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Salon Brand Building: A Modern Approach [EP:198]

June 23, 2025 • Episode 198

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In this episode of the Hello Hair Pro podcast, Jen and Todd dive into what it really takes to build a standout salon business in today’s industry.

They kick things off with a personal story about a salon owner's dress code and her grandmother's influence, which leads to a broader conversation about the role of professionalism and presentation in attracting the right clients and building trust.

Then, Todd shares a blueprint for treating your salon like a media company—from launching a podcast and building an email list to creating content that attracts dream clients and future team members. Learn how shifting your mindset from "just a salon" to a media-driven brand can unlock next-level growth.

Whether you're a salon owner, booth renter, or stylist with ambition, this episode is packed with practical advice to help you grow with intention, elevate your brand, and future-proof your business.

Timestamps:

00:00 – Intro: Why This Topic Matters
01:18 – A Salon Owner, Her Grandma, and the Dress Code Debate
03:30 – What Professionalism Really Means in the Hair Industry
07:42 – Jen’s Advice for New Salon Owners
09:26 – How to Build a Media Company Around Your Salon
20:52 – Final Takeaways & Growth Challenge

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Episode Transcript – Build a Salon That Lasts: Why Thinking Bigger Than “Just Hair” Matters

Why the Foundations Still Matter [00:00]

198

Todd: [00:00:00] All right. Welcome back. How's it going, Jen?

Jen: Good, how are you?

Todd: Pretty good. Just getting set up here. I feel a little behind, even though I don't know. You get that feeling from time to time. Anyway, so today's episode, Jen doesn't even know what's happening. Um,

Jen: I just like to show up.

Todd: I'm going to,

Jen: up.

Todd: I'm going to ask Jen a question, and then I'll give her a few minutes to respond. Even if she needs to think about it for a second, we can, we can pause or we can edit that part out and then I'll give you my answer.

And I think it'll help people because I think it'll be coming from two completely different, I have no clue what Jen's gonna say, and I think it, it'll be two completely different aspects. I would be shocked if it's the same answer. Um, also, obviously, because I've had the question in my head, I have my answer already prepared.

Jen: Gotcha.

Todd: It's just the nature of it. We don't have a [00:01:00] third person on the show that can give us questions that would like throw us off. But I'm also not trying to throw Jen off, like I want her to give the best answer possible because again, I think it's gonna help

Jen: should be

Todd: people out there. Before we get there, it's time for our opening takes!.

So,

Jen: I am ready.

Todd: okay. Go ahead. Take it away.

Jen: have a story that will come together and I think just get people thinking. So I had run, I, I wanna be a little bit vague here just 'cause if where we live then you'd know who I was talking about. So I had run to grab some food for us over the weekend, whatever. And there's a salon that just opened and I, it was the oddest thing.

I just happened to hear this conversation. So the owner of the salon and don't ask me how I know that. I just know that, uh, one of the owners, it's two people that own it.

Todd: You were outside of a salon and a conversation just happened.

Jen: Yeah. It's where I parked to go to get some of the food that I was getting for [00:02:00] our dinner that night. Um, it was the, but I just like, I, I always like kind of look at it 'cause they've just been revamping it, whatever, blah, blah, blah.

I know. A little backstory. so the owner walks out with her, I soon to find out her grandmother. And her grandmother said something like. Do your clients ever complain about your outfit? And she was like, Nana, no. No one ever complains about my outfit. Like this is what people wear. And first I can tell you, she looked very unprofessional and second definitely didn't look like she'd be owning a salon.

Like didn't level up anything. there was this moment, so now I'm just listening because I'm loving this nana. And then Nana's like, are you sure that people don't complain about what you're wearing? Because I don't think that it should be like, you should be dressing up. And she's like, Nana, people like what I wear. I had this moment because I think. I've had to, through both of my salons, talk to people about dress codes or what you're wearing or ask them like, Hey, let's look in the mirror. What do you think? And like, oh, maybe I should have made a different, a different choice today. But I think what the nana to me was getting at is maybe no one's ever complained to her face [00:03:00] that they didn't like her outfit, because nobody would, that would be rude.

