Tune in as Vonetta shares insights on building a beauty business, navigating salon ownership, and the industry's evolving landscape of education and licensing.

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KEY TAKEAWAYS:

🔅Have a Roadmap for Success: Planning and setting clear goals are essential for navigating the complexities of salon ownership.

🔅Work-Life Balance is Essential: Finding balance is key, especially post-pandemic, as salon owners juggle personal well-being and business demands.

🔅Invest in Staff Training and Development: Building a strong team through continuous education ensures long-term success and staff alignment with salon goals.

🔅Integrity Builds Trust: Maintaining integrity in client relationships reduces mistakes, dissatisfaction, and the need for redos, fostering client loyalty.

🔅Address the Risks of Unlicensed Activities: Unregulated services can harm both consumers and the industry’s reputation, highlighting the importance of proper licensing.

🔅Collaboration Creates Better Outcomes: Stronger partnerships between schools and salons can offer students real-world experience, preparing them better for industry challenges.

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The Hairdresser Strong Show is all about Salon Owners, Rising Stylists, and Seasoned Stylists sharing their experiences, successes, failures, and advice to inform, educate, and empower their Fellow Hairdresser. We won’t stop until we are all: Hairdresser Strong.

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The views and opinions of our guests are theirs and important to hear. Each guest's views and opinions are their own and we aim to bring you diverse perspectives, career paths and thoughts about the craft and industry so you can become Hairdresser Strong! They do not necessarily reflect the positions of HairdresserStrong.com.

Vanetta Dumas Jennings is a 30 year industry veteran, image specialist, salon owner, author, educator.

She sits on the D.C.

board of Barbering and Cosmetology and she does community advocacy.

Last time we talked, we heard about her story from high school all the way up to going into salon ownership.

And if you missed that story, definitely go back and watch it because it's filled with all kinds of incredible information.

Now today we're going to pick up where we left off and we're going to talk about salon ownership, community advocacy and getting and what it's like and how they, how she got on the board.

D.C.

board of Barbering Cosmetology.

So welcome back to the Hairdresser Strong Show.

I am your host, Robert Hughes and today I'm with Vanetta.

How you doing today, Vanetta?

I'm great.

Thank you again for having me.

I'm super excited.

This is fun.

Yeah, I agree.

I'm, I'm really thoroughly enjoying this conversation.

I'm, I really love your story and all your messaging that you have to have, you have that you shared so far.

So again, if you're listening or watching and you're just tuning in, I strongly advise you go back and check out the first episode before you listen to this one.

If you're tuning in just because you're interested in advocacy and salon ownership and you're in the right place.

So Veneta, you, we had just ended right around you saying that you were crazy busy at the salon and they didn't want to give you more assistance.

And you, but you were also talking about pulling back and maybe not doing as many clients and you're talking about a little bit of work life work balance with like having some time to yourself and taking care of yourself.

I feel like maybe that's a good place to start off and you can talk to that as we transition into your salon ownership.

I'll start out with a little segue before I tell a little bit about that.

I once read this book by Stephen Covey and I think it was the Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, I believe.

Yeah, that sounds, I think I've heard.

Of that book before and I would start with beginning.

I think the big, the biggest lesson I learned from that book is beginning with the end in mind.

And I say that what made me think of it is when you talked about that work life balance.

Work life balance is something that you always work towards and work for.

And in order to accomplish that, you got to begin with the end in mind.

And when you were, when I, when You were sharing a little bit about my back story and opening the salon.

And when I think about that, there was no work life balance.

I'm just getting to a place where there's work life balance because I'm a worker being I'm a Generation X and I was always taught to work hard and think about everything else later.

I wouldn't say that's a good idea because I think our millennials and our Generation Zs are teaching us a little bit differently because I know we also were taught to work smart, not harder.

However, our personalities, a lot of times, I'll speak for me, it's just to work hard.

And in that working smart heart.

That's funny.

The reason I laugh is because I feel like I work smart, yet I still find that I work hard.

But I'm now at a place where I have this work life balance.

And I think it came after Covid.

I don't know that I've ever had it.

I take a lot.

Go ahead.

I take a lot of small vacations.

That gives me a little bit of balance.

But I still work hard.

Once I'm on, I'm on.

Totally.

You know, I think that happened to a lot of people with COVID for kind of forced.

And no, I know it forced me to.

To do different things with my day because I physically couldn't do certain things.

And I hear you, I hear you on that.

Some say, I think like work life balance conversation is like, I think we could have an entire episode.

An entire episode on that, for sure.

Absolutely.

So, okay, so you tell us what this transitioned into ownership was like.

Tell us about that.

And you, you mentioned the word hard.

So please share all the details because I'm sure plenty of people want to know what they should expect.

