Chats Behind the Chair
Chats Behind the Chair is a podcast about real conversations—the human moments, emotions, and stories that shape the hairdressing and beauty industry.
For years, hairdressers have been there for far more than style changes.
We listen to stories of heartbreak, health challenges, financial pressures, personal growth and life's biggest turning points.
This podcast pulls back the cape to explore the conversations that happen behind the chair.
Through honest storytelling and lived experience, Chats Behind the Chair explores the emotional realities of the profession, offering insight, perspective, and practical wisdom for hairdressers, salon owners and anyone whose work centres on people.
Chats Behind the Chair
Detour
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Detour Taking a different direction
In this episode of Chats Behind the Chair, Deborah and Janey explore the idea of Detours — the unexpected turns, decisions and experiences that can completely change the direction of our lives.
They talk about the way our minds process and remember experiences differently, and how two people can walk away from the exact same situation with completely different versions of what happened.
The conversation also explores family history, the beliefs and stories we carry with us, and whether we continue down the path laid out before us or choose to create a different one.
Because sometimes a Detour isn’t taking you off course. It might be taking you exactly where you need to go.
For more information:
Chats Behind the Chair | CollectiveCourses
Detour
Taking a different direction
Inspired by David van der Camp
There are people who walk amongst us, like quiet warriors on a quest.
They have the ability to connect with others because of who they have been.
Learning from the University of life, taking their lessons they’ve learned to influence others.
Showing up for people in their time of need, ready to listen to a difficult conversation that needs to be shared.
Holding space, no judgement, privacy.
Here’s to the unsung heroes that shake beliefs, brake away from who they were destined to be.
They decided to travel a different way, than they could have gone.
At some stage a person helped them believe that deep down they deserve more.
To evolve into a person that they decided to become.
Everyone has a story, for some their life journey needs to be shared.
For all those who desire a Detour to a whole new Destiny.
Follow or subscribe to Chats Behind the Chair wherever you listen to podcasts, and join us for honest conversations that inspire, strengthen and support.
You can also follow along on Instagram at @chatsbehindthechair
You can either build a bridge or burn it, and it can make it a really positive experience, or it could end up being really negative. It's completely up to you.
SPEAKER_00Welcome to Chats Behind the Chair. I'm Janie and I'm joined by Deborah. Chats Behind the Chair is about the real stories behind the salon chair, the people, the pressure, and the lived experiences that shape the hair and beauty industry. This episode, we're talking all about detours, the unexpected turns, the shifts in direction, and the moments that change where the journey takes you. Deborah, hi.
SPEAKER_01Hi, Janie. So when I say the word detour, what does that mean for you? Going a different direction. You might have someone that tells you this is not a good way to go, there's a better way to go. You know, you may just choose to do your own detour based on you want to go a different direction. And you might end up in a totally different destination. So when you say detour, can you think of a time where that's actually played out? Well, it was interesting because I had a conversation a few years ago with someone, a friend and actually a client, and he took a totally different tea tour in his life. And I remember he rang me, he wanted an appointment in the salon, and he actually asked me if I had time, you know, after his appointment to catch up. And I'm like, totally. So he came in. I could see that he was deeply thinking about something. And, you know, it wasn't a time or a space to chat. But he said to me, I'm quite interested and curious about a situation that's just happened, but I want to talk to you after the haircut. So we did his hair, chatted about normal stuff. You know, it's often in that time and space people around you, you you can't talk about things in the salon sometimes. You can't be open. So we ended up catching up after the appointment. And he just simply said to me, you know, I'm really interested in all the mind stuff you've been, you know, studying and in your perspective. But what actually happened was he had vowed and declared in his own mind that he would never speak or see his father again when he left his home when he was 17. So 30 years later, David's dad came to visit him and his kids were just super excited to meet their grandfather who they'd never met before. So they were jumping around. Grandad's. Oh my god, like they were super excited. And he was like, whoa. So he had, you know, spent the night, decided that he wanted to chat, and he'd come into the salon to talk. And we're just gonna park that story, Janie. A little bit later on the podcast. But you're probably interested about what you're doing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I want to know what happened. Please tell me what happened.
SPEAKER_01So, you know, like in life, have you ever had that situation where you look way back in your history where you had something happened where you ended up ending a relationship with someone? You often think about the reasons why that relationship ended. And then you catch up years later with the person and you have really different perspectives of what happened.
SPEAKER_00And don't you feel like you kind of add layers to it and those layers almost become your new truth?
SPEAKER_01Yes. Over time your minds change. But you do get sets thoughts about people or relationships that replay in your mind often, regularly.
