Accelerate Career Growth, Speeding Up Success [EP:180]

Accelerate Your Growth: Speed, Systems, and Smart Strategies

In this episode, Jen and Todd discuss actionable strategies to accelerate your progress in business ownership and personal career growth. 

They emphasize the importance of speed, mentorship, taking risks, and creating effective systems. 

Tips for business owners include investing in mentorship, efficient systems, and good education. 

Employees are advised to practice new skills immediately, organize their workflow, and invest in quality tools. 

Jen and Todd also highlight the significance of building a network of like-minded professionals to open new doors and opportunities.

00:00 Introduction and Opening Remarks
01:05 The Importance of Mentorship and Coaching
04:50 Defining Your Goals and Path to Success
10:21 Implementing Ideas and Taking Action
16:21 Risk Taking and Stepping Out of Your Comfort Zone
23:20 Breaking Bad Habits
24:03 Implementing Efficient Systems
24:52 Streamlining Marketing Efforts
26:33 Standardizing Employee Processes
31:08 Investing in Yourself and Your Tools
37:46 Building a Strong Network
41:53 The Shortcut is Hard Work

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Transcript

180
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Todd: [00:00:00] Alright, what's up, everyone? Welcome back. Happy Monday. How's it going, Jen?

Jen: Great.

Todd: So, we're going to talk about, we're going to skip opening takes today. We decided to just, Rush through. So we're talking about speed today, and so we want to just get to the point, right? It seems like everybody wants to get to the end goal as fast as possible, and that makes total sense.

Like I mentioned on our first take of this recording, I am just like everybody else. I'm just as impatient as everyone else, and I'm trying my best. It's something that I actively work on to slow down. Like, there's a lot in the process. There's a lot in the journey that helps you later on. And if you rush, I think you're going to shoot yourself in the foot, for lack of a better term, and fall flat.

Right? Or fail. And that's not what we want. We don't want that for people. We want people to succeed. So, [00:01:00] I think we had said we were starting with, hold on, let me go back to my other notes. We're starting with mentorship and coaching.

Jen: Mm hmm.

Todd: So basically, learning from other people.

Jen: Yes. Mm

Todd: you learn from other people what you're doing, so in the case of mentorship or coaching, like if you pay somebody for their time, what you're really paying for is not necessarily their ideas or their thoughts, you get that too, but what you're really paying for is speed.

Jen: hmm.

Todd: You don't have to make the same mistakes. You don't have to go through the same things. You don't have to take as long figuring things out because hopefully you have a mentor or a coach that's actually done. the things before you and figured them out for you.

Jen: Right.

Todd: So that's a big part of it. And let's look at it through two lenses.

So let's today talk about what owners of businesses can do. And that can be whether you're an independent artist working for yourself or your The owner [00:02:00] of a salon, rental salon, commission salon, whatever. And then like, let's look at hair pros in general. So you are an employee somewhere. And so for owners, I would say you probably should at some point invest in some sort of business coach, group mentor, something,

Jen: Mm hmm.

Todd: and.

Again, it's, it's really about surrounding yourself with people that have built the thing that you're trying to build, if that makes sense. Which

Jen: perfect sense.

Todd: is pretty straightforward.

Jen: really great.

Todd: Yeah. For employees, it might look a little different. So you're not trying to necessarily build a business. You're building yourself.

So what could you do? And I know Jen, you can talk about this because it's what you did when you started, but you could find a seasoned stylist, seasoned barber, seasoned, whatever.

Jen: Mm hmm.

Todd: And just ask them for some guidance, ask them for some help, attach yourself to that [00:03:00] person. It doesn't even necessarily need to be somebody that you work with in the same salon.

It could be somebody that you go to that maybe somebody has been doing hair for 10 years and you've been doing hair for 5 years. There's a different set of problems from year 5 to year 10 that that person has already gone through than from year 1 to 5.

Jen: Yeah, correct. 

Todd: Do you want to talk a little bit, or what else do you got on that?

Jen: that's exactly I Mean if you're new or wherever you are in your career and you want To progress or maybe you're feeling uninspired. I your peers or people that have been Whatever it is you're looking for longer or great people to be around. When I was at my first salon, I picked the shift where the two busiest people worked that I looked up to that.

I liked the work they were putting out. Then I was like, I want to be like them. They had really big totals at the end of the week. So they were making in my mind at that time as a 21 year old, like decent money and whatever. So I just was like, I want to be working when these people are here. [00:04:00] And then it kind of was like, Oh, yeah. One day I asked one of them, like, will you do my hair? Cause I wanted to feel like what it would be like to be their client. Like, what is that experience like? So all of that sort of helped build that. That was my year one through five of doing hair. And then towards the end of that five. There was another girl that I worked with and I asked her to basically work with me one on one on Fridays if I brought in models and just really helped my skillset grow.

