Gerard Scarpesi is the co founder of Hairbrained.

Today we're going to hear about the Hairbrained Hairdresser Confidence Index.

What exactly is it?

Well, it's a measurement of sentiment, of confidence of hairdressers.

So why would you want to know this?

Well, mainly because if you're trying to start a business, launch a product, or you're trying to hire hairdressers, well, this is what you want to know.

Welcome back to the Hairdresser Strong Show.

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

How you doing today, Gerard?

Good, man.

It's Friday afternoon after a long week, so I'm good.

Awesome.

Awesome.

And you are in California.

Where are you at in California?

Orange County.

Yeah, what's that?

You know, I'm gonna be cheesy and you know, there's ice on the ground out here in D.C. what's up with the weather out there?

You know, as I always say, you don't have to live there.

As an east coast person, I know all about it and I hear about it every day.

And you do not have to live there.

You know, this week it's been maybe the coldest is maybe 55, and the warmest has been about 80.

Nice.

Nice.

Within one day.

It goes from kind of fall to spring to summer in a day.

That's awesome, man.

That sounds lovely.

Well, I'm super excited.

So for all the folks listening and watching, I, I mean, I've heard of, I've heard of you, Gerard.

I've seen you on various stuff, like on social media and on, like, just like talking to people and you know, you know, quite a few people that I know that talk very highly of you.

And, and I got a chance to meet you in person at the Serious Business in New Orleans, and you were talking about the Hairdresser Confidence Index.

And I got so excited because I was like, finally someone has data for this.

Like, we're going around and like, talking to people in our local community.

But, you know, this is a whole nother level.

So let's get started.

We'll get into like, the why, the how, the what, etc.

But just to give our listeners and viewers some information, like, can you give us, like, what is something that is in the Hairdresser Confidence Index?

Can you tell us, like, you know, maybe the three things that you think are really interesting that it measures and what that was when what you.

What you found out?

Well, I mean, first and foremost, it's a quarterly sentiment survey, as you mentioned.

Which is it's not a scientific survey.

It is more about how people feel.

So that's what it means by sentiment.

It's derived off of, you know, a very, very important survey, the Wall Street Journal confidence index.

And we can talk a little bit about that later.

But it's specified for hairdressers, and it's only six questions, so four to six, and then an addendum.

So the first question is, you know, how would you rate your job satisfaction currently?

Is it increasing, decreasing, or staying the same?

Then we ask about the previous three months that did your income increase, decrease or stay the same?

And then in the three months that are approaching, do you predict that it will increase, decrease or stay the same?

Then we ask some questions about investment in the business.

Do you plan to invest in retail, education, marketing in your business in the next three months?

And then, you know, each quarter we also add some other questions that are relevant to what might be going on in the world.

And, you know, the idea is that, you know, we're trying to understand how hairdressers specifically feel about the state of the economy and the state of business conditions.

And so in the last polls that you did and the last, like the data that you have, the most current data, what is some.

What is one data point that you think about more than others?

Is there one?

Yeah, for sure.

I mean, you know, to me, having been a hairdresser for 35 years, it's something I've always heard over and over again.

You know, you're so lucky to have a job that you love, which is true in many cases.

I mean, we get to be creative, work with people, work with our hands, a lot of times be entrepreneurial, but that alone does not lead to consistent job satisfaction.

You know, there's a lot of pressures on a hairdresser in terms of just physical pressures, pressures on time and energy, pressures on learning, keeping up.

I mean, you know, if you're not keeping up with whatever the latest trend is or the, the lingo, you can quickly be dated.

I mean, someone who was popular hairdresser two years ago can be cringe today very, very easily.

So just because you love it doesn't mean you're satisfied.

And that, you know, I think is one of the most telling things that we found in 2025 is that over 65, around 65, not over 65% either replied that they were staying the same with their job satisfaction or decreasing.

Now, I don't believe that anything stays the same.

So to me, that means decreasing, you know, stay the Same as just someone who's trying to be nice.

Right.

You know, so that only leaves, you know, the remainder saying that their job satisfaction was increasing.

So you know, when you kind of peel back the onion a little bit and you look at that and we look at all the other metrics that are typically reported upon in data and that our industry has done quite well with for a very long time.