So as a hairstylist working at, I would say the best salons in the city, being that I lived in Cincinnati and D.C.

i've always, my brand is to be the best.

So I've always aligned myself with people that I think the best, even down to the classes I take.

Being that I think I am the best, you have to kind of be like a little bit a step ahead of me in order for me to pay the top dollar for education.

And so with that being said, I glamorized salon ownership working in these salon environments that I worked in.

They ran like well oiled machines from the front desk to the back door.

And so I glamorized the industry in my head of how easy it is to do, being that I've always focused my Energy on skills.

Management was never an area where I spent energy to focus.

And ownership and all that it entails was never focused.

I thought in my head, because I know business and I've worked in some wonderful businesses, that I could do this seamlessly.

Well, I had the money, so money was not a roadblock for me.

What became the roadblock, if you think about it, owning a business as a hairstylist, I said before, it's important.

And I'm trying to be strategic in what I share because I really want to convey to anyone that's listening that may have these ideas of going into salon ownership and thinking it's a glamour job and it's very easy to do.

Going into that process, I felt like I had the money, I had the clients.

The only other option was to create a space that I loved going to and people enjoyed working at.

And I felt like I can do this.

So I did.

I jumped in the pool.

It's almost like jumping in a swimming pool and you feel like you can swim and you can't and, and, and that's when you find out.

And that's what happened to me.

Dealing with a landlord that had was on heroin.

So dealing with the landlord that had challenges was the beginning of the hard part of opening a salon.

Because I had to deal with all the mitigating factors that no one saw.

The harassment, the verbal abuse, the bullying, turning my lights off, turning my water off, stealing my furniture, to having to go to court.

Oh my gosh.

Nothing to do with being a salon owner, but everything to do with being a salon owner.

Because these are the things you had to shield from your clients, your staff and everyone around you and show up to work every day with a good face.

So that was my unfair advantage getting started.

I was there for two years.

Well, I had the team.

So training and educating my team was a new.

A new journey to be able to make sure that they had a well rounded balance, ensuring that they were able to do what they wanted to do with their career, yet still stay in line with the goals and the values and the mission that the salon had.

And what created that challenge is having people just show up for education, giving them free education and showing up.

And part of showing up is also being present and learning the information.

So being able to communicate the importance of this.

When you have a staff member that say they want to just do this, but yet these are the steps to get there.

So being able to make that mind shift that is no longer about me being behind the chair and generating income it's about growing and nurturing and developing a professional that has their own ideas about what the industry and what they want to get out of the industry and how much they want to take home at the end of the day.

So that became a challenge.

Training my staff was never a big issue because that's something I'm really, really good at.

But just getting that paradigm shift was something that I had to grow through.

And I had some amazing people work with me that was.

I was able to grow with.

And I say grow with because I became the student again.

As a salon owner, you are the student because your goal and your role is now of a different level of service.

You're not only serving the client and making sure that they're happy, but you're serving the staff so they can make the clients happy.

So that was.

That was very difficult with me learning the different mentality, because no disrespect to millennials, but Millennials is a group of people that I had to learn and I had to get to know because they come from a different mindset of way.

They like to do things, and they're adults.

So you have to be able to listen, learn, and still get your point across.

And I kind of in the early phases, so I like to say I'm this type of person, and I'm being completely honest.

I'm the type of person that if you give a person the plan, the strategy, and they just go and do it, because that's who I am, and that's what I did.

So I.

I did not have a policy manual.

I did not have even a legit payroll.

I had a payroll because they got paid.

I never bounced a check, but I wrote my checks in the beginning.

So I didn't have a payroll system.

I didn't have any of the business aspects of the business in place to function, to be, or to set my business up for success.

I think my business, I was operating as a hairstylist owning a business, and it's not the same.

So my business, in the beginning, it.

Even though we generated money, it never was a business that I visioned like the ones that I worked for.

And that's because I was operating at the begin doll and the end all of everything.

And I was just looking at the dollar and not so much had the.

Had the time or the capacity as an operating stylist to work the vision of the business.

So I would say for anyone that's interested in owning a business to hire a management team, and that may not be viable initially.

But that definitely has to be a goal to work towards.

If you're going to be a business owner and operator, you need a management.

And that management team has to have different layers of focus so your business can grow and develop into being the ultimate success of a business that you wanted to see and of business owners that you may admire and aspire towards.

Do you think that the business owner or management team could be stylists or do they need to be just on payroll getting paid by the business work, doing that job?

It could be both.

It could be both.

Okay, it could be both.

However, in order for it to be both successfully, there has to be time carved out to perform the role that that management role would require.

And starting out it for some, that may be how it has to be.

You have to start out still operating behind the chair.

But there has to be an in.

And for me, I see an end where I have to no longer be behind the chair and focus solely on growing the business in order for it to be successful.