SPEAKER_00You regurgitate them and you just keep going round and round in circles and giving it lots of energy as well.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, lots of negative energy. Or there was a situation that there was a pretty profound situation that happened in my life years ago. And I sat with the people that were with me at that point just recently. We were chatting about that time, and we had such different stories. From the same circumstance. Yes. And you know, it wasn't an argument, but it was kind of like, no, it didn't happen that way, and you know, you that didn't happen, and I said this and you said that. Do you have you ever had that? Yeah, and why do you think that happens? Well, it's completely about our minds, how we process information. So which I want to dive into now because we all have completely different memories of every situation. Even, you know, like we watched a movie recently. It was an old James Bond movie, and I kind of like in the middle of the movie, I suddenly saw some scenes that I kind of recognised, but I didn't remember the ending, but I remember bits of the middle of the movie. Because emotionally they affected you? It's just how our minds filter and how we what we remember. And then we went up the West Coast, which we'd been up the West Coast before, right at the top of the South Island over Christmas holidays, and I remembered bits of the destinations we'd been to, but not much of what we actually the journey. What we do in our minds of how we remember or recall is different for everybody.
SPEAKER_00So what shapes how we see or remember something?
SPEAKER_01Well, just really our history, our memories, our experiences, culturally, what we remember. We all have different belief systems. And the basically what happens is uh we have like our sensory, our visual, which is in our hearing, our feeling, our taste, and our smell are the sort of the five main sensory that come to our mind. And out of all of the bil millions of bits of information that we take in every second in our mind, when we you think of it, when we look out at a new view, all of the the views, the sounds that we hear, the smells that we hear, the feelings that we feel, and what we hear, only bits of that information actually go into our neurology. And most of it, you know, we either delete a lot massive amount of information every every minute. Or we and basically we only capture it's like millions of bits of information get thrown at you. And if they were like toothpicks of information, we only gather a small amount, a handful of those, and keep them in our memories. So that's why we have different memories.
SPEAKER_00That's so interesting. And do people have different can different senses be stronger for some people than others? Yes.
SPEAKER_01So look, I'm a visual person, so I see everything in pictures. So as children, visual children are very they daydream all the time. And we're children that often teachers will say stop, day, you know, come back. But actually, when we daydream it is the highest state of learning.
SPEAKER_00Really? Yeah. So daydreaming's a good thing in the classroom.
SPEAKER_01It is because you're actually absorbing, which is so interesting. If you are an audio person, so you'll remember s conversations often, that'll be what you'll remember mainly, you know, in your memories. And what happens with audio children or audio adults, they're listening. They're taking all the information how they're listening, and they'll often look away to actually absorb the conversation or the information into their minds.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I often do that. Like sometimes when I'm recording someone, I'm looking into the corner of the room, like I'm really taking in their words and what they're saying. And you as a child would have probably someone would say to you, look at me when I'm talking to you.
SPEAKER_01All the time. I say that to my children. Yes, so it's really interesting. We're all different. In a feeler, like um kinesthetic people, now they will remember feelings. So now you can often tell a kinesthetic or a feeler by they'll stand very close to you when they're talking to you, right? Almost to the point where you almost want to step back. But they they feel they know so that when they recall our memories, it'll be often about what they're feeling at the time. Now, smells are really interesting. One that is the highest sense of all of our senses. Now, I've never been to India, but they say the smells are literally or all of the senses get completely overwhelmed. And smells really interesting because when you're asleep, you cannot smell smoke. Ah. Is that true? Yeah. So, you know, this is the so it's crucial to have smoke detectors because you know, the the risk of falling asleep and then having the, you know, not the ability to smell is, you know, that is the reality. Which is so crazy because you just naturally think if it's such a strong sense, how would we not be able to smell smoke? So as you know, as I say, we f our minds filter. Now we either we delete, we have to delete massive amount of information because we would be overloaded. And by delete you mean Or just forget it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, we just forget it completely. Now, alcohol and drugs will do that. You know, have a big night, you can't remember. What did I do last night? Who do I have to apologize to? So, you know, uh you know, we couldn't take in information, otherwise we'd be completely overloaded with information. So we often will delete just to cope our coping mechanisms in our mind. Sometimes we will distort and again alcohol and drugs will do that, will distort situations because our minds And is that a coping mechanism? Well that is, yeah, your brain can only take so much. But also we distort so that we can use our imagination. So for example, if we're watching, you know, Superman, we're going, if our conscious mind, you know, would go, oh, this is a little load of rubbish, he cannot fly. So we need to distort to then be creative and have imagination, you know. So we want to watch everything because we want to believe it can actually happen, but it's not actually, we know that it can't happen.
