Staff Retention Secrets: How to Keep Stylists for 5–10 Years [EP:212]

In this episode, Todd and Jen tackle one of the biggest challenges salon owners face: staff retention. 

Instead of relying on non-compete agreements or fear-based policies, they share practical, proven strategies for building a culture where stylists genuinely want to stay. 

From career growth opportunities to education, mentorship, and financial transparency, you’ll hear exactly what’s worked at Hello Hair Co.—and how you can apply it in your own salon.

What you'll learn:

• Retention starts with culture and leadership, not contracts
• Define retention success as 5–10 years with your team
• Stylists leave when they see no path for growth or opportunity
• One-on-one mentorship unlocks motivation and hidden talents
• Education should be baked into your salon’s daily culture
• Invest in peer-led classes, curated outside educators, and team outings
• Celebrate staff growth beyond KPIs—focus on human value
• Transparency around money builds trust and loyalty
• Recruiting requires adapting to what new grads want today
• Freedom doesn’t have to mean isolation—community matters

Episode Timestamps

• [00:00] – Introduction + why non-competes fail
• [00:02] – Opening takes: profit myths & favorite styles from the past
• [00:07] – Strangest client requests we’ve ever had
• [00:12] – Defining staff retention: why 5–10 years is the goal
• [00:15] – Why stylists leave: lack of growth and opportunity
• [00:18] – How to create real growth paths inside your salon
• [00:20] – Battling the “booth rental is the only path” mindset
• [00:23] – One-on-ones & individualized goal-setting
• [00:25] – Spotting hidden talents and pushing people into growth
• [00:28] – Why levels and titles don’t matter—price points do
• [00:30] – Making education part of your culture (daily + curated)
• [00:33] – Staff-led classes and peer-to-peer education
• [00:35] – Investing in outside educators (the right way)
• [00:36] – Team outings via education + culture building
• [00:37] – Recognition and celebrating growth the right way
• [00:39] – Recruiting: what new grads actually want in 2025
• [00:42] – Why freedom turns into isolation for many stylists
• [00:43] – Positioning your salon as a growth environment
• [00:44] – Transparency around money and profit
• [00:46] – Closing thoughts 

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Transcript

Episode 212 – Staff Retention in Salons

Opening Take [00:00]

Todd: What's up everyone? Happy Monday. Welcome, welcome. Hello, Jen.

Jen: Hello. Good morning or afternoon. Good day.

Todd: good morning. It's pretty early. It's like 9, 9 30,

Jen: Yeah. Good morning to you. Good day to people listening. I don't know what time.

Todd: All right, so today we're talking about a, a hot topic, right, which is staff retention and more importantly this came from, I keep seeing posts on groups that are like. You know, I'm, I'm training my staff and I'm filling their books and then they're leaving. And so I think we can talk about some different things that we do at Hello to increase our employee retention.

Jen: Yes.

Todd: And these are, we can talk about things that we actually do that our staff actually approves of. And get into some action steps and hopefully help people out there if you're willing to change. If you're not, go ahead and continue with trying to force [00:01:00] non-competes and stuff like that. But I'm gonna tell you what, people don't want that. So if you're listening and somebody presents you with a non-compete, I would encourage you to think hard about it, whether you sign it or not. And I would move on to somewhere that doesn't have a non-compete because. A non-compete is trying to lock you in. And when you lock someone in, you have to question, why is this person trying to lock me in? And part of me wants to say that people wanna lock employees in so that they can be lazy so that they don't have to innovate and they don't have to push boundaries. And they don't have to change, they don't have to progress. don't have to search themselves or blame themselves for anything.

Jen: And

Todd: got,

Jen: I think they. Also take advantage of the young hair pros that think they need a job and there's nothing better out there, and shame on you for that.

Todd: 100%. Before we get there though, we always start with our opening takes. Opening takes. So [00:02:00] I, I'm just gonna jump in. I have two this week.

Jen: Ooh.

Todd: a quick one. Last week I wrote about profit in our newsletter, and by last week, when you're listening, this is probably like three. Out from here. So anyways September 11th, this newsletter went out.

I wrote about profit. I've seen a few posts that talk about, for example, one of 'em was like, I have an eight chairs salon, and my staff is fairly b busy. Not everybody, but my staff is fairly busy. They make X amount commission. will I see profit? I can't find profit. And I thought to myself, it's not just gonna appear. I think I might've even commented of what you should do. So you've gotta work profit into your pricing structure, regardless of your pricing structure. So if you are somebody that's working for yourself, you, you're an independent person, you have to work profit into that. You cannot away with just saying. And maybe people out there will luck out, but you cannot get away. From just [00:03:00] saying like, oh, my rent is $300 a week, so if I do anything over that, it's gravy. Not really, because what happens the next week or the next week? Or the next week,

Jen: I, there's so many more expenses than just rent.

Todd: right. Without even getting into it.

Jen: Yeah.

Todd: that's what I'm saying. So if you're a commission salon owner, you have to price profit into your pricing structure, whether you pay hourly, whether you pay straight commission, whether you're an hourly plus commission, whatever we've seen out there. If you're a booth rental salon owner, you have to price profit into your pricing structure. It's not just gonna happen just because a salon across the street charges, , $58 a week or whatever, and they offer all these things. It doesn't mean that you can afford to do that. It probably means that they're gonna go outta business or that they're just supporting themselves by being behind the chair.

Jen: Yeah.

Todd: a business. So price profit in. My second opening take, and I'll answer this too, Jen, [00:04:00] but I'm gonna ask you a question.

Jen: Okay.

