There’s a conversation happening in the music industry right now that’s gotten loud enough for the general public to start paying attention. Artists being asked to play weddings for free. Producers being offered a shoutout in exchange for a track. Session musicians, the invisible hands behind some of the most recognized songs on the radio, still not receiving royalties or credit for work that drives commercial hits.

The ask is always the same: do the work, give it away, and trust that the visibility will eventually pay off.

The public has started forming opinions about it. Taking sides. And what’s emerging underneath all of it isn’t really a music industry problem — it’s a much bigger conversation about what skilled work is worth, who gets to decide, and what happens when an entire trade absorbs the cost of being undervalued for long enough.

Hairdressers know that conversation well. It just hasn’t always been this loud.

The exposure economy and how it works

The premise is simple: do the work for free, or heavily discounted, in exchange for visibility. A shoutout. A tag. A mention to someone who might become a paying client. On the surface it sounds reasonable — especially early in a career, when building a portfolio matters and getting your work seen is genuinely part of the job.

And here’s the thing: sometimes it is reasonable. Sometimes a collaboration, a creative project, or an opportunity carries real value that isn’t measured in dollars — and a skilled professional who chooses to engage with it from a place of knowing exactly what they’re bringing to the table is making a legitimate business decision. That exists. It’s real.

But that’s not what we’re talking about when we talk about the exposure economy. What we’re talking about is something different — and the difference matters more than it usually gets credit for.

Two things that look the same but aren’t

There is a real distinction between choosing to trade your skill for something that holds genuine value to you, and being told your work isn’t worth paying for. One is a decision. The other is a negotiation you never agreed to enter.

A musician who chooses to play a benefit show for a cause they believe in is making a choice from a place of knowing exactly what their time costs. A musician who gets told there’s “no budget for music” at a sold-out event where every other vendor is being paid is being asked to subsidize someone else’s business with their own labor. Both get called exposure. They are not the same thing.

The same split exists behind the chair. A hairdresser who offers their work to a photographer for a creative shoot they genuinely believe in, where the images will build a portfolio, establish an aesthetic, open real doors, is investing in their own brand with full knowledge of the cost. A hairdresser who gets talked into a free color correction and full extension install in exchange for an Instagram post is being asked to give away HOURS of skilled labor for the possibility that someone, somewhere, might book an appointment.

One is a trade. The other is a misunderstanding of value dressed up as an opportunity.

Where it gets complicated

The reason this conversation is hard is because the line isn’t always clean. Exposure can turn into something real. Collaborations do open doors. The session musician who played for free at the right show has gotten the call that changed everything. It happens.

But the music industry’s loudest voices on this subject aren’t saying never work for free. They’re saying know what you have before you decide what it’s worth giving away. They’re saying the problem isn’t generosity, it’s the assumption that skilled work should default to free until it proves otherwise. They’re saying there’s a difference between an artist choosing to invest their craft and an industry that has quietly normalized the expectation that they will.

That normalization is what’s being pushed back on. And it’s exactly what hairdressers are navigating too, in a culture that has increasingly framed professional beauty as something anyone can learn from a YouTube tutorial, where going viral is treated as a business model, and where the years of education, practice, and skill-building behind a great cut or color are invisible to everyone except the person who put in the work.

What actually changes things

In music, the shift is starting to happen through collective voice. Artists talking openly about rates. Musicians refusing the gigs that don’t pay. Unions building minimum standards for a profession that has never had them. The conversation moving from private frustration to public expectation.

For hairdressers, the shift looks similar and it starts in the same place. Knowing what the work actually costs before deciding what to do with it. Understanding the difference between a genuine trade and a transaction where only one side is giving something up. Being able to say yes to the right things from a place of confidence rather than scarcity, and being able to say no to the wrong things for exactly the same reason.

Exposure isn’t worthless. But it isn’t a salary either. And the professionals in both industries who are navigating this moment most successfully are the ones who decided, at some point, that they were the ones who got to make that call.

Not the other way around.

Are you old enough to remember the days of the Yellow Pages?  That massive brick of yellow paper didn’t just make a great doorstop, it was the main place people looked to find anything. Every business owner had to have an ad in the Yellow Pages.

Today, the Yellow Pages are a thing of the past. If you’re trying to find a business, you’re probably going to turn to a search engine on the internet.  And if you’re like most people (75% of us) you’re probably going to use Google.com. With so many potential clients using Google and Google Maps,  it’s critical to make sure your salon is listed and your information is accurate and appealing.  The great news is that listing your business with Google is free and takes less than 10 minutes.  There’s no reason not to do it!

Managing your business listing with Google is done via Google’s “My Business” website.  It’s a good idea to bookmark the site so you can easily access it in the future.  It can be accessed at: https://www.google.com/business/

To create your listing you’re going to need:

• Your salon contact details (that should be easy)
• Your opening hours
• A short and enticing description of your business
• A square version of your logo.  250 pixels x 250 pixels or larger
• A profile photo that represents your business (Google seems to prefer that this image either be an interior shot, exterior shot, or product shot)
• A decorative cover photo bigger than 1080 pixels x 608 pixels in size
• Interior photos, exterior photos, and team photos (optional but helpful)

Let’s walk through how easy it is to list your salon with Google:

Open your web browser and visit Google Business Profile. Click the “Manage Now” button to begin

.

You’ll need to create a Google account if you don’t already have one. Once signed in, you’ll start setting up your business profile.

Type in your salon’s name. If your business has been around for a while, some of your business info might already be listed. Select it from the results, or click “Add your business” at the bottom if you don’t see your salon.

Fill in your business information, such as your category (e.g., beauty salon), and continue to the next step.

Confirm your business address. If you don’t have a storefront, choose to hide your address and specify your service area instead.

Google has updated its verification process and, for most businesses, now requires a video verification instead of the traditional postcard. This video usually needs to show your business location, signage, and possibly some interior shots to confirm your association with the physical location. Follow the instructions provided by Google Business Profile to submit your video. After approval, your listing will be verified and visible on Google.

Once verified, complete your profile by:

• Adding business hours: Clients rely on accurate hours, so be sure to update them if they change.
• Uploading high-quality photos: Businesses with photos receive more engagement.
• Writing a business description: Craft a short description that showcases your salon’s uniqueness and offerings.
• Enabling messaging: If you’d like, turn on the chat feature to let customers reach out directly from your profile.

Use Google Posts to share special offers or news with your clients. Respond to reviews regularly to build a stronger connection with your audience.

Having your salon listed with Google’s “My Business” will make sure you show up when prospective clients are searching for salons in your area. It will also help your business show up higher in search results.

Now, that’s 5 minutes well spent!

Now that you’re listed in Google have you set up your Facebook page yet?

This one started with a broken leg.

A few weeks ago one of our team members got hurt, nothing life threatening, just one of those unexpected things that shows up without asking. And almost immediately, without really talking about it, the rest of us started shifting. We started showing up a little differently. Checking in more. Being more intentional about the things we’d always just assumed were handled. Moving from autopilot into something more conscious and deliberate.

It was during one of our regular weekly meetings that we actually stopped and named what was happening. We’d lost one leg of the stool. And the stool was still standing, but we all felt it. The weight had redistributed. We were each quietly carrying a little more, while also trying to make sure our teammate knew things were okay so they could actually focus on healing. And on top of all of that, we were managing our own feelings about it, the worry, the uncertainty, the mental load of holding someone else’s wellbeing alongside your own work and your own goals.

That’s a lot. And we’re a team. We have each other.

Which made us start thinking about what that looks like when you’re doing it alone.

You are the whole stool

If you’re an independent hairdresser, you already know this. You’re not just the person behind the chair, you’re every leg of the operation. And when something unexpected takes you out, even temporarily, there isn’t automatically someone there to redistribute the weight. The clients, the bookings, the communication, the things that need to keep running – all of it just stops. Unless you’ve thought about it ahead of time.

And we’re not talking about money. We’re not talking about savings accounts or insurance plans or any of that – those conversations matter but they’re a different article that someone else wrote. This is about something closer in. This is about whether you have people. Whether you have a structure around you that doesn’t depend entirely on you being upright and available every single day.

The person who knows the plan

Think about this: if something happened tomorrow and you needed to step back for two weeks, is there someone in your life who already knows what to do? Not someone you’d have to call and explain everything to from scratch while you’re already exhausted and overwhelmed, but someone who already has the information. Who knows how to reach your clients, what needs to be communicated, who to contact, where things are. Someone you could reach with a single message and they’d just know to start moving.

That person is everything. And most of us don’t have one. Not because we don’t have people who care about us, but because we’ve never actually sat down and had that conversation. It feels strange to have, like you’re planning for something bad. But what you’re actually doing is giving yourself permission to rest if you ever need to, because you already know someone has the rest of it handled.

Community as infrastructure

Beyond that one person, there’s a bigger question worth sitting with: what does your community actually look like? Who are the people in your professional circle who would show up, not just emotionally, but practically? A fellow stylist who could take a client or two. Someone who knows your space well enough to keep things moving. People you trust enough to hand something over to, even temporarily, without having to micromanage from the sidelines.

We talk a lot in this industry about community, but it often stays surface level. The real version of it, the kind that actually holds you when something goes sideways, gets built before you need it. It gets built in the quiet, normal moments. The check-ins, the favors exchanged, the relationships where you’ve already shown up for each other in smaller ways.

That’s not an accident. That’s something you build on purpose.

The shift from unconscious to conscious

What we noticed in ourselves after our teammate got hurt was this move from unconscious effort to conscious effort. The things we’d always just assumed were fine suddenly needed to be actively tended to. And that shift, from assuming to intentionally showing up, is exactly what we’re talking about here.

You don’t have to wait for something to go wrong to make that shift. You can do it now, in the normal moments, when there’s no pressure and no urgency. Figure out who your person is. Have the conversation you’ve been putting off. Think about what you’d need someone to know if you got the call tomorrow that changed your next few weeks.

That’s what a foundation feels like. Not a number. Not a plan on paper. Just the quiet knowing that if the ground shifts, the people around you already know what to do.

And that? That’s worth more than almost anything.