SPEAKER_00And on a personal level, can you distort out of safety? Oh, I'd say so, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you distort. And then all you generalize information. So, you know, when we get a new experience, for example, like we can drive a car and we're asked to drive a truck, we will take all the information that we've learned from our with what we've already learned and then bring it forward to driving a truck, for example. So, you know, and where minds are incredible. Like they say that we have between 60 and around 64,000 thoughts a day. Naturally, 73% of our thinking is negative.
SPEAKER_00That's crazy, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and only 27% is actually positive. So that's how our minds often will work. Why do we do that? Because we just do it. Because we're we're you know, we're probably we're wired for survival from the caveman time. You know, we're wired more negative than positive. But it's good to be mindful of that. And we're gonna leap into this part of the mind more in the next episode. My next episode, which will be support crew. But basically, the mind is incredible, and it's good to just be mindful when we're having conversations that we all have our own version of what happened, you know, and not really get into arguments about kind of like, oh, well, that is that's really interesting that you have that perspective and be open to seeing other people's perspectives because we will have a different version.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's so fascinating, isn't it? Because I even think with my siblings, when we talk about childhood, my sister's got a completely different version of our childhood than I do. And it's like, we lived in the same house. Like, how does that work?
SPEAKER_01Well, and that's often causes issues and problems, and you know, relationships are fractured or ended sometimes with people. And, you know, that's where some courageous conversations and some communication tools can really play a big part of helping getting the glue back together, creating some bridges instead of burning the bridges. And family is blood, it goes through our veins. So this is the next stage. I was gonna talk about family and blood. And it's kind of interesting when you go back in your family bloodline, and we all had originally most cultures had crests, family crests. And my history goes back to the Viking time in Scotland. And I've got, you know, my maiden name, which I love that whole, you know, the history of the knights and their maidens, was basically overcoming, repelling adversity through virtue. So, what does that mean? Well, overcoming challenges through your your code, like your virtues. No, no, see, that's it's quite different, which we're gonna talk about in another podcast. We're gonna leap into virtues and values because it's quite interesting, but it's kind of like your moral compass. It's been for me, that is my code of conduct. I want to over try and overcome adversity's challenges. I want to kind of figure out a way, you know, instead of running away from problems, I've always tried to run towards them more.
SPEAKER_00Interesting. And that's in your bloodline, that's part of your family.
SPEAKER_01That's my that's my code. And I know you've got your own code. I've just got to search yourself to I'm so Janie, I've actually searched out your bloodline, your maiden name. I'm intrigued. And it's called noble vigilance, and you've got your own family crest from your bloodline, your maiden name. Noble vigilance.
SPEAKER_00What does that even mean? Let me so cool. It's a cool crest. Yeah, it says staying consciously aware so you can act in line with your values, not your impulses.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's cool. It's really cool. Wow. So I'd encourage everyone to have a look at their family crest and not necessarily your married name, but actually your bloodline. Who were you? Because it that's a big deal, right? When you become a, you know, a woman and a and a person in their own right. And then you do change your name when you get married. But you know, your bloodline that's comes through for all your ancestry is quite cool to learn. And as I think you know, as you get older, you kind of start to look back at your family lines and learn more about your history because you know, we all are part of that journey. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Oh, absolutely. Noble vigilance, watch out.
SPEAKER_01We'll look out. And the cool thing is, you know, whatever, you know, and like it's cool to create your own slogan if you don't like what you've had, or you know, like if you want to get it do a major detour and want to change your life for your future family, it's quite cool to think about what would that slogan look like to you? What would be moving forward? Or do you want to draw on who you've already been within your family legacy?
SPEAKER_00I feel like mine would be something like step forward, because I'm always there's always a little bit of fear. So step forward while still remaining true to yourself.
SPEAKER_01Cool. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00What about you?
SPEAKER_01Well, I'm I love my one, so I'm just gonna stick with it.
SPEAKER_00All right, stick with it.
SPEAKER_01But definitely check it out.
SPEAKER_00Now you're probably are you curious? I am intrigued. What happened? So the friend came to you to have a coffee to talk openly about the fact that his dad turned up. So what happened from there?
SPEAKER_01Well, I said to him, I we had a coffee, and I just said, Look, David, you know, you can make a decision. This is not my story. This is about you, right? You can either build a bridge or burn it, and it can make it a really positive experience, or it could end up being really negative. It's completely up to you.
SPEAKER_00So he was sitting right at that crossroads situation. So he had two options.