You know, at least reporting the data, you know, retail per client and average service ticket and all this data that we have, you know, I personally extrapolate from the data and then the data does prove this to be true, that, you know, if job satisfaction is decreasing or staying the same, that those performance metrics are decreasing or staying the same.

And that would be the second thing that the data tells us.

You know, overwhelmingly when people say that their job satisfaction is increasing, they also communicate that they are predicting to have raised a rise in revenue and that they are predicting to invest more into education retail marketing.

So there's a total correlation between the two.

Interesting.

So, you know, I, I have to ask because I feel like I shouldn't just go straight for this, but you know, at Hair, just a strong.

We, our big thing is, is we work with a lot of owners and I work with schools and I do, I do recruiting.

I used to do recruiting for a company that 15 locations and and so now I kind of do it for like a, you know, 15, 20 salons.

And what.

When we go and we recruit and we talk to the students and we talk to the owners and we kind of like gauge that, like that those vibes and figure out how we can kind team them up.

So what type of, how, what data do you have that would be for the person that's like trying to hire somebody, you know, because like, I mean people not being satisfied means that, you know, some.

Okay, this is like a side thing but like we've seen.

How do I say this?

I guess I'm just going to say it.

We've seen poaching coming back.

Like people sending video messages to other stylists at other salons, trying to get them to come over and join them, which I hadn't seen that and since before Instagram, like not, not, not like, not as much as we're starting to see it again.

And so I guess that is one thing.

Like someone parent clearly knows that there's a lot of not satisfied or increasing the satisfaction in hairdressers.

But like do you, can you.

What type of information do you extract from that that you would be wanting to Share with like the salon owner that's listening, that's trying to build that

their team, you know, part of it.

We also leave space for open ended questions where people can write their thoughts and opinions about certain things.

And it's mind blowing for a job that maybe is not thought of as a job where people would want to write a lot.

They actually do.

And we're able to, you know, over the course of a year take all those answers of open ended questions, run them through AI to kind of compile again the sentiment that came through from those questions.

So if it goes back to, you know, what is increasing someone's job satisfaction, you look at it in three areas.

I mean, at least it breaks down into three areas, you know, so the first is, and when I say first, they don't necessarily come in that order, but it's just the first one I'm going to talk about is learning.

But the learning, the keywords that we were able to pull out were timely and relevant.

Meaning, you know, learning something when you feel that you need it to execute the job, that's relative to what you're doing, you know.

So for instance, you know, if someone, and I think, you know, again, this is out of the hands of our industry and it's kind of a universal thing.

People, myself included, have been taught that, you know, if there's something you need to do in a relatively close time and you're unsure how to do it, what do you do?

You go on YouTube or some other relevant platform and you look for an instructional video on how to do it.

Now I've been salons all the time.

I still work on clients.

I do education and I see people doing that all the time.

You know, they're looking through different feeds to find something to help them do something that they're going to do on a client either that day or a consultation that they've had.

So as opposed to, you know, the traditional approach.

Now again, it's hard to not judge because you can come from my generation and go, if they would have Learned their fundamentals 16 years ago, they wouldn't have that problem.

But that's just the world has changed, you know what I mean?

And people need their fundamentals when they need them, because they've been trained that way even in school.

They've been trained that way, you know, to have it accessible.

You know, in school they give them a device and they're able to find what they need when they want to, when they want to do it.

You know, so timely was one of the Things about education.

Not, you know, no one was like, oh my God, I love that I was in this two year training program.

It was more like, I work in a place that delivers what I need when I need it so timely.

The other thing is relevant and you know, it comes up again and again of who's, who's doing the teaching.

And again we, we come from an industry that's got a lot of qualified people that can teach things.

But you know, especially if you're from a younger generation, you have learned that you need to learn from someone that has some kind of a badge.

You know, they are, they've got the followers or they've got the, whatever it is.

I, I, there's different kind of badges that people get.

But just because you're the owner of the salon and you've got a full clientele might not be enough for them to think you're a relevant educator.

They might not, they just might not, you know, so they, it's hard not to judge these things.

And I'm trying to not say what's right and wrong.

I'm just saying what, what these qualitative responses give us, you know, the quality of the answer, the emotion, the sentiment of the answer.

You know, if you move from education into some other areas, you know, there's one of the big things is energy.

And to think about the amount of physical energy, mental energy that a hairdresser, hairstylist puts out on a daily basis, it can be quite a lot.

