Welcome back to the Heritage Strong Show.

My name is Robert Hughes and I am your host.

And today I'm with Steve Reese.

How you doing today, Steve?

Very good.

Thank you for having me, Robert.

I appreciate it.

Absolutely.

Thank you for taking the time.

So, everybody, I was at Beauty Gives Back and, well, I wasn't there, Steve, you reached out to us beforehand, said, hey, you're going to be there.

You want to link up?

And we were at Beauty Gives Back.

Shout out to Maria.

And we were doing these little mini interviews and we had a chance to talk a little bit about the industry and we talked a couple.

We talked another time, I think two more times after that.

And we talked about data that you collect, all the different initiatives that you're part of.

And so I'm curious, would you give us maybe a high level overview of the different stuff that you're part of and a little bit about them so we can give the audience some context about who you are and what you do?

Sure.

So the first thing I'll say is I came into the industry as an outsider.

I had no experience in the industry.

I came into the industry because I got a job.

And that job was as the publisher of Modern Salon.

Very quickly I realized that this was very different from other industries I had been in.

I had been in hospitality, I'd been in packaging, I'd been in electronics, I'd been in automotive.

I've been in a lot of different industries in a short time.

But I realized this was very different.

It was very different because of the people.

And I very quickly recognized that what made this industry special was that people wanted to be in this industry.

It wasn't a job, it wasn't a career.

It's a lifestyle.

It was an opportunity to give back.

It was an opportunity to be creative.

It was an opportunity to really become part of a community.

And I appreciate how the community made me feel like I was a part of.

The community embraced me.

So I've always felt like it's my obligation, everything I can, to be supportive of the community.

Nice, nice.

So let's talk about like a little bit.

Let's start with one of the things that I thought was interesting that you're working on is there's some sort of initiative to, you know, get into the community, not the hairdressing community, but like the general public community, through way of career fairs and outreach so that people understand that this is a career and not a backup plan.

You talked about career counselors talking to career counselors, but you've also talked about like, kind of getting the word out about cosmetology.

Would you tell us a little bit about that?

Yeah, it's.

It's a virtually moment in time.

I've been involved in these conversations, and lots and lots of people have going back years and years and years.

And to a certain extent, we're still dealing with the beauty school dropout stereotype, which is very, very inaccurate.

And one of the challenges is that we want to make sure that people who are well suited for this industry know about this industry, know how to get involved, and we make it as easy as possible.

Now, one of the things that's happened in the past few years is with the Internet, we have a pretty good idea of who's interested in our industry just by what's trending.

And there are lots and lots of people who are interested in beauty and wellness.

The challenge has always been that they're not necessarily aware of it being a career.

And if they are, they have absolutely no idea how to get started, what all the different career options are.

So working primarily with Beauty Changes Lives, which is an industry nonprofit that provides scholarship dollars, mentorship, a whole host of other things to support the industry.

We've been working on ways to help get the word out.

Now, one of the things that's changed pretty dramatically is attitudes about our industry.

And if you go back to three or four years ago, we almost had a little bit of a chip on our shoulder.

You should go to college, you should get a good job.

But a couple of things have happened.

One is the whole conversation about student debt, loan repayment, which made people realize just how much money they owed.

And all of a sudden parents were saying, well, maybe I don't want my kids to do this.

Maybe, maybe I want them to do something different where they don't go into debt because I'm still paying off my debt 20 years later.

Second thing that happened was AI.

And AI was really interesting because it was the first major technology shift that affected white collar, that is college type jobs more than careers.

So what's happened is the conversations change pretty dramatically.

And it used to be the conversation we had was, should you go to college or should you get into the beauty industry?

And basically, parents and guidance counselors and all the other influences in a young person's life were saying, no, you should go to college.

And now that conversation has really changed.

And it's really different because it's no longer about college versus the beauty industry.

It's really college versus a career.

And then once people decide that, you know, what a Career might be something I'm interested in, then it's very easy to look at all the different careers and for certain types of people, people who care about creativity, people who want to be part of a community, people who want to give back, those type of people are going to gravitate towards our industry and we're going to get the people who really belong here now.