Todd: So surprise. If you could bring back any style from the past and it has to, your answer has to include the hair, what would you bring back?

Jen: Like a hairstyle.

Todd: Any style? Do you want me to go first?

Jen: Sure. Yeah. Go first.

Todd: I would bring back the style of the, and I don't know why, but I absolutely love this style. The 1920s flapper,

Jen: I like it.

Todd: that style back with the finger waves and the that sort of tight hairstyle.

Jen: Yeah,

Todd: I would bring that vibe back if I could.

Jen: I like it. Well, I could tell you a haircut I'd like to bring back that I think is fun to cut. I'm not so sure I love the style, but it's like one of my favorites. It's one of the ones that I think I, I tried to master in the beginning of my career was this like flippy haircut in the back sort of.

Asymmetrical Bob in the front and it was like really fun and creative to cut, which was super cool. [00:05:00] Style hair. I actually sort of wanna bring back some grunge 'cause I like wearing like beanie hats and not having to do my roots. So I'm gonna go with some grunge style and a flippy haircut.

Todd: So does that haircut work with the, with the style that you're thinking?

Jen: Not really. They're total, total offices. But that haircut I worked on for so long that I created like my own haircut for that. And I used to teach it all the time in my first salon. So it was like really fun. 'cause all my, it's the haircut I was wearing, so all my clients wanted it. So I had to get really good at it.

And in my. Today as a hairstylist educator, the techniques I created for that haircut I am teaching all the time, which is really, really fun. Grunge just 'cause like, I don't wanna do my roots. And I think wearing hats is cool and I think you can dress up grunge and make it look super cool and trendy.

Todd: I was gonna ask you if that was the haircut you invented at can I say the name of the salon?

Jen: Yeah,

Todd: So Dellaria

Jen: yeah,

Todd: first salon that you worked

Jen: yeah.

Todd: New

Jen: Yes.

Todd: And I remember you were just doing this haircut and they were like some, what was it? Your manager or somebody approached you and [00:06:00] was like, you have to teach this to, you started teaching for Dellaria, right?

Jen: Yeah, I did. That's when I started. Yeah, I was

Todd: School, pretty much you

Jen: I think I was like three years in I was teaching and I was recruiting for them. So it was pretty cool.

Todd: cool.

Jen: Yeah. I wasn't teaching cutting though. I was teaching color, but in salon I started teaching some cutting. So.

Todd: I remember in our first apartment you had your little it wasn't a whiteboard, it was like

Jen: The paper sheets.

Todd: office, the old school office

Jen: Yeah.

Todd: Notepads.

Jen: Yeah.

Todd: And you would be like, sit down, I'm gonna teach you color theory while we have dinner. And I'm like, what is happening? But

Jen: It's like crazy. 23 something years ago, I think. Yeah. Should have saved all that stuff. It would be fun to look at.

Todd: Happy several decades to

Why Retention Matters [05:00]

Jen: Yeah. I.

Todd: and fast forward, I would've never thought I would be in this industry with you at all. Never. So pretty cool. All right, so let's get into people.

Jen: Wait, my opening take?

Todd: Oh, you didn't do yours yet.

Jen: No, you're skipping [00:07:00] me. Oh my gosh.

Todd: It's 'cause I did two and then I asked you questions. Sorry, go. Go ahead. I'll

Jen: Okay. So Todd helped me out with this one. And I have. A question for myself. You can actually answer it too if you want, but what's the strangest client request you've ever had? I'll pause for a second here. 'cause if any of our teams listening, they probably right now can picture exactly what I'm going to say.

I have this client and she brought in a picture of a woman with a ponytail that had, it was like, basically, if you remember back, it was probably 15 years ago. Chunky highlights were really popular. And I actually, she still wears chunky highlights, but the picture was a girl wearing a ponytail. So we finished her service.

She pulls her hip, she's like, can't you just foil my hair in a ponytail? So it looks just like the picture. Now, if someone out there can foil hair in a ponytail or wants to create an education piece around foiling hair in a ponytail. There's a request for it. But I looked at her and was like, no, that's not a thing.

And then Todd started [00:08:00] to like entertain the idea to be funny. But this client was. Dead serious. Like how do you foil my hair in a ponytail? So I'm looking at him with like death stare. Like, this is not funny. Do not entertain this. Do not make this go anywhere where I actually have to have a consultation about foiling hair in a ponytail.

I'm not doing this. Anyway, that right now is what I can think about the top as the strangest request for a hairstyle.

Todd: I can answer that too if you

Jen: Sure.

Todd: I have one that stands out in mind that I had a few years ago, and this guy wanted. A disconnected sort of peaky blinders thing going on. And I was like, okay, we can do that. That's cool. Here's the twist though. They wanted a fade on the other side,

Jen: Oh,

Todd: so they wanted one side faded in one side, not,

Jen: interesting.

Todd: and I remember some of our staff, I don't remember exactly who it was, was how did you even connect that? Where do you do? You just have like a harsh line. And I was [00:09:00] like, I don't know. In the back, it transitions from to like gradually a harsher line over to like Peaky Blinders on the left side of this guy's head.

Jen: Interesting.

Todd: that's what he wanted. And he came in for a while and he would always want that same haircut.

Jen: Okay.

Todd: And I actually got better at doing it and I was like, I don't even know what I'm doing. 'cause this isn't. I just created sort of this gradual transition that went from blended pretty nicely to not blended at all, harsh

Jen: Okay.

Todd: And there we have it. That was probably, I don't know if it's, that's considered weird.

It's, he liked it. That's what he wanted. So, and I don't know how I pulled it off, but I, it took me a, a few times doing his hair and then I was like, okay, I can just kind of. Make this

Jen: Mm-hmm.

