The Omni Grove Park Inn, Asheville, North Carolina

First Annual · TrueNorth by Elevate 2026

The hair loss seminar our industry should have had years ago.

Two days in Asheville with people who've actually built a hair loss business. I'm teaching live, and we're announcing what I'm teaching soon.

  • December 6 and 7, 2026
  • The Omni Grove Park Inn, Asheville NC
  • 120 seats
$1,500a seat
Claim My Seat For $1,500

120 seats. Non refundable, non transferable.

The Great Hall fireplace at the Grove Park Inn, Asheville, photographed in 1913

Asheville, North Carolina

The Omni Grove Park Inn at Christmas

We didn't pick a hotel. We picked a landmark.

The Grove Park Inn opened in 1913, built by hand out of granite boulders hauled off Sunset Mountain, and it's been sitting on 150 acres two thousand feet up in the Blue Ridge ever since. Presidents have stayed here. Fitzgerald wrote here. The Arts and Crafts furnishings are original Stickley and Roycroft. You walk into the Great Hall and there are two stone fireplaces at either end, both big enough to park a car inside, and past them a wall of windows looking out at mountains that roll on farther than you can see. In December the whole place is dressed for Christmas.

Entries in the National Gingerbread House Competition at the Omni Grove Park Inn

And then there's the gingerbread

The National Gingerbread House Competition has been held at the Grove Park Inn since 1992, and 2026 is its thirty fourth year. Bakers fly in from all over the country to compete for more than forty thousand dollars in prizes. It's been on Good Morning America, the Today Show, and the Food Network. Every entry goes on display around the resort from November 17 through January 3, so the halls you'll walk between our sessions are lined with hundreds of castles and cottages and cathedrals that people somehow built out of gingerbread and icing. Some people drive across state lines just to see it. You'll be walking past it on your way to get coffee.

Underneath the resort there's a spa carved down into the mountain, which Conde Nast Traveler has named one of the top resort spas in the country. There are eleven places to eat and drink on the property. And when the sun drops behind the ridge, the whole valley goes gold out those Great Hall windows.

This is where we're holding the first annual TrueNorth, because the work we do deserves a room like this, and so do you.

While you're in Asheville

The Biltmore Estate is ten minutes down the road and it's decorated for Christmas too. A forty foot Fraser fir in the Banquet Hall, hundreds of trees through the house, and Candlelight Christmas Evenings after dark with live music in every room. Downtown Asheville has the food and the galleries and the music, and the mountain air to go with all of it.

Bring your husband. Bring the friend you always say you're going to travel with. Come in a day early or stay a day late and finally take the trip you've been promising yourself.

Who's going to be there

We're announcing the rest of the lineup over the next few weeks. Here's who's confirmed so far:

Speaker

Jen Gottlieb

Jen Gottlieb delivered her first standing ovation under the bright lights of musical theater. Years before she became one of the most sought-after keynote speakers and personal brand strategists in the world, Jen was learning the art of connection in front of live audiences, eight shows a week. But it wasn't until she left the stage, walked away from a hit VH1 show, and chose her own version of success that she truly stepped into her voice, and her power.

That bold decision sparked a journey that would lead her to co-found one of the fastest-growing PR and personal branding firms in the country, Super Connector Media, and become the go-to expert for leaders, entrepreneurs, and creators ready to be seen, heard, and paid for who they truly are.

Today, Jen is the bestselling author of BE SEEN: Find Your Voice. Build Your Brand. Live Your Dream. She's been featured on stages alongside Oprah, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Ed Mylett, and was named one of the Top 50 Keynote Speakers in the World by Real Leaders Magazine. Known for her dynamic energy, radical authenticity, and actionable frameworks, Jen helps audiences break through resistance, own the room, and build magnetic personal brands that drive real results, on stage and online.

Through her signature keynotes, live experiences, and her podcast The Jen Gottlieb Show, she's helped thousands of individuals transform their stories into powerful tools for visibility, credibility, and impact.

Jen lives in South Florida with her husband and business partner, Chris Winfield, and their three dogs: Teddy, Arthur, and Tammie. When she's not traveling the world speaking or coaching the next generation of thought leaders, she's probably on a long walk in a weighted vest, creating content, or ordering coffee like a true New Yorker.