I, you know, I share an anecdote from earlier in my career.

I worked at Suisun for the first 10 years was only hairdressers.

And then after I moved on from soon, I first time in my life I worked in a salon spa.

And in that spa there were massage therapists, which was amazing.

And I noticed the way that they booked, they would do this 60, 90 minute massages and then they would have breaks on their book and they'd drink tea and they'd meditate during that time and try to reclaim their energy.

And you know, I was just like talking, got to be friendly with some of them.

They said, you know, because, you know, here I am, I'm trying to slam another coffee, grab an espresso so I can fit in another client, not taking like a break to reclaim my energy.

And I got to know some of them and they said, you know, it's very physical what we do, the energy.

And I started to think, well, I lay hands on someone for up to an hour, it's very physical what I do to have you ever seen blow dried, very coarse thick hair or cut very long layers and on top of it I have to actually talk to them where most massage therapists don't do a lot of talking.

So I have to keep a conversation going.

So you know, again, we could go on and on.

But you know, simple things like giving a stylist some say in how their day is booked.

You know, instead of saying, well this is how it is.

You get 30 minutes for this and 45 minutes for that and 15 minutes for this.

And you know, we've come a long way as an industry.

Maybe now people get lunch breaks but they get buffer time the way these massage therapists did, you know, so that's what I took from the energy piece, you know, that people who had a little bit more influence over their own schedules and could think a little bit more about their own energy levels, had more job satisfaction.

Interesting.

Yeah, I mean a lot of things can go into that.

I mean again, if you're not charging enough and you have to hustle to get where you need to get, that might make you want to rethink it, you know, because maybe that's enough of a reason to add $5 on every service you do.

So you can take, you know, 10 minutes between every client instead of having a 1, a 145, a 215, a 3, you know, you need a little bit of break time in between and maybe that $5 is enough to buy you that 15 minutes.

Yeah, so.

Well, I think.

Okay, so hold on, I gotta write this down because there's like a couple of things.

So like.

Okay, so the first thing I want to bring up, I want to go back, back a couple of steps.

Okay, okay, so the first thing I want to bring up is have you seen the new data that's come out about learning and cognitive abilities in, in, in, in young people compared to previous generations?

I don't know specifically what you're referring to, but most of the things I've seen are not great.

No, they're less so.

Gen Z is confirmed through various studies to as a general.

Because this is all general stuff.

So like, you know, Gen Z, you know that I love you and you call me up and I'll give you any sort of free anything.

But like I, what we've, what we've seen, what the studies show is that there's been a cognitive decline.

So like the capability, cognitive capabilities of the younger people compared to older generations is lower across the board.

And so what how a lot of nations have responded and this isn't my opinion.

So this is just like, I could Google it right now and pull up multiple pieces about it and.

But what, what has happened is a lot of countries, including the U.S. have lowered the standards of standardized testing to deal with add and intention, like attention spans and like, I don't know, various other things.

Well, Denmark decided they weren't going to lower the standardized test.

The, the, the, the bar.

They weren't going to lower the bar to the people they were going to analyze.

And what they, what they just made the decision was to remove screens out of the learning process.

And in one year, there's all their test scores jumped up.

So I, I think that that's a really interesting conversation.

I know it has nothing to do.

It's only loosely connected to what we're talking about because the timely and relevant, you know, piece, it's like, sure, you can go grab a video, but like, do we know how valuable that education actually is?

I think that's a really important conversation, but that doesn't change the capitalistic consumer side of it.

Like, if you're trying to build a product, then you, you want to build it for the people, what they want.

That doesn't necessarily, you know, we're not solving societal problems here.

You know, I guess, like, that would be a proper response.

Do you have educational piece?

I will say, I personally think that the younger hairdressers that I interact with, and I do interact with, quite a lot of them are better educated than my generation was.

You know, we were taught some very simple things that were right and wrong and we had to do them.

And I, I was never very satisfied or, or thrilled with what, you know, I went through a very great training.

I went to Sassoon.

I was an apprentice there.

I became a stylist.

It took me.

It wasn't until after I left Suisun that I think I really understood what it was to be a great hairdresser.

I, I knew a few things there and I knew them very well, but I didn't understand the bigger picture of what made a great hairdresser.

