Salon 14 North & PayMint

For Russ, Tammy, and Amanda Razzi, owning a small business runs in the family. 

I met up with Russ and Tammy at their salon - Salon 14 North - on the first day of July in the middle of a heat wave. Walking into their cool and sleek shop, tucked into one of Haddonfield’s adorable side streets, was a welcome reprieve from the oppressive weather.

Russ has been cutting hair since he was 19 years old. “When I was in high school, my friends would always lean on me to suggest different looks for them. I really didn’t know what I was talking about back then, but a few of them mentioned I should work with hair professionally. I looked into it, and I realized it was something I could grow with - that eventually I could open my own business. I’ve stayed with it ever since.” 45 years later, this job is still his passion. “They say most people have at least three careers in their lifetime. It doesn’t look that way for me, does it?” Russ laughs. “In this industry, you have to have a passion to stay current. It is constantly changing, and you have to be able to change with it and have your staff do the same.”

Russ was in his 20s and working at a salon in Philadelphia when he met Tammy. She was a makeup artist getting a bridal party ready for a wedding. After getting married themselves and welcoming two daughters, it became their dream to open their own salon.

In 2000, on Tammy’s birthday, she and Russ went for a walk in Haddonfield and noticed a “For Rent” sign on a building on Haddon Avenue. “We took the number down, Russ called, and that’s how we started.” 

Haddonfield felt like the perfect location for their new business. At the time, Russ was working at Pileggi in Philadelphia and wanted to be sure his clients could easily still reach him by train. “You can take the Speedline in, you can shop and have lunch in Haddonfield, there’s so much to do. We thought it was a good place to go.” Russ’s father, who had strong carpentry skills, helped build the first version of the salon. They sent out handwritten postcards to all of their clients announcing their new endeavor, and they opened their doors to the public in November of that year.

At the time of the opening, Amanda, their oldest daughter, was 7, and her sister was 5. “We grew up in the salon. It’s where I did my homework and studied for tests. My sister and I would play in the back and talk to the clients every day. They all knew us. Some of them, who have been clients since my parents worked in Philly, still like to tell me that they remember when my mom was pregnant with me.” As the girls got older, they spent their evenings hopping from store to store in downtown Haddonfield. “We would always be there late on Thursday nights, bored out of our minds. We would cross the parking lot behind the salon and walk into Maxwell James. I remember just walking around the store, looking at all the clothes.”

Being the daughter of salon owners had its pros and cons. Amanada recalls leaving the house as a teenager and her mom commenting, “If you leave with your hair like that, you better not tell people that your parents own a salon!” She admits now that her parents knew what they were talking about. “My dad knows what looks best. When I was in middle school, I really wanted blonde hair, but my dad didn’t want me to go blonde. Whenever he would put highlights in my hair and the assistant would wash it afterwards, I would ask her, ‘How blonde is it?!’ and she would say, “Ehhhh…” It was funny. Towards high school, he finally said, ‘Ok, we can make it blonde.’ When I asked the assistant if it was really blonde, she finally said, ‘Yes!’. Of course he was right, and now it’s dark again. But when I was 13 or 14, I just wanted to look like Christina Aguilera.”

Watching her parents run the salon taught Amanda about the importance of a strong work ethic. “When my sister and I started in corporate jobs after college, people would go to lunch, and we would think, ‘There’s a lunch break?’ My parents never took lunch breaks, they just kept working. I think this mentality helped us propel our careers.”

Amanda learned a lot about the inner workings of running a small business, and this led her to starting her career in payroll sales when she was 23. “Every company’s biggest expense is paying their employees. It’s also usually their biggest headache. People need time off, people need to go on maternity leave, people want to move up but there’s no growth plan for them. When I started my career, I joined a big, well-known payroll company. I was working with many small businesses, and being able to lean on my experience from the salon really helped me. I realized I was pretty good at what I was doing.”

Amanda made the President’s Club (a company incentive that recognizes the top performing sales representatives) in her first year. Eventually, she moved on to iSolved payroll company, which is where her career took off. “I grew from regional vice president to vice president of sales, and the company moved me and my family down to Charlotte, North Carolina.” While Amanda loved many aspects of the job, the 60-80 hour work week was taking a toll on her time with family. “I recognized that these are pivotal years with my daughter that I am not going to get again. So I told my husband, ‘I want to move back.’ He is from Philly and was totally ok with that decision.”

After a year of working for another company 4 days per week, Amanda decided she wanted to launch her own payroll company. “I started PayMint at the end of 2024, and we went live in April of 2025. I began by recruiting businesses I was familiar with. My parents’ salon was my first client.”

PayMint quickly grew from 5 initial clients to 75. Amanda has felt a lot of support in the process. “I have a couple mentors I lean on who own payroll companies. I reached out to Lee Procida, from Mountwell Marketing, to help build my website.” Amanda connected with Tammy Pular, the owner of Maxwell James, the clothing store she had frequented during her evenings as a child in the salon. “I told her I was starting my own payroll company, and she said, ‘We’re switching.’ Since then, a lot of my work has come through word of mouth.”

Braving the heat, Amanda and I walked around town, stopping at many of the local businesses that now use her company for payroll. The list includes The Little Hen, Darling Betty’s, Inkwood Books, Maya’s Mexican Ice Cream, Jersey Java, and Dandelion District.

“My work life balance is so much better. I walk my daughter to school every day and pick her up. It’s been amazing. That is the whole reason I started my own business. Sometimes she will visit my office and I will joke with her and say, ‘One day, you can take over PayMint!’ She tells me, ‘No, I’m going to take over the salon.’” I ask Tammy and Russ how they would feel about that. “We would feel great. It would be awesome.”

As we return to the salon, things are bustling. The Salon 14 North team now has four stylists and three assistants. Tammy is behind the front desk helping clients check in and out and taking phone calls. “My mom knows every client’s name,” Amanda tells me. “She knows everyone.”

These days, Tammy doesn’t do makeup as much as she used to. She spends most of her time running Salon 14 North. For her, the biggest reward is the relationship she has with the clients. “I enjoy connecting with people. We have always wanted our salon to feel like home. You can come to your appointment in your pajamas if you want; we don’t care what you look like. You can share anything with us, but if you don’t feel like talking, that’s ok too.” She also loves seeing clients transform with Russ’s expertise.

“It’s especially nice when a client comes in for the first time and wants a whole transformation. Russ is just… he’s excellent. He’s really good with people. If someone comes in and says, ‘Hey, I’d like this haircut,’ and it’s really not going to look good on them, he will just gently tell them, ‘Let’s do a variation of this.’” They always land in a good place.

All of the hard work and effort the Razzi family has put into Salon 14 North has paid off. They have been awarded “Best of Philly” twice. Tammy recalls how thrilling it was the first time she found out about it. “A client called me and said, ‘Tammy, I want to congratulate you!’ and I said, ‘Why?’ She told me, ‘You got Best of Philly! You’re in Philadelphia Magazine!’”

One of the most rewarding moments of reflection for the Razzis came in 2025, at the salon’s 25th year celebration. “The place was packed. There was a constant flow in and out for three hours. Hundreds of people came by.”

Russ and Tammy said that some of their longtime clients traveled hours to attend the party. “We were so moved. People we didn’t think would come showed up. Russ has clients from Pennsylvania, Delaware, New York… even from North Carolina and Virginia. They traveled to be with us that night. We couldn’t believe it.” They brought along one of the original postcards they had sent out when they first opened and set it out as an acknowledgment of how far they have come.

“It really showed us that we have done what we set out to do.”