Todd: Gotcha. So what about I before we even move on, or maybe we should have started with this? I'm not sure. What about [00:05:00] defining what your goal actually is? That's probably a good place to start. So if you're trying to get there as you know, quote unquote, as fast as possible. What do you mean? What is there?

Where are you trying to get?

Jen: right? What is your vision for your your profession?

Todd: Exactly. And then how do you break those steps down? Because you're going to need different people and different mentors along the way for different things. And we're going to talk about networks and stuff in a little bit. But yeah, your path is not necessarily going to be the exact path of everybody else.

So I think that in the hair industry, you're There's sort of these pre thought out paths that people assume that they have to take

Jen: Mm hmm,

Todd: and it's wrong and I'm saying it's wrong because nothing is right for 100 percent of people, but 100 percent of people that we talked to are saying that this is my path and it's always the same thing right and we Not going to harp on it because whatever and from what we've seen like with [00:06:00] our own eyes come through our salon and move through on this path and we we've seen like I would say a good amount of failure

Jen: Mm hmm

Todd: where people are ultimately either, you know, they are lowering their prices and then that is just detrimental to your success whenever you have to lower your prices.

It's not a good thing. But they don't know what to do because they were so consumed with the path that they were sold that they never actually stopped to look at, what steps do I actually need to take to

Jen: to make it successful,

Todd: make it successful? And if you're not able to guess, I'm talking about working for yourself or opening your own place.

And a lot of people think that that is the ultimate goal. And a lot of people think that that's the only way to make money. And a lot of people think that's the only way to have respect of people in the industry. And it's just not true. It's not true at all. And business ownership is not for a hundred percent of people.

And that's okay.

Jen: Yeah,

Todd: I don't know why there's this sort of I'm not sure what word I'm [00:07:00] looking for, but it's almost like it's frowned upon to be an employee, but

Jen: I

Todd: I think it's true.

Jen: there that yes It was like quick can I get out on my own? And that means I'll be successful which I have seen so often the opposite of that And I've seen that happen to of course, but I think

Todd: Okay.

Jen: the word there.

I think you should define what success means to you. Cause for some people, just to say I'm an owner somehow makes them feel successful all it is is just a title. We talked about this last one, like just a title. It really means nothing. So I, I think when you're. a business or working for whatever it is that you want out of your career.

What does you should define what you think success is for you? And that's going to change over time because it's easy to get caught up in what everyone else thinks it is for them. So if you know what success is for you, maybe it's making a certain amount of money. Maybe it's being booked a certain amount of time. Of these things come into it. Then at that point, it doesn't matter. Sort of [00:08:00] what, like we say, what pay structure you are, if it's working for yourself or in a commission. If, if you're on your path to, you're constantly making more money and you're constantly getting busier and busier, then you should feel successful. You can see some of your friends that may be doing certain things and they're not making more money and they're not getting busier, but they say that they're an owner. So. You're more successful by that definition than your friend. But it's easy to just be led down a path that success equals that you have to be working for yourself, or you have to be owning your own business. And I would say not necessarily, unless that's the definition of success for you. I

Todd: Yeah, so first of all, could you hear my phone when it was ringing or doing whatever? I don't know how it got linked into the system, but it's on there, so I apologize. What I was going to say is, That I could prove to you that people can be more successful monetarily because we have people in our salon that are shattering their goals.

Money wise and service wise, and they're not working for themselves. And now I know we have a different setup. So our salon there, we [00:09:00] have a lot of freedom. So you're like on our, in our salon, there's a massive amount of support, but you're also on your own to deal with a lot of things because it's just part of the experience that we wanted to create for our team.

It's part of our vision. It's very important to realize that your end goal is not necessarily what you were sold in school or what your friend says is best for you or whatever. You really need to take the time and think that out. So if I could give anybody any free advice, and if you're going to listen to me at all take that advice,

Jen: Mm hmm.

Todd: really sit down and figure out what's important to you and what's truly important.

If just saying that you own something is important,

You're I'm gonna tell you you're gonna struggle,

Jen: Mm

Todd: but here's how to struggle less Find a mentor that knows how to build a business and then focus on business What too many people think that they need to do is get X amount of clients and then [00:10:00] they're somehow they know about business

Jen: And

Todd: Having having hair clients is nothing to do with business at all.

They there's zero carryover So I'm sure there's something there So don't bite my head off people listening but not a lot doing hair and running a business are Two different things.

