When Jeny Burkhart, owner of The Waxi Taxi, first entered the beauty industry, she never imagined she would one day run Waxi Taxi, a thriving waxing business with multiple locations across Northwest Indiana. Her journey from cosmetology school to entrepreneurship wasn’t planned—it evolved organically, passionately driven by her clients’ needs and her desire to balance work and family life.
Beauty Beginnings
Jeny’s connection to the beauty industry started early. When asked where she started, Jeny replied, “My mom was a hairdresser. I grew up in a salon.” As a teenager, she worked as a shampoo girl. After graduating from high school at 17, she immediately enrolled in cosmetology school, completing the 1,500-hour program in just nine and a half months.
“I actually wanted to be a makeup artist for theater and movies. That’s what I wanted to do.” Jeny said when talking about the beginning of her career.
Her professional journey began at a hair salon in Crown Point, where she cut hair for $8 per haircut. After about a year and a half of doing nails and hair, Jeny set her sights on House of Bianco, the premier salon and day spa in Merrillville at that time.
When asked why she chose to work at The House of Bianco, Jeny said, “They had it going on. They were the biggest, the best at the time. And I figured I’m going right to the best place around.”
The Waxing Discovery
At House of Bianco, Jeny was hired as a makeup artist but soon found herself doing facials, pedicures, massage, and waxing services she had little experience with. Her introduction to waxing was less than glamorous.
“I only really did eyebrow and lip wax,” she says. “Then, one day, they scheduled me for a leg wax, and I had no idea what I was doing. I just figured, well, it’s just like a big eyebrow, so I’ll be fine.”
The experience was anything but fine. “It was by far the worst experience of probably my life and the woman’s life,” Jeny laughs. “She probably still talks about it to this day. It was like a two-and-a-half-hour experience, and it was terrible.”
That painful lesson sparked Jeny’s determination. “I made it my mission. I was going to be better at leg waxing.” She practiced until she mastered the technique.
The Brazilian Revolution
Jeny’s career took an unexpected turn when a client from Chicago came in with a Cosmopolitan magazine one day, featuring an article on Brazilian waxing. “She’s like, ‘Hey Jen, I’m reading about this thing in this magazine. It’s called Brazilian Waxing. Can you do this?’ And I was like,
‘I don’t know. Let me see the magazine.'” Jeny agreed to try it, effectively learning how to do Brazilian waxing through Cosmopolitan magazine—a skill that would later become her specialty.
“Nobody was offering it here in Northwest Indiana,” she explains. “I was the only person outside of Chicago that was offering Brazilians.”
Family Changes Everything
After 12 years working at salons, Jeny faced a new challenge: balancing her career with raising three toddlers.
“I knew that wasn’t going to work with three toddlers,” she says about the salon schedule. When she left, her loyal clients understood her need to focus on family but made one request: “We’ll go somewhere else for facials, pedicures, manicures, makeup, all that. Is there any way you can still wax us?”
Living in Michigan City at the time, while most of her clientele was in Lake County, Jeny made a bold decision: “I’ll just come to your house.”
She began traveling across Northwest Indiana, starting as far west as New Lenox and working her way back to Michigan City. “I would almost always have my kids with me,” she shared. “It was an adventure.”
The Waxi Taxi Parks in Northwest Indiana:
Many of Jeny’s clients were also mothers with young children, creating a perfect arrangement. “They were able to get a service. I was able to do work, and we both kind of won, and our kids entertained each other.”
Soon, clients began organizing group appointments. “Why don’t I invite my friends over, and we could just have a whole group, and then you could see more people at once?” This led to “parties” where Jeny would provide waxing services for book clubs and girls’ nights, sometimes working until midnight.
As demand grew, a client-turned-friend suggested, “Jeny, you really need to make this a business.” Though initially resistant (“I don’t want a business. That sounds terrible.”), Jeny was won over by the perfect name: The Waxi Taxi.
“She’s like, ‘Well, I have a name. You should call it the Waxy Taxi.’ And I was like, ‘Well, that’s really cute.'”
The Wax Was Hot and So Is Growth:
With a catchy name, logo, and website, the business boomed. Eventually, the mobile model became unsustainable, and another friend suggested getting an office. Jenny’s first location was a tiny office in Chesterton for $150 a month, where clients surprisingly preferred to come to her.
“Everything that I’ve done has been driven strictly by my clients,” Jenny emphasizes. “From opening it to starting it, all of it. It’s been like them requesting it and me going, ‘Okay, sure, that sounds good.’”
Nine years ago, Jeny opened a second location in downtown Michigan City. As her business expanded, she hired her first team member, later moved to a larger space in Chesterton, and most recently launched a Crown Point location managed by her sister, Molly.
Lessons Learned Along the Way
When asked about what she’d impart to other female entrepreneurs, Jeny looked back and wished she had recognized her own value sooner. “I didn’t think I had a skill, gift, or anything to offer. It was clients telling me I had that skill to offer. And I wish I had recognized it myself sooner.”
She also emphasized the importance of finding mentors: “Boy, it would have been nice to have a mentor. I just fumbled through everything. I didn’t know how to run a business. I didn’t know customer service. I didn’t know anything.”
From accounting to setting boundaries to staff management, Jeny had to learn everything herself. “I had to figure out every single thing by myself. And it was painful.”
Community Connection: The Heart of Waxi Taxi
Community involvement has always been central to Jeny’s values, and that is evident in Waxi Taxi. Her passion for helping began in high school, when she, at 16, started a recycling program for Cedar Lake.
“I’ve just always been a person that if there’s something that needs to be done, I want to do it or find a way to get it done,” she says. “That’s just what we’re supposed to do.”
As a business owner, she feels an even greater responsibility to give back: “They keep me surviving, I keep the community surviving, and it just keeps going around.”
Today, in addition to being an active community partner, Jeny focuses on creating the flexible work environment she needed as a young mother. “I want as they grow and start families or move or their lives change, I want their career to be able to flex with them,” Jeny replied when asked about the work culture she seeks to create at Waxi Taxi.
Her team members make their own schedules and “essentially have all the benefits of having their own business without any of the stresses of having their own business.”
Jeny has created a successful business and a supportive community where clients and staff feel valued and understood—proof that sometimes the most unplanned journeys lead to the most meaningful destinations.
Waxi Taxi has locations in Chesterton, Michigan City, and Crown Point, Indiana, providing waxing services to clients across Northwest Indiana.
