Full Name: Nichelle Lock
Instagram Handle: @pheelinphuzzy
Location: Goodyear, AZ
Licensed Beauty Professional Since: 2013 (13 years)
Happy five years of Pheelin' Phuzzy! What does hitting this milestone mean to you, looking back at where you started?
Honestly? It means I bet on myself and it worked. I'd been licensed since 2013, so I knew the work, but in November 2021 I packed up my life in California, came to Arizona, and opened a one-woman wax bar with a lot of faith and not much else. Running the whole show myself was a different game.
Five years later I've got clients who've been with me since the beginning, brands I'm proud to partner with, and now I'm teaching other pros. When I look back at that first year, I see someone who was figuring it all out in real time. I'm still figuring things out, but now I trust myself while I do it.
Your brand is built around “Conversation & Comfort.” How has that philosophy helped your client retention? How do you think about retention differently now than you did in year one?
Waxing is vulnerable. People are trusting you with parts of their body they don't show just anybody, and if they walk in nervous, they're not coming back no matter how clean your work is. I'll never forget one client who was so nervous that even after she undressed, she kept pulling her shirt down to cover her stomach. She'd lost a lot of weight and was really self-conscious about her stretch marks. I told her, “Your body isn't my concern. My only focus is making you comfortable and giving you a great wax so you walk out of here feeling smooth and confident.” I kept reassuring her the whole service. She's been coming to me for years now, and she's learned to love her skin. Watching that confidence grow in her is one of the best parts of what I do.
In year one I thought retention was about the service: be fast, be good, they'll rebook. Now I know the service gets them in the door and the experience brings them back. Clients remember how you made them feel.
What made you want to start teaching other beauty pros? What gap did you notice in the industry that made you want to build those specific programs?
I kept seeing waxers who were either fast and rough, or careful and painfully slow. Hardly anyone was teaching how to be both. My part in Precision + Speed is showing pros that precision comes first, and the speed follows once your technique is solid. The other gap was skin. A lot of pros just look at the hair. Your client's skin is telling you everything — how it's prepped, how it's healing, what they're doing at home. That's where my “Your Skin Is Snitching” idea came from. I want people to learn to read skin, not just rip strips.
How do you personally define success in the treatment room at five years in? Has that definition changed since you started?
At the start, success was a fully booked calendar. Now it's a client who leaves feeling better than when she walked in, comes back with smooth, happy skin, and tells her friends. If my clients trust me, are comfortable with me, and are seeing real results, that's success. The calendar takes care of itself.
What keeps you inspired to keep building, five years in?
The people, first. My clients, and now the pros I get to teach. Watching a student's technique click in real time is a whole new kind of rush. But honestly, what really keeps me going is what still needs to change in this industry. There are still mean girls in beauty, and there's still too much marketing built on clients who already have perfect skin. That's not real life. I want to show the actual transformation: skin going from ingrowns, congestion, and breakouts to calm, hydrated, with a healthy barrier. That's the work, and people deserve to see it. And I feel strongly about this one: women are still being judged for their size and their anatomy. Nobody is supposed to look the same. Everybody is different, and that's the point. We're in this industry to make people feel comfortable in their bodies, not to judge them. As long as that still needs fixing, I'll keep building.