Jen: different,

Todd: So, all right, let's get back to speed. Yeah. Fast paced. Let's stay on track. So implementing things quickly. We see this, how many times do you see that people have all these ideas, but they never do anything?

Jen: right. All the time. Mm hmm. Mm

Todd: Paralysis by analysis, right? So, for owners, what you really want to do is try to test things right away. So if you have an idea, you should be testing it within days,

Jen: hmm.

Todd: not within months. And right there, a lot of people are like, but what if [00:11:00] it's not? It doesn't matter. You're going to figure out if it's not perfect.

You're going to figure out if it doesn't work. You're going to figure out what you can and can't do. You're going to figure out where you need to adjust. You're going to have inevitably times where you have to pivot. You're going to have inev inevitably time apparently I like that word, inevitably.

You're going to have times where you have to scrap something totally. How many times have we done something and we're like, this isn't working, scrap it? A bunch

Jen: Right.

Todd: part of well, it goes back to mentorship because you have to do that stuff if you worked with us because we would help you just skip stuff.

But again, we might what we've done with people in the past and what we still do with people is to still push them through to make their own mistakes and figure their own things out because there are lessons in some stuff. I'm not going to let you fall on your face. But I am going to let you work through your idea.

And I've had people in the past who I'll question their ideas and question their ideas. And finally, they're like, the more I say that, the worse it sounds. And I'm [00:12:00] like, Bingo, I got you there, but I let you figure it out on your own.

Jen: Right. Cause it's your business and it should be your thought and you have to learn how to be mindful and make mindful decisions, not just have someone tell you what to do. Then again, you're not running your business, you're, you're just being told what to do.

Todd: Correct. And that's not what we do. That's not our style. So I never do that. I never will just give someone the answer until there are times where people will become frustrated. And I'm like, do you want me to just give you the answer of what I would do? It's a, it's no way, shape or form a promise that it's going to work exactly how it worked for me.

But I can tell you it's probably going to get you further and faster. So at least it's going to keep us progressing.

Jen: I think too, when you have new ideas and you're like, I don't know when to start or whatever, everything you think, how it's going to go, it never goes that way. So the sooner you get moving on your idea, the sooner you'll be able to evaluate how it's going to be in real time, what's actually going to work and what's not going to work

Todd: Exactly. So for employees, the example that I had was to put into practice things immediately. So we hear [00:13:00] this in the hair industry a lot, right? We hear education, education, education. What are you doing with that though? Are you just taking education? Are you just saying that you're taking education and sitting online staring at somebody do something?

What are you doing with that education? And so You should really, like, if you go to a class and it's a cutting class, you really should have a mannequin before you even take the class so that you can come back and practice on that mannequin while your ideas are fresh immediately. Otherwise, that information goes in one ear, and what do you retain from that, 50 percent from watching something like that?

You know, because it's not hands on. You have to do hands on because hands on is what's going to get you, and I'm not saying hands on education. You can go to a look and learn. And my, what I'm arguing is that you immediately have to practice what you learned,

Jen: Right.

Todd: or else it's going to be [00:14:00] gone. And every day you push it off, more and more trickles out of your brain because you don't need that information.

So, not to get into how your brain works, but your brain isn't going to store this information if it doesn't think it needs it. That is a waste of energy for a human being. So you've got to put stuff into practice immediately, immediately, or have a model that's lined up. So say you take a blonding class, have a friend that wants to go lighter that you are going to try this technique on.

Then go take the class, and then immediately the next day, go implement that. Go try it. Go do your best. And you're going to find that you retain more, you're going to find that you move faster, and you're going to find that you progress far more than if you just sit on the information sitting on your hands.

Because you, you need action.

You got nothing. Okay.

Jen: say hands down on that. There's really not much else to say. say it all the time.

Todd: What the heck, dude?

Jen: could add is

Todd: I'm perfect. [00:15:00] I'm perfect. I'm perfect.

Jen: an educator do whatever the technique is, they've most often done that so many times. They're super efficient at it. They're, they're Like they make it look super easy and it's easy to leave that and be like, Oh, I could do that in a second.

And then you go to do it and you feel like you have two left hands. So, you know, it's, it's so important to go practice that because it's not going to be as easy as it looks. Even if the technique itself is easy, the person showing you, you know, It's very, very fluent in that technique, so it's if the more time, like you said, if you don't practice it, you're just gonna it's it'll be a have been a waste of your time.