But if I tell more about my story.

I opened a salon on U Street.

I was again fully booked, hired a few people, we had fun in the salon.

So the advocacy for me was something that kind of came together by doing events, you know, doing fundraising events that may helped another cause.

One of the causes that I took a lot of pride in, working with unhoused individuals, working with families that had needs.

And so we would do fundraisers that might be a coat drive, winter warm coat or food drive, things of that nature.

And that's something that we did twice a year.

The other things that we did was just bringing self esteem awareness inside the salon, different events, fitness, bringing fitness trainers in, creating health and wealth, bringing nutritionists in the salon, teaching them about diet, different things of that nature.

We brought dermatologists in the salon, talking about skin and a lot of different professionals.

So that's kind of where the community advocacy lived within the salon environment.

But back to the story about entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurship is a whole nother.

I don't know if I ever got good at it.

Honestly, I've been doing this for 13 years.

I don't think I've ever got good at it.

I'm more so good with training and developing staff and what that looks like when you're experiencing a detour and a shortcut.

And.

And that's when I start doing presentations on the making of a six figure stylist.

Because I said I did it.

Let me give you more, an organized way of how you can do it and give you the Tools that will help you become successful.

Because now I have a staff.

So in order for me for them to be successful, I had to give them a roadmap that would help them.

So I began teaching that inside my salon and I wrote out the program, did a whole presentation and then I started teaching it at conferences and different events and then some one on ones and now I'm ready to do it on a grander scale.

So I'm in the process of writing a book that really dives into the meat of it because I've taught the program in an hour.

So you know that's a fast track and just giving you little information that you got to take notes and expound on your own.

I've done it in a four hour segment and sessions and I've done them on a weekly series.

So with that being said, having the book as a tool really will allow the person to really dive in and really get to know who they are in the industry and to become successful.

But in a salon, as a salon owner, I don't know how much I can talk about it.

It's just important to really know who you are by being the expert, communicating to the consumer every step of the service being clear, earning their trust, gaining their respect and preventing any unsatisfaction.

That is been my claim to fame.

It's what I share with my staff, it's what I share with anyone who will listen.

These are the key steps to being the expert because in a salon environment, customers are more educated than you are.

And that's with the YouTube and the Instagram and social media.

Whereas before in my industry, when we came up, we just had magazine and the consumer was not as well learned prior to the Internet as they are now.

So in order to, you know, command the respect that you need, it's just important to be able to constantly educate the consumer.

And being able to translate that with my staff was super important because I no longer am focused on just me and my chair.

I'm focused on the business and making sure the business can be thriving so we don't have challenges.

And those challenges like return return requests where a person may or may.

Well we know return requests is when people want to rebook with you.

But what I'm challenges when you're, you're not maintaining that retention.

That's what I'm trying to say.

You're not getting the referrals, your prices are being questioned, you're getting complaints.

So these are some of the challenges that you want to be able to continue to coach to these types of behaviors.

So you are getting the return request, you are getting the referrals, you are getting satisfaction.

Because I, while I'm not probably, well, I ain't going to say probably.

While I'm not where I want to be, I feel like I've stayed consistent with where I am.

And partly being an entrepreneur and an operator, it takes a lot of focus to be able to do both really well.

And I think Shonda Rhimes, the great movie producer, writer and all the things she is, she said when she was doing Grey's Anatomy, maybe Scandal wasn't doing good, or maybe when Scandal was doing good, her kids wasn't doing well.

In order to do anything well, you have to have some kind of focus.

And that's why I say having a management team is important.

So while trying to balance entrepreneurship as a salon owner and still be behind the chair and still be the highest producer, not because that's what I wanted, but just because now the hairstylists want to be the millennials they want, if I can speak for them and forgive me if I'm over speaking to anyone and no stretch am I trying to be offensive, but want the work life balance that we work so hard to strive for later in our life, they want it now.

They want it before the, the clientele.

They want it immediately.

And I, I think it's a great thing because I'm not saying the way I did it was the best way, but in order to be able to do that, you still got to be focused.

And, you know, they now want to work three days, two days, four days, or, you know, or they want to work when they decide however that that is.

So, you know, being that I was an owner operator, I had to pick up the slack on any of the capacities that may have or may have been or may not have been like him because now I have an overhead.

It's not just about what I make and take home.

And as I shared with you before, I opened my salon with no loan, I began after being in that one location for two years and dealing with a really adverse situation with my landlord.

As I shared previously, I had to move to a new location just to have a better peace of mind and a better focus.

So my start was I had an unfair advantage just with just the things outside of the salon that no one know knew I dealt with.

I mean, I had my landlord turn the lights off.

Why I had clients in the chair.

I had to, I had to call a beauty supply store to bring me chairs into the Salon while my.

I come to work and my chairs are missing and we're working.