Todd: as . So that's the creative part of the, of the hair industry

Jen: Yeah.

Todd: get to kind of just make stuff up. As long as you have some sort of fundamentals, you

Jen: I was [00:10:00] like, as long as  where you're pulling the hair, what you're doing, then you can generally create anything. And like you said, maybe the first time you're like, I don't even know what that just was, but every time you're like, oh, if I pull this this way and this way I can protect that side or make this look better.

And, and then you get better at sort of creating your own haircut for that.

Todd: Yeah, I was helping one of our hair pros with a haircut they had it was Brooke, she had her dad in, and she's like, I want to get better at cutting short hair. And so I, I helped her. We did a consultation and then she was like, he likes this, but he wants to be longer in the front. And I was like, okay. This is like, picture this as a long haircut, just working closer to the head. And she was like, that makes sense. And then I said, perfect. Great. Now how do we preserve length direction? So just over the, over direct the front to where you want, see where that falls. Go from there. And she was able to knock it outta the park. So, yeah. And, and a lot, most of that stuff I stole from [00:11:00] you. Shout out Christian awesome if you're ever listening, because I, I still retain a lot of his education. I think his stuff is awesome,

Jen: Agreed.

Todd: no pun intended.

Jen: Ha.

Todd: But he, he was great and still use a lot of the techniques because he's one of the few people that took hair techniques and made it practical in his education.

It wasn't just theory. A lot of times I've been to these classes and it's just like, this'll work, and you look at it and you're like, how in real life would I apply that?

Jen: Well,  why, right? We talk, I talk about this all the time. Christian actually cuts hair behind the chair so he understands how to make it relatable that most people out there that educate do nothing behind the chair. So they can create all the techniques they want, but they're not relatable when you're actually working.

Christian's probably one of the few that, there's a few of us that do hair behind the chair and educate and it, you can just tell the difference.

Todd: All right, so let's talk about maintaining staff, staff retention.

Jen: Let's

Todd: retention matter? Even? Why are we talking about this? Well, it matters because you need to build some sort of a culture and you can't do that if you have constant churn.[00:12:00]

Jen: agree.

Todd: let's define that. We, Jen and I talked about this a little bit this morning. What would you say is like a good staff retention? We defined that by aiming for a minimum of five years.

Jen: Yes. I think most salons average, well, it used to be three to five. I think most salons right now are like one to three. I would imagine that's sort of where that statistic is. But I would say five. You're, you're onto something and now what do you do?

Todd: Yeah. So what, what do you do next is I try to get them to 10. So try to get to a decade with people and at that point I think you've proven yourself. I think that's a solid retention. five to 10. Works and I don't have any like hard data is just simply, I feel like if you can get somebody to five years, you've done a really good job.

And I wouldn't beat myself up if somebody left after five years because that's a long time. One and two in that amount of time, people's lives change.

Jen: Right.[00:13:00]

Todd: at how you are at 15 years old to 20 years old.

Jen: Big change.

Todd: Big change. Now look at from 25 to 30. From 35 to 40, like those are massive jumps in, in our human lives.

Jen: Mm-hmm.

Todd: If you can get somebody towards a decade, you are successful. I would check that as success. And so how do we, or what else? Why else is retention important? I would say. creating the culture, but also your sanity and your peace of mind. So we're watching people lose their minds constantly

Jen: Mm-hmm.

Todd: on these groups because they're not retaining people, they're blaming everything else except for themselves,

Jen: Right?

Todd: not a sane way to When you operate a business, everything falls on you,

Jen: Yes.

Todd: single thing. You run out toilet paper, that was your fault. Why is there not a system in place? That might sound silly, but it is what it is. You are running out of color [00:14:00] constantly. That's your fault. And some people might say, well, it's always back ordered. Okay, find a new distributor. It's still your fault, it's your business. If your distributor can't keep up for whatever reason with you, and hey, maybe it is like if there's like a global shortage or something, I get it. There's gonna be these things like we had COVID five, six years ago. I get it. There's gonna be times where we all face the same thing.

But if a group of people out there is complaining about something, but there's other people that are succeeding and thriving, then your argument becomes less valid on it being everyone else. how come some of us can it and prosper? Do you have anything else for why retaining staff is in

Challenges Owners Face [10:00]

Jen: It, it builds a strong foundation for your business, right?

Todd: Yeah. Yeah.

Jen: And I, the, the retention also helps when bringing on new people that you have, everybody in your business that has bought into your culture [00:15:00] believes in what you're doing, believes in how the business is run, so they really help you. Train anybody new that's coming in, and it makes it a lot easier because monkey see, monkey do, right?

They're, they're doing what is expected of them, so the next person's going to do that. And then it just kind of, like I said, it just makes it easier. It's just like retaining clients, right? It's a great foundation for your staff's paycheck. They need to retain clients to have a strong foundation so they can build their life.

You need a strong foundation in your business, which in for you is your employees.

Todd: For sure. So let's talk about some reasons why staff leave.

Jen: Sure.

Todd: would people be leaving your business? Number one, we all know Jen, you can take it if you want, 'cause you shouted it out this morning.

Jen: I don't even remember what I said.

Todd: Opportunities for

Jen: Oh yeah. Yes. Growth, growth, growth, growth, growth. You need to show them truly, this to me is, is the gem, like this is the magic potion right here. If your [00:16:00] employees. Are in your business and they're looking at what, how you're running your business. Like, I could do this myself.