Related to that, we did some research with the Beautycast Network and we, and we've done it for the past two years and we went to the association of Career Counselors and these are the people who are advising high school students about what to do with their lives.

And we asked them how they felt about careers in general versus college versus careers in beauty specifically.

And virtually all of them said that we think that the world is trending towards careers and we think much more positively about careers.

And then we ask them specific questions about which do you think offers greater financial stability?

Which do you think offers more job security?

Which do you feel offers more job or career satisfaction?

And by a pretty significant margin, people felt that careers and beauty careers represented that more than traditional college.

So that's kind of a sea change.

And that's our opportunity to get the word out because people are going to listen to us.

Additionally, I saw some third party research recently which was talking about career schools.

And the real challenge wasn't, was never, was never younger people in our career, people who like our career, like our career.

We just had to create awareness.

It was always the parents and now parents are twice as likely as their children to say, perhaps you should consider a career versus college.

So there's a dramatic difference.

And our goal over the next few months is to start developing a campaign that we can use to take advantage of the viral nature of our industry.

Because there are so many people like you who have audiences and we can get the industry to start telling our story a little bit more accurately, figuring out, yeah, what is we need to share.

But the other part of the equation is that if you think about consumers, every single stylist out there is dealing with consumers on a regular basis and they're the ones who can share the word about our community.

And like, this is what our careers are really like.

And these are the types of people who might really like careers in beauty and wellness.

And these are the people who perhaps don't.

And then you have so many brands who are selling to professionals, but they're also communicating with consumers in a lot of different ways.

So we're at this unique moment in time where we're going to get a lot more mileage out of anything we do than ever before.

So I have a.

So you were talking about, you know, career versus college and how there's been a big shift towards career.

Can you.

Do you have any, like, anything like quantifiable or data or, or, or something to share with us?

Like it was only 10% people chose careers and now 30% choose careers over college.

Do you have anything like that to share to give us, like the, the sea change, like some sort of example?

Good question.

I wish I did.

Given that this whole conversation really has only been the last year and a half or so, we don't really have enough history behind us to have a lot of data.

That being said, the research we've done and research other people have done indicates that perceptions have changed pretty significantly.

So the expectation is, if we do a good job telling our story, that we can impact behaviors.

And it's not just getting more people in our industry, it's getting the right people in our industry.

It's getting people in this industry who found a career that really aligns with what they care about and who are going to be committed.

And one of the things I've always loved about this industry is it's really all about you.

If you're focused and you're serious and you work hard, you can be incredibly successful in a lot of different ways.

In terms of lots of friends and support mechanisms, in terms of lots of freedom and in terms of lots of money.

If you're not motivated and you don't do a lot, you're not going to accomplish a lot.

And it's not that different for most other types of jobs or careers.

We want to make sure that those millions of people who are following our industry on social media understand that there are opportunities here and this is how you might get started.

And these are the range of opportunities.

And I can tell you that in conversations with people in this industry, it's not just about cutting or styling hair.

It's lots and lots of other things.

And if I'm a brand or distributor, I would love to have people working for me who are licensed professionals because they understand the business and they understand the products and they understand things.

So there are lots and lots of opportunities.

We just have to make sure we communicate it in a way that resonates with this generation.

So what other.

What type of resources are career counselors asking for to communicate better with their students?

We.

We've done a very uneven job of communicating with them.

And if you're going Back a few years ago, they.

They were trying to push people towards college.

Yeah, yeah.

And that.

That's changed a lot.

And they're looking for information.

And if they're lucky enough to locally have some salons who work with them and some beauty schools who work with them, they probably have the information they need.

But what I can tell you is it's very, very uneven.

There are areas where they get a lot of attention and areas where they don't get a lot of attention.

And there are certainly industry groups like beautycast Network who go to these career fairs and to set up activities to make people more aware.

But the larger opportunity for us is, is that the whole college versus career conversation is much, much broader.

And there are large organizations like CQ and Blue Recruit, which are now addressing it.

And we just have to make sure when they're talking about the college versus career decision, when they talk about careers, they have the information to explain what our careers are and what they aren't and to really help identify the types of things that would be most attractive to people who are thinking weird.

So what was I going to ask you so in the conversation about?