Right? But at the same point, if you're not getting compliments on what you wear, or people aren't like, oh, I look forward to seeing, like, what kind of outfits do you have on today? Maybe you should reevaluate the way you represent the brand. Of who you wanna be in any career. And it just kind of, it just hit me in a way that I was like, yeah, no one's gonna complain to you, but maybe you should take some of Nana's constructive criticism rather than basically tell her she's wrong. 'cause she may have a point and some insight into the world that you just haven't been in yet. So anyway, go Nana. I loved her.

Todd: Cool. I think the dress code thing for me is, um, I don't know, it's too much, uh, it's too subjective. Like what looks professional to you and what looks professional to someone else might be completely two different things. You know? Like for you to be like, I dress professional. Yeah, maybe in your [00:04:00] setting, but if you talk to like a lawyer, how would that look?

Jen: for

Todd: You know what I mean? It's just, it's just different. So

That's

Jen: why I said it just depends on who's listening and where you're coming from. Um.

Todd: yeah, I think it's the vibe too for the business. Like I wouldn't expect. A place that people weren't dressed up to to meet me at the level that I would probably want to be at in regard to getting services there. But I would know that I would expect that. So,

Jen: And we,

Todd: what I mean? Like it's sort of.

Jen: with our staff that are like on the verge of promotion and certain things, and I'm like, so when we jump to this promotion, a client walks in, the expectation has now changed. That price point puts a different, um,

Todd: Spin on things. That's what, that's exactly, that's exactly what I'm getting at.

Jen: So

Todd: Yeah.

Jen: you are currently with the way you dress, like at the price point you're at, I would expect that totally cool.

But as it goes up, there are different things now that you're gonna have to level up [00:05:00] and you might not like that you're judged by the way you look or where you wear, but that's just life. Um, and if you're in the hair industry, you're absolutely judged on first your hair. People are looking at all the time, but they're looking at you to be some fashion forward with what you're wearing and things like that.

I have clients all the time that are like, I can't wait to see what you're in and you always dress so great. Um. And that makes me feel good too. I, I put effort into how I look every day.

Todd: Cool. So yeah, you'd be attracting a different clientele too. The more you charge the,

Jen: Yes, absolutely.

Todd: income your clients need and then yeah, everything goes up and they, uh, we tell people all the time that like our staff, the number one priority at Hello is the client that's from our staff.

For Jen and I, we take care of the stylists, the hair pros, the barbers. And

you, we attract people that respect. Now, e everyone's not the same, [00:06:00] right? But we have a lot of clients that they value time, so they're paying a higher price point, but they, they understand what they're getting and they feel like there's value there. And it's the whole package. You know, it's the, it's the hair pro that's professional.

It's the hair pro that's. Doing an actual consultation and yeah, wearing the clothes and, and playing the part. I guess I get it. My opening take is a, is a just a challenge or a question for people to think about and it's super simple and it's what do you want, what do you really want? What do you want out of your career?

What do you want out of your business? Depending on where you're at, if you are a renter, what do you want out of that career? Does it, was it just to get there just to say you're a boss, babe, or whatever you say, like, what do you really want? If you're a commission stylist, what do you really want? Everyone can say build a clientele, but think about it a little bit deeper.

Jen: Love

Todd: What do you really want out of your career? And then I think that'll help you. If you can answer that question, I think it'll help you [00:07:00] guide, it'll give you your play by play template

Jen: Mm-hmm.

Todd: you need to do.

Beyond a Salon: Think Media Company [07:00]

Jen: A vision

Todd: And, and if you can't figure that out, reach out to us. We'll help.

Jen: Absolutely.

Todd: Alright, let's jump into

Jen: Just,

Todd: topic here.

Jen: I am, I'm locked and loaded here with a coffee, hot, black. That's how I like it. My water and my shake, and I'm glad I have all three 'cause I have no idea what's coming at me.

Todd: So say you had somebody approach you or you're helping somebody and they have a business, we'll assume it's a hair salon because that's the business we're in.

