Episode 3: The Lawyer Who Built a Salon Empire on Her Lunch Break

For 14 years, Ashley Smith built a career as a federal attorney — and then discovered, almost by accident, that a hairstylist client was out-earning her. That one moment cracked open a decade-long "midlife crisis" she'd been sitting on since high school, when she couldn't attend cosmetology school alongside earning her regular diploma.In this episode of Kingdom ROI, Ashley — owner of Vidni Salons, a salon suite collective in Atlanta — walks us through changing clothes in her car so coworkers wouldn't know she was moonlighting in cosmetology school, surviving fraudulent chargebacks that shut down her first salon, and the landlord relationship that taught her the salon-suite business model from the inside out. She breaks down how her background as a tax attorney and contract-law teaching assistant lets her draft her own commercial leases, save thousands in legal fees, and negotiate as an equal in a male-dominated commercial real estate world.Ashley also gets candid about money and faith — her unfiltered take on churches that solicit tithes while pastors flaunt lavish lifestyles, why she gives to people on the street without judgment, and how she leans on her faith (and a day job) to get through the slow seasons every entrepreneur faces. She shares a full-circle story of being passed over for a promotion — only to get the call the same month she opened her first salon — and closes with practical advice for aspiring business owners, including how to get a free SBA business advisor.