Women in March – Part II of IV
Like a phantom, it’s hard to predict on any given day what Pueblo native Elizabeth Gallegos might be doing. It would be an understatement to say, ‘she keeps busy.’ Actually, busy falls well short when describing the scope and involvement of this civically engaged businesswoman.
When she’s not overseeing her nationally recognized salon, she has her hands in real estate, either selling a property or staging one. Or she might be at a board meeting; she sits on a number of boards in the city she loves. Yes. She stays busy.
She credits her indefatigable drive to her late father, Manuel, a career grocer who showed her the power of personal relationships. Of course, she also credits her late mother, Bertha Marie, a person who also set a great example and the person who first encouraged her to give cosmetology, the beauty industry, a try.
In college, said Gallegos, “I really didn’t know what I wanted to do.” She loved learning, but not necessarily loved college. She moved to Denver for a brief period but was drawn back to Pueblo. There for a few weeks and still trying to figure out a plan, she took up her mother’s advice and started beauty school. “Within a couple of months,” she said, “I found out how much I enjoyed it.” From behind a chair, she came to see what her father had told her years before, how personal relationships, little things, could make a big dif- ference. “I learned that we make people’s day! She’s been ‘making people’s day’ ever since.
She had not only found her niche in the beauty industry, but it had also found her. A large chain in the industry hired her to shuttle across Colorado and to shops in Nevada to work with stylists and fix problems that might be holding a store back. She did that for a dozen years, but the travel and transience came at a cost. She still loved the work but needed to find another path. “I was really at a crossroads and had outgrown what I was doing,” Gallegos recalled.
Armed with a solid understanding of her industry along with business skills acquired over the previous dozen years, she returned to Pueblo. She did interior design for a year, staged a few homes, all the while keeping her hand in the beauty industry, when she decided to open her own shop, calling it Euphoria. The decision paid off. “It grew quickly.”
The salon is now in its 22nd year. It has been recognized as one of Colorado’s top fifty minority-owned businesses, won consecutive Best of Pueblo awards and, in 2011 and 2012, was recognized by Salon Today Magazine, an industry standard, as one of the 200 top salons in the U.S.
Running a business presents its own challenges. But Gallegos has managed to keep things running smoothly, certainly smooth enough to allow her to participate on sev- eral boards across the city. She is currently President of the Saint Mary Corwin Hospital Board of Directors and is Vice President of the Pueblo Urban Renewal Authority. Gallegos serves on the Pueblo Library Foundation. She has also served as board president of the Pueblo Latino Chamber of Commerce and The Greater Pueblo Chamber of Commerce. She also sells homes for one of the city’s real estate firms.
Gallegos admits that the commitment she has to her busi- ness and community can be exhausting. Fortunately, over the years, she said, she has learned when to say ‘No.’ When asked to take on ‘just one more task,’ she asks herself, “What is it really going to take?” If the answer doesn’t add up, she’ll gracefully decline. “It’s self-preservation.”
Her off-the-clock life is taken up with family. She is married and has a daughter and two grandchildren.
While it might seem like she is juggling more than any normal person might need or want, she has few complaints. It’s a trait she got from her parents, people she described as “the perfect role models.” Her father—a Safeway store manager—periodically uprooted the family and moving, sometimes out of state. The company would send him into communities to fix under-performing grocery stores falling short of meeting customer needs. In order to solve the problems, no job was too trivial and every customer, Gallegos remembered, was important. “He knew everybody’s name… he embodied the entrepreneurial spirit,” she said.
While Gallegos is quick to acknowledge the traits she picked up from her father, she gives equal credit to her mother, a woman who maintained a well-organized home— also a woman who decided to go to college after her children grew up.
The Pueblo businesswoman says she has applied what she would see her father doing for people in her own business while trying to replicate the same finesse and organization that her mother employed at home. It’s a formula that has worked for her as a businessperson, as a board member helping shape the direction of organizations she has joined and the community she serves. It’s all pretty simple, she said. Offer your best effort every day at whatever you’re asked or need to do.