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Lizzie Velasquez, speaking at TrueNorth by Elevate 2026

Speaker

Lizzie Velasquez

Lizzie is coming to talk about her own hair loss, in her own words, to a room full of the people who do this for a living.

We spend our whole careers on the technical side of this. Densities, attachment, color matching, the shape of a hairline. What we get almost no training in is the person. What it actually feels like to watch it come out in the shower. What she has already been told by three doctors and her mother and the internet before she ever sits down in your chair. What the wrong sentence from a stylist does to somebody who is already hanging on by a thread.

You'll take better care of every hair loss client you ever touch after hearing her, and you'll be better at the consultation too, which is where most of us lose the sale without understanding why. Follow her at @littlelizziev.

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Nick Mirabella, business strategist, speaking at TrueNorth by Elevate 2026

Speaker

Nick Mirabella

Nick coaches mesh integration and extension stylists specifically, which is exactly why he belongs in this room. He isn't a general salon consultant handing you the same plan he gave a med spa last Tuesday. He knows our services, what they cost to deliver, what they're actually worth, and why so many of us are booked solid and still underpaid.

He's been voted the number one business strategist in the salon industry, he's been in this trade since 1997, and he still owns and runs salons. Every location he's owned, he's built into a seven figure business. He's taken stylists with full books and flat income and helped them add somewhere around $10,000 a month in profit, without adding hours or chairs or one more marketing gimmick.

He's not coming to give you theory. He's coming to tell you where your money is leaking out and what to fix first. Follow him at @nickmirabella.

More names are coming: social media, business, and more of the medical side of hair loss. Every time we announce one, this ticket gets harder to get, not easier.

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Some of this is probably going to sound familiar

You're booked three weeks out and you still check your bank account before you walk into the grocery store. You're one of the most talented people in your salon and you're easily the most tired one. You raised your prices twelve dollars back in the spring and felt bad about it for a week afterward.

Then a woman sat down in your chair and took her hat off, and she cried, and you went home that night and looked up mesh integration at eleven o'clock.

Maybe you took a class after that. Maybe you did two clients, they came out beautiful, and then nothing happened for three months and you couldn't work out what you'd done wrong. Or maybe the certificate is still in a drawer somewhere and you haven't charged anybody what the work is worth yet, because you're bracing for what they'll say when you do.

I want to be clear about something. There's nothing wrong with your hands. Nobody taught you the business, and that's a completely different skill. A technique class shows you how to do the work. Very few of them tell you what to charge for it, how to get the next twenty clients through your door, how to keep somebody coming back for eight years instead of one appointment, or how to build any of it into something that still pays you during a week you can't work.

That's what these two days are for.

Stylists working on a client at an Elevate Mesh Integration class

What this actually is

It isn't a trade show, and it isn't a class where you sit and take notes and drive home the same person you were. It's a room full of stylists who are done guessing, sitting in front of the people who've already worked it out.

Why we call it TrueNorth

Sailors have navigated by the north star for thousands of years for one reason. Everything else in the sky moves. That one point doesn't. When you can't see the shore and you have no idea which way you're pointed, you find that star and you know where you are again.

That is what Elevate has become in this industry, and I'm not going to be shy about saying it. When a stylist wants to know how hair loss work is actually supposed to be done, ours is the standard she measures herself against. When somebody teaches this work somewhere else, they're usually teaching some version of what we built. We set the direction the rest of this industry steers by, and we take that seriously enough to name an event after it.

Direction also happens to be exactly what most stylists lose along the way. You already know you were made for more than back to back highlights. You just don't know the road between where you're standing now and where that actually lives. So we are going to stand in that room for two days and point at it.

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What we're doing in that room

Six sessions over two days. I've put down what each one would cost you on its own, priced against what we charge for the same education everywhere else.

What you get Value
I'm teaching live. We're announcing what I'm teaching soon. I'll be in the room, and I'll talk through what I'm deciding while I'm deciding it. Not a video, not a reel somebody edited down. You'll be standing right there. $1,497
Lizzie Velasquez on her own hair loss. The whole client, not just her hair. Hair loss is medical and it's personal, and almost none of us were trained for that conversation. Lizzie is telling her story from the other side of the chair, which is the side we spend the least time thinking about. $997
Where Elevate goes next: men's hair replacement. We're bringing men's work into Elevate, and the educator who will lead it is coming to introduce it. This is a session, not a hands on class. She'll walk through what the work involves, who the client is, and why we're building it, so you know what's coming before anybody else does. Half the people losing their hair are men and our industry has mostly left them to sort it out alone. $497
The business session with Nick Mirabella. Voted the number one business strategist in the salon industry. He'll show you where your money is going and what to fix first, which usually isn't the thing you'd guess. $1,497
Social media that actually books people. How to build a page that brings hair loss clients to your door, instead of one that collects likes from other stylists. $497
Two days in the room. Me, our educators, the speakers, and 119 other stylists who are after the same thing you are. Honestly, a lot of what people take home from something like this comes from whoever they end up sitting next to at lunch. $997
Total value in that room $5,982