And I truly believe part of why education isn't always what people are doing is because they've had either bad education or they don't practice it. So they're like, that's that was a waste of my time. I'm never gonna use that. Well, you didn't even try. That's just plain and simple. But if you want to get technically better, faster, you need to go to these demos or watch your videos, but then, like you said, practice on mannequins or real people right away, and you will see yourself progress really quickly.

Todd: Yeah, there's [00:16:00] no way around it. You can't progress with it without it. It would be like when I owned my gym and I told people, just go watch videos of people squat. Your squat will improve. Nope, your squat only improves when you squat.

Jen: Yeah.

Todd: So let's move on. Let's talk about risk taking. So obviously in business, we're looking at speed.

You don't want to take like unnecessary risks. You don't want to be reckless. But there are times where, and we touched on this a little bit with implementing quickly, is You have to just move like you have to not get caught up over analyzing every single decision you can come back and adjust things as you go, but you need to still be going so for that's what I would say for owners,

Jen: Yes.

Todd: right?

So you need to sort of say, say you have this process in your [00:17:00] business. Just get it going. And then perfect it. So minimum viable product is something that was, I was trying to come up with in my head there. Minimum viable product is something that you can bring to the market. You can bring to your business and you can launch it like it's good enough.

You know full well and good that it's not perfect, but you also know that if you don't start, you're never going to start. So you have to get something out there. It's like when a lot of businesses start, like when we started. We got a website out there. It wasn't the best website, but we needed a website.

So we got a website out there and then we went back and we were like, how can we improve this website? What do we need to do to take this website to the next level

Jen: That's a great example.

Todd: for employees, I would say taking risks, it would be stepping outside of your comfort zone. So it would be exploring, say, you're somebody that's new in the industry because I see this way [00:18:00] too.

Like I, I see this too much and I disagree with it and I think people are setting themselves up for failure maybe or shooting themselves in the foot, but they want to specialize as quick as possible. Like just got my license. I'm going to specialize in this. Now. I'm only going to do only this. And I'm like, okay, well, you're leaving a lot of potential on the table because you don't even know what you like or dislike.

You don't know what you're good or bad at because you're bad at everything to be honest with you. And you might not be bad, but you know what I mean? Like you're not, you're not very good when you,

Jen: very low level when you come out of school. So it's equally low level on all the things.

Todd: and that's any industry, any person, I guess once in a while, you're going to have a phenom. You're going to have a tiger woods that just like, At three years old was amazing at golf, but odds are that's not you. Odds are you're going to struggle in the beginning. So what I would argue you should do is expose yourself to all the things, even the things that you're uncomfortable with.[00:19:00] 

And then you can sort of niche down and specialize as you go. I would be challenging you to get outside your comfort zone on things like social media. A lot of people are like, I don't want my face on there. I don't want this. I don't want that. Well, I'll tell you what, when you put yourself on social media and you're able to push yourself there, you're going to be a lot more comfortable with one person sitting in your chair.

Because you

Jen: Practice,

Todd: you're over it, you're practicing speaking or whatever. The other thing is networking. What are you doing? Who are you talking to? I was talking to one of our staff the other day, one of our hair pros, and she was like, hey, got myself into this text, and it's like, just like minded you know, hair pros from all around the country.

And we just text about stuff. And I was like, that's really cool. Like, and then she said now everyone listens to your podcast. And I was like, thanks for sharing that. [00:20:00] But find a group, find something on Facebook, find there are Instagram groups. People want to charge you five bucks to get into them, but whatever, find something and check it out.

Who knows what you're going to find. If you got to pay somebody five bucks to get into their silly Instagram group, do it, you know, do it for three to six months and then be like, you know, I'm not really getting anything out of this, or this has opened my eyes, or this has shown me what I want to do next or whatever.

But you got to do something. You got to get out there. You've got to form a group and like all learn together, I guess.

Jen: I think on that, the more things that you can spread yourself, I don't want to say thin is a negative thing, but the more, the more things you can do. Right. So like you said, generalist on your skillset, doing social media, getting into networking groups, all of those things will help you first For the generalist on the skill set, build your clientele quicker because you're going to just be able work on so many more clients more often.

And then you can decide what kind [00:21:00] of services bring you the most joy. But if you specialize in the beginning, you're, you're literally cutting off 80 percent of clients that you could be seeing. So if you want to build that clientele, the more general you can be in the beginning, the quicker that clientele will build. If you want to build your confidence behind the chair and be able to, you know, Have better consultations. All of that comes in getting yourself out there, the networking, the social media. Again, if you want to be the best version of you and whatever pressure profession you're in as quick as possible, you have to do all the things at once consistently over and over again.

And before you know it, within a year, even you could be like five years ahead of where most people are that did nothing. Like that's how much you can get out of that and get there faster. But it requires putting in the work. All the time, constantly, and in all different directions.