There’s a particular kind of gut punch that hairdressers know well. It usually arrives as a notification… a tagged post, a comment from a colleague, a client’s username in your DMs… and when you click through, you find yourself watching a video of someone you just spent four hours with, describing your work like you were the worst thing that ever happened to their hair.

The caption says “stylist horror story.”
The comments say “girl run.”

And somewhere in the retelling, the consultation disappeared. The formula discussion disappeared. The three reference photos you both agreed on disappeared. What’s left is a narrative that’s clean, shareable and almost entirely fictional. And it has your salon’s name in it.

This isn’t a new problem. But social media has given it scale, speed and a comment section. Understanding why it happens and how to protect yourself when it does, isn’t about becoming defensive or paranoid. It’s about being smarter and more prepared in a landscape that has fundamentally changed what client relationships look like.

Why clients cast hairdressers as the villain

Before we talk about what to do, it helps to understand what’s actually going on. Not every client who posts a negative video is being deliberately malicious. The reasons are more varied, and sometimes more human than that.

Some clients genuinely can’t communicate what they want. This is probably the most common and least malicious version of the story. A client arrives with a vague feeling. They want something “different,” something “lighter,” something “like her but not exactly that.” They approve the plan at the consultation because they don’t have the vocabulary to articulate that something feels slightly off. They leave not quite happy, but unsure why. When they post about it, they’re not lying exactly, they’re filling in the gaps of their own confusion with the most available explanation: the hairdresser didn’t understand them. The hair didn’t turn out right, so someone must be at fault, and they’re not about to make a video calling themselves out.

Some clients experience a disconnect between expectation and reality that has nothing to do with the execution. Reference photos are a blessing and a curse. A client can love a photo, believe it’s achievable, and be disappointed when the result (which may be technically excellent) doesn’t match what they pictured in their head.

The thing they pictured in their head often wasn’t the photo. It was the photo plus their face, their lifestyle, their fantasy version of themselves. When the mirror doesn’t reflect that fantasy, something or someone has to take the blame.

Some clients need the content. This is the harder truth that people in the industry are increasingly willing to say out loud. “Stylist horror story” and “hair disaster” content performs extremely well on TikTok and Instagram Reels. It gets views, comments, sympathy and followers. For some clients, a mediocre hair experience is raw material. A great hair experience is not.

There’s no viral upside to posting “my hairdresser did exactly what I asked for and I love it.” The incentive structure of social media rewards drama. So some clients, consciously or not, are building their audience on the back of yours.

And some clients, frankly, are looking for a way out of paying. Negative content posted before a dispute is resolved, vague complaints that are difficult to disprove, stories that conveniently omit the part where they approved the formula. These aren’t always accidental. Most clients aren’t doing this deliberately, but some are.

How to protect yourself before you’re already cast

The most effective protection happens before the appointment ends… ideally before it even begins. None of this is about distrust. It’s about creating a paper trail of the care and professionalism you’re already bringing to every client.

Make the consultation a record, not just a conversation. Verbal consultations are invisible the moment the client walks out the door. If you’re a salonMonster user, capture everything in client notes. Document what was discussed, what was agreed and any concerns that came up. If your booking system allows photo uploads, like salonMonster does, even better.

A timestamped note that says:

“client brought in reference X, discussed that their natural level means we can achieve Y but not Z in one session, client confirmed they understood”

This enormously powerful if a dispute arises later.

Get explicit, specific approval before you start. “Does this look good?” is not the same as “Just to confirm, we’re going for a warm caramel balayage, staying away from the roots and you understand it’ll take two sessions to reach the lightness in your reference photo. Are we good to go?”

The second version creates a moment of genuine informed consent. It also gives a client who has doubts a natural, low-stakes moment to raise them before you’ve touched their hair.

Check in at meaningful milestones, not just at the end. If you’re doing a colour service, check in after the bowl. Check in when you’re toning. Give the client a chance to course-correct while you still can. This isn’t just good service, it’s documentation of the fact that you invited their feedback throughout and they confirmed they were happy. If they later say you “didn’t listen,” you have a timeline of check-ins that tells a different story.

Have a clear and visible complaints policy. If something goes wrong, clients should know they can come back to you. Post this at your station, include it in your booking confirmation and say it out loud at the end of services: “If anything feels off once you’ve lived with it for a day or two, please reach out, I want to make sure you love it.” This does two things: it gives genuinely unhappy clients a direct path to resolution that doesn’t involve a camera and it demonstrates reasonable, professional conduct if a dispute ever goes further.

How to spot the signs before it happens

There are patterns. Experienced hairdressers will recognise them immediately and newer ones will benefit from knowing what to look for.

The client who can never quite commit during the consultation. They say yes to everything but with a slight hesitation. They keep pivoting back to a different reference after you’ve agreed on one. They seem to want you to just know what they want without having to say it. This isn’t always a red flag, some clients are just nervous or indecisive. But it’s a cue to slow down, ask more specific questions and document more carefully.

The client who arrives with an outcome that isn’t achievable in one session and won’t engage with the reality check. You explain that going from a box-dyed dark brown to a platinum blonde is a multi-session process (if its possible at all). They nod along but seem to not quite absorb it. They keep returning to the reference photo. This is the gap between expectation and reality forming in real time. Put the timeline in writing.

The client who talks about their “last hairdresser” in ways that feel like a pattern. Everyone has one bad experience with a hairdresser. But a client who has a villain in every story, who has been let down everywhere they go, may be someone who needs a villain in yours too. This isn’t a reason to refuse the booking, but it is a reason to be exceptionally thorough in your documentation.

The client who seems more focused on filming the process than experiencing it. There’s nothing wrong with clients filming their transformations, it’s great content for them and often for you too. But a client who is exclusively focused on the “before” and seems disengaged from the actual service may be constructing a narrative, not experiencing a service. Trust your instincts here.

When the video exists and it’s about you

Sometimes you do everything right and it still happens. Here’s what matters then.

Don’t respond in the comments. It’s tempting, and it feels like justice, but comment-section defences rarely land the way you hope. You’re playing on their platform, in their narrative, for their audience. You will almost always lose, even if you’re right.

Respond privately and professionally, once. A calm, factual DM – “I’m sorry to hear you felt this way. I’d welcome the chance to discuss this directly and make it right if I can” – creates a record of good faith without escalating publicly. If they don’t respond, or they refuse, that’s a record too.

Let your existing clients speak for you. The most powerful counter to a negative viral moment is a base of clients who will show up in your defence, not because you asked them to, but because they genuinely love your work. That’s a long game, built appointment by appointment. But it’s the only one worth playing.

Know when to let it go. One video from one client, however unfair, is not the end of your reputation. Hairdressers who are known for their skill, communication and professionalism build reputations that outlast a bad-faith post. The clients worth keeping will do their research, read the room, and book anyway.

The social media era has changed a lot about what it means to be a hairdresser, and not all of it is bad. It’s also given incredible hairdressers a platform to showcase their work, build loyal communities, and attract exactly the clients they want to serve. But it has made the cost of a miscommunication, or a client with a grudge and a ring light, higher than it used to be.

The answer isn’t to become defensive or to stop trusting your clients. It’s to build the kind of professional practice where your care, communication and documentation speak for themselves. That if you ever end up in someone else’s story, the truth has somewhere solid to stand.

The last time I saw Douglas McCoy in person, we were in New Orleans—aka its own country (Douglas’ words, and honestly… accurate). This time, we linked up for an episode of The Digital Chair and immediately slipped back into that easy, “industry friend” rhythm—swapping travel stories, education hot takes, and the kind of behind-the-scenes salon reality you only hear when the cameras are rolling and the guard’s down.

We started where a lot of the best hair conversations start: vibes and stories. Douglas and I reminisced about Bayou Saint-Blond, the people, and that unforgettable last-night dinner in an old church—where the chef didn’t just feed us, she narrated the meal like a masterclass in culture and intention. Then, because New Orleans can’t help itself, it turned into an impromptu dance party with the service staff out front. You can’t script that. That’s the point. It set the tone for the whole chat: real life, real humans, real hair world.

The Education Shift We’ve All Been Waiting For

From there, we got into what Douglas is really passionate about right now: education that doesn’t rely on ego, shame, or intimidation.

He’d just finished teaching a two-day, hands-on razor cutting class in Toronto (with Back A Bottle at Civello Salon), and what stood out wasn’t just the technical focus—it was the way he teaches. Douglas isn’t there to perform a rehearsed show. He’s there to build confidence, skill, and curiosity without making anyone feel small.

He said something that should be printed on a banner and hung in every classroom: “Leave your ego at the door.” He wants stylists to stop trying to impress educators and start using education for what it’s actually for—growth. And he’s big on reading the room, finding who’s hungry to learn (not who’s “best”), and adjusting in real time so the class serves the humans in front of him.

And let’s talk tools—because we’ve all been there. Someone shows up with the “wrong” razor, or the distributor situation means half the room has something totally different than what the educator expected. Douglas’ approach? Make it work. Teach the why. Keep the dignity intact. He even brings extra razors so nobody gets boxed out. Because nothing says “gross old-school education” like: “You can’t use that… but you can buy the right one in the lobby for $250.” Douglas has zero patience for that.

His goal is simple: nobody leaves feeling wrecked. In his words, “I don’t want anyone walking out feeling shitty.” That’s it. That’s the bar. That’s the evolution.

No More “Break Them Down to Build Them Up”

We also got into the not-so-fun shared history many of us have in this industry—where education was basically a personality test designed to see who could survive public humiliation.

Douglas named it perfectly: the old philosophy of “break them down in order to build them up.” And he’s not interested in carrying that forward. He’s interested in building people up from where they are, and if someone’s frustrated, you don’t push harder—you rewind, simplify, and rebuild the foundation without crushing their confidence.

Honestly? That part of the conversation felt like exhaling. Because so many stylists are still healing from those “torture chamber” classes—and we should be past that by now.

Pony Studios, Editorial Energy, and Staying Sharp

Then Douglas took us to Oakland—specifically Pony Studios, which he describes as one of the best education experiences out there. It’s editorial-level talent, filmed with serious production quality, and accessible in-person or online (with live Q&A). And yes, apparently there’s a legendary dive bar next door, which feels like the most hair-industry detail possible.