They don't know where to start, or they don't know how to focus. They don't know what they should really be building. Before they get trapped in,, the online world of how should you do your pricing and this stuff, what advice would you give them for growing and building their business?

Jen: Now I go.[00:08:00]

Todd: Yep. You can take as long as you want.

Jen: I just free.

Todd: Actually, we have a, we have a call and a half an hour, so you need to be less time than that.

Jen: So I would offer, uh, all kinds of advice, I guess, uh, start with, first of all, like I. Why do you want to open this business? I wanna understand to them their vision. I wanna listen to everything that's going on in their head, like, throw up on me. All of the things that got you to this point of like, I wanna open a business because I can give them all the advice of like why I would, but that might not be the advice they need. So kind of understanding where they're coming from. Um, that would also help me arrive at, are they even ready and sort of. much energy do they really wanna put into this business? Uh, 'cause running a business is not easy and you best be. Ready to work a lot. So then I'd go into kind of, um, what, what we did.

We, uh, went through a bunch of strategies on mission core values. Like, [00:09:00] where do you see your business going? Where do you want it to be in the future for your vision? What is, what do you stand for in your business? What kind of things will help you make your decisions in your business so that you are always making decisions from a place that's healthy and that supports the business that you are always, um. Running, right? That's what we do too. Uh, then from there, help them their team. Uh, you're gonna need an accountant, you're gonna need a lawyer. You're going to need someone to help you find your space. Uh, what does that all look like for you? then go from there. I guess that's nice. Short and simple answer.

Todd: I like it and it's completely different than mine. So obviously if you've listened to this podcast, read our newsletters, anything. You know that we always start with the foundations, like, why are you doing this and how did you get here? And what are your goals? So I wanted to take it a step further from [00:10:00] that.

And my advice would be to, instead of focusing on building a salon, because what you're gonna do is you're gonna copy what everyone did to build a salon. I would focus on building a media company through your salon, and this is something that can be incredibly powerful because. You now? Well, you do a couple of things and first what?

Like somebody's probably like, what's a media company? What do you mean by that? So what I would do is I would have ways to publish a lot of content. And I'm not talking about Instagram random posts because ask everyone that does that. It doesn't really help you. I'm not saying don't do that because it's fun or whatever.

But this question is geared towards more of a serious, how would you build a business? So a media company is gonna be a company that produces content across different platforms. So you're going to [00:11:00] need something that you own. So a podcast such as the one we do, we own this podcast, we own the audience. We own what gets said, and we can reach our audience at any time.

We publish every Monday. We could publish every day if we wanted to, and we would reach those people. So if we had a message to send out, it's very easy for us to get that in front of somebody without having to worry about hacking some fucking algorithm. I could just publish it and the people that wanna see it, see it.

I would build an email list. Incredibly powerful tool. You own that email list. You don't own followers on Instagram, you don't own anything you publish to, uh, Facebook, unless of course you're publishing it somewhere else. If those websites or those platforms rather go away, you've got nothing. So I would start with those two.

I would start with building your email list, and I would start with a longer format, something like a podcast you could do, um, a blog, which is, I would highly recommend doing [00:12:00] all of these, but I would probably start with two and build from there. And so what, what do these things do for you? So I'm a multimedia company.

Cool. What does that mean? Well, it means that you have more visibility. 'cause you're spreading out wider, which is better. You're gonna attract more people because you're gonna just simply reach more people. It's a numbers thing. You're gonna build trust and credibility so people aren't just looking for, uh, somebody to post dimension and a photo.

They're looking for somebody that's establishing themselves as an expert in a field. That's what you want. When you go on and you read reviews and stuff of businesses, what are you looking for? If you're looking for dinner, are you just looking for pictures of egg rolls or are you looking for experiences that people had?

Some people might be looking for pictures of egg rolls with a hashtag crunchy or something. Right?

Jen: Ha ha.

Todd: What?