In this conversation?

Oh, man, there's like two questions, and I can't remember the first.

Second.

First one.

So I got the second one in my head, so I'll ask you that.

So you mentioned something about, like, working.

I.

This is kind of like an annoying hot button question that I know, like, some people are probably going to, like, get emotional about.

So I feel like I got to ask you what.

You mentioned something about working.

You know, put in the amount of work we do and have you had.

What is your experience with the.

With the concept of hard work like that?

Do you have anything to share about this idea that hard work is a necessity for success or anything like that?

Would you like to comment in on that?

Do you even know what I'm talking about?

Yeah, yeah.

There was a quote.

Somebody told me it was from Vidal System, and I'm probably going to mess it up.

But it was something along the lines of, the only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary.

And the reality is that life gives you what you work for.

And it doesn't always mean hard work.

Sometimes it means smart work.

And a big part of smart work is taking advantage of opportunities.

And I know a lot of people have seen Ted Lasso and one of the scenes I really love about Ted Lasso when he's talking about being curious.

And people love to talk about themselves and they love to share things and especially people in this industry, they love to help other people.

That's what really sets this industry apart.

And there are a lot of people who take advantage of that.

And you're one of them.

You're always asking people how did you get where you are, what the challenges you dealt with, what are the learnings, all those type of things.

There are a lot of people who sit by the sidelines and wait to get spoon fed this type of stuff.

And it's not specific to this industry.

It's just part of life.

The more curious you are and the more you put yourself out there and ask people questions and engage them, the more success you're going to have.

And a little bit scary.

But the reality is if you ask from a place of earnestness and integrity and genuine curiosity, 99 people out of 100 in this industry are going to be happy to help you.

That's what they're all about.

Totally.

Totally.

I personally, I think there was kind of segueing into the generational gap.

But before we get there, I, because I was, I was going to say my experience is people will work hard at any age as long as it's, they're clear about the, the, the steps that they take lead to where they're going.

And so I, I've noticed that it, it's hard work.

It needs to maybe be reframed.

Your smart works word, that's pretty good.

I, I'm going to needle let that noodle on, on my brain.

So what about before we go into generational gap too much?

Because I feel like that, that kind of tends to take us in that direction.

But what about education?

Like, if I said what is the state of education in the industry?

What is the first thing that comes to your mind?

Evolving.

Evolving.

Okay.

How, how do you see education evolving?

Well, if you think about it, a number of things have happened.

20 years ago, learning to use the Internet, you know, 10, 12 years ago, we were just learning to use mobile devices or smartphones.

We basically live in a world that's completely different than it was just four or five years ago.

And what happened during the pandemic was it just accelerated technology because people had to use it.

You didn't have choices anymore.

If you wanted to connect with people, you had to learn how to do this stuff and you had to make your mistakes.

And we always talk about technology adoption as something that should have taken 10 years and it happened in two years because we were forced to do it.

Now that's a lot of dislocation because people are Just now figuring out what do I really need to care about, what don't I need to care about what are best practices, what are not best practices.

And then when you think you're catching up, AI comes along and everything's completely different again.

And I think that's going to be how the world moves.

There's no next normal.

The new normal is everything's going to be changing.

So if you think about it, a lot of the older people who are more established, who are running a lot of the businesses, they're used to doing things a certain way, and now they have to do it a little bit differently.

And it's particularly a challenge, first of all, because a lot of the older people like myself, were, I guess, digital immigrants compared to the people who are younger in digital natives.

And what that's done is, is it's kind of shifted the balance of power because here within your business, you have to rely on technology, and you kind of understand that, but you certainly don't understand it at the same level that a younger person does.

So the younger people have a lot more power than they've ever had, and they're living in a world where they go online and they see answers, you know, very, very quickly to things, and they're very focused on the result because that's what they've learned.

Older people grew up in an environment where you learned the process and you learned how to do things, and then you got to the end result.

There are benefits and drawbacks to both.

The benefit to getting a result quickly is you get a result quickly.

The downside is if something changes, you might not understand the process or the mechanism well enough to account for that change and to figure out what happened and what you need to do.

So there.

There's a lot of confusion and a lot of dislocation.