Why am I here? Because I can do this myself. They're gonna leave. So if you have people leaving, they're looking at whatever your day-to-day is that they believe they can do it themselves. Either the same, better, or a little worse, and they're okay with that. If you can show them a growth path of all these things that you offer, all these things that you can do for them that eventually they're like, I could never, ever.

Raise my prices the way I do under this salon. I could never, ever do these other X, Y, and Zs, whatever it is that, that they're looking for that like they would never either be able to do it on their own or they would never be able to get there as quickly as they could with your leadership and your mentorship.

Those are very huge differences for why somebody would stay or leave. Because. People will come and go and if you don't have any opportunity for growth for them and they're like, I can do the same thing or less and be not in this really negative environment, they're gonna go. For some people even they'd like to make more money, but they'll [00:17:00] take less because they'd rather just not be under your leadership.

But if you can show growth and if you can show them opportunity, both of those things are very important and they look at that as like, whoa. The value here is that I would never do this stuff on my own. I didn't even think to do this stuff on my own. You. You're good, but you'll have to keep doing it.

Todd: The second somebody thinks, I've outgrown this place. That's o that's it's over pretty

Jen: Yeah. They're lost. They're gone.

Todd: already, they've already reached a point. They've arrived at the conclusion that there's nothing else left here for me. So they're already checked out. I would say at that point, you probably want that person

Jen: Mm-hmm.

Todd: because after that, it's what do we do when we're bored, when we're kids? Start trouble. You poke your little brother, you, you, you knock someone's pencil off the table. It's the same thing when we're adults, what do we do when we get bored? We get up to mischief.

Jen: Yep.

Todd: It's just the way we're

Jen: Yeah,

Todd: You know? We need something to entertain us and need something novel.

Jen: I [00:18:00] agree.

Todd: unfortunately, if you've allowed people to get to that point, I don't know how hard I would fight for them.

What I would do is start building for the people in your pipeline if you don't have a pipeline. Build the opportunities for people first, then create a pipeline. Because if you bring people into what you have currently, it won't work. You've already proved that. So you've gotta pivot somewhere.

You've gotta do something different. And creating those opportunities can look like all sorts of different things. You know, we hired one of our hair pros to deep clean the salon for

Jen: Mm-hmm. Extra money for her.

Todd: that, yeah, it just fell it, it just made sense to us because. We had a cleaning company. They were subpar.

They just weren't hitting and they didn't care. it showed, and it's not a huge deal because no one's ever gonna care as much as you

Jen: Right.

Todd: the owner of your business, you no one your best employee doesn't care as much as you do. It's like with your child. Nobody's gonna care quite as much as you care

Jen: Mm-hmm.

Todd: your own child. [00:19:00] So what did we do? We saw an opportunity, we presented to the hair pro. She loved it. She likes cleaning. She likes being in the space by herself. She takes, takes pride in the space. It's her space she works in. there's all sorts of benefits there. we created some opportunities for two of our Hair Pros and probably more in the future to start educating. They're gonna educate under Hello Hair umbrella and they're gonna run some ticketed classes. We did some test stuff last year. We're working on some stuff for this year, and then we're gonna really dive in and do some training for 2026. And that is another opportunity.

Jen: I think too, we're in a, now this is today's hair Pros that are coming outta school, this will change. But right now the current hair Pros that are coming out of school are being taught to get a job and then go out on your own. There's no way you can make more money. There's no way you can be successful.

There's no way you can be successful in a commission salon. So you now realize if you're hiring outta school, which most of us [00:20:00] are, you have an uphill battle right from the beginning. You have probably a year, maybe a year and a half to teach this hair pro. How you can help them grow faster, better, bigger than if they went out on their own.

So if you understand that, that people coming out of school are being taught to be on their own, then you can now educate them and grow them in a different way. We totally understand that. We know when people are coming out, they're looking at probably us as a stepping stone. Not everybody, it's just how it is.

And then they're looking at, I can only be successful on my own because they've been taught that over the last 15 months or however long their program is. What we go and we show them is right off the bat, the opportunity, the growth, how do we get them where they are? And all of them are like, whoa, I could never do this on my own.

And , we, we hear it all the time. Like, I'm never leaving you. Someone's always leaving. But the goal here is because we have the awareness, because we have the open mind that this is what's being taught to them. Then we know how to deal with them in a different way. And we understand that the opportunity and growth is.[00:21:00]

So important for them to, to buy into, to understand that we can help them get further in their career than they ever could on their own, and that we want the best for them on all platforms, for their career, for their growth, for their technical skills. Those things always need to be talked about.

Todd: So I had one more where you are sort of diving into how to keep people at your salon. I had one more for why stylists leave

Jen: Oh, sorry.

Todd: pros

Jen: jump ahead there.

Todd: No, it's cool. It's all kind of blends together, so I don't, is what it is. I am a notes person, so I have

Jen: I love it.

Todd: in sort of order, but we don't have to go in order. The last thing I had, which you just. Literally touched on was your not, I don't like to use the word fighting, but you are challenged by the pull in the industry of the people that are renting the suites or renting the booths that say you keep all the money.

Jen: Mm-hmm.

Todd: So you have to be showing people and not just telling them, not just saying, Hey, this is how we create a, a path for you. you [00:22:00] want somebody to be at your salon for, we already defined it as five to 10 years. How do we get them? How do, how do we get them? How do we get them to that first mark that's five years? Well, we're gonna need a one year goal, probably a two and three year

Jen: Mm-hmm.

Todd: and then it's gonna launch you to your, a very intensive four year goal to get you to five. And so that means yearly, at least meetings we meet with our staff. I feel like constantly because it's just who we are and it's part of our culture, but. meetings at least once a year where you're really diving in deep, like set aside an hour, hour and a half for these meetings and lay out goals.