Jen: That was

Todd: It's [00:13:00] true. And you get to do that stuff at scale, so you're building trust at scale because you've spread out wider. One of the benefits you're gonna get, another benefit is the content becomes your recruitment tool.

So you are, I constantly see people that are like, how do you hire people? How do you find this? How do you find this? Well, we don't at, hello. What we've done is we've just used our platforms to talk about our culture, to talk about the things that we're doing at the salon, to talking, talk about the positions that we put our staff in.

Talk about the opportunities that we push them to take, and it attracts people. We get staff relate. We get hiring questions every single week. Every single week I get at least one email or message saying, are you hiring? Uh, the next thing it would do for you is it would diversify your revenue streams. So we've added education this year, [00:14:00] our own education at Hello, why?

It's something that we've wanted to do for a long time. We feel like we have something to say and we feel like we have a way to say it, and that's cool. So that's what we're building out For you, it might be a subscription model. You can do it with podcasts, you can have a Patreon. You can do all sorts of different things.

When you start looking into it,

your content that you create is going to build your community. Like your actual freaking tribe, your fans, your people that want to hear from you, not just random people that follow you, just to follow you. I feel like on social media, we have a lot of these followers that are like, they're, they're not even people that live around us.

They're never gonna come to our place. They're never gonna comment on anything. It's just, they're just sort of there. That doesn't really help. What you want is the people you can connect with. What you want is when you go out to,, your kids' basketball game that, um, another business owner is like, Hey, please [00:15:00] keep your newsletter going.

It really helps me. Stuff like that. Stuff that you hear back from people, that's the stuff that you're after because that's gonna build your business because you're building, you're building in that authority, you're building your own content.

Jen: You're creating a

Todd: And it

Jen: really, right.

Todd: Well, that's on here too. Yeah. Um. You're gonna attract better clients, which means you don't have to sell these clients.

So that means you don't have to go, Hey, what are good gift card deals? Or, what are good percents to offer off to build new stylists? Like you don't have to do that stuff because you're building trust within your community, within your audience, and now they trust you. So if you say, come on in, we'll take care of you.

You can sit with Gianna or Lauren or whoever. They're gonna trust that you have. Their best interest at heart because they've been following your content and that's what you've been telling them. Hopefully your message might look different. And then one of the other things you're gonna do is you're gonna fu future proof your business because you [00:16:00] can pivot, you can move.

Say one thing slows down. Say, say you're doing education. For example, we're coming up, we just started summer. We're coming up into summer. We're not gonna run classes for summer. It just doesn't really work. We don't want it. We don't want it to work. That's our summer break. In the fall, we'll get back to education.

So what can we do? We can double down on some other stuff to keep things going. So I would, I would start with thinking about that. And then where you would go from there is you would figure out your goals. Right? So I have some example goals just to help you guys think about stuff. So one of your goals could be, it could be all of these things.

It could be a couple or one. Attract X new clients a month. So say it's 15, who knows? That could be a goal. And now when you start to think about these, you think about how you would publish content that would make sense to those people. What if you wanted to hire a top tier [00:17:00] stylist? You are looking for somebody to come in that's, you don't have to train.

That's kick ass and you wanna work next to somebody like that. Give yourself 60 days, put together a plan and then get to work. How about sell X amount of retail products a month through your content? Yes, you can do that. How about grow your email list to say 500 people, or how about just build a recognizable brand, something that people know, something that people recognize.

I dunno. You could go on and on and on, but that's the advice that I would give. And those are the first few steps that I would take

Jen: well thought

Todd: to,

The Problem With Short-Term Thinking [14:00]

Jen: myself.

Todd: yeah, well I had time to make lists and stuff, so what do.

Jen: I think it's great because it's a different approach. I think a lot of people, like you said, when starting up, I don't know other

Todd: It's really, it's really not, it's really not a different approach. It's just a, [00:18:00] it's just that a lot of people in the hair industry haven't done it. So if you look at other industries, they do this really well. If you look at, um, let's take a big example. Let's take Red Bull. Look at Red Bull's marketing.

