Published in the Quad-City Times on Feb. 22, 2024

At any given moment, there’s a good chance that Dao Vo is either on a plane or in a salon.

The 29-year-old nail technician spends half of her time living in Los Angeles, and the other half living in her hometown of Davenport. She flies back and forth every month, in order to spend time with her three young boys. 

Vo, a single mother, says the travel isn’t a problem. She’s been taking those cross-country flights for five years now, and it’s safe to say that her life today is a lot different than it was then. 

Years before her move to Los Angeles in 2019, Vo was living at a women’s homeless shelter in Moline. She’d just left living with her parents, who both also worked as nail technicians, and she picked up a job as a nurse to save up money. 

After a while, she saved up enough for a low-income apartment.

She enjoyed working as a nurse, but kept doing nails on the side. Her older sister, also a nail technician, was an inspiration. 

“I like the creativity of it,” she said. “Being able to have my client feel beautiful.” 

The more she started doing nails, the more she realized she wanted to make it her full-time gig. Vo kept at it, hoping to escape the long hours of nursing. 

“I just wanted my kids to be financially stable,” she said. 

Vo came back to Davenport to become a licensed nail tech, earning her license in just a few months at La’ James International College. She turned it into a dual-license for both California and Iowa and bet on herself by accepting a job at a salon in Hollywood in 2019.

“I just wanted to see how far I could go with the nail industry,” she said. “I was the talk of the town here in the Quad-Cities, so I’m like, ‘Let’s just go to L.A. and see what we could do there.’ And it just popped off, I guess.”

Vo’s bloom wasn’t immediate. Not long after arriving in California, Vo had to adapt. When the COVID-19 pandemic started, the salon she worked at told her it would be closing down. 

“I’m like, ‘I can’t stop my money,’” she said. 

So she started taking house calls, doing nails on-call at the homes of different social media influencers and celebrities.

After a while, Vo became something of a social media influencer herself. Today, she has almost 200,000 followers on Instagram. When she first moved to L.A., she had only 500. 

She’s done nails for rapper Bhad Bhabie, model Draya Michele, internet personality Blac Chyna and professional wrestler Barbie Blank. Most recently, Vo had her biggest break yet — she did the nails for South African singer Tyla before her appearance at this year’s Grammy Awards. 

At the Grammys, Tyla won the inaugural award for Best African Music Performance for her song “Water,” a viral hit online. Vo had done Tyla’s nails for the “Water” music video and Tyla’s Vogue Magazine cover, too. 

When she found out about Tyla’s Grammy win, Vo said she jumped up and down in a restaurant. She didn’t watch live because she was already doing someone’s nails. 

That’s common for Vo, who said she takes six to seven appointments every day, each one varying in length but often upwards of two hours. The time commitment doesn’t bother her, she said while rattling a mostly-empty McDonald’s coffee cup for effect.

“It’s just a breeze to me,” she said. “I don’t really pay attention until I’m done.”

Thanks to her nail technique and success on social media, Vo signed to a Hollywood talent agency this year, with the hopes of reaching more big names out west. She’s got a bucket list of clients: Ice Spice, Saweetie, Nicki Minaj. 

“They’re talking about magazine covers, different celebrities, different celebrities,” she said. 

Vo also came back to the Quad-Cities this week to pay it back to La’ James International College. She spent four hours with students working on new designs and furthering their creativity. 

She’s hoping to appear at some of La’ James’ other campuses nationwide, and to talk to students about online marketing and how to build a following. 

Vo always designs her own nails, too.

As she showed off her current set — a row of glistening silver punctuated by a Hello Kitty design on her middle finger — Vo also revealed a tattoo on her chest. It’s a phoenix, with wings spreading over her shoulders, rising from the ashes.