There is also a generational divide because you have younger people who are living their life digitally and maybe older people aren't, and they communicate differently.

They have different expectations.

I know we are going to be presenting some research we conducted in beauty schools on the generational divide.

And one of the challenges is that going back used to get respect because you were the teacher, you were the source of information.

Everybody needed to go through you to get where they needed to go.

Now people have lots and lots of places they go for information, and right or wrong, they tend to believe a lot of it at face value.

Not realizing that that TikTok you saw showing somebody seamlessly do something was probably recorded 11 times until they actually had that result.

But the challenge as, as an educator now is now you've almost got to earn that respect, and you've got to show them you know, what you're talking about.

Where in the past it was a very, very different dialogue, now there's no judgment call, which is better, which is worse, but it's just very, very different.

And it creates a challenge when you've never had this much of a divide, especially in a world that continues to change so fast.

So we had this conversation once before, and I've had plenty of time to think about it.

And I'm kind of glad that we had this conversation and I had time to think about it, because when you first said it, I was like, so if Timmy, who's 8, wants Skittles for dinner every day, do we give Timmy, who's eight, Skittles for dinner every day?

And I, my answer is no.

Like, there's not a conversation to be had.

The answer is no.

And so like a student who doesn't know anything, who thinks they know something, is now dictating how they educate.

Anyway, that was where my head went the first time we had that conversation.

And, and I've definitely had some time to think about it and evolve my, my thoughts on it.

And I, and I'm so glad you brought that up because I wasn't sure if this was going to come up.

So I was teaching a class.

I started a boot camp on Sunday.

And it's a six week class.

I mean, it's, it's one day a week for six weeks.

And we go over the foundations and I, I had one of the students shout out to Victor, Scotty, what's up?

Thank you for so much for this question.

Well, I don't know if it was a question, but it was more of a conversation we were having and we talked about, like, how it's very much like, this is my way.

You have to do it this way because, like, this is.

I, this is success.

Success is do it the way I did it.

And so, like, and I, and I really appreciate that because when I was 19, like, I didn't want to hear what anyone had to say.

I was like gonna, I was gonna go fast and I was gonna blaze trails.

And I didn't care.

And so, and I didn't care what my dad said.

I didn't care what any teacher said.

The only people I cared were people who I thought were really cool or had what I wanted, which kind of translates into social media, but on steroids, because you can pick your, your, your, your influencers and if you consume all of the information about the world through social media and that echo chamber that's created by the algorithm that's kind of feeding you the things that you want to hear, then you know, it's not your fault that you don't know what you don't know, you know?

So, like, I think that I.

And it really kind of, that revelation really helped me appreciate this conversation so much more.

So when I was talking about, I was talking to the class as a whole saying, you know, this is how I learned.

I learned to get good and then get fast.

Don't get fast, then get good.

Build your clientele slowly.

Don't take everybody.

Make sure that you're, you're, you're.

You know, if someone's rude to you, then just don't do their hair ever again.

Like, it's like over.

It takes a lot longer to build your book that way, but you end up, you know, looking back into the past and being so grateful you did because your clientele is amazing, like my clientele, and shout out to all my clients who are checking this out, I love you.

So, so.

And it was in that conversation that the kind of the idea and revelation of, you know, why is it that older, the older generations, the older folks, the people who are maybe immigrant immigrants to technology.

Why is it that we are the way we are?

And I think it has a lot to.

I was thinking about, like I was 19, 18, 17 when was I started in the industry.

17 years old when I started the industry, I had no social media.

So everything I knew about the industry was told to me by the people around me.

I barely used the Internet back then.

I used it to pull directions for things, maybe look up a word or something.

But so, like, it makes sense that you would think that this is the way because when you were coming up, you found the way to success and you're going to share this way with others now.

What I think it's okay for a person who wants to put themselves as an educator is to say, well, this is the way, because I know it works.

If you don't like this path, then you should go find your own path.

But I also think it's okay as an educator to be like, hey, I know this works and that's what you're here for today.

And that's how I'm teaching this bootcamp.

But I also get a free pass because it's a boot camp.

It's foundations.

It's not like a creative cutting class.