Look at Red Bull's content. If you go on Red Bull, they do, they don't. Publish a single picture of a can of Red Bull in any of their content. It's fucking, excuse my language, it's freaking airplanes and people jumping out and parachuting. It's people jumping over buildings and cars and doing crazy stuff.

Right? That's their marketing, that's the community that they're tapped into

Jen: because their

Todd: and they get,

Jen: Bull gives you wings. So they're literally,

Todd: yeah.

Jen: they're using that to, to fuel their marketing.

Todd: Exactly. Um, a lot of other companies do it too, like, uh, well, whatever, any, any big company. But what they do is they connect with, with their audience and they inspire some sort of [00:19:00] emotion. And then they do that consistently, and then they establish themselves as the experts. Like if you.

If you needed help with like a home project, you're probably gonna go to Lake Home Depot. 'cause that's what, that's the commercial. That's the jingle that you remember. That's the thing that they've decided that was going to be their brand. And so we like, we do it at our salon. And I know I'm, I'm guessing there's other salons that have podcasts and stuff, or YouTube channels or whatever and they put out content.

But I think more people should be doing it and less like. Less of the entry level, sort of, I have no clue what I'm doing. Marketing approaches because they just, they, they don't work. I saw one this morning that was like,, something about deals, like what deals do you do to, to get, um, clients in the door?

Well, every time you do that, all you're doing is artificially inflating [00:20:00] your numbers and you'll feel good that week, but then the next month when the people all go to the next deal. Down the road, you've got nothing again. So you're like a hamster spinning your wheels. Instead of, what I'm arguing is that you should be building your own content and distributing that and establishing yourself for the long term so that you don't have to constantly do this.

Because once you get a book of content, like we could talk about stuff we've talked about. This is episode what? Almost 200. So we have 200 episodes to draw upon of stuff we've already talked about. We don't have to keep recreating the wheel. We can just keep putting new spins on stuff and re reusing our marketing.

And it works because it works. And then maybe 20% of the time you're creating new stuff or coming up with new ideas, right?

Jen: Yeah,

Todd: So I don't know if it's all that different or new. Maybe just in the hair industry.

Jen: a business look at, to what you're saying is like, what should I be charging? What should my logo [00:21:00] be like there? It's, it's a low level way of looking at the business rather than the bigger picture of like where you want it to be in creating a brand. Right? Um, what product should I carry?

Like these are just where they tend to focus. And I think the focus at that is, I. too low level. If you think higher, you think bigger. You think creating a brand, like you said, you think start marketing and getting that out there. Then, then as you do all those other things, you've already got support.

You're, like you said, you're growing more wide and it also, it, it, it helps the business so well if you are only just trying to hire people all the time and, and spinning you be like a hamster like it. It's exhausting. Um, and if the bigger you can build that, the stronger your foundation is with anything, the business is supported and as maybe a staff member leaves or a few leave it, it's not so devastating 'cause you have other things coming in to help that business stay strong.

Todd: Agreed. Yeah. Love it. Anything else, Jen? I think we can wrap up this one early.

Jen: I [00:22:00] love it. No, I think that was great. Lots of things to think about, um, which is what we're here for.

Todd: Yeah, I'll, I'll probably follow up in the email this week and, uh, maybe give some more thoughts or maybe a little template or something to help people even more. There we go. So if you're not on the email list, get in there. You can find the link pretty much anywhere on Instagram, on the show notes from the podcast, uh, whatever.

Email me, whatever. All right. Thanks for listening, everyone. We'll see you next time. Bye.

Pretty good. Just getting set up here. I feel a little behind, even though I don't know. You get that feeling from time to time. Anyway, so today's episode, Jen doesn't even know what's happening.

Jen: I just like

to show

Todd: I'm going to,

Jen: up.

And I think it'll help people [00:23:00] because I think it'll be coming from two completely different, I have no clue what Jen's gonna say, and I think it, it'll be two completely different aspects. I would be shocked if it's the same answer. Also, obviously, because I've had the question in my head, I have my answer already prepared.

Jen: Gotcha.