And here I am acting like nothing is going on, having a police come inside of my business like nothing is going on.

And that's one of the things I can take pride in.

I know how to remain calm in an adverse environment.

So I did move to a new location and my second location when I moved to where we are now.

We've been there for 11 years.

Come in July.

I'm really excited.

So exciting.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

To say that, you know, by the grace of God again, I was able to maintain a salon I was currently working in and of course, my home.

So that's a mortgage and a rent, all utilities, and a payroll.

While I at that particular time didn't have a formal payroll, I still had payroll that I had to write out on, you know, so payroll.

And now I have a new salon with not only a deposit, first month's rent, now I have to also pay an electrician, a plumber, drywall, buy new furniture, and up my Aveda products because I'm an Aveda now.

I went from an Aveda family salon to an Aveda concept salon.

So much larger space, more upfront and personal on U Street, and doing so again second time around, no loan, while maintaining everything else.

I take great pride in that.

And that's something that's new for me.

That is new for me to actually pat myself on the back for being able to do anything because I've been so busy operating under.

What do you call.

I have a very different story than many people might have.

And my story is simple, like I'm so busy putting out fires that I've never really got to enjoy the building and the growing of the business to actually reach that level of the vision that I've already set forth.

When I told you, I began with the end in mind.

I'm not there yet and nowhere near there.

However, I'm still here.

Something is quite interesting about that picture.

But I moved to the new location, renovated entire space.

It was previously an apartment, tattoo parlor, and did all the things and now hiring new staff.

And that was fun.

That was fun.

I mean, I had so much.

So many fun, fun things and.

And so many different events that we did that was really fun.

But then it became burdensome because the more staff you have, the harder it becomes.

So trying to manage people, train people, and then they quit and do it all over again.

Manage people, train people, and then they quit.

And you know what?

I think we just landed this.

The other conversation.

Oh, man.

Retaining.

And the return on the ROI of training people and stuff like that.

I'm writing this notes down because, you know, if.

If I.

We get the.

The chance to.

I want to have more of these conversations.

Okay, so what.

Where did the.

Where did the.

Where did the state board come in to all this?

And the.

Can I share something before we get there?

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Okay.

One of the things I think the road map I think would be important to add to this journey is being able.

That I didn't say and I should have started with was being able to establish what the brand is and to be able to establish being an expert to the clients and being able to be consistent and lead with integrity and creating a demand for the business.

I think that's important and that's how I was able to do what I've done and been able to maintain it up until this point.

And having that representation is super important.

Yeah.

I mean you.

This.

All this like if I was.

If I was a person that was thinking about opening up a salon and I wanted to know what type of things to.

I wouldn't want to know what I don't know.

I would.

I am loving this conversation right now.

And.

And if anybody's smart enough to ask themselves what things do I not know before I get into this venture, then they've just like landed a little gold mine here.

Because what your.

Your story I feel like is really pointing out a lot of what it.

What it takes.

And this is so good.

Well, thank you.

I would say for that person, you know, even having an operating system, I, you, You know, I.

There's so many out there.

I personally use the lawn biz having a system that now I do have a payroll, real payroll.

So manage being able to.

Managing your inventory, being able to manage your customer flow, being able to have communication back and forth with their clients.

So using a software system that communicates with your clients for you, being able to input that information like thank you for coming, we haven't seen you in this amount of time.

Having a newsletter and these of these natures things don't to be able to continue to communication with them or sending happy birthday or happy this holiday or that holiday and that type of communication.

But the salon software is super important because it also lets you know how much one person may have spent over a period of time.

Whether this person is purchasing product or not purchasing product or they did when to tell them there's time for this service or that service.

And having those things in place has been super important to managing the salon seamlessly outside of, pardon me, the day to day.

Those are the things that also go unseen.

The reminders of their salon appointments.

I remember we used to have people canceling, but we were not calling them or sending any form of reminders.

So having that reminder system in place and things of that nature, that communication piece and continue now, you know what they didn't tell us?

That we now have to be videographers, photographers, filmmakers, we have to write scripts, we have to dance.

Now even so that's the other part of being in business that we gotta now do that we never had to do before.

We gotta, we gotta become celebrity people.

We have to appeal the people, like do a little song and dance for them.

Now that's, that's a part of it too.

Yes, it is.

It's an unfortunate part of it for those boomers that may be left or these generation X people like myself.

But that's where you hire people.

You hire people to do things that they're very good at and you can focus on the things that you're good at.

And that would be for entrepreneurs leading the business, not so much just owning it.

Because being a salon owner is really a glorified bill payer Because Oprah Winfrey said, if you cannot afford, if you can't afford not to go to work, you're an employee.

So while I hold the title of entrepreneurship, I'm still an employee because I cannot afford not to go to work.

