Case Study
Queen of Kinks’ Path to B Certification
Timeline of Certification Journey: April 2025 – April 2026
Overview
Kinky Rootz Salon d/b/a Queen of Kinks is an inclusive salon in Nashville, Tennessee, deeply committed to cultivating beauty rooted in sustainability. From the very start, Kristi Mefford, the salon’s Founder and CEO, has operated with a purpose of caring for high frequency waves, kinks, and curls, creating a safe space for women to embrace their natural hair. Not only is she an advocate of health and well-being but she remains deeply in tune with the impact her salon has on her local community.
As Kristi began learning about B Certification, she saw that it would be a natural extension of what her salon actively embodies every day. However, being a solopreneur in charge of every aspect of the salon severely limited her time capacity to understand the B Certification process and all that it entails. Kristi sought support through B Lab U.S. & Canada’s Level program, where we at Enharmonic Encounters proudly serve as a resident consultancy. Having been connected through Level, we created a plan to guide Kristi on her B Certification journey.
The Challenges: Limited Bandwidth, Informal Structure, and an Intimidating Framework
While Kristi knew all along that her salon captured the spirit of a Certified B Corporation, the work of actually getting there presented some obstacles:
✔ Limited Time and Bandwidth: As a hands-on stylist also running the daily operations of the salon, Kristi’s time was greatly divided.
✔ Infrastructure Gaps: The lack of structured operational policies and tracking mechanisms generated initial uncertainty around translating the salon’s impactful ideations into a framework of practices that could be measured, sustained, and recognized.
✔ Unclear Path to Certification: With limited operational scale, identifying and maintaining the right impact business models throughout the review process would be absolutely critical to earning a passing score.
The Solution: A Bespoke Approach Emphasizing the Salon’s Convictions
We met Kristi where she was and tailored a strategic plan that was most relevant to her salon, ensuring the best pathway possible for success:
✔ Accentuated the salon’s innate spirit of charitable giving across two fronts, leveraging the Designed to Give impact business model as formal inspiration.
✔ Amplified the salon’s investment in the community where it operates by formalizing a consequential commitment to serve local customers, leveraging the Local Economic Development impact business model as formal inspiration.
✔ Aligned the salon’s mission and values with clear practices and mechanisms of accountability, ensuring that every aspect is accurately and consistently reflected into the future.
✔ Developed key operational policies to strengthen the salon’s business infrastructure and solidify how ingredients for handcrafted products are sourced.
✔ Organized all documentation and interacted with B Lab during the review process on behalf of the salon.
The Impact: Clear Intentionality in How to Show Up and Effect Change
Confident in the work preparing for the review, we submitted the B Impact Assessment in November 2025. Our expert knowledge of acceptable documentation and methods of verification enabled us to successfully make the case for Queen of Kinks’ newly formalized commitments, most notably:
1️⃣ To donate 5% of total company time year over year on a pro-bono basis to local public schools through Rooted 2 Serve H.E.R., an initiative Kristi ideated to empower girls to explore their personal identity, cultural roots, strengths, and dreams, all while creating a safe space for authentic self-expression.
2️⃣ To donate 2% of top-line revenue year over year to charitable organizations providing direct support to women overcoming domestic violence (including through the overlap of the salon’s new 1% for the Planet business membership), a cause rooted in Kristi’s own lived experience and a reflection of the salon’s belief in healing, empowerment, and resilience as pathways to restored self-worth.
3️⃣ To serve a customer base that is at least 75% local and independent, honoring Kristi’s deep commitment to serve her community irrespective of growth and scale.
With all of this impact and more accurately captured and recognized, we guided Queen of Kinks to the end of the journey with favorable results:
✔ B Certification Achieved: Queen of Kinks officially became a Certified B Corporation in February 2026, just in time for B Corp Month and Champions Retreat 2026 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
✔ Formalized Business Operations: We entered the review process with an initial score of 83.4, and finalized B Certification with a score of 83.7, meaning we successfully substantiated every question that was examined during the Verification stage (and a bit more!), ensuring operational integrity and a clear path for growth.
✔ Clarity and Direction: Queen of Kinks now understands the power it has to be something bigger than one person.
Partner Perspective
Working with Jeffrey started as a simple B Corp consulting relationship, but it quickly turned into something much deeper. He didn’t just walk me through Certification. He helped me untangle my business, my systems, and, honestly, my thinking. During moments that felt overwhelming, Jeffrey brought this calm, steady presence that made everything feel clear and doable. No pressure, no ego—just wisdom, strategy, and real support. Because of our work together, I didn’t just earn my B Corp Certification. I gained clarity, confidence, and a stronger foundation for where I’m taking my business next.
Now having officially crossed the threshold to become a Certified B Corporation, Kristi walks away from this experience with a few key learnings for all solopreneurs and small companies to keep in mind when embarking on this journey:
1️⃣ Solopreneurs and small businesses tend to already have great missions and are doing the work. They just may need structure and organization around their operations in a way that can be sustained and recognized.
2️⃣ Solopreneurs can’t go it alone forever, not if they want to grow. Policies and systems need to be created for the business to continue to operate and expand beyond the working owner.
3️⃣ How you show up, give, and track impact matters. When you get aligned with your purpose, you go from simply working in your business to building something bigger than yourself. You then begin to see that you wield more power than you may have initially imagined.
Through our expert guidance at Enharmonic Encounters, Kristi is fully equipped to take her salon to the next level while remaining committed to a journey of continuous impact improvement.
How About You?
Are you thinking about embarking on your own B Certification journey? We would be more than happy to discuss how it could look for you and your company! Learn more about how we can build bridges to purposeful impact together through our B Certification Consulting service.