Todd: It's just the nature of it. We don't have a third person on the show that can give us questions that would like throw us off. But I'm also not trying to throw Jen off, like I want her to give the best answer possible because again, I think it's gonna help

Jen: should be

Todd: people out there. Before we get there, it's time for our opening takes So,

Jen: I am ready.

Todd: okay. Go ahead. Take it away.

I just happened to hear. This conversation. So the owner of the salon. And don't ask me how I know that. I just know that one of the owners, it's two people that own it.

Todd: You were outside of A salon and a conversation just happened.

Jen: Yeah. It's where I parked to go to get some of the food that I was getting for our dinner that night. It was the, but I just like, I, I always like kind of look at it 'cause they've just been revamping it, whatever, blah, blah, blah.

Like didn't level up anything. there was this moment, so now I'm just listening because I'm loving this nana. And then Nana's like, are you sure that people don't complain about what you're wearing? Because I don't think that it should be like, you should be dressing up. And she's like, Nana, people like what I [00:25:00] wear. I had this moment because I think. I've had to, through both of my salons, talk to people about dress codes or what you're wearing or ask them like, Hey, let's look in the mirror. What do you think? And like, oh, maybe I should have made a different, a different choice today. But I think what the nana to me was getting at is maybe no one's ever complained to her face that they didn't like her outfit, because nobody would, that would be rude.

Todd: Cool. I think the dress code thing for me is I don't know, it's too much it's too subjective. [00:26:00] Like what looks professional to you and what looks professional to someone else might be completely two different things. You know? Like for you to be like, I dress professional. Yeah, maybe in your setting, but if you talk to like a lawyer, how would that look?

Jen: for

Future-Proofing Your Salon [21:00]

Todd: You know what I mean? It's just, it's just different. So

That's

Jen: why I said it just depends on who's listening and where you're coming from.

Todd: Yeah, I think it's the vibe too for the business. Like I wouldn't expect. A place that people weren't dressed up to to meet me at the level that I would probably want to be at in regard to getting services there. But I would know that I would expect that. So,

Jen: And we,

Todd: what I mean? Like it's sort of.

Todd: Spin on things. That's what, that's exactly, that's exactly what I'm getting at.

Jen: So[00:27:00]

Todd: Yeah.

Jen: you are currently with the way you dress, like at the price point you're at, I would expect that totally cool.

But as it goes up, there are different things now that you're gonna have to level up and you might not like that you're judged by the way you look or where you wear, but that's just life. And if you're in the hair industry, you're absolutely judged on first your hair. People are looking at all the time, but they're looking at you to be some fashion forward with what you're wearing and things like that.

I have clients all the time that are like, I can't wait to see what you're in and you always dress so great. And that makes me feel good too. I, I put effort into how I look every day.

Todd: Cool. So yeah, you'd be attracting a different clientele too. The more you charge the,

Jen: Yes, absolutely.

Todd: income your clients need and then yeah, everything goes up and they we tell people all the time that like our staff, the number one priority at Hello is the client that's from our staff.

For Jen and I, we take care of the stylists, the hair pros, the barbers. And

you, we attract people [00:28:00] that respect. Now, e everyone's not the same, right? But we have a lot of clients that they value time, so they're paying a higher price point, but they, they understand what they're getting and they feel like there's value there. And it's the whole package. You know, it's the, it's the hair pro that's professional.

Jen: Love

Todd: What do you really want out of your career? And then I think [00:29:00] that'll help you. If you can answer that question, I think it'll help you guide, it'll give you your play by play template

Jen: Mm-hmm.

Todd: you need to do.

Jen: A vision

Todd: And, and if you can't figure that out, reach out to us. We'll help.

Jen: Absolutely.

Todd: Alright, let's jump into

Jen: Just,

Todd: topic here.

Jen: I am, I'm locked and loaded here with a coffee, hot, black. That's how I like it. My water and my shake, and I'm glad I have all three 'cause I have no idea what's coming at me.

Todd: So say you had somebody approach you or you're helping somebody and they have a business, we'll assume it's a hair salon because that's the business we're in.