So my goal, I think for anybody to think that being a individual salon owner or to own a salon is easy to, to think again.

And I tell the people that I've worked for, if I had to do all over again, I would just stay working for you.

And then I tell them that if I didn't love what I was doing so much, I would come back.

So it's kind of like the two things, you know.

So you're definitely not the first salon owner to come on the show and say that exact thing.

It's like I've made more money doing this.

Being a hairdresser, you calculate the stress in and all the years that I didn't make money as a salon owner.

If I would have just stayed making this, the, you know, being the high earner in the salon and putting my money away, investing in, I'd probably be worth more.

I thought that was interesting.

And I think that that's a whole other conversation which I'm going to write down that one too.

So like the value and like, like secession planning and working on your business, not in your business, all that stuff.

Okay.

I really want to get to the state board and the community, more of the community stuff.

So would you, Would, would you.

Can we shift gears there?

Absolutely, absolutely.

Well, thank you for giving me that extra time.

Sayboard.

I've always wanted to be on the state board and so the process is quite easy.

It's just submitting a resume, going to the talent and exact talent and acquisition process that's on the website for talent and acquisition for boards and DC boards.

But just being appointed by the mayor, working on the state board is an honor, it is a privilege and it's something that I do not take lightly.

We serve at the pleasure of the mayor.

That serve helps to serve and protect the consumer.

And we work in partnership with the licensed professional to make sure they have all the tools and the information they need to be successful creating a clean space for their customers.

That's what we do.

I think what we don't do is come in and shut people down.

We don't tell people what they can and cannot do.

This that is a health department.

That's the health department.

And I think that's where we get the bad rep, that that is us.

But it's not.

It is the health department.

And while the health department has these new rules and regulations, being that I have been newly inspected by these new rules and regulations, it's not as bad as it seems.

Because we go to school, we know to sanitize and clean, cleanse our tools and implements with the barbicide and the things that are regulated and approved of.

We do this every day, anything anyway.

And I think the biggest problem is the unlicensed activity.

That's the biggest problem and that's where the board has our focus is the unlicensed activity.

And the unlicensed activity are people that have not been at either.

They have not been educated, but they're performing services because someone has given them a space or they're doing it in their home, or they're been to school, haven't passed the exam or been to school and haven't taken the exam.

I think that is where our biggest challenge lie.

And I think because there's so many focuses on people hiring people without license because the demand is there, because people with license don't want to work together, they want to work individually.

And that is being if they're in their swamp salon suite, in their basement, in their kitchen.

I think the biggest risk now for the industry, and I think that's partly why, and forgive me if I'm overstepping, but the biggest reason why people feel that they can't make money and they can't be successful is because they're going about it in a way that was not, has not been proven.

I mean, we're not animals, but we do perform well in packs.

Like if you think about the classroom setting, we typically learn from one another.

We typically have fun and enjoy being in spaces with other people.

And when we tend to do things separate, I think we make a lot of shortcuts.

I think it takes us very focused, individual and they are out there and they are doing well and I respect them wholeheartedly.

That can work in those environments.

But it's the people that don't want to do what it takes to abide by D.C.

laws or D.C.

regulations or Maryland or Virginia or any state in the US to just perform the services that we need to perform in a clean, safe way.

So being for me is just about helping people have easy tools to be successful, not the roadblocks and the hurdles that makes working eat hard.

I have a question.

So why?

How.

What inspired you to join the board?

I've always wanted to be on the board.

I'm a rule follower, okay.

And I believe so.

Anyone that knows me know that I take what I do very seriously and I'm not good at it by happenstance, I'm gifted and I'm gifted because it was God given a gift.

But I'm also talented because I worked hard on my gift by adding to it with education and practicing my skills.

So that's where my talent came in.

So not only am I gifted, I'm talented.

And I take what I do so seriously because you can take somebody's hair out through chemicals, you can burn someone's skin through chemicals.

And it's just this very serious, although very fun industry and skill set.

So for me, I just, I just like to help maintain a level of standard that's missing in our industry.

I also like to make sure we elevate the industry for those that think there isn't much to be desired for us because they don't take us seriously.

And that goes to Congress and Senate and the laws that's being made as a representation of our industry or non lack of representation and then just regulations in general.

I think it's just important.

I just strive to be at the forefront of being able to help.

So on that to the next level.

Sorry.

On that note, I'm Curious one, I know our time is we're getting time to wrap it up.

So just to kind of like tie this off a little bit, I'm curious to know.

There's a lot of new ideas when it comes to licensing and regulation and I'm sure you've heard plenty of new concepts.

There's some ideas that think that we should make the state the test harder and raise the amount of schooling and the more things that people should learn.

There's some people that want think that we should make it quicker and just focus on the safety stuff and not really teach a lot of hair.