SPEAKER_01No, it there was another layer to this because his dad was terminally ill. Right. Okay, that definitely adds. Another layer. Yeah. And as it turned out, he shared it with me a few weeks later. He said, you know, it was really cool because his father recalled a lot of stories about him when he was younger that he'd forgotten or didn't know about. And he shared, so they had this he took a week off work and it was just this really special time where his children spent time with their grandfather. There was a lot of healing for him, which was a beautiful thing.
SPEAKER_00So he opened the door and let his dad in.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and they he took a week off work and he spent that week with his dad and just observing and just, you know, they had a really positive week. The reality is I actually met David in early around 1996. David Vanderkamp actually came up to Collective and he wanted a space to learn or to actually open his own business, which was a piercing business. And that was really new at that time. He was almost like a pioneer in the industry. Funnily, he always wanted to be a hairdresser, right? So he was quite a character and he ended up becoming, you know, like a very big part of within his own brand in a steel within, you know, our umbrella. And um, in fact, he got so, so popular, he ended up having to open his another studio in a bigger space. But we kept in contact and virtually every day I would see him. I'd either walk past a studio and he would be, you know, he'd be chatting to someone in a space or he'd be in his room piercing. But he became this person that I know a lot of the teenagers, he was just someone that people could talk to. He almost became, you know, known as the free counselor for a lot of, you know, kids and adults that really just needed someone to have a platform conversation with. And, you know, he used to train all around New Zealand as well. So he was an educator as well of his craft. So he actually later through his journey, he ended up meeting another teenager that really needed to learn. You know, she was struggling at school. Her name was Casey, so he started actually mentoring her, which was lovely to see. She was a young teenager. So suddenly in 2022, David Vanderkamp passed with a house fish issue, and he was 54 years old. The community just grieved. He was just like, no one could believe that he was larger than life. He was the biggest personality possible that you could lose. And during that time, Casey, she decided to do a fundraiser for David's sons, and she decided to open the piercing studio up for two days. So we put it all out in social media and she raised $12,000 in two days. Wow, amazing. She was pretty nervous to go there and do this. But I said, look, David's gonna be, he's gonna be whispering in your ear, just go with your gut feeling and like just do what you know you feel you need to. So anyway, in his passing, he Casey's actually ended up taking over his business, and she has in his own, in her own right, built on his foundation, his legacy to have this incredible business called Anna Steele in Queenstown. Now when I look back, you know, he was someone that just influenced people. He took a detour. So I actually ended up writing a poem in dedication of David Vanderkamp. Detour, taking a different direction. Inspired by David Van der Camp. There are people that walk amongst us like quiet warriors on a quest. They have the ability to connect with others because of who they've been, learning from the university of life and taking their lessons they've learned to influence others, showing up for people in their time of need, ready to listen to a difficult conversation that needs to be shared, holding space, no judgment, privacy, hairs to the unsung heroes that shake beliefs, break away from who they were destined to be. They decided to travel a different way than they could have gone. At some stage, a person helped them believe that deep down they deserved more to evolve into a person they decided to become. Everyone has a story. For some, their life's journey needs to be shared for all those who desire a detour to a whole new destiny. Check out our social media site because we're gonna post that up. But detour is all about, you know, taking a different direction, going a whole different way of what you want, how you want to play out your life and your with you and your family. And so I want to dedicate the poem to people that have done that and inspire others. Now, my part with David, I was he was my support crew and I was his support crew. We always had a beautiful forum of being able to chat about anything. On our next podcast, Janie, we're gonna talk about support crew because they're the people that support us along our journey. And David was an amazing support crew for me, and I was to him. And you know, we all have a support crew, and they're often people that just believe in us before we believe in ourselves. So check out the next podcast and um please um go on our social media sites and see that poem that we've actually written on dedication to David Vanderkamp.
SPEAKER_00I love that. So if someone is sitting right now at a detour, what would your advice be to them? Decide what your slogan is.
SPEAKER_01What what do you want in life? And that comes down to whose life do you see that you really think they've got a good life, and then model yourself.
SPEAKER_00And so you got your slogan and move towards the one that is closely aligned to that slogan.
SPEAKER_01Firstly, you need your support growth, and then you need the great mentors. Awesome. Thank you, Deborah. Thank you, Jamie.
SPEAKER_00Well, thanks for joining us today on Chats Behind the Chair. If you could please do us a favour, we would love for you to subscribe and also share this episode with a friend who you think might enjoy it. It's one of the best ways you can help us grow. Have a fantastic week, and we'll catch you back here soon on Chats Behind the Chair.