Lexi Miles Corrin built female-focused Waxon franchise at 25

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Lexi Miles Corrin was 25 when she launched Toronto-based WAXON Laser + Waxbar, when she found an opportunity in the industry to offer a far better experience in waxing hair removal services to a wider audience.

During her corporate career, travelling often, she would find herself behind a shower curtain getting a wax at a local mani-pedi spa.

Travelling in the United States also gave her insight into the growth of specialized services. Seeing a gap in the Canadian market, she founded the hair-removal franchise, but with an additional goal: creating strong career and business opportunities for women.

Female entrepreneurs often face the additional challenge of juggling family, as well as self-judgement. Miles Corrin is raising four children, while building the business so was determined to make the business supportive of other women and their lifestyles, whether franchise partners (franchisees), clients or employees. The business, with a team of more than 200 women, is currently a fully female franchise system, Miles Corrin says.

Here, Miles Corrin shares her entrepreneurial journey, and how she teaches her children about giving back to the community through One Girl Can, a Canadian and Kenyan registered charity focused on some of the world’s most vulnerable, high-potential girls.

How did you come to establish WAXON?

“I began my career as a management consultant, specializing in operations, working primarily in the U.S. with Fortune 500 companies. I spent a significant amount of time on the road, traveling every Sunday, returning every Friday, working around the clock, and losing myself in my work in the process with very little time for self-care of any kind.

As such, I often found myself behind the shower curtain of a local mani-pedi spa for a wax, thinking there must be something better than this.

Spending so much time in the U.S., in 2012, I started to see a shift and specialized service offerings were becoming more top of mind with more boutique brands popping up everywhere I visited.

Being drawn to these businesses while in the U.S., and then going back home, I immediately saw the gap in the Canadian market in the hair removal space and leaned into the opportunity.

I put all my business knowledge and personal customer experiences from the hair removal industry to build the WAXON brand, then launched the first location in the Summerhill area of Toronto, in 2012, at the age of 25.”

What challenges did you overcome during your early years forming the company?

“There are many challenges that female entrepreneurs face when starting a business. Along with the challenges that many brand builders face, like understanding your consumer, learning their buying patterns, tightening operations, and building processes (and more). Women are often also tasked with the balancing act of starting and raising a family.

In my case, I started a family and am raising a family of four, all while pursuing my entrepreneurial dreams.

Over the past 12 years, I have built a team of over 200 women at WAXON and am proud to say we currently have a fully female franchise system.

I believe in women as leaders and in our ability to build and motivate teams while executing with thoughtful vision and strategy. Women are so resourceful and lead with vulnerability.

However, there is one thing that, as women, I believe we struggle with more than anyone, and that is how we judge and perceive ourselves.

When I started WAXON, I remember feeling so proud and excited about what I was about to do leading into the opening of my first location. Of course I was nervous, but overall, I felt very proud. The day before our grand opening, I’ll never forget this one particular moment, when I was alone in the location. I took a minute to appreciate what I had created, soaking it all in and realizing it was real; I was here. I had put every dollar I had into this location, and the reality had set in that it was about to open.

Within seconds, these thoughts were quickly interrupted by an overwhelming voice in my head that was filling my mind with negative thoughts: ‘Who are you to open an aesthetics business with zero experience in aesthetics?’… ‘What if you fail?’ … ‘What will your friends think of you?’… ‘What if no one shows up?’

Too often we listen to that voice instead of listening to our intuition.

As I have continued to grow my business, I have gained more experience with understanding how to navigate around that voice in my head. I’ve gained more confidence in silencing judgments and leaning into believing in myself to make the best decisions that lead to substantial growth for all stakeholders involved. My hopes are to inspire more women to do the same within the WAXON ecosystem and beyond.”

I have built a positive culture, geared around female empowerment, to ensure everyone tied to the business – from the HQ team members to our franchise partners, clients and employees – feel confident and powerful.”

How did you make decisions regarding expansion across the country?

“When I first started WAXON, my initial goal for the business was to grow to 100 locations in five years. Today, after 12 years in business, we have 18 open locations, six more locations set to open this year, and I wouldn’t change a thing.

What I learned very quickly is the importance of building a strong foundation for the business, putting us where we are today, ready to spring forward into what will be WAXON World Domination.

Real estate selection is a critical piece in the success of any WAXON franchise, or brick and mortar business, and is not something we take lightly at WAXON.

Our process is quite detailed, and we use several tactics and systems to unlock the most ideal location. However, eight years ago when we made the decision to open a franchise in Halifax, Nova Scotia it was made largely on gut instinct and experience.

My brother and his wife decided to take a chance in his little sister’s business and was not only one of our first franchise locations but was our first out-of-province location and male franchise partner. Having gone to Dalhousie University in Halifax, and with my brother living in Halifax, we knew exactly where we needed WAXON to be. This gave us significant experience in how to support, adapt and scale the brand across the country.

Today, we are much more methodical and technical in how we select real estate. We apply a comprehensive strategy, review many data points and look at an entire market, not just the site itself, to support the long-term success and sustainability of a location.