Todd: Yeah, I have two quick points. So if you look at obvious ones would be for hairstylists not necessarily what you think of with barbers, but you have coloring and cutting. Now you might want to do just coloring or just cutting. That's great. But if [00:22:00] you do both in the beginning, it's going to make you better at the other.

So for example, if I know I am going to cut the hair a certain way, and the hair is going to move in a certain way or react in a certain way, then that's going to teach me where I should place my color. Okay. And vice versa, right? So there's,

Jen: is

Todd: you can, you can double down basically on your speed, like you're saying, and you're not cutting off the clients and you don't know what you don't know.

So I don't know why people are so quick to do that. I think specialization is a luxury that you are opened up to after you've put some time in.

Jen: Yeah, I would agree. I think everyone should look at it that way.

Todd: And the second thing that I was going to say, the second point was, I tell people all the time, the fastest way to not reach your goals is sit in the break room. And we've had a lot of people in the past at our salons that they're just in a rush to get to the break room. [00:23:00] They, you know, you had it at your last salon too, not even just hello, but you had people that would run and put the color on the client and then run out back.

Like they, for some reason, there was something about the break room. They just loved hiding back there. And

Jen: That gets you nowhere quick.

Todd: mindset. Yeah. Like, you're not like, what are you doing? You're just playing on your phone. That's not making you better. That's not getting you to your goals faster. That's not doing anything positive for you.

Jen: It's not leveling up a darn thing.

Todd: No, chilling in the broke room is. That's like, go eat there. You don't need to hang out there. Like go eat your lunch or whatever, or have your snack or drink your coffee. And I'm not saying if you have a stressful, crazy, busy day that you might not go decompress there, but it's, I'm talking about the habitual people who their goal was to just like do nothing and they're not at our salon anymore, so it doesn't matter, but either way let's talk about systems.

So you really got to [00:24:00] get the inefficiencies, I guess.

Jen: Mm hmm.

Todd: Out of your way as fast as possible. So what does that look like for a business owner? That looks like putting systems into place. So you don't have time to be doing manual bookings.

Jen: Mm

Todd: It should be something that's online. I know, sorry to pick on you, Jen.

It's something you struggle with. But, yeah, sorry. It is what it is. But, you don't have the time to be sitting there booking your client's appointments. They should be able to do that on their own as adults in your booking software. You don't have time to be going over, like, say for example, marketing. You don't have time to reinvent the wheel every month.

Jen: Mm

Todd: have to come up with a plan or in a system and then execute on that plan in that system so that you can continue to progress. Cause if you have to come back [00:25:00] and say your marketing is blogging, you're like, I want to blog heavy salon and I'm going to put out a ton of content to support the blog and whatever, three, two, one go.

So you start going through and every month you're recreating the wheel and you're sitting down and you're spending hours trying to come up with what blogs you're going to post and what topics people want to hear about. You should really have a system. You should really be sitting down and doing that stuff once, and then having like a format

Jen: Right.

Todd: a workflow for yourself.

That's what we do. So we have like a marketing agenda that we sit down and I have through, I don't know, April, March, May, whatever. I have the topics for those ahead of time.

Jen: Right.

Todd: then I have a format for what the blogs are going to look like. So when I sit down to write them, I'm just writing them. I don't have to spend all this time being like, what am I going to write about?

What are we going to do? If you figure that stuff ahead of time, if you figure out that stuff ahead of time, you can systematize it. And then it just makes life,

Jen: saves you time.

Todd: All your [00:26:00] repeatable processes should have a system. So silly stuff, it might sound silly, but like picking up the phone, it's important that everyone picks up the phone the same way.

Why? Because it's consistency and it's something that's repeatable. So you just want it to happen the same way all the time. That way you don't have to constantly be like, well, why was that person this or why didn't that person get. Hold about this. Or why did this get missed? Hopefully that makes sense.

For employees, things you might look at. And Jen, you can jump in anytime. I feel like I'm just doing just all.

Jen: I am adding my little tidbits.

Todd: For employees, you might want to look at stuff like your consultations. Like, maybe have, if, at our salon we have a training, so we go over consultations and what they should look like. And then we allow everyone to put their sort of mark on it, put their spin on it, because we believe in collaboration, but also the individual and the creativity and the art that goes into it.

So,

Jen: And having fun. Mm

Todd: and having fun, yes. [00:27:00] You really should figure out your consultation process and get that to where it's looking the same all the time. So you're not coming in and you're like, what should I ask this person about? What should I do with this? What, where's this? What do I say?