Like use the smart system, do all the goal setting things, do all the feel good stuff, lay that out. Because if you don't, you're going to have stylists that are leaving. They're not seeing the next step, and it's on you as the leader to provide them with the next step. The next step isn't just watch me and answer the phone until you get clients. It's not a good step. It's not working. We talk to people [00:23:00] constantly that are like, this is what's happened to me and it's, they're in my eyes and correct me if I'm wrong, I think that's an old school practice and I think it's taking advantage of younger hair pros.

Jen: Mm-hmm.

Todd: for sure. Nobody should be assisting you for years.

Jen: No, that program needs to be short, sweet, swift.

Todd: Yeah, I just, we just had somebody, this is completely different, but that was curious if they could apprentice at our salon. I talked to them and I said, , an apprenticeship you, I looked at their Instagram 'cause they sent it to me and I was like, it looks like you're in hair school. And they said, I would literally leave hair school and start over if I could apprentice with you guys. Never met this person ever. But that's how bad of an experience they're having in school. That they would quit. They would quit and start over. So I don't want that for that person. So I have, I'm gonna lay out a couple different things and then we can chat to them or whatever to see if we can help get their mind right, or, I don't know.

I just wanna help people. So so how do we keep hair pros progressing? Jen, you [00:24:00] talked about the growth opportunity. It's a big deal, like that's why people are leaving, but how can we those opportunities? I guess I just touched on it with the goals.

Jen: Yeah,

Todd: That's really

Strategies That Work [20:00]

Jen: and you really need to understand the individual goal for each hair pro because not everyone's the same. We have people that are not number oriented if we tried to push them too hard. They would quit. Like they are just at a slower pace. They might be, , the marathon pace. And then we have the sprinters and then we have the in between all are coached individual to what their needs are, their goals are, and also what we see for them for goals because, , someone might set a goal for themselves and we're like, you could do way, way more things than that this year.

Right. Like I, we've pushed, I, I have one of our staff, I had her on a photo shoot with us and we needed help doing makeup. So I'm like, can you kind of do makeup? And she's like, I love doing makeup. I've just never done it like on clients. So I'm like, okay, let's, if you could help me with this photo shoot, let's do it by the end of the photo shoot.

I'm like, you do makeup now? And she's like, what? I'm like, you do makeup [00:25:00] here now. Like, you are fantastic at this. Let's push this. And she, over the last year was like so thankful. Like no one's ever seen that in me and has pushed me. And I was so scared, but like I love now. This part of my career that I'm doing makeup, I would've never thought I'm doing that.

So you also have to have this hyper awareness of talents and strengths your staff has that maybe they're too scared to embrace and, and push them to technically get better at that. Again, they could never do that on their own. No one's gonna push themselves. Hard enough, they're just not going to, nobody wants to be uncomfortable.

So the minute they get uncomfortable, if they're on their own, they're either gonna step back or, or pivot or move around it. But not embrace it. So part of your leadership and mentorship is to help get them through those hurdles so that before they know it, they've grown as a human and as a hair pro and are just doing all these things that they never thought was possible.

Todd: Yeah, I think the individual mentorship is a

Jen: Mm-hmm.

Todd: it and I, so what we do in these meetings with people our hair pros. [00:26:00] We rarely talk about KPIs. We rarely talk about these metrics like your rebooking, your percentage booked, your product sales, retail sales stuff like that because those are things that we can nudge throughout the year.

Jen: Correct.

Todd: somebody needs something specific, like if somebody says to us, I'd really like to sell more retail. Perfect, now we can help you with that easily. We don't have to have an hour meeting going over numbers. These people know their numbers.

Jen: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Todd: that to me is a complete waste of time. I take that from people like big CEOs.

Somebody like Elon Musk would say, if you're in a meeting and you don't see the value of being there in, in their company, you are blessed to just whacked my microphone. You, we, we bless you to get up and leave if you think you have more value not here, go to where you have more value. So I don't wanna waste these meetings.

Jen: Right.

Todd: know, I get an hour to an hour and typically, like if we run over like an hour and 15 minutes with people where it's Jen, myself and the person, [00:27:00] and we can really dive into the individual

Jen: Yeah. And what motivates them?

Todd: for? Yeah. Motivate them. What are they looking for? Under Hello.

But more specifically in the career, is this somebody that wants to educate, that has a teaching background, that and how can we, how can we show them that we can leverage these skills that they have as individuals? I

Jen: Mm-hmm.

Todd: think that's just like a huge part of it. And it might be something as simple as in your salon, if you're somebody that has, I'm, I'm not into these levels and stuff. Because we have a level system, but the level system is based on price.

Jen: Right,

Todd: We don't need a 1, 2, 3, 4, or five. What does that mean to a client? Nothing. They don't know what a four is. They don't know the difference between a four and an eight. It just, it

Jen: right.

Todd: make sense. And you see people naming stuff like junior associate and stylist, and. Medium stylist and assistant and senior and educator and part owner, and [00:28:00] no, nobody really cares. I'm gonna be honest with you, and that's not exciting. What's exciting is finding out what people want and being able to give that to them and then growing their paycheck. That's what's exciting,

Jen: Well.

Todd: to us.

Jen: I think also if you're focused on more, like the price point becomes the level you are educating that staff member to be comfortable with repeating their prices. Because let's face it, a lot of people are not comfortable with prices or talking about pricing. And then also from a client perspective, that client, you're, you're always asking them, not what level do they want, you're asking them, , what's your price point?