But the real gem? Douglas got booked behind the chair at Pony for a day… and it lit something up. He loved the energy, the team, the high-level work—and he decided to start coming down every eight weeks to work for a week.

That’s such a pro move: if you’re in a smaller market or you feel yourself slipping into “comfortable autopilot,” you purposely put yourself in environments that demand more of you. Not because you’re not good—but because you want to stay sharp.

The Big Pivot: A Rebrand, A Reset, A Hybrid Future

And then we hit the business side—without it feeling like a business lecture.

Douglas shared that after 11+ years with House of Pop, it hit a point where it became too big to carry the way he wanted to carry it. Then came the pivot: with help from a friend, they shut down May 18 and reopened June 1 as Lucid Room—after gutting and rebuilding the entire space in about 10 days.

Now he manages the team and culture, while the business side is handled by his partner—freeing him up to create again, teach again, travel again, film again. And the salon model? Hybrid. Commission on one side, independent stylists on the other—so commission stylists can grow, build, and transition without leaving home base. That’s the kind of flexible structure I’m seeing more and more, and it solves a real retention problem: why lose talent just because their career goals evolve?

Also, Douglas wins for the most honest commission take: he prefers it partly because of taxes. Which, if you’ve ever tried to explain write-offs to a stylist who just wanted to learn a new layering pattern, you already know.

What happens when you mix raw talent, a fearless drive, and a vision for a better salon culture? You get Nikii Beis, owner and stylist at Elevated Studio in Squamish, BC—and my latest guest in our one-on-one salon sit-down.

Nikii’s journey into the industry started in the most relatable way—highlighting a friend’s hair in a bathroom at 16. That moment snowballed into an apprenticeship under a Redken educator, and eventually, the launch of her own luxe, four-chair salon with a big heart and even bigger standards.

We talked about the early hustle, the lack of money (seriously, nobody tells you how broke you’ll be those first few years), and how learning to “show up early and caffeinated” can change everything. “You have to want it,” Nikii told me. “If you don’t, you’re never going to make money doing this.”

One of the most refreshing parts of our convo? Nikii’s no-BS take on toxic salon culture—and her commitment to doing things differently. “I tell my team, if I ever come off the wrong way, I want you to tell me,” she said. “You can’t expect stylists to thrive if they’re walking on eggshells.”

She’s also built a business model that’s as flexible as a balayage blend—offering a mix of hourly, commission, and chair rental options so stylists can grow without needing to jump ship. It’s mentorship with room to evolve, and it’s working.

We got real about mentorship, burnout, continuing education, and why you should never assume you’re the best in the room. Her advice? Stay humble. Stay hungry. And always keep learning—whether it’s from a $1,100 blonding course or just watching a foil placement on Instagram that makes your jaw drop.

If you’re a stylist dreaming of opening your own space, mentoring new talent, or just navigating the highs and lows of salon life, this one’s for you.

Watch the full video for more behind-the-scenes stories, stylist wisdom, and laughs. Trust me—you’ll leave inspired.

You can find Nikii at:

https://www.instagram.com/elevatedstudio.hair/

https://www.elevatedstudio.ca/?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAaeG6dT2qgbrhXX1mEe2tsLi1XNSWq6W5Q8puK0pXw-BSDgLM8SEDbqNppX-iw_aem_wuCo0JEtHtHxjGmujmVzlA

Transcript

Liam Shea (00:00)
to okay fantastic. Nikii, thank you for joining me. Would you like to tell me just a little bit about who you are and what you do?

Nikii Beis (00:11)
All right, so I’m Nikki Bace. I live in Squamish, BC, and I am owner and stylist at Elevated Studio here. Yeah.

Liam Shea (00:20)
Awesome. We love elevated studio.

I was going to start at the beginning of you, but like we’ve just said elevated, we might as well. Where are you located?

Nikii Beis (00:31)
So Squamish BC, mid-Southern end of Squamish. Yeah. Since July 17th of 2024. few months here. Yeah. It’s good. It’s finally starting to settle down a little bit. was…

Liam Shea (00:33)
Yep. Yep. Awesome. And how long have you been open?

Okay, that’s brand new, relatively. How’s it feeling?

Yeah.

Nikii Beis (00:50)
hectic at first. was definitely days where I was like, what am I doing right now? But yeah, after the holiday rush and everything, got a little nice relaxing break and yeah, feeling good. Yeah, I know. 11 days away from the salon. was great. Yeah. There are four chairs.

Liam Shea (00:55)
Yes.

that’s nice. You took a break. Whoa. It’s amazing.

How many chairs are there? Okay, all full?

Nikii Beis (01:16)
They are all full most days. There’s five stylists of us, including myself. And so some of the girls only work two days. Some of them work four days. Just depends on what they’re feeling and how many clients they have. yeah.

Liam Shea (01:31)
Absolutely. I love

it. Where, okay. So where did you get your start in the industry?

Nikii Beis (01:37)
Okay, so I’m originally from Mississauga, Ontario.

And I was doing my friend’s hair in her bathroom. I just did like highlights of my friend’s hair when I was like 16 years old. I had no idea what I was doing, but I was like, I’m going to try this. And it actually turned out pretty good. Like, I’m not going to lie. looked back at it and like that was a little bad one. But yeah, my friend’s mom went to this super high end salon in Toronto called Exit Salon and her stylist has robbed the owner there. And he was like, Hey, who did your highlights? Probably like, my

Liam Shea (01:56)
Yeah

Okay.

Okay.

Nikii Beis (02:11)
those look terrible.

Yeah, she said, like, like my friend did them. And so, yeah, anyways, long story short, he saw some sort of potential that I didn’t know I had. And he had asked me to come and apprentice under him. So I started going into Toronto every day and started learning from, he was a red can teller technician. I basically like owe him my career, I would say. He definitely got me started, got me interested in it.

properly and yeah, it was a great little start to her. Yeah.

Liam Shea (02:47)
I love that. I love

that. know you’ve got you’ve feel like you’ve got the two, you’ve got the people that say finished or didn’t finish high school and didn’t know what to do and so thought it would be easy or something like that. And then you’ve got you and I, because I was what I left home at 17. I dropped out of high school and I was at the bar of a restaurant. Maybe I was 18 at that point, possibly 19. And I

needed a haircut and I wanted to quit the job I was at. I heard somebody mention a salon I knew of and I went and chatted him up at the bar and he offered to give me a free haircut the next day. I said, why are you trying to get a free haircut at a bar? I said, I want to go looking for a job and he said, we take one apprentice on every two years and ours is done in two weeks. Are you interested? So it’s that same like that’s lucky.

Nikii Beis (03:34)
That’s it.

Yeah, just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Yeah.

Liam Shea (03:40)
I liked fashion, but like hair, I’d never held a brush in my life.

I didn’t know what I was doing. It was like the error part of trial and error was was strong. Yeah, yeah. Mm hmm. So you did did you do an actual apprenticeship?

Nikii Beis (03:51)
Yeah, yeah, there’s definitely a lot of mistakes that happen

So I started my apprenticeship with him and he actually told me, I think it’s a right time for you to go to school, to go to school. And I was kind of surprised because he had always been like, oh, like, don’t worry about hair school. They just build bad habits, blah, blah, blah, which I was kind of like, ah.

I mean, there are some bad habits don’t get me wrong, but I still think it’s important. But yeah, he sent me to school. And then when I finished and went to return, he was like, look, I kind of knew I was like, losing my salon. So I’m going to send you it to the other people who work here and they’re opening up a salon. And then it kind of just kept going from there. I

Definitely butt heads with one of the salon owners at the new salon I went to. So it was a shorter lived experience there. I learnt a ton, but it was, in the end of it, was just, like I would go home crying at night, which unfortunately is actually like, it’s part of our industry. Like we, think it’s the toxic part of our industry.

Liam Shea (04:50)
Yes.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yes.

Nikii Beis (05:02)
However, it is a part of our industry that I learned quickly. I actually wasn’t interested. I don’t care what kind of education I was going to get. I wasn’t interested in it anymore. So yeah.

Liam Shea (05:12)
Good for you. Most

of us, I shouldn’t speak on behalf, many of us I think are a combination of too young along with too ignorant to know what you shouldn’t put up with. And so the stories I hear, especially depending on how long you’ve been in the industry, feel like it’s, I don’t feel like, I feel like the industry is better than it was when I started 25 years ago in that way.

I don’t feel

Nikii Beis (05:38)
Yeah.

Liam Shea (05:38)
like a new person in the industry is vastly more likely to understand, but it does seem like more people know it’s not okay to treat you a certain way. I worked with someone, I won’t say who and I won’t say where they started, but they were assisting at the salon they apprenticed at and they were holding a bleach bowl for their stylist that was doing color and.

think was 10 or 11 p.m. at night and they yawned and the stylist painted bleach on their tongue while their mouth was open and said that’ll teach you to yawn while you’re assisting me and she didn’t do anything about it she just sort of took it and I don’t think that would be as likely so there is you are right there is a toxic part of the industry

Nikii Beis (06:28)
say like there’s like I’ve been doing hair for like 16 years now right so there was it was a different time not that acceptable but it was a different time and I feel like it actually made me not saying I’m a great or anything but I do think that it makes me a better mentor because right now like I look at like my junior stylist my little baby stylist and like I’m trying to protect her from

Liam Shea (06:35)
Yeah.

No.

Nikii Beis (06:54)
everything possible. Like I’m like, hey, if you don’t like something, like I want you to tell me, like if I come off the wrong way at all, like please do tell me. And I think it’s important. Like I feel like more salon owners need to understand, like you cannot create a toxic work environment because they will not thrive and then they will not grow. And yeah, we’re setting them up for failure. So it’s a hard as is like clients are hard enough as is we don’t need the mentors and the owners being the same way.

Liam Shea (07:15)
And that

Yes.

you’re

already gonna cry at the best of times. Like you’re gonna go home in tears because you’re gonna take something someone said personal or you know when you start I’m sure it was the same for you. I don’t have nearly as much of a problem if someone doesn’t come back again at this point. Okay cool whatever we weren’t the right fit but at the time like I should go home and commit seppuku. Obviously I am a terrible person on every level and deserve

Nikii Beis (07:41)
Yes.