Where I think personally I, I'm not a screen hater and I also, I support timely and relevant in a lot of ways.

I mean, I really do.

I can go wrong in a lot of ways too.

But just, just like anything, you know, Just like anything.

But I.

Go ahead.

Sorry.

Yeah, no, I just think that there's.

It's, it's not so.

You know, if you open a salon tomorrow and you hear this, you know, you can try to understand it and see how to make it work towards your benefit or you can kind of, you know, push against it.

I guess it's the choice that you have to make.

And I think within the market and even within hiring there are people that go both ways.

You know, I mean if you just have to know what you believe in and follow it and get the message out there and you know, one of those two choices might limit you.

I don't know which one it is right now, but they don't necessarily have to, you know, as long as you, if you believe in doing it a certain way.

And I still think if you've got the conviction behind it to hold to it, you can succeed.

So I will say that I've had the idea that my pushback against this kind of like information that I just shared is that if you, what are we're talking about?

Non digital natives teaching digital natives.

And we don't see, and we see cognitive issues, we see developmental issues and we are some of the most adaptable creatures that we know of.

And so like, would it make sense if we kept this train going for another generation?

Would we see more digitally capable and native people teaching younger people?

And then we figure out.

I think it's, I'm not convinced that screens are the problem.

I just think there is definitely a correlation going on, but I don't think you can prove causation.

And there is also the time based concept of this study where you're not really having Gen Z teachers, Gen B, you know, because they probably wouldn't teach Gen A, but like, you know, like that is really, I think if we're still seeing issues then maybe, maybe there's a conversation.

So I guess that's, that's like, that's my take on the whole thing.

So I, I'm not convinced.

And, and I've interviewed, I've interviewed well, I mean I've definitely interviewed one person who learned everything on YouTube and he's pretty talented.

Now he could be just naturally talented.

But like, I think you're right.

I do think that young people, when I go to talk to them at the schools and we see them going into salons and we interview them ourselves, they are definitely way beyond where anybody I know was at the same level.

So I, I completely agree with you.

I don't, I mean it's, it still goes back to, you know, their passion and focus because even in my generation being trained a certain way, there were still plenty of people that didn't have the passion or the focus and they Just didn't get anywhere.

And there were people that did and they did get somewhere.

So even today, I mean, you still have to have that.

But I just think there's so much more at your fingertips than ever before.

And there's a lot of, like, there's a lot of more independence.

Like when I, when I was coming up, I, I was so blessed.

Like I, I had, I got into a company that had multiple classes a week.

And so like I, my, my, my growth was just so high.

But I, I mean the timely thing, I think, and, and I, I just, I don't know, I think that I had the experience that maybe other people might have today, but with using technology when I had it actually at my fingertips and I could go and I took class once a week for myself.

I started teaching class once a week, which made me a better student, you know, so, and if you think about

that, that's still, and it's always been the rarity rather than the reality in our industry.

You know, I mean, I, I, a lot of salons, I'll say the majority don't even have an organized training program and never did.

I mean it was kind of, you know, you're here, you can watch me, you can ask me questions.

Okay.

You're a young stylist, I can give you my point of view.

But what you're talking about, a structured organized training program with class time and everything.

Yeah.

Is still, you know, it's always been a rarity and then we can talk about that all day long.

Costs money to do that.

It does.

I mean salons don't have that kind

of 15 locations in the local.

Different.

It's a whole different ball game.

Yeah.

It's industrialized in a way and I

don't really think that that's as popular.

These, I feel like there were more salons that had like 20 hairdressers and, or multiple or like multi.

A couple locations.

And I feel like what I see now is a lot of more bespoke boutique styles, six chair salons, maybe up to 10 STR hairdressers who like kind of like mix up.

I don't see a lot of big salons, but like I'm just focused.

I am like a DMV, DC, MD, VA metro, DC metro area.

Like I, I don't get out as much as, you know, you see so much.

Do you think that that is, do you see the same thing or.

No, not really.

You know, I think, you know what, obviously, you know, depending on the part of the country you're in.

And the way that the laws and rules have changed, you know, the independent or the booth renter or the 1099 stylus, whatever, was less.

You know, the.

Something I heard recently from a reputable data person was, you know, pre Covid, it was, you know, about 30% of the industry.

You know, post Covid, it was 50 high 50s, and that they've seen it go down a little bit to mid-50s again.