Jen: need a few key questions to really get that consultation on point.

Todd: Yeah, exactly. But have those.

Jen: Right.

Todd: that might not be as obvious for people starting out, right? Because they're nervous. They're already thinking like, so I know for a fact, cause I've seen people do this and people listening, you're probably going to chuckle or you're going to be offended. You have a client call, or you have a client come in for a consultation, or you have someone send you a picture or whatever, what's the first thing you do?

Start fuckin formulating your toner, don't you? You don't even know what the person wants, you don't even know what the hair's gonna lift to, you don't even know if they're gonna change their mind, you're wasting

Jen: to

Todd: so much yeah, you went right to the end. You're like, I'm gonna use this toner on them, what do you think?

What do you mean, what do I think? Where are they? Is their hair even like, is that even [00:28:00] possible? How many times have you seen that? And I know everyone's probably laughing, but Jen, how many times have you seen that where somebody will send an inspiration picture, but we don't know what their hair looks like?

So what are you talking about atoning for?

Jen: now to the staff and they're like, I know there's nothing you can do until we're at this point. Like,

Todd: You have to get, yeah, you have to go through that. So I would start to, if you're an employee, think about that stuff. Think about your client retention. How can you retain, retain more clients? Why are you not retaining more clients? I'm not saying that in a bad way. When you start out, you're not going to retain very many clients.

It just is what it is. You're going to see a shit ton of clients in the beginning, and you're going to have them coming through your chair and some of them are just testing you out because they're just testing. When, when you start out, you're at a lower price point, but some people are going to hop salon, salon, salon, just at the lower price point.

And that's just their jam. That's what they do. Now, how are you going to blow people away? So they never leave you. That's an open question. I want you guys to answer it or think about it.

Jen: the other thing I would look at, and I don't think people really [00:29:00] think about this as your workflow. So you should be setting up your station that works well for you. Make sure maybe you've got. Like we shift shares at, at hello, but maybe where you are, you're not. So when you came in, you put your combs here, your scissors here and your brushes. And every time you're going to grab something, like you're tripping yourself up. Okay, well then that workflow is not working for you. Where do you put your tray? Where do you put your foils? Where does all your stuff go? And does that have a nice flow to it with the client included in the chair? So that you're not like in their face or anything like that. It's really important to have a really great workflow. When we have newer people that come in, I'm like, we need to work at the chair with the mannequin, because. When you sit with a client, where is your tray? I don't need you tripping up over that. Did you grab your clips? Do you have this? And it show it exposes like what you're not organized about.

Are your combs all in to me? They need to be pristine. They're not stained, not teeth missing. So like going through that and making sure your workflow is professional, is leveled up and that you can move around the client in a way that works really well for both of you.[00:30:00] 

Todd: Agreed. Agreed a hundred percent. And we did that from the jump with hello, because it was not only a new salon, but it was a new space we had gutted it and rebuilt it. So what we did was we brought in our team, our opening team. And we worked for a few days, just sort of like a soft opening. We don't know where stuff's going to be like, let's, let's build this out.

Cause we can put stuff where you think it's going to work, but if it's not working there, why would you continue to do that?

Jen: And like, so kind of what you said, when you add new things, like you got to take a risk and you've got to change things on, we're adding kind of a new service type menu to some stuff we do. And we'll have a class because we need a workflow. How do we find all the stuff we need? If we're going to add these services at a different level,

Todd: Correct.

Jen: add it on and we're like, Oh, we'll just wing it.

No, let's go through a class with some people and make sure. Everything we need to run these services at the level we want. Everything's, we, we, first we have all the stuff we need. And second of all, is it easy and is it accessible how we need it and what do we need to change to get there?[00:31:00] 

Todd: The I want to talk next about investing in yourself. So I see this a lot too, where people are like worried about the costs of things. And I'll tell you the return on investment for a business class or a leadership class or some sort of marketing course or whatever, right, is far greater than guessing and asking random people on Facebook.

So I would highly suggest that you take some sort of something. And I'm talking to owners right now, so you need business, you need marketing. You need whatever.

Jen: That's

For sure.

Todd: yeah. And, and that's your fast track right there. You can go on and pull people on Facebook and who have no clue what your business is.

They have no clue what your mission or your vision is. They don't align with your core values. They

Jen: You also don't know their background and you're asking random people for advice for like, it doesn't even make sense.

Todd: right. And, and it's hit or miss because [00:32:00] some, like Honestly, I don't think there's anybody out there maliciously giving bad advice, but I see stuff that I'm like, wow, if I applied that to hello, we'd close in a week. Like that just would not work. And again, if you don't know how to run a business, you don't know what you don't know.

