good hair day
Owner of Austin’s newest blow dry bars jumps in headfirst with 2 salons
The owner of two new Blo Blow Dry Bar locations wants you to know that it’s never too late to change your life.
Bindhu Isaac, the owner of the newly opened Circle C location of Blo Blow Dry Bar and the soon-to-open Cedar Park location, is a longtime physical therapist who decided to blow up (pun absolutely intended) her career to pursue her dreams.
Isaac, who graduated from the University of Texas in the 1990s, always thought she’d be a doctor of some sort. During a Zoom conversation in early March, she told CultureMap that was something her parents had always wanted for her, but she wasn’t sure she wanted the same for herself. But she went for it anyway.
After graduating from UT, she moved to New York City to pursue her physical therapy career. That’s when she met her husband and, she says, put her career on the back burner to follow his career. Then she had two kids — so her career stayed on the back burner.
“When I hit my late 30s, I told myself that I was going to make a big career change, because I wasn’t truly happy in the career that I decided to do,” Isaac says.
Even though her career had been lower priority as she focused on her family life, Isaac still made time for herself.
“I used to go get blowouts all the time. Every week, that was my downtime,” she says. “It just made me feel so good.”
She became fascinated by the beauty industry and how accessible it was becoming for everyday people. So she started doing research into how she could get involved, and she discovered the CEO of Blo Blow Dry Bar is a woman. That was the moment she decided opening franchises of Blo was the route she wanted to take.
Isaac wants to use her new career as a business owner to inspire women like her and give them a safe space to take care of themselves — “body, mind, and soul.”
“As women, we take on so much. We have many hats. A lot of us work, and a lot of us are mothers, and a lot of us are part of the community. And we need quiet time, even just getting our hair done,” she says. “As women, we need to prioritize ourselves because we get caught up with doing everything for everybody else.”
And, Isaac says, she’s discovered that it’s not all that different from her physical therapy practice.
“This is all customer service. I’m looking at somebody, greeting them, making sure they’re feeling good. And as a physical therapist, I was doing that daily,” Isaac says.
She says she recognizes that some people treat their hairstylists as therapists — and that’s pretty similar to her old career, too.
“It’s just providing motivation, giving them a safe space and providing an outlet, either verbally or physically or how to just feel better about themselves,” Isaac says. “Obviously, they’re coming in because they feel like they need to work on themselves, either physically during physical therapy or even when they’re coming into a salon.”
Isaac says it’s been a long road to get where she is now. She signed her franchise deal in 2020, right before the pandemic hit, and she’s thrilled she’s finally seeing the fruits of her labor.
And now that she’s at the salon every day, she’s moved her weekly blowouts to every three days. And her favorite look? The “red carpet.”
You can find the Circle C location of Blo at 5700 Slaughter Ln., suite 230. The Cedar Park location is coming soon.
Lake Austin Spa Resort's gently eclectic interior.Photo courtesy of Lake Austin Spa Resort via Condé Nast Traveler
Miraval's stark, modern looks.Photo by James Baigrie, courtesy Miraval Austin via Condé Nast Traveler