So I mean, but just, you know, we're talking about a five year time period to go from 30% to high to mid-50s.

So I mean, you know, those are a lot of those people that might have worked in a larger salon, you know, but to me it goes back to the question of I don't, you know, of course people want independence and they want to think for themselves and make decisions for themselves, you know, but I've been an employee for people where I felt I could do that.

So it depends on how those jobs are run, who the leaders are.

You know, I don't think it's an impossibility to have that, I mean, or to make it flourish.

But I think you're probably right, you know, statistically, and I don't know that anyone has the exact statistics on it because there's so many ways to define what we do as, you know, a barber in Spokane, the same as, you know, editorial hairdresser in New York, meaning they both, do, they both have the same job.

And so do their numbers fit in here or are they actually in different industries?

You know what I mean?

Are we lumping it all together?

So, you know, that, that's where I kind of lean into the sentiment and the, the broad strokes of it, because I find the minutiae of the numbers I trust a little bit less, to be completely honest with you, because I just don't think that, you know, and I'm not a data scientist.

I, I graduated high school and I became a hairdresser and I've been a hairdresser for my 35th year.

But I know the industry and I know the people in it and what it, what it is comprised of.

So a lot of times I hear the data and I'm just like, it doesn't sound right.

I've worked for some big companies that have fielded big surveys through actual companies that run surveys and looked at the, at the end result and said, oh, this is not right.

You know, and then as you dig into it, you can say, oh, the person that answered this question about advanced academies is actually talking about a class that they Took at a trade show, which is not an advanced academy.

But the person running the survey, he doesn't know that meant nothing to him.

Oh, it's advanced education.

It's not, it's not the same.

It's just not.

It's.

So there's so many things that make it impossible to, to judge.

So one other, There's.

I got one other thing, actually two other things.

And then I want to, I want to, I have some other questions about the index.

These are all kind of adjacent.

So, so let's see how.

Okay, so let's talk about the buffer thing because I, I brought this up to our salon owners because, like, while, while we were in New Orleans that Monday, I actually had to run my wife and I had to run because we had to run our, our, our monthly call and with our, with our, our salon owner members.

And I was telling them all about the index and the piece that, you know, like this, this buffer thing and like, no booking during processing time and like, making their own schedule is exactly what I'm hearing when I go and talk to the schools.

It's like, and like, you know, and do the social listening on social media and Reddit and all that stuff.

And so I was, I love to hear that there's actually empirical data to like, support back this whole thing up.

I want to tell you what the response was and I want to hear what you have to say.

I mean, it's straightforward.

Like, they were started doing the math.

If they st.

If, if they, how much money do, how much do they have to raise their prices to make the same amount of money to lose the person who's getting their hair done in between your processing time and if there's 15 minutes in between each appointment and they were figuring like, you're losing like probably three appointments a day minimum, and then doing that math expand out.

And they were like, how we suppose.

How we supposed to, like how we supposed to adapt our business model to that?

And I don't have an answer.

You know, I, I, I, I would love to sit down and like, run the numbers if someone wanted to like, pay me for that, you know.

But like, at the end of the day, like, how, how, how do you, what do you think, what is your response to that?

I mean, I think that's a valid way of looking at something.

I also think it's valid to think about longevity of an employee.

Meaning what's the turnover rate?

Like, what's their attrition like?

And if they could have employees that had more job satisfaction and Felt better working there.

How much longer would they work there?

And over the course of time, how much more would they grow within the business before they burnt out and said, oh, I'm sick of this, I need to be independent even.

And on the, on the small, that's big scale, that's big picture thinking.

Because most of the.

And again, this is just someone who's been around the industry.

Most of those big salons that we were talking about, that you're seeing less of a lot of them because I worked in them, did education in them, they had major attrition problems.

And that's why they kind of boom, boom, boom, because they thought the bigger they get, the more they have to control and industrialize.

And then at a certain point they lose that connection with the employee and people.

They're losing them faster than they can make them.

I've seen that over and over.

But that's big picture stuff.

So small picture stuff.

As someone who's worked behind the chair and you mentioned serious business and it's something I've been involved with for a very long time.

I was an employee of Aveda Corporate, not that Aveda.

You know, it's not an Aveda only event, but it's Aveda adjacent event.