So you're setting yourself up for a longer go at it. Which means you're going to need more capital to keep your business running. And when you look at a class or you look at a mentorship or you look at whatever, and you're like, I don't know if I have that 3, whatever. Okay. It's going to cost you 75, 000 to fix it in three years.

Jen: the mistakes that you're gonna,

Todd: So

Jen: gonna end up.

Todd: all the money that you were leaving on the table and all the money that you're dumping into the wrong ideas and the wrong things. And I would just. I, I would take the road of investing heavily in yourself,

Jen: hmm.

Todd: For, and what's that?

Jen: piece of advice.

Todd: Thanks. [00:33:00] For employees, I would say, I would go back to the practice, right?

Don't wait on stuff. I would invest in, Jen, you can talk about this a little bit, but tools. It's you gifted me a pair of scissors when I first finished barbering school and I was like, I don't know if I need 1, 300 scissors and you were like, Todd, rather than go buy, you know, a 500 pair, 200 pair, this 100 pair, right?

Figure out what you like and get a quality set of tools. I'm not telling you to go out and spend 1, 000. That's not what I'm saying. But what I am saying is try to figure out the things that you really need and invest in those. I see a lot of barbers, for example, are like, I need 14 pairs of clippers. Do you?

Do you

Jen: Do

Todd: really?

Jen: Mm hmm.

Todd: Or could you get by with three or four? Like, do you know what I mean? Like it's, so why not have three or four pairs that are kick ass

Jen: Right.

Todd: for you [00:34:00] than to try to have as many as possible? Well, I need all the different colors and this and that. That does nothing for you. Right. So, and again I'm talking about speed.

If you want to play around, it's like if you, you've told people this before, set yourself up with combs and brushes, and that, those are the combs and brushes you're going to use for the next couple months. Because how do you have no,

Jen: have to like,

Todd: You have to use them. So how do you ever know what you're now? I'm not, I'm not sitting here telling you that if something's miserable to keep doing it, some stuff you're going to know right away, you hold it and you're like, I don't like this at all, but what I'm talking about is when you're done with school, it's easy to go to the store now because you have a license and to buy all the things and then be like, can I pick up another shift?

I need money. You know what I mean? So like, stop doing that to yourself.

Jen: I think investing in tools is really important. What I would say to somebody, like the fastest approach there is make a list of what do you need? What's the most important thing that you should go for first? What does that [00:35:00] look like? What is the cost? Find out what you want. I obviously scissors are extremely important. Even if you're a low level hair cutter with a good pair of scissors, your haircuts are elevated. It does make a huge difference. Then it might be replacing combs and clips and brushes that maybe came in your kit for school. But eventually that whole kit that you got for school should all be replaced with better working tools. It just, first of all, levels up the professionalism in what you're doing. But most of the stuff. Okay. Some of the investments you make in it will make you better at what you're doing for those services.

Todd: The other thing I want both people, owners and Employees to look at is focus on investing in yourself, invest in, in good education. Don't just take everything that comes at you. Don't just take everything that's on Instagram. Don't just take everything that people are like, this person has a large following, so they should come to your salon.

That stuff is so lame and I'm tired of it.

Jen: Mm

Todd: not all good education, not all education is created equally [00:36:00] and not everyone with a giant following on Facebook or Instagram is good at what they saying that they're good at. A lot of it is a sales pitch. And people are trying to just get in front of you so that they can sell you kits and things,

Jen: they're trying to

Todd: whatever product they're trying to sell you.

So, something that we take seriously is education, and we look at bringing in outside educators. This year we have a fantastic person, I've never met her, but you've talked highly about her. We have somebody coming in for a specialty class, we're flying her in from wherever she is, somewhere out in the Midwest.

And it's going to be awesome, but we get approached all the time. It's actually, it's a little less because I've just started ignoring people, but we get approached all the time where people, they started out with like, Hey, Todd, this person's coming in. They have 400, 000 followers on Instagram. I'm already tuned out.

Jen: Done. Yeah.

Todd: You're not telling me anything about what this person can offer me or what this person can offer my team. You're telling me about, I do [00:37:00] not care about your name dropping. It does not matter to me.

Jen: find it such a turn off. When people start name dropping, I'm done over it.

Todd: True. And when, if I wanted to get in touch with that person, I could just get in touch with that person. I don't need a middleman. So just, I'll stop ranting there, but in, in invest in some education.

Jen: created equally.

Todd: Yes, invest in some good education, and then put that immediately to practice, and you'll be far better than taking everything that comes your way.