Yeah. Yeah.

Liam Shea (07:53)
something bad to have, yeah. It’s already gonna be difficult enough as it is at the best of times. Well, that’s lucky that they have you. And then they’ll all leave at once, right? You will always, like every five years, the entire staff will walk out the door at once.

Nikii Beis (07:54)
Yeah, no, I agree.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, I’m definitely prepared for it. I know it’ll happen.

Liam Shea (08:20)
Well, yeah,

but ideally, if you’re treating people right, you won’t get the total walkout. You know, you might get the version where one person goes off and does their own thing, which I’ve always felt is supposed to happen to a degree, especially with young stat. Like, I’m going to mentor you and then you’re supposed to leave home. It’s still hard and it still feels personal. But the goal is to create a productive member of our industry to me.

Nikii Beis (08:25)
Yes.

So something

I’m trying out and I’m not sure if it’s the right way to go. It’s just, mean, obviously it’s my first time having a salon. So something that I’m giving a go to this time around is I’m doing…

a salon that’s like, have my hourly baby stylist and then I’m going to have my commission stylist and then I have chair renters. So I’m offering more than just that whole, you’re on hourly or commission. In the hopes that, you know, instead of you leaving and going to a better opportunity because you don’t want to be on hourly or commission anymore, maybe we can switch you over to chair rental when it becomes appropriate time for you. Like you’ve filled up all your days. You feel like you could make

more on your own, you feel like you could handle ordering all your own products and making sure everything’s in here on time and then that. So yeah, I think that that for me was kind of my way of being like, you know, this way I can kind of take on different levels of stylists, different experience levels, and everyone can kind of help each other and grow that way. And yeah, hopefully that was the right.

Liam Shea (09:39)
Yeah.

I think that’s amazing.

Where I got my start was like that. It was mostly, I think, what was it? It was 12 chairs, 13 stylists, and an assistant slash apprentice at all times. And I, for two years, was the assistant slash apprentice.

Yeah, okay. I was the assistant slash apprentice and they you started on the floor as a they didn’t really say junior stylist, but you started as the floor is it on the floor as a new stylist and you worked your way into commission, whether your minimum wage or commission, whichever was higher as what you got. And then when you were ready, when you felt like you wanted to pay chair rental, you just switched to chair rental.

So that way, like you said, there’s a place for you to grow into if you not everybody’s going to be that person, not everybody wants to. And then a bunch of people will go independent and stop. and then some of us, and I’m guessing like you and I can’t help ourselves and we’ll have to keep doing the next thing.

Nikii Beis (11:05)
Yeah, I always told

myself I was going to open a salon, so this is kind of just like, okay, well, I’ve done everything else and I feel like I’ve succeeded in everything else, so, yeah.

Liam Shea (11:08)
Yeah.

Yeah. Do

you find

I had a tendency to, know, early on I kept my mouth shut. And then not that long after that, I started to voice my opinion. I’m not great at keeping my opinion to myself. And I think I wanted to be independent at a certain point because I wanted to, if I’m going to spend all this time talking about what I think would be a better idea, at a certain point I needed to prove to myself that it was a better idea and not just say it.

Nikii Beis (11:34)
Me neither.

Liam Shea (11:51)
I don’t know if you felt like you wanted to see if your idea was going to work or not or you just wanted to control your environment.

Nikii Beis (11:59)
Probably a little bit of both. Like I love the salon that I was at beforehand.

it was awesome. Chair renting and everything, it was just kind of that point where I was like, you know, I think I got to try this. I told myself in my 30s, I would give it a go. So was like, you know what, I’ll give it a try. I’ll see how it goes. And like another part of it was like control your environment, right? Like I would like certain things and I wanted to try different things. And I feel like when you’re in somebody else’s space, there’s only so much that you can do that feels appropriate and anything past that. Like I feel like it’s too much to ask too much.

to do it. So yeah, it was more so like seeing out something that I always had wanted. And yeah, it was just the next step.

Liam Shea (12:36)
Yes.

So you decided to open a salon. It’s really hard to do. It takes a long time from inception, from the point that you decided you were doing it, how long did it take until you were open, let’s say?

Nikii Beis (12:48)
I did.

Well, I had kind of said to myself, so I moved out to BC about six years ago now. I had said to myself, oh, like I’ll give it like a year or two and then I’ll probably open a salon. COVID happened. And so I was like, wow, this is probably the worst thing that could have happened at this point. And so I told myself, okay, I’ll look back at it a years from now, whatever. And then…

Liam Shea (13:14)
Yep.

Nikii Beis (13:26)
things just got easy. I loved the salon that I was at. Everything was easy. Everything was pretty flawless. The owner was great. And so I just got comfortable. then one day I was like, no, I told myself I wasn’t going to be comfy. What am I doing? So I started looking for places to lease. And I actually found this place very quickly because everything I had looked online, I was just like, yeah, not interested, not interested. I came to see this place and I was like, oh, it’s too big. I kind of just wanted a little studio for myself. And then I sort of

about

it, like, you know, it actually wouldn’t be a bad thing to have stylists and it wouldn’t be a bad thing for me to have somebody I can mentor. And yeah, I just kind of started thinking about it. I’m like, it’s just a little under a thousand square feet. So it seemed like it was going to be way too much. And now in hindsight, I’m like, I could have went bigger than this. Like, I mean, I have great stylists, but at the same time, like I have, like everything has worked out the way it has because of the opportunity I took and how it went. So, yeah.

Liam Shea (14:26)
Was it empty when you saw it the first time? Like a totally empty? Yeah.

Nikii Beis (14:29)
Totally empty.

Actually, the walls that are around me right now didn’t exist. It was a concrete slab. My unit actually was like one big unit that was then split in half. So there’s 101 and 100 of our units. And it was always originally 101 and then it became 101.

Liam Shea (14:34)
Right.

Nikii Beis (14:50)
We built a wall, we all the electrical, the plumbing, all that kind of stuff together, like we worked at it together and yeah, it was a lot of work. Like I to leave this place in…

December, like beginning of December, 2024. Everything was signed and done and decided on. And then like we got started. I think we got our building contract in like mid January or something. And then just kind of got started. And after every single delay that could have possibly happened, we opened in July. So we’re hoping for like March or April, which is probably like a unrealistic goal, but at the same time, it is totally.

Liam Shea (15:26)
Yeah.

That’s a little hopeful. That’s okay. It’s okay to hope.

Nikii Beis (15:36)
But I thought for sure like June would be the latest that we would open. And then I was like beginning in June and I’m like, don’t have a place to work as of April 1st, because I told my previous owner I would be out for sure. I’m sure she would have found me a space. But if she had leased to somebody else or something else had happened, then I wouldn’t have had a spot. So was kind of like, let’s go.

Liam Shea (15:54)
Yeah. It’s interesting when you see a space empty because you were saying you saw it thought it’s too big. It’s so different to see it empty. You imagine it’s larger than it is like a thousand square feet. Big empty, especially if it’s a big rectangle and empty. That’s a big space. But the minute you put walls and things, it shrinks quite quickly. You get to that point where you’re like, wait, how many chairs can I fit in here? that’s not a lot of space. How do I? Yeah.

Nikii Beis (16:00)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, I originally had wanted three hair sings in here and then I started looking at it and I was like, people are going to be like touching elbows and like my whole thing was I want it to be spacious. I want to be like more of a lux salon where you might want.

Liam Shea (16:24)
It can be sneaky.

Nikii Beis (16:41)
not being right next to your neighbor. You can have a private conversation and not worry about somebody listening in. So the four chairs, I mean, we could probably fit five or six in here. Not really the vibe that we’re going for those. Yeah, but it’s actually kind of cool because like for Vancouver Coastal Health, I had to create like my floor plan and have like, this is going to go here and that’s going to go there. And I did so many little iterations, but now when you look at

my floor plan that I submitted to VZH versus what you actually walk into, it’s almost identical. Like it’s actually crazy. Yeah, it’s actually crazy like how much thought had went into it. Like I drove myself a little bit crazy being like, I have to like, I have to figure this out. And now that we look at it, the only thing that changed was the color bar, which is where like, I wanted it to be big enough so that my chair renters and my, like my commission stylist could have

Liam Shea (17:14)
Mm-hmm.

That’s a… Wow. That’s…

Nikii Beis (17:39)
like their own cubbies. because of course chair renters supply their own supplies, right? So I wanted to make sure that everything could fit and that there would be enough spaces for everyone. However, when I put it in, I was like, my god, this thing is massive. So we actually cut it down to smaller and that’s the only thing that we changed in the whole plan. Everything else went exactly how we had planned it. So yeah, that was good.

Liam Shea (17:41)
Right.

That’s really impressive and super lucky. That’s great.

I love it. Okay, so if we went back into in time when you were just about to start your apprenticeship, would you what would you tell yourself? What would you tell a young you?

Nikii Beis (18:22)
The first eight years of your career are not going to make you that much money. And then you’ll make money. I think that that’s something that like, we need not like not to normalize necessarily, but we need to kind of explain to stylists. It’s like when you are learning, when you are growing, you’re not making much money. And you have to accept that. like, luckily, I was in a financial position where I could

Liam Shea (18:30)
Yeah. Right.

Nikii Beis (18:51)
not be as concerned and that’s not always the case right but I yeah I didn’t realize how little of money you made at the beginning and so I was always like my god am I gonna make money in this am I gonna make money like what’s happening and yeah

Yeah, I would tell myself that. You will make money at one point. And I do remember my, so the second salon I went to work at where I was saying I butt heads with one of the stylists, but not the other, or one of the owners. So the other owner, I remember she sat me down one day and she’s like, I just want you to know, like you can make six figures being a hairdresser. It takes time, it takes a lot of practice, but you have a skill and you’ll get there at one point. So she’s like, just don’t give up. And I think that that kind of always stood

Liam Shea (19:12)
Yes.

Nikii Beis (19:39)
out to me and that was always something that kind of yeah it hit pretty hard and so I think even one of the stylists that I brought on I had kind of said like hey like you know if you if you do go to chair rental like you do have potential to make quite a bit more than you would think so it’s something to look at so sorry somebody doing something outside of my door right now and trying to get me

Liam Shea (20:03)
It’s okay.