And you know, within our service wheel at Aveda, we have the whole kind of retail ritual.

And I can tell you, working in some of the best Aveda salons, concept salons, when you are jam packed and you start to run behind and you maybe are working worried about the quality of your work, you start to cut out some of the pies on that service wheel.

Well, I don't really have time to walk Robert to the front desk, even though I should.

I don't even have time to help him get changed and treat him like a human being, like a guest in my salon.

I'm going to let him fend for himself.

He's done.

So I don't have time to show him the products that I use at the front desk and remind him how important they are to use.

I don't have time to ask him to rebook and to say, hey, you know, I, it's the holidays.

I'm going to be booked for the next six weeks.

I know you're going to need a haircut.

You need one every six weeks.

You should book now.

And I don't have time to say to him, you know, I'm still open to new clients if you get any compliments or any friends or anybody that really send in my way.

So you're sacrificing one or the other, I can't.

You know, you have to figure out what works for you.

You know, and sometimes, you know, for me in business and you know, the entrepreneurial side of the one thing, best advice I ever got, and I think sometimes people struggle with this is you manage the old while you create the new.

So if you have certain systems, your old systems, you know, IBM doesn't just throw out every system they have while they're testing a new system, you know, but it doesn't have to be one or the other.

You have to test certain things and see where it goes and then make decisions based on how it affects the business.

But you know, ultimately it's going to be case by case.

But I think there's definitely a case to be made on either side.

So what do you think about this?

Because you kind of mentioned it.

Like my, my response was I think when you bring them in, you they're not going to be busy, right?

So like you give them the space and you don't double book them and then you have conversations with them about money.

You have helped it like have conversations about their goals and figure out like what motivates them.

And then if they are motivated by like wanting to make more money, which majority of people are, they can, I guess they can raise their prices and keep the way they're scheduling or they can start maybe adding more clients to their book, which might be a little easier considering like how far booked out, like how many clients do they need?

Like that's a whole other conversation.

But like my thought thinking was that there are, and this is probably might kind of annoy some people.

But like I, I think that we are programmable beings that fall into narratives that we believe things to be accurate and true.

And then we build these, these castles around this stuff.

And, and then like, and especially when we are low on the exposure space and low on the exposure level when it comes to like working and paying bills and life and stuff.

So if we're talking about bringing on like a new person, then, then I say like, give them what they want.

Like let, let them be the ones that decide to ramp up their schedule or.

But like what if they don't?

What if they want to keep those buffers and those clients keep paying those prices as they go up so then it ends up being the awash.

Like it's the same thing.

So I don't know.

I kind of like, my idea is like people will either adapt, evolve and adjust and be able to like handle more, but like the nervous system can't just like take it all at once.

So like, if someone really needs that space, it's probably their nervous system saying like, no, I know myself and I don't want, I can't handle all that.

But once you're fully booked, you might, your nervous system can take more.

So you're either going to take more or you're going to say, actually I'm going to keep this and I'm going to like raise my prices.

And then for the, from the, from the perspective of the business, it should be kind of the same.

I don't know, what are your thoughts about that?

I mean, you know, the thing that I think about as you're talking there is communication and I think, you know, the industrialization of the way that you manage something has its efficiencies, but sometimes the first thing that goes out the window is that one on one communication and figuring out what someone needs to perform.

And the best managers take time to understand each person and then customize and create an environment that they can thrive in.

The simplest thing that I learned along the way, and I'm by no means a business guru, I did own a salon.

It was the hardest job I ever had in the industry and I've had pretty much every job in the industry.

And that without a doubt is the most difficult one.

But the one thing that I did learn in that role was the five minute meeting where you know, whoever you are managing with, you know, you have to have a set in stone five minute meeting with them once a week that has no agenda.

And you know, it's not about going out to have coffee and hang out either.

It's in a professional setting in your office space or your reception if you don't.

And it's just really to talk about whatever they want to talk about.

And then in turn, if you have something important you need to share with them, you can share it with them.

And I just found, you know, that really helped me understand each individual person and that I couldn't just say, you're all the same, I'm going to book you all the same.

You all have to perform, perform the same.

Because they don't.

I mean, and the US Military doesn't even work that way.

They can't expect everyone to do everything at the same level.

There's different levels and different ratings.

You know, pilots within the military get different rankings or ratings where no, you're not qualified to fly that aircraft, you can fly these aircrafts and maybe that person just stays there.