There's not really Any interpretation as far as I'm concerned.

And I preface the class with that.

And they were very receptive, receptive to it.

And I'm wondering if there's something in there that maybe like, oh, and one other thing, because then I want to hear what you have to how what you're thinking as I'm talking.

So one other thing is when I learned to teach at Graham Web.

Sarah Leonard.

Shout out to Sarah Leonard.

She's told me that everyone pays the same amount of money to be here, so you have to give everyone the same amount of time.

She says, I see you spending a lot of time with some people who might not be picking it up as fast, she said, but they didn't pay more than the next person.

So you gotta, like, just accept the fact that some people will fall through the cracks and you can't teach everybody everything and not everyone's gonna get it.

And so that is another really piece of interesting thing, because, like, if a student doesn't wanna learn from a teacher, you know, I don't know there, I feel like we're, you know, like, can we make this conversation equitable on both sides?

You know, you still have the teachers, still have knowledge, still have, you know, so like, and then the students are choosing to go to a school and paying for that school.

So where.

Anyway, I'm going to stop and just let you talk.

No, you raised a lot of really interesting points.

I think the first thing that we just have to say is social media creates a sense that you're going to go out and you're going to be immediately successful.

And there are 100 people who are, and we know who they are, but we don't know about the 99,900 who aren't.

And in any job, in any career, in anything you do, you got to pay your dues.

And people will look at lawyers and say, wow, they make so much money.

I got to tell you, your first few years as a lawyer is not a happy time.

You have to pay your dues.

And one of the things that I think has to be tied to this outreach to new people and why we want to get the right people, people who really belong in this industry, is because they'll understand that.

Because they'll understand that there's a commitment here.

But in terms of the educator, it's really.

Our role has changed, if you think about it.

So it used to be there was a limited amount of information.

So to a certain extent, you were the content creator, you were creating how you presented this to students now there's too much information.

And the challenge is that the students don't have the experience in the industry or in life to really decide what's important and what's not.

So you've gone from a content creator to a content curator.

And being a content curator means you have to be able to discuss those different things with your classroom and explain which of these are good and why they're good and which of these perhaps are not so good and why they're not so good.

And it's definitely not a talking down conversation.

It's got to be an active conversation respecting their perspective, where they're coming from, vice versa.

And I think it's very, very difficult coming from a world where most things were top down to a world where things are top down, but they're also bottom up and they're also coming in from the sides.

Yeah, I mean, I don't disagree.

I think that's more like the words you choose, the tone you take.

But I don't know that that necessarily addresses.

Like, okay, for example, say I teach classes.

Like, when someone chooses to pay to come to my class, class, they're choosing to learn from me, and I need to be able to answer all their questions.

I also need to know when the time is.

Like, I just want.

I understand that you learn all these other.

You've seen all these other ways, but for this class, I want you to do it this way.

You can do it any way you want, but I want you to see what happens when you do it this way.

And if you really, really want to try it another way, why don't you do it this way on one side and this way on the other or something like that.

But at the end of the day, like, I'm.

I'm, like, I'm here to teach a specific course.

Like, if Paul Mitchell school, they have a curriculum, they have a course, you know, like, it's not, it's not anybody's.

As a matter of fact, Paul Mitchell school doesn't even have a choice.

Like, the National NACUS decides what's in the curriculum.

So I think.

I think maybe we're talking about two different things.

We're talking about one is how you communicate with another person, and the other is like, what is on the agenda, I think, is maybe where this conversation is.

I think it's conflating together.

Well, we're talking about two complementary but different things.

I mean, when people go to school, they're making the choice to go to school.

They're not necessarily making the choice you know, I might want to go for aesthetics or I might want to go for.

For cause, but essentially they're picking that.

When they're picking you, they're picking you because of you.

So it's a very.

So it's a lot easier for you to say that because they have voted with their feet that they want to see what you have to say.

And there are always people who.

Some people just want to go hear music, and some people say, no, no, no, I'm going to pay a lot more and travel because I want to hear this band because they're that much better.

And life is a combination of both.

What, according to your information, what is the attrition rate or approximately from student.

From people in the industry after graduation?