And then I know where to put you. And if they ask, well, what's the difference? Well, the price point. Generally goes up with either longer experience, client retention, the more skilled you are. So rather than be like, well our level five has about here, whatever, and also using the price point as where you sit in the salon means that your education background necessarily for time in, for how many year, how many, how many years you've been doing hair, excuse [00:29:00] me.

Doesn't really matter. 'cause we have some people that. Have done hair for a smaller amount of time, but they catch on quicker. Their skillset, they either work on it more, but their skillset has just grown really quickly. Other people, it might take them a little bit longer, so, it doesn't mean that just because you've been doing it for five years and she's been doing it for three, that the price point's going to be higher or lower.

Again, it becomes individual. How, how much do you wanna work on it and how quick do you wanna get there? And that also creates a really healthy culture too, because it's not just like, oh, well I do hair for five years, I'm gonna get here. Like, no, you have to do the work. You always have to be doing the work and reinvesting in yourself.

Todd: Agreed. Let's touch on education a little bit.

Jen: Okay?

Todd: Because that's another major point, and the reason I say major is I'm basing this on what's worked for us. You might have a salon full of people that are, if, if they're older, they probably don't wanna do education. They're kind of done. They just want to do their clients and go home. For us, education is baked in. And I'll often post and [00:30:00] I'll just write Education daily, because at Hello, there's an opportunity for you to either talk to somebody about something, see something you haven't seen, see something you need to see again, or work with somebody one-on-one or in small groups every single day. If you want that to happen, we will facilitate it. It often happens without us facilitating it and we, because Jen, we are at an advantage. Jen is an educator for our brand. Works through our distributor, and so we have additional opportunities for education, but you can get those too.

Jen: Oh yeah.

Todd: don't have to be an educator in order to get great education.

You have to be a curator though, for your team. I would not just bring in every single person that sends you a thing saying, Hey, we're only reaching out to a

Jen: Nope.

Todd: people.

Jen: fall for that.

Todd: This person is a celebrity stylist. They're coming in. You should, you should have education. Like don't fall for that stuff.

You want good education, not a sales pitch. So just be careful of that [00:31:00] stuff. And I'm not trying to trash anybody. I get people need to make money. And for some companies, the way they make money is they run commercials. And how do they run commercials? They're not on tv. They run 'em in front of your staff during quote unquote educational events. Totally get it. Totally fine. Totally not knocking the model. It's just not that level of education that we want to see at hello?

Jen: Well, it goes, oh, go ahead.

Todd: I was just gonna say, do we wanna talk about what do throughout the year real quick?

Jen: Sure. And I think it's, , it goes to your leadership again. They trust you. And if you are bringing in crap education, that trust goes down. So the next class you do, they're like, why would I go to this? It's not good. So you need to have like a mission and vision for the education you wanna bring in.

Todd and I, when we bring in outside education, there's an interview process that goes with that. Not every email that we get that people wanna come in. Do we engage with? We understand the level of education we want if it's not under our roof, meaning us doing it [00:32:00] ourselves. And by doing that, when we have a class, our whole staff cannot wait to show up.

There's not even a question about it. They look forward to it. What We did this?

Todd: Bummed out if they're away. I, I think Gab was like on vacation or something for one of the more recent ones last in the spring or something,

Jen: Okay?

Todd: she was like, damn it,

Jen: Yeah.

Todd: am I away? I'm gonna miss this.

Jen: Yeah.

Todd: we'll do it again. We'll do it

Jen: Yeah. What we did this year, which is a little different than last year, which I really loved, is in those one-on-one meetings at the beginning of the year, some of our staff looked at the struggles the other staff members were having, whether they were young staff members or older. It didn't matter technically, and said, Hey, I have something I could offer.

I would love to teach this class. I think it would really help for everyone that's struggling in this case, everyone that's struggling with balayage, like I learned this a couple years ago, it's really worked for me. I would love to do a class with the staff. It was fantastic. So we were able to now.

Todd: opportunity,

Jen: What's that? We were able to create an opportunity. Yes.

Todd: an opportunity.

Jen: And it [00:33:00] wasn't just so, , I know my, the staff loves me, but they don't always wanna hear me talking all the time. So in order to get some other people doing stuff was really awesome. I run an updo class every year. Generally it's March because it's what kicks it off This year I had approached Lauren, Hey, would you wanna take over and run this class?

I am there to support you but I, I think you have a lot to offer and it's a, it's a strength of Lauren's, so pass it off. So she ran the updo class this year. I was there to support if she needed anything, but she ran it for the staff, which was great. So it was really cool also for the peers to see their, their peers teaching them.

Culture and Leadership [30:00]

And there was a respect there. It was really awesome. Obviously I come in and I, I do some of the other stuff that I knew, some haircuts that we needed some strength with some different blonding. And then we. I always love if we can bring in some outside educator of somebody new, just some new kind of inspiration.

And the end of this month, somebody that I had worked with a couple years ago, we will be flying her in to do a curly [00:34:00] hair class. She's just very knowledgeable, but also I, I think the staff will get a, just a amazing vibe off of her. So she kind of hit a few points with that. And

Todd: is important. We're not just bringing her in because she's somebody that has a massive following on social

Jen: no, actually the opposite, she does not.

Todd: Yeah, we're bringing her in because she fits what our

Jen: Yeah.

Todd: is looking for and she fits, she, she falls into the criteria of somebody that. Probably could work at Hello Hair if they

Jen: Yeah. Yeah.

Todd: we align mission core values, those sort of things, and what we wanna see in the hair industry and what we believe education is and should be.