We take a real estate committee review approach, working with some incredible specialists to evaluate as much as we can, prior to deciding on a site. However, I still believe that even after reviewing all the data, that final gut check is critical.

Ensuring that we feel great about the site and the franchise partner feels confident moving forward, is important to us. Often, businesses are too short-sighted and select a site because it checks a lot of boxes, while forgetting that you are ‘married to’ that site and have to operate and market it for many years to come. Intuition is key.”

What are you most proud of when you look at the evolution of WAXON?

“I am most proud of the team and culture we have built.

Although we are exceptional, the best really, at what we do in hair removal, we truly are a business that stands for so much more than that. We are an ecosystem that supports women – from the women who work for WAXON, own a WAXON or frequent a WAXON.

This also extends to our female retail partners like Victoria Radford, and our in-store collaboration with female founded, Sous La Face.

When I started WAXON, the aesthetics industry was known to be a high turnover ‘catty’ industry.

In advance of opening the very first WAXON location, I made a commitment that we were going to do things differently.

I had a mission to disrupt the personal-care service industry on many levels and create fulfilling careers for women.

We were going to build a business based on a foundation of respect and admiration for all employees and clients.

We were going to create a franchise system that supports women who are looking to pursue their entrepreneurial dream and be supportive and nurturing in the process.

During the pandemic, we were closed collectively for 322 days, opening and closing within 24 hours’ notice and sometimes only able to stay open for days at a time. The personal-care service industry was used to make a statement, in my opinion, and this resulted in my people being out of work.

When we finally reopened for good, the aesthetics industry was hit as hard as the restaurant industry in terms of job shortages, especially due to the halt on all aesthetic training programs over the course of the pandemic.

For us at WAXON, because of the community we created and uphold, we are proud to have had a 96-per-cent return to work rate.

In the service industry, to me, it’s simple: If your people have passion for what they do and feel valued and respected at work, they will provide better services and experiences for their clients. My greatest pride is our people, and that pride yields top performance for the business.”

How did you become a champion of One Girl Can, and any other philanthropic initiatives?

“At WAXON we are firm believers of profit with purpose.

Prior to partnering with One Girl Can, we supported various organizations, including White Ribbon, in support of ending violence against women, and Project Sunshine, supporting children in hospital receiving medical treatments.

Over the years, we came to the determination that it was more impactful to shift our focus to one organization we felt very compelled to support, instead of diversifying our funds amongst multiple organizations.

One Girl Can is an organization that provides the opportunity for some of the most vulnerable and high-potential girls across the world to move out of gender inequality and poverty.

The organization provides education and mentoring, and helps girls achieve meaningful income to better build their lives. We are launching a WAXON x One Girl Can focused month to raise money for the organization, with each location supporting a girl to help provide her with school supplies, pay for her tuition and support her progress throughout her school years.

At WAXON, we also provide support inside the organization within our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee. We survey our teams and choose three topics that they want support on throughout the year, for example mental health, and we bring in speakers to educate, share and inspire our team members.”

When you think about your children as the next generation of entrepreneurs and philanthropists, how do you involve them in learning about community giving?

“I have four kids – ages 5 1/2, 4 and 20-month-old twins. Although they are still quite young, I think about One Girl Can, which supports young children like mine and gives them great opportunities to be their best and create success for themselves.

I read the letter I received from one of the girls that I supported recently, and plan on sharing it with my children as they get older. I believe it is a very impactful way for my children to see how other children their age live, and the privilege they are living in every day, not only to not take it for granted, but also to do what they can to help others.

I believe that with each generation of entrepreneurs, the focus on impact, philanthropy and profit with purpose should be built into the anatomy of the business in the early stages.

I also believe that when someone is starting out and doesn’t have the funds to contribute to an organization, they can start small, you always have your time and your voice. I love offering my time to speak for organizations on panels or keynotes and found this to be an effective way to give back when I was in my early stages of business.

You can also start small with donations via silent auction support or join the board of a committee. I believe that making a difference isn’t always about writing a cheque, which is tough to do when you’re first building your business. There are so many ways we can bring focus and light to important issues and work to make a difference.”

What projects or initiatives coming up are you most excited about?

“As I began growing WAXON, I went back and forth a lot on whether to franchise the business or not. I personally and proudly own six WAXON locations in the GTA, and I love opening new locations.

We are on a mission to revolutionize franchising from what has traditionally been known as a ‘boys’ club’ to an empowering, supporting opportunity for women in business. Currently at WAXON, all our franchise partners are female.

I truly believe women are exceptional business owners. I find we are intuitive, we are visionaries, we lead with empathy, and we are very good at building teams and executing as we are tremendously resourceful. I also believe that there are many women who desire to be their own boss but are too afraid to take the leap.

We have built a program that critically and thoughtfully supports women to confidently take the leap in owning their own business. We have franchise partners (franchisees) who have left corporate jobs, who are newly empty nesters, who have been stay-at-home moms, and who are coming off maternity leave. Their common theme is, they want something more for themselves.

Our goal at WAXON is to create women millionaires – creating independence, wealth and confidence for women by a network and company of women who want to see them be as successful as possible.”

Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length.

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