Well, I don't know an exact number, and I'm not sure if anybody does.

The challenge with this industry is there are so many gray areas.

So, you know, ballpark out there.

There are probably 2 million licensed stylists in the United States at any given time.

Maybe a million of them are working because you.

This is one of the great things about this career is if you learn how to do this, you can do this anywhere in the world, and you can actually leave the career and come back later.

And a lot of careers, you just can't do that.

So that's kind of a plus thing.

But the challenge is that because of that, it's hard to really track people.

And then you have people who are working gray areas.

You have people who are independent contractors who might be working out of their kitchen or their garage or something like that.

So we don't really know now.

What I can tell you is that beauty changes lives.

Did research when we really started working on this industry education, advocacy type of campaign.

And what we found was that people who stuck with this business for like three to five years, working ostensibly full time, and full time has changed.

They used to be 38 hours, then with 32 now it looks like full time is more or less 26 hours.

But people who stuck with it, and this was their primary focus for that long, tended to stick in the industry and not only stayed in the industry, they were very, very happy about being in the industry.

They felt that compared to their.

Not their customers, but their friends and their family, that they had a better job, that they were making a fair amount of money and they enjoyed what they were doing more.

But the challenge is that a lot of people get lost in those first few years.

And it's probably the same across a lot of different things.

I mean, I was an English major.

Did I end up, I wasn't, I wasn't an English major.

But if you really do end up using it or you know, if you studied this and it's not just getting the right people into this industry and by the right people, it's kind of self select.

It's people who really want to do this and they kind of have a sense of what this career is like and they realize that I may spend a fair amount of time standing or I may spend a lot of time with people and people may be asking me for my opinion and to be creative.

And if I don't feel comfortable with these things, maybe this isn't the best career for me.

But understanding what this career offers and then understanding that I'm gonna get out of this, what I put into this and yeah, I'm gonna work really, really hard and I'm gonna set myself up for success.

So I, I think this is such a great conversation because I, I like to think I open things up and get into the weeds.

But like I'm realizing that I, because I haven't had this conversation enough.

I haven't.

So one of the things about that you're talking about is kind of making me think about another thing like related thing is like 60, approximately the number I have is 60% of the industry is independent.

One second piece is more than half of people are leaving the industry five years after graduation.

That's another piece.

I don't know how accurate that is.

We got another data set that says there's a 40% churn rate from the industry.

There's, there's like all these numbers and so, and then I also work with some lawns locally on their, their hiring stuff and like helping them, you know, find good fits and stuff like that.

So like, so what, what they're saying is they know that they're, they're all like, you know, I'm the only person from a graduating class of cosmetology school that's still in the industry.

So I don't actually expect you to be able to find that many students to send to me.

I think that because the people that they're looking for are the people that will stick around.

So they're fighting against attrition and the desire to be independent.

So do you have any thoughts in that space?

Well, first of all, to say I'm the only person in my graduating class tell me that they don't know.

They don't even remotely come close to knowing because they haven't stayed in touch with all those people.

And it's not the type of industry where you're necessarily going to bump into these people at some point in time.

So that's kind of people saying, like, everybody wants to do this, and it's never everybody.

It's just a sense.

That being said, we need to get the right people.

We need to do a better job educating them on the reality of what this industry is all about.

And there's a challenge because in the current environment, if you have less hours to devote to curriculum, you basically have to make sure your people can pass the test.

And you might not be spending as much time as you could or should be spending on the types of things they need in terms of soft skills and communication and finance and all those other things which are going to make them successful.

So there's definitely a need to focus on those people who are just coming in the industry and make sure they have the information tools they need.

The second thing is, if you came out of law school and you spent three years in law school and you said, okay, I'm going to go out and I'm going to do it by myself.

And I've never worked as a lawyer before, and I've never been part of an office before.

I have to imagine it's going to be really, really difficult.

And it's the same thing if you're coming out and you're trying to work independently.

I know lots and lots of people, including in my family, have worked at McDonald's.

And it's not that that's what they aspire to for their entire life.

It's that by having a job, you're proving that you're reliable.

You're showing up for something on a regular basis.

You're understanding how business works to a certain extent.

These are things, and you and I have talked about these.