And then people learn hair in an apprenticeship or continue education.

And then there's also there's another idea that I heard about parsing out the licenses so you just get a hair license or maybe just a nail license or just something.

So there's like all these different ideas for people that, that are thinking of like how can like of updating our systems and in terms of regulation and the what what people are asking on 1, 1, I'm curious to know where how you personal about any of these ideas and two, and if you haven't heard any of these ideas then that's fine, that's fine too.

But if you have heard some of them, you've had some time to think about them.

I'm just curious what your opinion is.

And yeah, you said a lot.

So I'm trying to dissect it all in my head to see where I start with my answer.

Well, I'm a traditionalist, so we can start there.

You can probably see the way I'm dressed.

I got on a little blazer.

I am kind of a little square and conservative type of hairstylist.

Although I can do all the hair types and have fun as avant garde as I want.

So I can take it either way.

Based on what you said.

I do think it's important for individuals to be learned in the areas beyond just safety.

But in theory, theory is more important than anything before you get to the place of practic practical.

So there is a foundation that I think very strongly that every person needs to have.

Now do I think the license should be broken up into a lot of different pieces?

I do not personally.

I will say this.

We believe people should go back to work.

I believe people should go back to work and whatever that looks like.

I know people are doing lashes and they're able to do that and that's their focus.

People are doing nails and that's their focus.

There's people that doing blow dry.

So they're thinking, there's ways that I've heard they want to deregulate the industry so people can just go get a license to do blow dry.

People are just doing braids.

So in that vein, I think if people just want to go to work and be successful at doing one focus, there's no harm in that if that is a focus.

However, the challenges that we're seeing, that those people, same people that maybe want to do just lashes, they now are doing microblading, but yet not go to school for microblading.

So if you're in a space and no one knows you there and you've, you've been inspected and your license is on the wall for lashes, they don't know if you're doing microblading in that space and you're doing it.

Totally.

Not some.

Not everyone.

Not some.

So when those challenges comes about, I mean, we, we see them every day, or I'll say every meeting, we get these visuals of the consumer being harmed in some form or fashion that someone that under the ostriches of having a license or not having a license actually performed, whether it's fungal diseases, whether it's abrasions of some quantities form or another that's been infected, it's deplorable.

And so when you think about it like that.

So if you are not to pick on any specific segment, but say if you are a braider and you didn't go to school, but yet you're braiding and you're taking hair follicles out and people's hair not growing back, they don't have edges.

What happened?

You know, I think on those terms when I think about the old idea, the whole idea of us being deregulated, it's so much so that it's hard to keep up with when they think about how many inspectors they have in a region.

It's the unlicensed activity.

And are you going to actually go to school to get that license and do just that, or are you going to be like me and want to be a jack of all trades and later decide you want to focus?

So I have a.

I guess I'm curious to know that within this whole vein of conversation, what I've noticed is that young stylists want to move very quickly.

They don't want to go to a salon and do an apprenticeship and learn how the salon works and all the, all the soft skills and the.

And the other things that they just don't know, that they don't know.

And I don't have any hard data to back this up, but the majority of what I'm experiencing when I'm talking to school owners and students and teachers and salon owners and other stylists, that it's hard and there's a, There's a large enough failure rate of people getting out of school, trying to go out on their own that it raises my concern.

And I'm just wondering if there's a.

Is there a way to help these young people?

Maybe, maybe giving them, maybe getting.

And one.

One, I don't even know if you're seeing, seeing this at all.

Maybe this is something that you're not seeing.

I'd be curious to know, like, are people able to graduate school and in a large percentage find, find success by going out on their own immediately without getting real world experience?

And two, if they're, if, if they are, if there is a higher rate of failure with those people, what kind of ideas, if any, have been floated around to help them?

I don't think that that's licensing or regulation necessarily thing.

It might be more of a community building thing, more of an outreach, more of a education thing in terms of like the industry educating younger people.

However, I have come to a conclusion, a belief that if young, if rising stylists were spending time going to salons while they're in school and shadowing and learn, picking up some of these skills and learning what things that they should train themselves on and learn more about because they're not really getting into the salon schools.

And the schools don't deny that they're unable to teach them certain skills because it's just not a real world experience.

And so is there, do you think that it's possible or is there a way that maybe the state board could work together with the schools and maybe the salon to figure out a way to get these kids into.

Into salons, maybe foreshadowing, maybe getting credit for the.

Towards their license or.

I don't know.

So any, any of that stuff that I've just said, what are your thoughts on it?

I just kind of just dump some stuff on you.

But yeah, it's a little overwhelming to dissect.

Maybe that's a separate conversation.

You said a lot.

Yeah.

Oh.

What I would take away would be this.

I think through observation of the people I've encountered and the people that I've had conversations with, have shared stories about that we're in a generation that that tends to want something without working for it.

