jackpot!” But after a half-decade of staying home with her two sons, she was bored. So she launched a mobile business called Straight At Home, pitching her blowouts on parental message boards and bringing a luxury that had been previously reserved for the glitterati to moms all over L.A. She quickly learned that her business model—which included paying for a bab