Jen: It's not like she's this, I'm a curly hair expert. She's just Addis and she cuts curly hair all the time and she's an amazing human. And I think the value of what she has to offer because she cuts hair behind the chair, is way more than somebody coming in for a free curly hair class. That's not really teaching our staff how to cut curly hair.

Todd: And if you're listening as a salon owner, this is an investment.

Jen: Yeah.

Todd: This is us fronting the money [00:35:00] to train our staff. Not fronting, but putting up the money

Jen: Yeah.

Todd: Educate our

Jen: Yeah. This cost all falls on us,

Todd: we've never once asked our staff or thought about, well, what if this person's leaving?

Jen: right.

Todd: You know, we're just gonna grow everybody on our team.

And if, again, like we said in the beginning, if somebody's leaving, somebody's leaving, but we're just gonna constantly create these opportunities for people because it does what we're gonna talk about next briefly, which is attracting

Jen: Mm-hmm. And then the last thing this year, which we try to do every year is what,

Todd: Go ahead.

Jen: It's education for. We try to do some sort of a, like a group outing, right? Everyone was, what should you do for your group, whatever. So we look at that as an education opportunity. So.

Todd: what I was going

Jen: Yes. So let's create something for us to go out, but why not learn at the same time?

And now this event, it just happens to be local. It's, it's really close. So it made it very easy. The whole staff's going. Todd and I cover everything. There's no cost to them. They just, just show up. But it gets us a team outing while learning and [00:36:00] I was flat out, honest with everybody. I don't expect the education to be top-notch.

I'm not really sure, but I do think we can learn a couple things from it. And if nothing else, we can be inspired by hair, go have fun together under a really cool setting for an event, and they were all like, I'm in. Whatever. This sounds like fun. Cool.

Todd: Yeah, that's one where you are weighing you the, , you're looking at the pros and the

Jen: Yep.

Todd: and a con might be this education might not be exactly what fits our team. I'm not saying it's bad, it's just not really

Jen: If you learn something cool, and if you don't, that's okay, but we're gonna go do this together. That's how we looked at it.

Todd: Because it checks other boxes, like getting out of the salon as a team.

Jen: Getting in a cool atmosphere. Yeah.

Todd: grabbing wherever we go. Probably grabbing like a cocktail after, or before, I don't even know what the times or whatever, but stuff like that, that's team building, ? So you're, you're also building something now if you're struggling with people leaving that people wanna be part of something

Jen: Yes, absolutely.

Todd: if you're creating all of [00:37:00] these opportunities and you are bringing your team to events and you're bringing people in, people feel left out when they miss that

Jen: Right,

Todd: if somebody is sick and misses that outing, they're gonna be bummed

Jen: right,

Todd: And it's not that I want people bummed out, but we're trying to get, build a culture

Jen: Very important.

Todd: wanna be part of. other thing I want to touch on real quick about how to keep people moving forward and progressing in your business is recognition. Celebrate their growth, and this can look like whatever you want. For us. It is not the, I think they're cheesy, like the online posts, I'm not against them, but celebrating that stuff publicly is fine for us, it could be, Hey, this client reached out and we do this in our, so in our communication software, it might be like, Hey let's just use someone random's name.

Hey Gianna, a client reached out. They were super stoked about their hair. They said all these fantastic things and I wanted to let . That I thought that was awesome, but they thought that was

Jen: Mm-hmm.

Todd: And I do this sort of, [00:38:00] it's not public, but it's in front of our whole team.

Jen: Right.

Todd: these are just little ways that you celebrate people and you show them that you notice them.

Jen: Mm-hmm.

Todd: their value that they bring as a human being, not as a retail percentage, not as a rebooking percentage, but as a human

Jen: Mm-hmm.

Todd: they bring and what they offer to the client. That's what we celebrate. All the other stuff falls into

Jen: Mm-hmm.

Todd: So. this matters unless you can find staff. So let's quickly go through some different ways to find staff. We know you, you've gotta look at different models. We are not anti rent, anti suite, we are not at all. We just chose to run a commission salon because that was the model that worked for what we wanted to build as Todd Jen. Hello Hare. What does this look like? Commission salon fit that best. That's the only reason we chose it.

Jen: Yes.

Todd: So. You've gotta look at, like get a pulse on what's going on. Like we know a lot of people that move into suites and [00:39:00] move into booth renting situations that either don't make it, which sucks, that's awful, we

Jen: Yep.

Todd: that. Or that are miserable in a few years and they're like, this is not all it was cracked up to be. they're struggling and they're getting second and third jobs just to afford their booth rent, which is crazy to me. But it is what

Jen: Right.

Todd: so you've gotta understand that there's a group of people out there that don't wanna do all this stuff. They don't wanna be Instagram famous, they just want to connect with clients.

They want to have a great place that they can feel good about they wanna learn and be inspired along the way. So if you understand what people are looking for, like Jen, you talk about, we talk to young hair pros constantly all the time. If you're out there looking for a job, I don't know if we have one for you, still reach out because you never know. And we to get. Our pul the pulse of what people like, what are the

Final Thoughts [40:00]

Jen: Yes.

Todd: in September, 2025 graduating

Jen: Yeah.

Todd: looking for? It's different than what [00:40:00] people were looking for that graduated potentially in the summer.

Jen: Yes. And this is how we're always being innovative on our offerings as a business because these people come in and they let us know.

Todd: size fits all.

Jen: And they let us know. We can see the change happening, but probably before it's happening because they're telling us like, I'm looking for these things, right? Like, oh, okay, these are new.