These are things that are really, really important.

And there are probably people just like there are people who go to college because I don't know what I want to do, so I'm just going to go to college.

There are probably people who felt the same way about beauty school.

I'm not ready to figure out what I want to do yet, but, you know, they're willing to accept me and I'll figure out the finances, so that's what I'm going to do.

And it's like anything else, making sure that people have the right information.

And part of that is being very direct and very honest with them about the realities of all this.

And, you know, the.

The universe will then Align.

So, I mean, this has been an incredible conversation.

We are at, at our time.

If you were going to give a salon owner advice when it comes to their concerns about low applications to the salons, like across.

This is across the board, at least in the dmv.

Like, if it's not in other places and you're listening or watching to this, please let me know.

I'd love to hear from you.

But everyone I talk to is having challenges with hiring, and especially young, the younger, like the rising stylists, you know, people with less than three years in the.

In the industry, let's say one year and less, or in students, they're having a lot of trouble hiring.

Do you have any advice for them?

Well, this advice is coming from someone who's never run a salon, so.

But, you know, you.

You do a lot of research.

I talk to a lot of people.

Yeah.

Well, what I will say is there are a lot of things going on.

One of them is that people are working less hours because people have side gigs and because they want to work less hours.

So if you took the entire workforce and you had the same number of people, but they went from working 40 hours a week to 30 hours a week, there's a lot less capacity out there.

You do have people who are going to independence.

You do have people who are working underneath the radar.

I think what it really comes down to is there's an expectation among younger people that this isn't just a job, but this is an opportunity for me to grow.

They want to know that you're investing in them, that they're going to learn.

If they're going to come to work for you and they're going to spend most of the time doing towels and sweeping up, it's not going to be very attractive.

You have to be invested.

Then.

The other thing is there are beauty schools all over the country, and every salon owner should be working with the beauty schools, inviting the students to come into their salon once in a while, talking to them about the real world.

And it's not only an opportunity to identify the real high flyers, because within any class, not just in beauty and wellness, but in any topic, there are those people who, you know, are going to be superstars, you know, and if they're going to be superstars, they may not come and work for you forever, but they may come and work for you for a while.

And at that point in time, you've built a relationship with them and they've made your business better.

And life is not a straight line.

You may connect down the road.

And that is one of the things that we're always talking to younger people about.

They can't be dismissive things say, well, I talked to this person, they can't help me.

It's like, well, you know, maybe they can't help you right now, but talking to them, they give you information, you learn and you learn different things, you get different perspectives.

And it may be that three years down the road they reach out to you and say, hey, I remember we had a conversation and the timing was bad then, but now I think the timing's really good.

It's just having a better sense of how the real world works.

And I think that's what salon owners and professional stylists can really impart upon the next generation.

They can say, this is how I did it.

This is how you can do it.

Now, of course, there are lots of paths.

You may do it very, very differently.

But there's something here.

So just think about what's here that might be of value.

Nice.

Nice.

Awesome.

And then how about one last piece of advice?

If you have anything or something to say to the educators and the folks in the world of education, whether you're school or an independent visual educator.

Independent, whatever.

Well, the one thing that somebody told me a long time ago is that your friends define you.

And by friends I mean the people you associate with.

One of the challenges of this industry is it was very much an under the radar, family, business, community type of industry.

And it's gotten more and more corporate and find the people you can work with who really care about your business.

Not saying that corporate people don't, but there are certain groups and businesses and organizations which really care about the industry.

And hairdresser.

And I feel very blessed to work for Pivot Point because Pivot Point is a third generation family business where every single member of the family has graduated beauty school and they care passionately about the industry and they let me work on projects related to sustainability and wellness and recognizing domestic abuse and a lot of things which are deib things that are really important to our community.

There are lots of groups out there like that.

Start exploring groups, start making sure you're spending time with the people who are curious, who are motivated, who really care about the business, but also care about you.

Nice.

Nice.

I love that.

I love that.

So thank you so much for taking the time to come onto the show and share your perspective and all the information that you are collecting.

It's very valuable.

So thank you.

It's my pleasure.

I appreciate it.

All right, well, until next time.

I'll see you later.