Denver will figure out to cut out certain parts. Is it loud? Did you say go for it?

Nikii Beis (20:08)
We will just ignore that.

No, I just don’t know what she’s doing.

Liam Shea (20:15)
You’re allowed to peek. You can be a looky-loo. You can wanna.

Nikii Beis (20:19)
That’s fine. I’m over it.

Liam Shea (20:26)
Yeah, I made pennies for a really long time. It also took me a while. So once I left where I did my apprenticeship, I went right to chair rental about four years in give or take.

Nikii Beis (20:30)
Yeah.

only four years in a.

Liam Shea (20:43)
Yeah, was just it was the only at the time it was the only way out that I saw.

Nikii Beis (20:46)
Yeah.

I think that’s amazing by the way, I’m not saying that in a bad way. just think that’s amazing that you felt comfortable and that you were excited.

Liam Shea (20:55)
No, no, no, it’s-

Well, I’m not going to say I felt comfortable.

think I was so uncomfortable at the time that there wasn’t anything that was going to be more uncomfortable. I already didn’t make money, right? I already made such a smaller money and I had lived with roommates from day one. My rent was relatively cheap. So I, you know, I was in a good position in that way. but it just kind of had to happen.

Nikii Beis (21:11)
Yeah.

Liam Shea (21:30)
But when I did it, I know for myself, and I don’t know, I don’t know, it sounds like it was a different place where you were. I struggled a little bit with that sort of high school mentality of.

I’m not busy because of other people. I’m not busy because of externalities. And it took me, I would say, maybe two years almost of chair renting before I realized I had to make the choice to hustle and to show up. To not do that thing where I glide in exactly the time my client gets there or two minutes after and…

and moving slow and blaming others and, and did you have a moment or did you find from early on you got that? Like, did you have a moment where you understood when that person said you can make money, that hustling was going to be the thing you needed to do?

Nikii Beis (22:28)
I think that…

When I moved out to BC, I just was like, I have to move. I have to start making money. Like, it to happen. And so when I moved out here, I was commissioned for a little bit while I was like building a clientele. And then I slowly started to see like, okay, like chair rental is going to make me more money as long as I hustle. And so I do feel like that mentality definitely kicked in when I was just like, I’m a chair renter now. I’m paying by the day. That means if I have to go in and I have to work a 12 hour day to make sure that I’m making enough money.

Liam Shea (22:49)
Right.

Nikii Beis (22:59)
I’m gonna do it.” And slowly that ended up being that like, aha thing for me where I was like, yeah, I don’t walk in right as the client comes in. Like, no, I’m there half an hour before. I’m setting up, I’m getting ready, I’m making sure that I have caffeinated myself because I’m not the best human if I don’t have caffeine in me. And I just like…

Yeah, you just, change. I think there’s like this point where you just realize, okay, like it is me and I’m the reason I’m not making money and you can make money doing hair. You just have to actually be pushing and you have to be wanting it. Like you have to want it. If you don’t want it, you’re never gonna make money. Yeah.

Liam Shea (23:35)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, I remember the day I made the decision. And so I started showing up to work 90 minutes early. I went to the cafe across as well.

Nikii Beis (23:46)
That’s it.

Liam Shea (23:51)
It might have something to do with I’ve been I’ve just come on the other side of a multiple year journey of finally coming to terms with the fact that I have ADHD and I didn’t want to come to terms with that fact and I fought it for a long time. But what’s been interesting coming on the other side of it is starting to realize which things are just how your brain works. So I know a lot of people have struggle with time management and I was thinking, well, why don’t I struggle with time management?

Nikii Beis (24:01)
Yeah.

Liam Shea (24:20)
And that’s not really true. I realized I had two modes of time, either on time exactly to a little bit late or the day before. Like those are the choices I had. So I decided I was going to try and show up to work 90 minutes early, go across the street and have a breakfast sandwich and a coffee, chat with the owner there, get in the head space that I needed to do, walk into the salon an hour beforehand, set up my, as my

Nikii Beis (24:31)
Yeah.

Liam Shea (24:50)
chef friends call up my mise en place, get all set up. And so then I have from my setup to when my guest arrives, I have like 30 minutes to just be in the space and not feel rushed and plan what I might need to plan for each person that’s coming in that day. And I, from that moment on that I did that, I started making more money immediately. I think sometimes some of it has to do with

your guests know if you want to be there or not. Like people can tell if you don’t want to be there so they tend to be drawn and attracted to a person who’s having a great time and wants to be there and shows up and the person is like all day long.

Nikii Beis (25:39)
also think that there’s a point where you have to realize if I don’t have fun being there, my client’s gonna see that. They’re not gonna have fun either. They don’t wanna come in when you’re just like, yeah, I guess I have to be at work. Your job should be fun. Hidressing is so much fun. I enjoy it every single day. Every client that comes in, okay, obviously there’s one or two here and there. There’s gonna be, but it’s…

Liam Shea (25:57)
me.

Yes, but-

Nikii Beis (26:03)
It is so rewarding to like listen to people say, hey, like this happened in my life. And like, like you like follow people’s journeys. Like sometimes.

It’s unfortunate things like your client will get cancer or something and you’ll like you’ll be following that journey. But other times it’s like, hey, I’m going to school for this. Hey, I went to school for this. Hey, I got the job doing this. And then, hey, I finally got my dream job. know, like it’s so rewarding to like take people’s energy on and then you feel.

I don’t know, you just, you show your clients like, I’m really excited to be here I’m really excited to hear everything that you have to say. But you have to be in that mindset. Like, Hey, I want to listen to this. If you don’t want that, then you shouldn’t be a hairdresser. Cause a big part of it is taking on your client’s energy and working with it, not just being like, I’m going to just be blah today. So yeah.

Liam Shea (26:46)
Yes.

Yeah, it’s such an intimate job.

I mean, you’re touching people immediately. So you get closer quickly because of that, or theoretically. Yeah, even the, even the sad journeys, like you were talking about a client gets cancer, even those journeys are just as special to be brought along with, with someone like to be a part of ups and downs.

Nikii Beis (27:12)
Yeah.

Liam Shea (27:30)
I feel like I’ve gone through wild things with people that just sit in my chair every six to 12 weeks. I feel a part of families that I’m not a part of. I feel like I’m best friends with people that I’ve spent 10 minutes with outside of the salon total. I feel really it’s a lucky, we’re lucky to get to do it, depending on who you are, obviously. I don’t think everybody feels lucky to do it.

Nikii Beis (27:41)
Yeah.

Totally.

Yeah, I will also say I’ve actually found a lot of like my good friends through work as well. Cause like you sit with clients for like two, three hours and it’s like, you like a free interview for like a best friend. It’s actually pretty cool. And I used to think like, no, there has to be this line with clients where like, oh, like, you know, they’re, clients, they’re not.

Liam Shea (28:10)
Yes.

Nikii Beis (28:18)
friends, but it’s like, no, you can kind of just be friends with all your clients and you can have more of a personal relationship. And if people want to like take that personal relationship outside of the salon, if you’re comfy with it, then do it. You might find somebody who you’re like, this is actually like, I think this person might be my new best friend. So you never know. Right. And I feel like when I moved to a new town, actually, I met a lot of people through work and created like a pretty awesome community because of that. So

Liam Shea (28:45)
I completely

agree. Yeah.

Nikii Beis (28:47)
something to remember as well.

Liam Shea (28:53)
Did you have any mentors early on? I mean, I know you talked about that first hairdresser who said that you should come. And so obviously that’s a mentor.

Nikii Beis (29:02)
Yeah.

Yeah, I would say Rob was definitely like, he stood out. was patient. I was 17 years old. Like I was a little shit for lack of better words. I like, I just remember he was trying so hard to teach me everything and like I took as much as I could, but I was still a 17 year old kid. So he did such a good job. And then when I moved on with like the next

Liam Shea (29:15)
He he.

Nikii Beis (29:32)
to people that I worked with. As I said, like I butted heads with the one guy, definitely. But he still taught me a ton. Like he taught me tons with cutting. And then the lady who owned the salon as well, she taught me a ton with like coloring and just giving me like the confidence to feel comfortable as a hairdresser. Like as I said, she was actually the one who mentioned to me, like you can be a six figure stylist, you just need to stay in it and you need to work at it.

Liam Shea (29:37)
Mm-hmm.

Nikii Beis (30:01)
that was pretty good mentorship in my opinion. Like I think they, all three of them did a great job, even though I would never go back to said salon. Yeah, exactly. I do think that they did a great job, like helping me mold into the person that I am today. everything else that I went on from there, I can’t, I can’t say I had a good time at any of the other salons I worked at.

Liam Shea (30:13)
One thing has nothing to do with the other. Yeah.

Nikii Beis (30:28)
I went independent pretty quick after those and I started working at a little studio that was actually a tanning salon, funny enough. The owner was awesome. It was a tanning salon. It was the only hairdresser there and it was good. I had my own little room and then we thought we were moving somewhere else so I like quit there and then it turned out we weren’t ending, like we didn’t end up moving somewhere else. So I started working from home and then…

Liam Shea (30:55)
Okay.

Nikii Beis (30:55)
We got to BC, so pretty independent after that.

Liam Shea (30:59)
love it. I feel like.

Access to mentorships is quite different now because I, you you said you’ve been doing it 16 years. So that would be a year maybe before Instagram even came into existence and several years before it was a tool that was used consistently by the industry.

Nikii Beis (31:22)
Yeah.

Yes.

Liam Shea (31:28)
If somebody were looking for like, what would you say to somebody now who was coming up in the industry and sort of wanted mentorship?

Nikii Beis (31:36)
I think courses are so important, but also just going on Instagram and watching how somebody does something. There is so much free education online.

Liam Shea (31:44)
Yep.

Nikii Beis (31:47)
you can pay for course X, and Z and like learn a ton, but you can also learn a ton like if you as long as you have those basics, which is where schooling comes into hand and everything, right? Doing an apprenticeship at a salon. As long as you have those basics, like Instagram teaches you so much. And like I still go to many courses. I do many courses online. Blonde Chronicles is actually one of like my favorite like go-tos with my junior stylist to be like, hey, go watch this, go check it out. I think she does like a

Liam Shea (32:13)
OK.