Jen: Now I go.

Todd: Yep. You can take as long as you want.

Jen: I just [00:30:00] free.

Todd: Actually, we have a, we have a call and a half an hour, so you need to be less time than that.

Jen: So I would offer all kinds of advice, I guess start with, first of all, like I. Why do you want to open this business? I wanna understand to them their vision. I wanna listen to everything that's going on in their head, like, throw up on me. All of the things that got you to this point of like, I wanna open a business because I can give them all the advice of like why I would, but that might not be the advice they need. So kind of understanding where they're coming from. That would also help me arrive at, are they even ready and sort of. much energy do they really wanna put into this business? 'cause running a business is not easy and you best be. Ready to work a lot. So then I'd go into kind of what, what we did.

We went through a bunch of strategies on mission core values. Like, where do you see your business going? Where do you want it to be in the future for your vision? What is, what do you stand for in your business? What [00:31:00] kind of things will help you make your decisions in your business so that you are always making decisions from a place that's healthy and that supports the business that you are always, running, right? That's what we do too. Then from there, help them their team. You're gonna need an accountant, you're gonna need a lawyer. You're going to need someone to help you find your space. What does that all look like for you? then go from there. I guess that's nice. Short and simple answer.

And my advice would be to, instead of focusing on building a salon, because what you're gonna do is you're gonna copy what everyone did to build a salon. I would focus on [00:32:00] building a media company through your salon, and this is something that can be incredibly powerful because. You now? Well, you do a couple of things and first what?

But this question is geared towards more of a serious, how would you build a business? So a media company is gonna be a company that produces content across different platforms. So you're going to need something that you own. So a podcast such as the one we do, we own this podcast, we own the audience. We own what gets said, and we can reach our audience at any time.

We publish [00:33:00] every Monday. We could publish every day if we wanted to, and we would reach those people. So if we had a message to send out, it's very easy for us to get that in front of somebody without having to worry about hacking some fucking algorithm. I could just publish it and the people that wanna see it, see it.

I would build an email list. Incredibly powerful tool. You own that email list. You don't own followers on Instagram, you don't own anything you publish to Facebook, unless of course you're publishing it somewhere else. If those websites or those platforms rather go away, you've got nothing. So I would start with those two.

I would start with building your email list, and I would start with a longer format, something like a podcast you could do a blog, which is, I would highly recommend doing all of these, but I would probably start with two and build from there. And so what, what do these things do for you? So I'm a multimedia company.

Cool. What does that mean? Well, it means that you have more visibility. 'cause you're spreading out [00:34:00] wider, which is better. You're gonna attract more people because you're gonna just simply reach more people. It's a numbers thing. You're gonna build trust and credibility so people aren't just looking for somebody to post dimension and a photo.

Some people might be looking for pictures of egg rolls with a hashtag crunchy or something. Right?

Final Thoughts [28:00]

Jen: Ha ha.

Todd: What?

Jen: That was

Todd: It's true. And you get to do that stuff at scale, so you're building trust at scale because you've spread out wider. One of the benefits you're gonna get, another benefit is the content becomes your recruitment tool.

So you are, I [00:35:00] constantly see people that are like, how do you hire people? How do you find this? How do you find this? Well, we don't at, hello. What we've done is we've just used our platforms to talk about our culture, to talk about the things that we're doing at the salon, to talking, talk about the positions that we put our staff in.

Talk about the opportunities that we push them to take, and it attracts people. We get staff relate. We get hiring questions every single week. Every single week I get at least one email or message saying, are you hiring? The next thing it would do for you is it would diversify your revenue streams. So we've added education this year, our own education at Hello, why?

When you start looking into it,

They're never gonna come to our place. They're never gonna comment on anything. It's just, they're just sort of there. That doesn't really help. What you want is the people you can connect with. What you want is when you go out to,, your kids' basketball game that another business owner is like, Hey, please keep your newsletter going.

Jen: You're creating a

Todd: And it

Jen: really, right.