And I think if we were to go to the statistics, I don't know that any of us have it because I don't think it's enough statistics out there, if anyone has done the research to find it out.

Right.

But what we do know, and there are statistics and research that has been done that anytime you want to be good at something, there's hours that has to be sent on learning it, practicing it and performing it to become good at it.

So there's no quick fix or easy way out of it.

There has to be a certain amount of hours and I don't have the statistics in front of me that has had data to back it up in research that in order to do anything and do it well, you have to learn it.

Maybe.

I guess what, I guess you have.

To be able to practice it.

And there has to be that segue.

And I think that's where the school come in.

They teach it through theory, you learn it through practice.

Yes, there can be some form of apprenticeship afterwards because the school's role job is to only teach them how to pass the state board.

And the state board's job is to give you the foundation and the fundamentals to get started and not to talk about another industry.

But in order to become a doctor, you have to learn everything and become a generalist.

And then when you go back, back to school is when you become a specialist.

So I don't see any difference in the profession that I chose as a career and the path that I've taken to be any different.

However, a thousand percent agree with you, by the way.

Thank you.

However, there is a lot of amazing people out there that has done it different than I have and reached their goals quicker than I had.

And so it's no quick fix to say it can't be done.

But that's a specific kind of person that goes back to.

If you think about it, there's three or hundred people in a school.

There's only one valedictorian.

Right.

I mean, you just have to think about it's only going to be a very small number of a person that will excel in the environments that you speak on or even excel with the different variables that we discussed about deregulating, licensing, segmented segmenting, licensing, all those things.

Now, for the people in this industry that has been successful, they've charted a path for themselves.

And without a path, you're going to be all over the place.

And when you're all over the place, you.

It's just like this, the old saying, go, a jack of all trades and.

And master of none.

And so that's what I think about the whole thought process behind it.

If there can be a way that we can come together, and it hasn't happened yet, we're all different.

The health department, the state board, the schools and the salons, we're all different and we all serve different purposes.

So if our regulating board mission changes, the school's mission changes, the salon's mission change and health department mission change in some kind of way to make sure we can align and work together.

It's the only way that it'll ever happen.

Amen.

That's what I'm talking about.

I think that the solution isn't one party needs to.

We need to connect in a way where we figure out, like, the best way to move forward.

One thing I think would be helpful is if every student knew that.

Getting that the school, what you just said, like, if they knew that, like the school teaches them the passive state board.

This is the state board's job.

And then when you go out, you have.

You are going.

You're going to need more education if you want to be successful.

And knowing that, I think would be a huge impact to the experience that salon owners and students are having when they get out of school.

Because the students are walking into the world like they don't know that salons are going to make them continue their education and train and start off as an assistant or an apprentice and not even get a day behind the chair for up to a year.

You know, they think they don't know that.

They don't know it.

And I think part of the disservice for schools is the schools are not, for whatever reason, at the capacity to have within their budget to pay hairstylists to quit doing hair, to be an instructor.

In most cases, schools are hiring people that need the money, or let's not denote.

Forget to denote this.

Or having enough passionate people that just care about the education and can afford not to make the money that they can make behind the chair.

There are passionate educators out there and their goal in life are to be educators.

And we applaud them for that.

Yeah, there are some really.

I agree.

There's a reason why I'm as good as I am.

I had some amazing educators and they're.

They started as an education educator and they retired as an educator.

I thank God for them.

Them.

However, in the society that we're living in now, some of the challenges is just being able to afford a lifestyle to just make a living on caring for their families.

They need a little bit more.

And so where the budget is, I think that's where they struggle with finding good, qualified educators.

And yeah, and that's, I think, the biggest challenge.

And then finding educators with the roadblocks that are very good at being an educator.

Because you have to think about it.

If people go with a product brand like Aveda or Wella or, you know, some of the Paul Mitchell, they have an education program that teaches instructors how to be instructors.

However, state board regulation for instructors require you to have so many additional hours of organized education.

That creates a roadblock where some people can be an educator.

They have the years, they have the experience.

They've been teaching salons through Wella or Goldwell or Aveda or Paul Mitchell.

And they are teaching them skills to put the lesson plan together.

They're teaching them skills to convey a message without verbal fillers, as I'm using now, and teach to all learner types, like the person that can see it, the person that needs to have the hands on, the person that can read it, the person that has to do it.

There's four different learner types in this process.

And you have to have an individual that can teach to these learner types.

And these product companies are paying their instructors and teaching them how to, you know, get the attention of the learner.

But in the school system, a lot of times they may or may not have that budget to provide that level of education to the instructors or hire someone that has it.

I don't know.

I don't have all the answers.

And I'm not talking bad about anyone.

So I don't want to offend anyone in this process.