Nikii Beis (32:17)
great job with that, like the platform and everything, but I do think that you can just learn things by watching people. It’s like, like, look how she just put that foil in. Like, I wonder if I try doing that next time. So there’s a lot of times where I’m like, I’m just going to give that a go and either works or it doesn’t work and I never do it again.

Liam Shea (32:34)
Yep. I still 25 years in get my mind blown on the regular where you’re like, that’s an option. How did I not know you could do that? What do you mean your foil doesn’t slip? How did you, what?

Nikii Beis (32:39)
Yeah. 100%.

I

also think there’s something to be said. You are never going to be the best hairdresser. You will always learn something from every single person that you’re around. I can learn something from my junior stylist. I can learn something from any of the girls who work here. It doesn’t matter your skill level. You might know something that somebody else doesn’t know. So for me, it’s like important to remember don’t…

discredit anyone ever. You’re not better than anyone else. You are never going to be the best if you are not open-minded. And if you’re open-minded, you’ll take in so much knowledge, and that’ll help you be a better stylist.

Liam Shea (33:17)
Hmm.

Yeah, love it. think the Buddhists call that beginner’s mind. Approach everything as if you know nothing and you will learn everything. I also found, I don’t know if you found the same thing, I found at a certain point I started to realize the most successful hairdressers that I knew weren’t necessarily the best hairdressers I knew. And it didn’t seem like

Nikii Beis (33:33)
Yeah.

Liam Shea (33:57)
skill level had a direct correlation with financial success. Did you find anything similar?

Nikii Beis (34:05)
Yeah, kind of. definitely feel like there’s, ooh, I have to be careful how I say this. I definitely think that there’s like a little bit of like a god mentality with a lot of stylists.

Liam Shea (34:16)
Yes.

Nikii Beis (34:19)
I just, I think that being humble is a lot better of like an approach and being humble might actually help you make more money and help you just keep clients more. If you’re not humble, at least a little bit, I think that people will start to see through that fairly quickly. yeah, I do think that there’s a lot of stylists.

Who do you have that god mentality and we’ll see how it goes like I mean Instagram is an amazing tool sometimes It’s not necessarily the best tool for the client to find Silas because they’re really just they’re looking for like who thinks that they’re the best not is actually the best so There’s goods and bads to that

Liam Shea (34:55)
Yes.

Yes, it definitely Instagram definitely has. I find most hairdressers that are really active on social are probably speaking to other hairdressers more than they’re speaking to prospective clients like it tends to be a bit of a circle of showing off and trying to impress each other as opposed to hey, here’s the experience you’re going to have when you come in to see me. You’re going to feel like this when you arrive.

Nikii Beis (35:30)
Yeah. Yeah.

Liam Shea (35:33)
And this when you leave, which

like for me is my goal. I don’t really care what it is we’re doing on any given day, as long as you leave happier than when you arrived.

Nikii Beis (35:41)
Yeah.

Yeah, 100%.

Liam Shea (35:48)
Yeah. and so education, you talked about that. You’re obviously a fan of continuing education. Keep going.

Nikii Beis (35:49)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Always,

always continue education. I would say that that’s something that you should be doing like every few months do a course whether it be just, okay, I’m going to scroll on Instagram and follow like my favorite person who like I like her techniques. Let me just go and refresh on everything. That’s fine too. That’s education. You don’t necessarily need to spend a ton of money on education. You don’t need to go and buy that $1,100 course for Blonding. You can learn a lot.

outside of a course where, yeah, there’s a lot of courses that I find like I’m like, yeah, like I think that that would be awesome. Do I think that it would give me $1,100 worth of education? Or can I put that $1,100 elsewhere? I find that something that I struggle with a little bit. So sometimes I will not do a course based off of price. So yeah. Like I’m not saying that they’re not worth it. I’m not great. I just think that money can be put better elsewhere.

Liam Shea (36:43)
Yeah, I know I struggled early on. Pardon me? No, no, no.

Well, it depends how much money you have. I mean, if all you have is $1,100, I’m not sure that course is the thing to spend it on. I also find it depends on how you learn. I didn’t do well when there were only in-person courses where like day one was look and learn and day two was hands-on. For me, I needed to see a thing a thousand times in a row. And that’s okay.

Nikii Beis (36:56)
Yes.

on your.

Yeah, sorry.

Liam Shea (37:22)
Once I’d

seen something a thousand times in a row and then I replicated it a thousand times, I was good. So I found I’d usually get one or two things out of a course, but I struggled with retaining three straight hours of showing me how to do something. I’d only be able to remember a bit of it. Whereas now I find with online stuff and it’s not the same for everyone. Some people really like hands-on. I don’t like doing it immediately after I watched it unless it’s

Nikii Beis (37:35)
Okay.

Yeah.

Liam Shea (37:52)
Now it’s a little different. It’s a little easier for me to take a thing I saw briefly and go and put part of it to work. But yeah.

Nikii Beis (38:02)
think that there’s like this thing where if you have like a pretty solid base you can easily intake information right so where I am at my like in my career now it’s like okay yeah I can take in like I saw this thing on Instagram let me try it I wouldn’t have been able to do that five

eight years ago, whatever, right? Like it’s how strong is your base? And then from there, your education will depend on that, right? If you take a junior stylist and you send them to that $1,100 course, they might not intake that information because they don’t have the base of that, right? So like courses are so relative to where you’re at in your career and what you need to learn. So that’s also a big part of continued education for me. Yeah.

Liam Shea (38:47)
Yes. Yes.

Nikii Beis (38:49)
I love it, I encourage it. I think that it needs to be based off of what you actually need and what your base is.

Liam Shea (38:56)
that makes sense to me. Yeah.

I’m going to pivot a little bit in terms of what I do, the digital side of technology. So separate from just doing hair itself. At what point did you start using digital tools of any sort, whether it be like Salon Monster for online booking or, or just tracking things at what point did you, has it been the whole time in your career or did it happen at a certain point?

Nikii Beis (39:03)
Yeah.

Yeah.

When I went, like, independent back in Ontario, I had my body for a little bit, which is very expensive. Like, not necessarily what I needed for what I… It was. Yeah.

Liam Shea (39:43)
It was kind of the first at a certain point, but it wasn’t

really at the, mean, I know I tried it early on. It wasn’t really built for our industry.

Nikii Beis (39:50)
No, it was definitely built for more like yoga and RMT and like all those kinds of things. If honestly, if Salon Monster had been there at that point, I would have given that a go. Yeah, I went with the Garo at the old salon. That’s just what we had and it worked pretty good. I do like the online booking portion of it, but there’s times where I’ll see like one of my regulars book in and I’m like, you just booked in for root ketchup. Like you need highlights girl. What are you doing? So there’s this.

Liam Shea (39:55)
Yeah.

Awesome.

Yes, yes. You can’t book for the

amount of time you want to be here for. That’s not. Yes. Yes, exactly. Yeah. So how did you, did you find digital tools? How did digital tools help you the most? What was the aspect of digital tools that helped you the most?

Nikii Beis (40:22)
Yeah, or the amount of money that you want to spend. I promise you, it makes a difference.

I mean like there’s like like in terms of like online education and stuff or

Liam Shea (40:42)
Or just any

digital like, you find even with like salon software, did you find the having online booking was the thing that did it for you? Did you find having automated reminders, thing did you find tracking of client information? Like what are the things within digital tools you found effective for you?

Nikii Beis (41:00)
I mean tracking your formulas and stuff like that through an app is so much easier. Like if I can just pop open a client’s profile and be like, cool, like last time we did this and she said that it was too warm, then this time we’ll do this instead. Having clients be able to go online and book themselves is fantastic. And I do encourage it most of the time, but I do also ask my clients to pre-book before they leave. And I do like the feature of re-book.

or check out, I think that that’s awesome. I think that that’s been done very well. Yeah, it’s Automated reminders are the best thing. You cannot tell me that you’re missing your appointment because you forgot. Sorry, you’ve got however many messages you need to show up. yeah, it’s good things. then enforcing a cancellation policy, I love having the credit cards on file.

Liam Shea (41:33)
the pop-up message that comes in there. Yeah.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Nikii Beis (41:53)
I rarely enforce it, however, that being said, when I have to, I will. So, yeah.

Liam Shea (41:59)
Yep. I’m

a big fan of of a structured cancellation policy to leave leave little room. I know for myself, I require 24 hours notice for every hour length of appointment time. So like if you have a three hour appointment, you got to tell me three days in advance. I have a cancellation list, but I can’t always fill three hours or four hours tomorrow.

Nikii Beis (42:24)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Liam Shea (42:26)
Like I

might be able to the day after or the day after that, you know, I can fill an hour tomorrow probably, but three hours might be tough.

Nikii Beis (42:34)
Yeah, no, I agree. That’s actually a really good idea per hour. It’s not necessarily a bad idea. Maybe I’ll give that a go.

But I’m like, as I said, I really enforce it. It’s one of those things, right? Like I had a client yesterday who was like, hey, there any way I can push tomorrow’s appointment, which is today, obviously, but tomorrow’s appointment to early April. And I was like, no, because I need like I needed 48 hours notice. I’m giving you a three hour appointment, right? She’s totally cool about it. She’s like, okay, I’ll show up if I have to. And I was like, look, I’ll try to fill it. If I can fill it. Don’t worry about it. We’ll just we’ll move you to April. And I found someone to fill it, luckily, but I was like, God, it’s a

Liam Shea (43:09)
Right? Yeah.

Nikii Beis (43:11)
pretty big appointment, right? So you’re like, I, it’s a Wednesday morning. How am going to fill a Wednesday morning for a three hour appointment last second? So it happens sometimes, but I won’t charge you if I can fill it. But if I can’t fill it, yeah, definitely.

Liam Shea (43:18)
Exactly. Exactly.

That’s a nice way of going about it too.