Can our business make a change? Do, what do we need to do to, to keep up with what these new Hair pros coming outta school are looking for? What are the values of these people coming outta school? What's happening like with what they want? Right? Always changing. So we need to always be interviewing so that we can be ahead of that, so that we can make sure that our business is operating at the level we need it to in the year it's operating.

So it's always new and innovative,

Todd: Exactly,

Jen: but if we don't ask them or we don't know, then we're gonna be just complacent.

Todd: for sure. And so then answering those questions helps you find out what people are looking for. So people are looking for structure, people are looking for support, people are looking for, I said they wanna be part of [00:41:00] something larger than themselves. People want community. So if you can create those things and tell those stories. You'll attract people that align with what you are putting out. I think we need to shift the message too, that freedom doesn't have to be isolation. A lot of people we talked to, and, and this is always surprising to me because everybody, it seems like everybody wanted to be a booth renter at one point, which was totally fine. I get it. they were being sold all this stuff, but they're like, this isn't really freedom, this is isolation. Like I'm not inspired, I don't have someone to bounce ideas off of. I'm not really connecting with the people that are around me because there's no, no cohesion.

Jen: Right

Todd: And

Jen: and.

Todd: saying that there aren't those booth rental salons out there.

There are, I'm sure there are amazing ones where it's a community and everybody's kumbaya or whatever the saying is. And probably get in trouble for that. Are you allowed to say that?

Jen: I dunno.

Todd: what that means.

Jen: I don't know. I, I think too, there's also people [00:42:00] that they went out to go do the stuff on their own and they're exhausted and what they're finding is they can't show up and be the hairstylist that's creative anymore because they're bogged down by all the other things that are coming up day to day about running.

If their booth rental right, and, and that's another thing that just you don't always either think about or until you get there, you really can't understand what it looks like to do all the things and then still wanna be this creative hairstylist and you're just like, I'm burnt.

Todd: Yeah, the, so the other side of that isolation I, I had was that people, you, you can maybe position your business as growth guidance. So people think that they can only grow if they're on their own, but what if you flipped that? What if you said to them, but can grow and I'll show you

Jen: Mm-hmm.

Todd: That's basically what we do at,

Jen: Yeah.

Todd: what are, what are your goals as a young, professional as a human being. You know, we have people that are purchasing houses, purchasing vehicles, [00:43:00] and that has nothing to do with the salon, not directly. Obviously,

Jen: Right.

Todd: to do that, but those are goals that we, Jen and I have done those things. So it's just another layer of guidance that we can offer.

We've purchased a house. We built a house. What do you wanna know? We can share everything with you and help people through that process. As a leader, you should be doing that stuff. That's what we're looking for in our one-on-ones. It's not the, again, I'm, I'm harping on this a little bit, but it's not the retail percentage and it's not your percentage rebooked.

Jen: Correct.

Todd: what are your goals? And then Jen and I ask ourselves, how can we get this person there?

Jen: If you take care of your staff, those other things fall into place, but they're not stressed by those numbers and they don't think they're gonna be a setback if they don't get them.

Todd: I have one more thing and then we can wrap up if you

Jen: Sure.

Todd: you have anything else. And it's just simply be transparent with people. Be willing to dive in and explain to them how money works. I'm not handing people a p and l. I will explain how dollars come into our business as top line, how they move through our [00:44:00] business out to where we choose to move them. I'll explain profit because if we don't have profit, we can't eat this is our business. So I explain those things and I show them what their chunk looks like, what their piece looks like, and I show them where the other money that quote unquote, a lot of salon owners are, are. Demonized as well.

You're keeping this Well, I show our staff exactly what we're keeping. Not to the dollar, but I'll tell them this is where the money that isn't in your paycheck goes. A lot of it goes to education. A lot of it goes to just simply operating,

Jen: Yep.

Todd: running and breaking those costs down. That can help your staff understand because been sort of already a little mini brainwashed coming outta

Jen: Mm-hmm.

Todd: with the idea of, I can't make money at a commission

Jen: Right. I think that piece is extremely important.

Todd: Yeah, so I just wanted to end on

Jen: And if you don't know how to do that, then that would honestly, that's a call that you Yeah, and that's where you would use a mentor. Like, how [00:45:00] would I break this down with my staff? That might be the one thing that changes everything you do. And you just need someone to explain it to you so you can explain it to them.

But that has been wildly successful with all of our staff. And then they understand the numbers that they should, right? They need to understand how we operate. It's very important.

Todd: Yeah, I don't remember the last time somebody asked for a raise in regard to commission going

Jen: Right, because they,

Todd: explained where the rest of that goes. So you're probably already closer to your 55, 60% when we're, when we're talking about the additional things besides the money that's in

Jen: Right.

Todd: And Yeah, it's, it's fascinating because you have people that are super creative. That's why they're in this field and they're, majority of them are not into math. We're at the point now where we have stylists that are like, Todd Jen, care. You've proven it. Trust you just keep me

Jen: Mm-hmm.

Todd: They don't care what the percents look like. And then we've had others that are like, this makes so much sense now. [00:46:00] Thanks. I'll focus on those price

Jen: Mm-hmm.

Todd: and we show people too, things like, this is how you're going to make more money. some of it is tangible, some of it's untangible and it's just, you've gotta figure out what that looks like in your

Jen: Correct.

Todd: Get on our newsletter.

Jen: Yeah,

Todd: That's all I got. Anything else, Jen? Any closing thoughts?

Jen: no. Have a great day

Todd: All right. You guys got this. You can do it. You can build a awesome culture. I know you can. If you're listening to a podcast, you obviously care.

Jen: and reach out if you need help.