I just, from my experience, some of the things that I've seen, it's especially in the D.C.

area, cost of living is high.

Being able to afford to make a living off of this or not having to experience the roadblocks that it takes to get.

I know someone right now that is.

Is a global artist, but they don't have an instructor's license.

How do you become a global artist and not have an instructor's license?

It's because that there's a barrier somewhere that doesn't allow you to take the test that you would most likely pass to get the license to be an instructor.

Interesting.

That's roadblocks.

That's somewhere in the line, I think think there's roadblocks that people can't get the instructor's license.

They've worked 30 years, but yet they got to go back to school for, you know, 150, 250 hours.

And if I can demonstrate, which is how I got the job with the Veda, that I can create a lesson plan, I can present an information to, you know, several different learner types and perform the actual demonstration from start to finish.

That qualified me from being an instructor.

Only challenge is if you don't have an instructor's license, then you can't be an instructor.

But if you do, then you can move to that next phase.

So I think that's the biggest challenge.

In that, you know, that's, that's interesting and I like your line of thinking and I think I would like to talk more about it.

I also think that the salons have a role to play and the stylist being more involved.

You know, Patrick Guarneri, who also sits on the board with you, he always likes to talk about how, how people need to be more involved.

They need to come to the, come to the meetings, they need to go to the schools as guest speaker.

Like, like imagine if every, if it was like part of the salon owner culture to just regularly, kind of like on a regular basis, go to all the schools in the area and share the message of what it's like working for them, what the expectations are they would know when they going out into the real world, they'd be so much better equipped as well.

Not so like you're, what you're talking about will help increase, improve the education they get.

And then, and then what I'm talking about will help them know what the real world is, not just what social media people tell them it is because social media people are not telling them everything they need to know, but they don't know that you know.

So anyway, I don't, I agree with Patrick.

We do need to go into schools.

And I'm guilty.

I've said that I'm going to go into schools.

But a lot of times the challenge been either a, the school don't invite you.

And that's something that can be, you know, a little proactive on both parts, the salon owner and the school.

But the other thing is sometimes because some salon owners are owner operators, the days that they want you to come into schools are your biggest days behind the chair.

Totally.

So finding that common denominator where it's like a day that the salon owner not under benign chair, but then you have the salon owner that don't know anything about the industry, but they own a salon.

So they would have to take someone with them and again, that person is behind the chair.

So it would require some planning and proactive on both parts because there are some sacrifices we can make.

I can admit I can take off on a Thursday.

When they want you to come to a career fair, I want you to come and speak to them.

But it's with planning, you have to block your book off maybe two months in advance or, you know, some things to that, you know, degree.

Yeah, absolutely.

Okay.

So I think this is.

Feels like a great place to wrap it up.

I know that we went way over on time.

I great.

I so appreciative that you stuck with us and finished your story and.

Well, I mean, not maybe not finished, but got us this far.

Yeah.

And we got the salon ownership and realities of salon ownership and advocacy.

I think that was an awesome conversation.

Is there any last pieces of advice or things you want to say or anything before we sign off?

The last pieces of advice I would share is having a roadmap.

Anything that you do, you want a roadmap and you want to be able to establish yourself.

The other thing is your branding.

What does that look like?

And having a clear idea of what that looks like and being able to be the expert, not out there practicing.

And.

And sometimes you got to work with other people to learn by being an expert.

And the other thing is having integrity.

I think that's probably the biggest thing that has made me successful is having integrity.

I don't believe in doing redos or giving people their money back.

So therefore, what do I need to do to minimize complaints or mess mix?

What do you call it?

Mess ups.

Mistakes.

Yeah, mistakes.

So as I said in a previous episode that I messed somebody's hair up, I take very good pride in not doing that again.

So just being able to have integrity and communicate with the client and keep.

I think a lot of times people want to do people's hair outside of the mirror.

Like, how do you have your back to the mirror or to the wall and the guests can't see themselves?

That always baffles me.

And then you wonder why people complain and say you didn't do a good job.

You have to talk the customer through every portion of their service this.

That way they know that you know they're happy.

And you got to be able to read the body language because most of the time they're not going to tell you.

They're not going to tell you when they're unhappy.

You have to be able to read their body language too, to know these things.

So I say having integrity, if you do have to redo someone's hair, do it with, you know, no discrepancy and make people feel good and just having fun and loving what you do throughout the process.

I think that's the biggest thing we the reason we do hair is not to not have fun.

You know, they told me the reason I started doing hair is because they said you always wanted your hair done.

And that's probably true.

I like having my hair done.

I get it done every week.

So whatever it is for you, just have fun, because this is the best business in the whole wide world.

I love that.

Amen.

Well, thank you so much for coming on the show and taking your time, and I greatly appreciate it, and I'm sure the audience did, too.