Last thing I want to touch on, we're going a little long here, but that's okay. Last thing I want to touch on is your network. So, when you build relationships, it's going to open doors for you that aren't going to be open for, I guess, just on their own. You need people around you. You need [00:38:00] So for owners, you're going to need, well, we already talked about business mentorship, coaching, and all that stuff.

What about even just connecting with other owners so that you have someone that you're so that you're not like I'm alone in these problems, right? And that could be a group, but it would be better to be almost in person or a small group, not saying avoid, you know, big Facebook groups with tens of thousands of people, because there are some occasionally good stuff that happens in there.

Generally, it's the same thing recycled over and over and over, but. There are some stuff. You're going to need a network of, well, for example, what about your accountant? Now, a lot of people, and I see this again, I see this in Facebook groups where people are like, I like to do my accounting on my own to save money.

Okay. You're not saving money because if you think about it, you're taking so much longer to do that stuff that you're not focusing on growing and building your business.

Jen: and it's not your specialty So you're missing out on opportunities that an accountant is more [00:39:00] aware of.

Todd: Yeah, of course. Another one that could help you is having a good relationship with your distributor or your vendor. If you use a more boutique, a more, like, regional style distributor, like we're fortunate enough to work with. Those guys that we work with are available too much.

Jen: Yeah

Todd: They're available all the time.

I could text them right now in the middle of the show and be like, Hey, say hi, and they would jump on. I guarantee you. Guarantee you I could get one of the owners on the phone right now. And we love them for that. But my point is they want you to be successful because you're purchasing their products. So

Jen: them successful.

Todd: more, yeah, it keeps, it's, it's cyclical and it's like this great relationship.

So yeah, do that stuff. And again, you're, you're not going to go out and learn law. So get a lawyer. It's a cost upfront, but you chose to open a business and that goes for independent [00:40:00] people too. What's going to happen if somebody decides to sue your little pants off? You little, you little owner pants, right?

It, you need a lawyer. You're not going to be like, Oh, I figured that out on my own. I'm independent. Like, good luck.

Jen: Yeah

Todd: and now hopefully that never happens, but it does happen from time to time and you hear about that stuff where somebody gets pissed off and they want money back or they want this or that, and, or you mess something up.

Like that's going to happen. So have a good team for employees.

Maybe online communities, maybe people within your salon, maybe you're forming your own network, maybe you're, like, getting into that text group that I heard about recently. It's just a matter of surrounding yourself with people and then choosing if they're like minded enough to remain around. So, if you find that you're somebody that likes to watch the train crash and you can't turn away, you're gonna struggle because you're gonna go into these [00:41:00] groups And you're going to see this stuff that you're like, none of this makes sense, but you're going to stay there and consume it almost as entertainment.

When we're trying to do is build a network to accelerate you. So don't let,

Jen: to

Todd: get stuck.

Jen: not down

Todd: Yeah, don't get bogged down in the wrong networks, but you're going to have to go through and hopefully you're at a salon where the owner or the management team can also mentor you and help you through. Like I, what am I on year five or six of cutting hair of barbering?

So somebody coming out of school, I have five or six years on them. Even some of the people at our salon, I have a couple few years on them. And like I said, working through years five and six are work are different than working through years two and three. So, you know, just find your network and surround yourself with good people.

And the last thing I want to say is that oftentimes doing just doing the work and putting in the time is the shortcut. [00:42:00] So for example, everyone wants the magic pill, right?

Jen: hmm.

Todd: What are you guys doing in your salon to bring in clients? Right. But they don't want to hire a marketer sometimes hiring the marketer and doing the hard work, which is making the money to hire the marketer is that is the shortcut.

Jen: I

Todd: It's not,

Jen: Mm

Todd: it's not the magic bullet. Like, what are you doing for Valentine's day? What are you doing for specials for Memorial day? Like that's not, that's so low level thinking that you've got to get yourself. And I don't mean that in a, in a derogatory way at all, but I'm just meaning you're focusing on the lower level tasks.

And you need to start thinking about building a business, something that's replicable

Jen: hmm.

Todd: or that you can move forward. And that really is the speed. The speed is just doing the things and doing them well. And when you aren't sure what to do, go back to your basics. So work towards virtuosity, which is just simply doing the common things uncommonly well.

Jen: Mm

Todd: And when you can figure that stuff out, [00:43:00] that will accelerate you.

Jen: Yes.

Todd: That's all I got. Got anything else, Jim?

Jen: No, I think that was great. Ha

Todd: One of our longer episodes makes no sense. Here we are. All right. Thanks for listening guys. I'll let you go on that note. All right. Bye everyone.

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