Yeah, yeah, I’m a huge when I do walkthroughs with new salon monster users, particularly people that are going independent for the first time, going into booth rental and salon suite rental, I usually sort of pivot away from the spiel where I show them how to use salon monster and shift towards by the way, do you have a cancellation policy? And do you know how to enforce it and

Do you know how to use these? I know within Salon Monsters booking settings, one of the things that I use for my cancellation policy is I don’t let clients cancel or move their own appointment within 72 hours of the appointment. So if they try to cancel it two days out, it’ll say, you can’t, you have to get in touch with me so I can say, well, the reason is you can’t. I mean, you can, you can.

Nikii Beis (44:11)
Thanks.

Liam Shea (44:22)
I say to everyone, especially no shows who I charge 100 % for, I always say the same thing to them because they always offer to pay right away. I say, can pay me to watch Netflix in my free time as often as you like. It is not a problem. Don’t feel bad if you pay me for it. Feel no guilt. I just sat back and got other stuff done if you’re paying for it. I don’t care one way or another. Yeah, although I prefer to be doing hair.

Nikii Beis (44:30)
Yeah, that’s nice.

Yeah.

Liam Shea (44:51)
Are there any other, so when it comes to those types of structures like telling, so you get, you know, a new, a junior stylist, do you talk to them about that side of the business, about cancellation policies, about…

Nikii Beis (45:04)
Yeah,

like slowly over time, right? Don’t want to throw too many things in there at once. But yeah, let them know over time how they have to go about dealing with all of that. So yeah, try to teach like the little basic things. I mean, she’s my first junior stylist. I’ve never had another junior stylist, I can’t say from lots of experience.

Liam Shea (45:15)
Love it. Love it.

Fair enough, nothing to compare it to.

are one or two things, if you’re speaking to somebody that’s about to open their own shop like you, and they’re about to bring on a junior stylist, what are one or two of the things you’ve kind of learned, either things to do or things not to do, both of which are equally important?

Nikii Beis (45:34)
Yeah.

guess if you’re if you’re bringing on a new stylist make sure they actually want it I feel like like my junior stylist wants it so that’s awesome I can’t even call her junior salad she was like older than me but my my baby’s Dallas she definitely wants it so was more so trying to find ways sorry trying to find ways to encourage her to want it even more

So we talked about that, we figured out more things, and that was super helpful. But yeah, finding that and then, I don’t know, if they don’t want to, just don’t bother. You can’t teach people who doesn’t want to be taught. If they don’t want to be taught, they’re never going to learn, they’re never going to succeed.

Liam Shea (46:25)
Yeah, it’s too hard. Yeah.

They just won’t. I don’t think you’re going to last. It’s not easy to do this and it will drain you a bunch of the time, especially early on. And if you don’t want it, I have a friend who rents my chair the days I’m not doing hair and they’ve only been doing hair for maybe 18 months total. They were already in their 30s. It helps when they’re.

Nikii Beis (46:36)
Yeah. No, it’s not.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Liam Shea (47:02)
You know, a 17 year old and an adult human are very different people to deal with as far as like teaching how you have to work. And one of the things I noticed, I talked to Britt early on about this and I’ve done an interview and we’ve discussed her methodologies that she’s used. She’s a hustler, like a hustler. And so she works two days a week on commission at a barbershop, but rents a chair three days a week. And she figured out how to get busy. She

She handed out cards, QR codes, social media. She boosted posts. She would post looking for hair models and boosted those posts. It’s so important to be able to hustle. So it’s great that you have someone that’s hustling.

Nikii Beis (47:36)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think also,

like you want to encourage them to do that too, right? Like there is like, I’ll sit there and be like, hey, like, I’m paying you right now, but go and post on social media, like go do a post, go get yourself some extra followers, like whatever ends up working, right? There’s, yeah, you just want to encourage them. You want to tell them about all the little things, all the little things that you didn’t like and that you like and…

Liam Shea (48:06)
Yes.

Nikii Beis (48:20)
I don’t know, a lot of it is just like, tell your junior stylist about the bad things. Tell them about the good things. Don’t just like, yeah, don’t just expect them to just succeed right away. Like they need to know everything to be able to succeed. yeah. No worries. Thank you for having me.

Liam Shea (48:26)
Yes.

Yeah, I love it. Awesome. Thank you so much for doing this.

Where can people find you on the internets?

Nikii Beis (48:46)
at elevated studio dot ca is our Instagram page for the salon. It’s mostly my work, but also the other girls are all on there as well. We tend to collaborate quite often there and yeah, elevated studio dot ca.

Liam Shea (48:50)
nice.

I love

it. I’m gonna try and find some time to come out there so we can actually do a feature of the salon. I wanna video it and see it in person. So I’m really excited to make time one of these days.

Nikii Beis (49:13)
would be awesome. I’ve seen your space.

Liam Shea (49:15)
Yes, you have. It’s true. Yep. I’m coming. Well, thanks a ton for doing this. Appreciate it. Yeah.

Some interviews feel like work. This one felt like sitting down with someone who has lived the same chaos, asked the same hard questions, and then decided to build better answers.

When I sat down with Hunter Donia, I knew we were going to get into the real stuff: career starts, bad industry advice, business growing pains, and what it actually takes to make this work long term. What I didn’t expect was just how many moments in Hunter’s story would feel familiar to anyone who has ever stood behind the chair, loved the craft, and then gotten smacked in the face by the business side of beauty.

Hunter has been in the industry since they were 15, started assisting young, and was in the salon on their 16th birthday. That alone tells you a lot. This wasn’t a casual “maybe I’ll try cosmetology” path. It was commitment early, all in. And one of the biggest things that stood out to me was how much they credit assisting and mentorship for building real confidence, real relationships, and real readiness before taking clients at 18. In an industry that loves to rush people to the floor, Hunter made a strong case for why foundational experience still matters.

Then the story takes a turn that feels very beauty-industry-core: they moved to rural Pennsylvania for a relationship, landed in a completely different environment, tried to build again from scratch, and learned the hard way that posting on Instagram is not a magic spell. Hunter was doing all of it—referrals, client experience, old-school outreach, the whole hustle—and it was still hard. That part of the conversation mattered because it cuts through a lot of the nonsense. Sometimes you are working. Sometimes you are doing the “right” things. And sometimes it is still hard.

What changed everything was the pandemic pivot. Hunter talked about how online education suddenly opened up, how they dove into business and marketing education, and how that pushed them to take the leap into a salon suite—even while openly admitting they barely had the clientele for it. Their phrase was basically: would not recommend. And yet, that risky jump, paired with strong business theory and timing, turned into a massive shift. Within a few months, they were booked solid and fielding steady new-client demand. That is the kind of story stylists need to hear in full, because it was not luck alone and it was definitely not just “post more.” It was strategy meeting opportunity.

The heart of our conversation, though, was what happens after you get busy. Hunter said something that beauty pros need tattooed on the inside of their booking hand: being booked is not the end of your problems. It just gives you a new set. More clients can mean more admin, more scheduling, more emotional labor, more pressure, more inventory, and a faster path to burnout if you do not build structure around your success. That is where Hunter’s world really comes alive—systems, automations, boundaries, and the kind of practical business setup that lets a stylist keep their sanity and their career.

We also got into one of my favorite shared truths: boundaries are not mean. They are useful. I talked about cancellation policies and how being firm tends to attract the right guests, not scare them off. Hunter took that further and put it perfectly—if you are letting one disrespectful client steamroll you, you are not actually serving anyone well, including them. That part of the conversation was sharp, honest, and probably a little too relatable for anyone who has ever bent over backward for a Karen and regretted it immediately after.

And then we got into something even more personal: ADHD, systems, and why so many stylists are incredible at the chair work but struggle with everything around it. This was one of those behind-the-scenes parts of the conversation that made the whole thing feel more human. Hunter connected their love of systems directly to how their brain works. Online booking, boundaries, structure, fewer moving parts—it all becomes less about being “organized” in some generic way and more about building a business that actually supports the person running it. Honestly, that part hit home for me.

If there was one big takeaway from my chat with Hunter, it’s this: talent matters, but talent alone is rarely what builds a sustainable career. The stylists who last are the ones who learn how to support their artistry with systems, boundaries, better decisions, and yes, some above-average work outside the chair. Hunter said it plainly: if you want more than the average outcome, you have to be willing to do more than the average work. Hard to argue with that.

This conversation had a little bit of everything: vocational school, salon-floor reality, small-town rebuilding, pandemic pivots, business education, ADHD, and the power of saying no. In other words, the real stuff. Watch the full interview for the deeper version, because Hunter brought the kind of honesty and practical insight that can genuinely change how a stylist thinks about their career.

You can find Hunter at:

https://www.instagram.com/hairbyhunty/?hl=en

Transcript:

Liam Shea (00:02)
Okay, fantastic. Okay, so I’m here with Hunter Donia ⁓ and we’re gonna have a little chat about industry stuff. Would you like to start by just telling us a little bit about yourself?

Hunter Donia (00:15)
going on? Liam, thank you so much for having me. Yeah, dude, my name is Hunter Donia. I am an industry business educator. mostly teach hairstylists how to systematize and automate their beauty businesses. I’ve been doing this for about six years now. I’ve been in the industry since I was 15 years old. I started when I was in vocational school. And I’ve been in the salon since my 16th birthday. And I have gotten to a space in which I’m just so passionate about serving

Liam Shea (00:17)
super great.

Hunter Donia (00:43)
other people in this industry by showing them what’s possible and teaching them how to achieve what’s possible within this career path with my own experience working with hundreds of stylists, thousands of stylists if not at this point, and also ⁓ my own experience and success that I’ve achieved. And it’s just such a blessing and I absolutely love getting to do it. And I love getting to have conversations with people, with platforms who…

are doing the same thing, gifting that same type of opportunity and the tools to be able to achieve that success and make it as easy as possible. So I’m really, really excited to be here.

Liam Shea (01:18)
I’m super excited to have you here. Yeah, I mean I Sounds like you’ve been in the industry for a plenty of time. I’ve been behind the chair for 26 years Still doing it two days a week in that bright Blurried area on the other side of the shelf where my friend rents my chair the day I’m not behind it and then we started this software company to try and help me and then my friends and then my co-workers so I am with you about being passionate about

Hunter Donia (01:27)
badass

Liam Shea (01:47)
partly trying to give back and equip people with tools. I don’t know about you, when a few years in I started to realize how many people…

failed early and left the industry. They were told how much money they could make. They weren’t told how much money they’d probably make and they weren’t told how much they had to do. ⁓ When you were coming, so you started vocational school. When you were done that, at what point were you behind a chair in a salon?