Todd: Well, that's on here too. Yeah. You're gonna attract better clients, which means you don't have to sell these clients.

So that means you don't have to go, [00:37:00] Hey, what are good gift card deals? Or, what are good percents to offer off to build new stylists? Like you don't have to do that stuff because you're building trust within your community, within your audience, and now they trust you. So if you say, come on in, we'll take care of you.

So what can we do? We can double down on some other stuff to keep things going. So I would, I would start [00:38:00] with thinking about that. And then where you would go from there is you would figure out your goals. Right? So I have some example goals just to help you guys think about stuff. So one of your goals could be, it could be all of these things.

It could be a couple or one. Attract X new clients a month. So say it's 15, who knows? That could be a goal. And now when you start to think about these, you think about how you would publish content that would make sense to those people. What if you wanted to hire a top tier stylist? You are looking for somebody to come in that's, you don't have to train.

That's kick ass and you wanna work next to somebody like that. Give yourself 60 days, put together a plan and then get to work. How about sell X amount of retail products a month through your content? Yes, you can do that. How about grow your email list to say 500 people, or how [00:39:00] about just build a recognizable brand, something that people know, something that people recognize.

I dunno. You could go on and on and on, but that's the advice that I would give. And those are the first few steps that I would take

Jen: well thought

Todd: to,

Jen: myself.

Todd: yeah, well I had time to make lists and stuff, so what do.

Jen: I think it's great because it's a different approach. I think a lot of people, like you said, when starting up, I don't know other

Todd: It's really, it's really not, it's really not a different approach. It's just a, it's just that a lot of people in the hair industry haven't done it. So if you look at other industries, they do this really well. If you look at let's take a big example. Let's take Red Bull. Look at Red Bull's marketing.

Right? That's their marketing, that's the community that they're tapped into

Jen: because their

Todd: and they get,

Jen: Bull gives you wings. So they're literally,

Todd: yeah.

Jen: they're using that to, to fuel their marketing.

Todd: Exactly. A lot of other companies do it too, like well, whatever, any, any big company. But what they do is they connect with, with their audience and they inspire some sort of emotion. And then they do that consistently, and then they establish themselves as the experts. Like if you.

Well, every time you do that, all you're doing is artificially inflating your numbers and you'll feel good that week, but then the next month when the people all go to the next deal. Down the road, you've got nothing again. So you're like a hamster spinning your wheels. Instead of, what I'm arguing is that you should be building your own content and distributing that and establishing yourself for the long term so that you don't have to constantly do this.

Because once you get a book of content, like we could talk about stuff we've talked about. This is episode what? Almost 200. So we have 200 episodes to draw upon of stuff we've already talked about. We don't have to keep recreating the [00:42:00] wheel. We can just keep putting new spins on stuff and re reusing our marketing.

And it works because it works. And then maybe 20% of the time you're creating new stuff or coming up with new ideas, right?

Jen: Yeah,

Todd: So I don't know if it's all that different or new. Maybe just in the hair industry.

Jen: a business look at, to what you're saying is like, what should I be charging? What should my logo be like there? It's, it's a low level way of looking at the business rather than the bigger picture of like where you want it to be in creating a brand. Right? What product should I carry?

You're, like you said, you're growing more wide and it also, it, it, it helps the business so well if you are only just trying to hire people all the time and, and spinning you be like a hamster like it. [00:43:00] It's exhausting. And if the bigger you can build that, the stronger your foundation is with anything, the business is supported and as maybe a staff member leaves or a few leave it, it's not so devastating 'cause you have other things coming in to help that business stay strong.

Todd: Agreed. Yeah. Love it. Anything else, Jen? I think we can wrap up this one early.

Jen: I love it. No, I think that was great. Lots of things to think about which is what we're here for.

Todd: Yeah, I'll, I'll probably follow up in the email this week and maybe give some more thoughts or maybe a little template or something to help people even more. There we go. So if you're not on the email list, get in there. You can find the link pretty much anywhere on Instagram, on the show notes from the podcast whatever.

Jen Ford

Host

Todd Ford

Host