You know what I mean, so it all comes down to me in this zone right here to communication and understanding the factors that motivate the individual.

I will come back to say the original message here from this very clear survey findings is that when people have increasing job satisfaction, their confidence increases.

And if you've ever worked in a salon, confident hairdressers that are feeling satisfied, you tell me, do they make more money or do they make less money?

Oh, way more money.

Someone who's got a problem and this, this, you know, they make no money.

Yeah.

If they can go somewhere else, they hate their job.

And not only that, they drag people down with them.

Totally.

Right.

So I mean it again, it's not, not mathematical, it's not scientific, it's emotional.

And I think a lot of what we do, communication and emotion are top, front and center.

Nice.

This has been awesome.

So I, I got a qu.

So like, thank you for all of this.

This has been a great conversation and I appreciate you considering and answering some of my questions.

So I am curious to know, why did you start the hair the hairdresser confidence index?

Like what, where did that come from?

I'll tell you the exact story.

I mean, you know, in the role that I have with Harebrained, as the co founder, president of the business, I work with most of the major brands in the industry and most of the major associations and they're always very focused on quantitative data.

And we've even done surveys with them to try to get quantitative data, number based, scientific data.

And it's always kind of left me wondering, scratching my head and wondering why, why did that, why do those numbers look like that?

And to be honest, just usually when I go to even things that we're not involved in, if I go to a presentation on industry data, I kind of leave and want to puke.

And I don't know why.

It always kind of physically just made me feel ill.

So I was talking to someone on my team who's a very valuable kind of mentor for me.

He works for, for Harebrained and for me, but he's also a mentor at the same time because he's got more business experience than I do on a wider level.

His name's Tony Divino and he was a company called QuestX that used to own American Salon.

They owned the IBS show and they were in all other kind of things.

And he was a senior person at that company and moved on.

And when we first started Harebrained, he was someone that reached out to discuss the possibilities of Questex and Harebrained you know, it was kind of shiny new thing.

And, you know, quickly I realized this is someone who I think could be a mentor for me.

And he's always kind of been in our orbit.

So long story short, a few years ago, you know, he had, he's in his mid-60s, I would say, he's kind of semi retired.

We figured out a way to get him to work with us on a, on a more consistent basis.

So when I came back from one of these events and, you know, was talking about feeling physically ill, and he said, well, you know, let's, let's peel it back a little bit.

Like, you know, I think the problem is like, you want to know why, you know, not just what or how, you know, which is what we get numbers, numbers, numbers and this and that, but, you know, why.

And he referred me to something that I'd always heard of, that I think a lot of your listeners will have heard of, you know, even in the background on the news when you're a kid and they say, you know, the Wall Street Journal confidence index this month is blah, blah, blah, blah.

You know what I mean?

It's like something that you know of and I knew of it and I just didn't really understand if you said it's a regular survey that happens of small business and they do confidence indexes of different people, but this specific one is of small business owners across the United States.

And they're able to then take that, to extrapolate that sentiment against real data and say, why is the GDP going down?

Well, if all the business owners are fearful and expressing the sentiment that they're dissatisfied, they're worried about investing, they're worried about, literally worried about the future for whatever reason, political, economic, socio economic, whatever's going on, usually those other things go down.

It's just.

And you know, so there's your big why.

So if we can supply that kind of understanding of what's happening in our industry and correlate the two, you know, we'll be in a fairly good place.

It doesn't mean it solves the problem, but it helps us understand how to address it and start to think, you know, at serious business, I have this big graphic of an iceberg.

And there was what was above the waterline, which was average retail per client, you know, you know, percentage booked rebooking, percentage client retention, all these things.

But below it were all these unspoken of things, you know, pressure, energy, family situation, all these things that.

And we all know that what's beneath the waterline on an iceberg is usually 100 times bigger than what's above it.

So the idea is if we can understand what's going on below it at an industry wide level and as a manager on a personal level, if you're an iceberg, I need to know what's below the waterline on you.

You know what I mean?

Then I can actually coach you and be a mentor.

I hope that answers the question.

Yeah, no, that was, that was great.

I really appreciate all the consideration that went into it and, and, and the story of how it came about.

I really do appreciate it.

And when you, I do have one other question.

How did you, how do you collect the information?