Your seat

$1,500

per seat

The room seats 120. Once the seats are gone, they're gone.

Claim My Seat For $1,500

120 seats. Non refundable, non transferable.

Do the math yourself before you decide

I'm not going to promise you a number. I don't know your market, or your prices, or how hard you're willing to go at this once you're home.

But work it out before you buy anything. Take what one hair loss client is worth to you across a year, the install plus every maintenance appointment after it, and set that number next to $1,500. For most stylists I know, it isn't close.

The other half of that math is the part nobody adds up. If you've been circling this for a year already, that year cost you something too. You just never wrote it down anywhere.

Who belongs in this room

  • Come if

    • You want to add hair loss services and you don't know where to start
    • You're already doing this work and you want it to be a business instead of a side service
    • You've wondered how anybody builds a hair loss clientele on purpose, instead of waiting on referrals to trickle in
    • You're curious about the Elevate method and what it would do behind your chair
    • You want to know where men's hair replacement is going before it rolls out
    • You want a page that fills your books
    • You own a salon, you're good, you're busy, you're tired, and you know something on the business side isn't working

  • Don't come if

    • You want a certificate for the wall and nothing about your week to change
    • You're really booking a vacation and writing it off. Bring your family, but be in the room.
    • You think one more technique is the answer and not the business underneath it
    • You already know you won't raise your prices when you get home
    • You're hoping somebody else will do the hard part for you. Nobody in that room can build your business except you.
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The questions you're probably already asking

I can't afford $1,500 right now.

I understand, and I'd rather you keep your money than sit in that room resenting it. But the real question is whether it comes back to you, so look at what one client is worth to you over a year and answer that part honestly first.

I've never done any hair loss work at all.

Then you're exactly who I'm building this for. You'll learn from me live, in the room, and leave knowing what the road actually looks like, instead of trying to piece it together from Instagram.

I've already taken your online course. Is this the same material?

No. The courses teach you the work. This is the business around the work, the marketing, Lizzie's story, and a first look at the men's work we're bringing into Elevate. My live session will sharpen your hands, but that isn't the reason to come.

Why not just learn this online?

You've probably tried. Most of us have twelve saved reels, a folder of screenshots, and a Tuesday that looks exactly like last Tuesday. Something different happens when you're in a room with people who are already doing it.

Can I bring my family?

Please do. The Grove Park Inn in December, with the gingerbread and Biltmore right down the road, is a great trip for everybody. Just be in the room when we're in session. The ticket covers you.

What if the dates don't work?

Then catch us next year. Tickets aren't refundable or transferable, and your seat is registered to you, so please be sure about your dates before you book.

Gingerbread photograph by Harrison Keely, CC BY 4.0. Great Hall fireplace, 1913, Library of Congress, public domain.

One more thing

  • The room seats 120. Once they're gone, they're gone.
  • Lodging isn't included. Staying on property is the easiest way to see the gingerbread display, since the resort limits public viewing on some dates in December.
  • Your ticket covers both days of programming. Travel, lodging, and meals outside of what's served in the room are on you.
  • Tickets are non refundable and non transferable.
  • You don't need to be Elevate certified to attend.
  • A seat is $1,500.

I've watched women look in a mirror and meet themselves again. I've watched them touch their own hair and go quiet. That's the work. It isn't a line on a service menu, it's a calling, and I believe God put it in front of some of you for a reason.

I think a lot of us are waiting on permission, or on a sign, or on the year things finally calm down. They don't calm down. You just end up older behind the same chair.

If you want in on it, come to Asheville in December.

See you at TrueNorth.

Kelly Maxwell
Founder, Elevate Mesh Integration

$1,500 a seat. 120 seats.

Claim My Seat For $1,500