I had been an educator for a West Coast nail company many years before and had been very impressed by a salon there in which I had given several classes. It was a beautiful and elegant A-frame building—all glass—and they had served champagne and cheesecake to all their clients. It was called Cheveux, which meant “hair” in French, and I had known that when I opened a salon I would call it that.

“No, no, it will be really cool,” Mike said, “because every time you pick up the phone, if you greet the person on the other end with ‘Hello Gorgeous,’ it would make them feel good.” I told him it was dumb and we weren’t doing it, mostly because the name was already picked out!

We opened Cheveux Professional Hair Design and owned it for ten years. We grew the business quite a bit by the time we sold it. As in every business, we had our ups and downs between employees, taxes, wages, utilities and repairs. But I found that I just could not find the complete fulfillment in the salon that I very much needed. There was just something missing. There was an emptiness that I could not explain. I thought that maybe there was something missing in me.

I went to classes to further my education. I trained in Chicago and Miami and New York and I even attended Vidal Sassoon in London to train, which was one of my dreams. Still, I never seemed to find the fulfillment I was looking for.

I became an educator for the color line that we used in our salon at the time, and I did a lot of traveling for them teaching classes. Many of the salons where I instructed on this particular color line were in downtown Chicago; top salons in the industry were asking for me as their instructor. Still I was not finding that fulfillment I was looking for I thought maybe a change would help. So we moved our salon across town, from one location to another, and tripled our size.

We expanded our services and, over a few years, grew to 14 hair stations (with stylists and colorists from Beginner to Master), massage rooms, tanning beds, nail and pedicure rooms, esthetics room and multiple office staff. We did constant promotions, like referral programs, product sales for holidays, Back-to-School specials for product and services and “The Boss Is on Vacation” sales. We had thousands of clients and did a great business.

Yes, it was coffee and mints, rather than champagne and cheesecake, but a wonderful salon regardless. And still the emptiness was there. That is the only way I can describe it—just an emptiness. In 2005, on a trip back from Indianapolis, Indiana, Mike and I were talking as our son Seth slept in the back seat of the car. I talked with Mike about that same thing that I had been feeling for a year or more—that I just felt like there was something else that we should be doing, that I thought there was a higher purpose for us. Suddenly I looked at him and I said, “I know what we’re supposed to do!” Mike’s eyes got big and he listened intently as he drove because he too was kind of down on our salon.

It had been so much work all the time, for so many years, and it seemed like we just couldn’t get it to where we thought it should be. He was looking for a higher purpose as well. “We’re supposed to have a mobile day spa, a mobile salon that will cater to cancer patients.” “Wow,” Mike said, “that is unique. Wow.” “A place that will be a wonderful and peaceful sanctuary for them—a palace on wheels that will go to their curbside and pamper them with spa services and make them feel like a queen for a day.” “Yes,” he said smiling, “that sounds amazing.” I told him we would offer these nurturing services to women with cancer: facial, manicure, pedicure, makeup and hair styling. I said that we could travel around Indiana doing these makeovers, making hundreds of women happy and changing their lives forever. “YES!” he said again, louder. Mike was smiling more broadly with each idea, thinking of the positive impact we could make on all these people.

“And…” “Yes?” “AND…” “YES?” “And…and all the services we would provide these women would be free,” I said. “We will charge them NOTHING!”

I watched all the color slowly leave his face. “Kim, how are we going to pay for this? How can we make a living for our family?” he asked. “I don’t know. I don’t know how it’s going to happen, but I know it’s what we’re supposed to do.”

We spent the next few miles in the car with my trying to convince him that this is what we were supposed to do. Mike was not buying into it (I could tell) but, being the supportive husband that he is, he stopped at a bookstore in Kokomo and went inside the store to buy me three or four different books on “women and fund raising” and “women and nonprofits” and “grant writing for dummies”—anything he could find that would make this dream come true.

He knew that, once I set my mind to an idea, there was little chance in changing it. I spent the next hour talking about this and how we would make this happen. Mike was not saying much and he was changing the subject just about every chance he got.

About 30 miles from home, our son woke up and we decided to take him into a play area so he could stretch his legs a little bit. As we were sitting there talking, I looked at Mike and I said, “You know what? This is supposed to be called ‘Hello Gorgeous!’ because, when these women feel the way that they do during their fight with cancer, that’s how they deserve to be greeted. That’s what they deserve to hear.”

He still wouldn’t talk to me about it and it took me several months to convince him. We held onto the salon for another year and then we sold it to concentrate our efforts fully on Hello Gorgeous. Since then, Mike has worked six days a week, 12 hours a day at this—up until 2014, I worked three days a week as an independent stylist, in the salon we sold to pursue this dream, supporting our family, as God unfolds this enormous and amazing journey in front of us.

Every woman we are able to help teaches us something. The hugs and tears of joy tell us we are on the right path, that we are making a difference. And Mike has told me that, because of what he has seen with this project and what he has learned from these Gorgeous Women, even if he never gets paid real money to do this job, he will not quit.

God Bless,

Kim and Michael Becker