So we send out a survey first via email to people who've responded before.

Then, you know, so we go down the line.

So we, we send it out to people who've responded before.

And originally we built an audience by saying, sending out an email and saying, you know, opt in if you want to be part of this survey.

You know, then we go broader and broader and broader until even we even just post like a story slide on Instagram.

So we're able to look at it broadly now.

We're even starting to partner.

The first quarter of 2026, we have run a survey specifically with Boulevard, the Salon software just to Boulevard users.

And we also just launched one with Sola to people that use solar suites so that we can kind of, you know, look at all of this data against each other too now to hopefully grow this and see satisfaction in different.

Yeah, as I said, you know, is someone in a solar suite the same as someone that has, you know, 20 stylists working for them?

I mean, you know, are they class?

I don't mean are they the same?

I mean, are they classified?

Is it the same job?

You know, and how do they respond?

And then what can we do?

What, where do we take it from there?

That is exciting.

You know, and again, I just, you know, I say this all the time because we, you know, it's not overly scientific.

A lot of it is, it's about emotion, it's about sentiment, it's about giving people a chance to communicate.

A lot of the open ended stuff where we say, do you have any other thoughts you'd like to share?

That's, that's where the gold is to me.

You know, when we can have little charts about satisfaction and performance and this and that, but when we go through those people and, you know, people are writing hundreds of words to talk about how they're feeling about something, it's, it's really interesting and powerful stuff.

That's amazing.

This is, this has been great.

I, I really appreciate you coming on the show and telling us all about it.

Do you have like, anything that you want to kind of like sign off with?

Is there anything that we didn't talk about that is part of your, what you've got from the index that you'd like to share beforehand before we, you

know, I think we got the broad strokes there and I think, you know, you kind of mentioned it as well, that, you know, when it comes to the satisfaction piece, there's so many influences that happen.

Like, you know, even 10 years ago when you didn't have so many voices on social media alerting people to challenges that maybe they didn't even know they had, you know, so those are things we have to address as well.

And, you know, you mentioned it a little bit earlier, but it, it is something I've been thinking a lot about.

You know, I see a lot of things, you know, it's like if you don't know about a challenge and then you see somebody else has the challenge and you think, well, maybe I do have that challenge.

And, you know, that even adds another layer to it, you know.

Did you ever think that you were undercharging before you heard all these people talking about undercharging?

Did you?

You know, it's like, it's an interesting piece that can influence satisfaction.

And most of the times what I'm seeing is that it can influence it in a negative way because it's like, you know, keeping up with the Joneses, so to speak.

You know, like, oh, I see what's happening over there.

And totally, yeah, it's just a kind of a little thought.

Here's the last thing.

I'll end it on.

We in at Serious Business, which was our first large gathering of hairdressers where we shared this.

We did a word cloud and we asked people, how are you feeling at work?

And this was a, you know, a serious business for those who don't know.

It's a lot of owners, managers, but it's not exclusively that there was.

There's a wide variety, but I'd say it skews towards owners and managers in commission and employee based lines.

But there's also a smattering of other job classifications.

But in all three of the groups that were.

All of them were over 100 people.

And all three of the groups in Word, Cloud, it's the word that people respond with the most, is the biggest one in the middle.

It was overwhelmed on all three of them like that.

Overwhelmed like that.

Boom.

So if we don't think job satisfaction is a challenge in our industry, I mean, that's a microcosm of it right there, right?

Totally.

This has been amazing.

Thank you so much for coming on the show.

I. I really hope to be able to talk to you more maybe about some of these side conversations that we had.

I would also, as we.

After we sign off, I'd still.

I'd.

I'd like to, like, give five minutes if you're.

If you're cool with that.

But before we sign off, can we.

Can we can people.

You can tell people where they can find you and where they can find the hairdresser.

Confidence inde index information.

Yep.

If you go to hairbrain.com which is our site and our online store where we sell professional tools and we publicize articles for our brand partners, you can.

The confidence index report is there.

You can download it for yourself.

The findings of a confidence index.

It's hairbrain.com you know, if you want to follow us on social media.

If you don't, Harebrain underscore official on Instagram.

And my own personal on Instagram is Gerard Scarpesi.

My name.

Awesome.

And we'll include all that in the information below.

All right, well, until next time.

Thank you.

Peace.