Hunter Donia (02:20)
Yeah, good question. So funny you say that, it’s so true. Like nobody actually tells you and sets you up with the expectations of what you’re getting yourself into. I mean, especially when I was a kid and I was like telling my parents that I wanted to go to vocational school. And for anybody who’s listening to this, who doesn’t know what vocational school is, it’s basically like grade school that you can do while you’re in high school. And so in my case, at least. so.

When I asked my parents if I could go, I remember both of them from their stigma of trade school. They just thought that’s where all the unmotivated, lazy kids go or something like that. ⁓ Cosmetology was something that I was super passionate about and I could really see myself making a career out of. I remember my dad, me and him were driving in the car at some point, I don’t know where we going, but we passed this house and I was like, I want a house like that one day. And he was like, well, you’re not going to be able to afford it being a hairstylist. ⁓

And it’d be such a cooler story if I was able to say like, and I own that house now, that’s not true, but I could probably afford it. I absolutely could make that happen. And nowadays, and I proved him wrong, ⁓ but they are both so grateful that they allowed me to take that step into that space, because of where it’s gotten me now. ⁓ And I started that vocational program and I actually…

Liam Shea (03:16)
Right. ⁓

Hunter Donia (03:36)
was getting my hair done with my mom’s hairdresser at a salon close by. And she and I had become pretty close and she was like really encouraging me. She was like, hey, like you just started vocational school. Why don’t you get a job here as an assistant? And so I was, I just, was barely 16 yet when she was suggesting this to me. I didn’t think, I didn’t even think about like, I didn’t think I was old enough. It was my, hadn’t had a job yet at all. And I was like, I don’t know. Like that’s a little bit crazy. So it was my very first job I ever applied to.

I looked insane because I was very expressive with my identity at the time. My hair was a crazy color, crazy makeup, really cheap, ugly clothes. I was not ready for the bougie salon that I was applying to at all. And they took a chance on me. I went through four interviews because they were probably really slowly contemplating as well. so literally, my first day was my 16th birthday. My manager was like, hey, if this is your birthday, you don’t have to work.

You don’t have to work on that day. We can start you the following week.” And I was like, no, like this is the best birthday gift ever. I was so excited. ⁓ then it just went on from there. And so once I got my cosmetology license before graduating high school, ⁓ but then I graduated high school and I shortly after, probably like six months after I graduated high school, I had finished up being a personal assistant with my mentor at the time. And then they put me onto the floor and then I started taking clients right when I was 18.

Liam Shea (05:04)
That’s amazing. That is early to start taking clients, like in a legitimate way. That’s amazing. Good for you.

Hunter Donia (05:09)
Yeah, I don’t know

how the hell I got anybody to trust this little sassy 18 year old, you know, I think that what was really helpful and I think what a lot of, you know, and I feel like it’s funny, I’m like, I kind of like classify myself as a millennial. I’m like right in the middle of like Gen Z and millennial, but I’m technically Gen Z. I’m like just like the older side of Gen Z. I feel like I sound so much older than my generation when I say this, but like

That experience, like I had like three years of assisting basically almost. And that experience is so lost upon this generation that we have now coming into the industry. And it was so essential for my success because I was able to make so many really great deep relationships with the clients that were going to those stylists at the time. And I was able to take so much time like learning from my mentors.

And I was totally ready even at that very young age to, to interact with those people in the way that I needed to, ⁓ to have a skillset, to be able to take care of them confidently. But then they also trusted me as well too, cause Hunter’s been washing and toning my hair for like two years. You know, like I’m ready to, I’m ready to, you know, move on from this mentor whose prices are now very high to this lower price new hairstylist that I already have a relationship with. so.

It really set me up for a lot of success starting that young and spending that much time assisting and growing my skillset before actually taking clients. But it’s a very privileged situation. I was very lucky to have those experiences. I worked hard for them and I definitely went for them, but not everybody has the same opportunities that I had, of course, but it was a great place to be.

Liam Shea (06:38)
Sure.

It shouldn’t count as a privilege. Everyone should have that opportunity. It’s a shame. I did an apprenticeship, like a legitimate government sanctioned apprenticeship that required this many hundreds of hours and a person would come by the salon and check in with me and make sure I was getting the things I’m supposed to get in an apprenticeship. ⁓

Hunter Donia (06:58)
Yes.

Right.

Liam Shea (07:12)
And so all of my, I maybe I did six weeks of school towards the end to prep for my exam because none of the, I’m sure it’s the same in lots of states throughout the U.S., none of the stuff on the exam when I took it, the stuff you’d do in the salon. I could practice roller sets, but not if I was actually assisting in a legitimate way all day long. ⁓ yeah, but yeah, I loved my apprenticeship. And you’re right, is, again, shouldn’t count as a privilege, but it’s-

Hunter Donia (07:33)
Right. Yup.

Liam Shea (07:43)
It changed everything. I I learned how to, ⁓ I did inventory. I was the receptionist. I cleaned the place. I folded the towels. I put away people’s color orders. I helped people mix color when they needed it. I got to do everything but do hair. And then probably the same as you, got to start blow drying a little bit of hair and then, and doing shampoos and all that stuff. It’s, yeah, it is a privilege to come at it from that way. How long were you at that shop?

after your, ⁓ like when you when you went out onto the floor officially.

Hunter Donia (08:17)
Yeah,

when I got onto the floor, honestly, it was pretty short because I ended up meeting a boy, which I just don’t meet boys. This is my biggest takeaway whenever I tell this story. I met this boy and I was probably there for two years actually on the floor. I had no problem building a clientele, like I said, like I had.

the, the, mentors, their clients just carters come see me when they couldn’t get them with the mentors. And I retained them. had tons of people who had already was like in my high school was like, we’re like, I was just doing their hair on the weekends, you know, ⁓ practicing on them and, and, know, just charging them like a cheap amount of money or whatever it be. and then I, ⁓ so I had built up my clientele, but I met this boy and I was like,

I’ve always lived in my dad’s house and I had never made like big changes in my life. First relationship that I ever had. And then I moved out to live with him an hour and a half away into the middle of rural Pennsylvania. So I’m in Philadelphia now. I’m in Philadelphia now. And I grew up in the burbs of Philly, probably like 45 minutes outside. Um, but then I moved even more to like more central, um, more West. And, uh, it was literally, we’re talking like Amish land, Pennsylvania, like

Liam Shea (09:19)
Okay.

Yep.

Yeah.

Hunter Donia (09:35)
horse and buggies on the road. are like literally like horse poop on your tire, on your car tires. Like that’s very much the situation. does not smell pleasant. that’s the, that’s place I moved to. And, ⁓ I started in a employee salon, trying to build my clientele there. ⁓ it was a little bit difficult for me because of just being in this environment that was so different and also not very welcoming to who I was as, you know, with my identity and things like that and what I was used to, but I was marketing and all that. And, ⁓

⁓ eventually, so I left that salon that I’d been at for like five years that I’d worked so hard to like build my name within. And then I had to kind of build from scratch over there in that space. And eventually I was successful once, ⁓ once I moved out on my own. ⁓ but it was really difficult. It was a difficult move for sure.

Liam Shea (10:23)
That’s, I mean, I left, my apprenticeship in junior styling was about four years total at the original salon I was at. And then I left and went right to renting and share, which was tough because I didn’t have a huge clientele, but I only did it a handful of blocks away. It’s not like I moved to Amish country afterwards. It was like, hey, I’ll rebuild from scratch in a small town. Totally the same. ⁓

Hunter Donia (10:35)
Mmm.

Right.

Hahaha

Yeah, dude.

and I was like, like I said, I’m young. it was literally, I was 20. I think I was 20 years old. And so was like, yeah, I’m young. I know how to do this Instagram thing. I’m just going to post on social media as I do that nobody else is doing and grow my clientele. And it was absolutely, that was not the case. And I was not just posting on Instagram how everybody tells you to. I was also doing the things that, the old school things.

Of course, I was asking my clients to send me clients, you know, and I was knocking the client experience out of the park. I’m very confident that I was doing that. And I was going to the mall, handing out my going up to people that I thought would be ideal clients, like handing them my card, like doing the pitch, like I was doing everything. And it was really, really hard for me to grow. honestly, I’d say that like I didn’t even get there. Like I didn’t even make that happen. But then the pandemic happened.

and then everything kind of shortly changed for me. But I’m gonna stop yapping. If you’d like to hear the next part of the story, then I’ll keep going, but I’ll take a pause.

Liam Shea (11:52)
probably continue to. mean, the pandemic was, is and was a huge shift, especially the digital side of things. I mean, it’s not like any of us had ever taken a Zoom class prior to the beginning of the pandemic or knew what Zoom was. I mean, I’d used Skype back in the day, but,

Hunter Donia (12:12)
Yeah, dude.

Yes, love Skype.

Liam Shea (12:20)
That was just to talk to a friend that was overseas or something, not a work-related thing. ⁓ I mean, there was an aspect of me that found it really amazing because where I am, so I’m in Vancouver, BC, Canada, and traditionally, if you wanted education, you had to go to in-person education. And if you weren’t close to a place that had great in-person education, you had to fly somewhere.

Hunter Donia (12:25)
store.

Right.

Liam Shea (12:50)
go to the States and there would be an exchange rate that hurt a little bit. And so it was just, it was harder to do. And then all of a sudden it was all, not all of it, but lots of it was online. There were a few people ahead of the curve. I know like Pony Studios in Oakland was already doing, I think I was already subscribing to their app at the time. They were already doing really high quality productions with multi cameras of people. when pandemic hit, I imagined it was easier for them to pivot.

Hunter Donia (12:54)
Yeah.

Night.

Liam Shea (13:21)
⁓ so you were in that small town when pandemic hit, right?

Hunter Donia (13:25)
Yeah, I was. And so I was

in this employee salon and you’re so right. the pandemic just like changed everything. Like it was so crazy. And like you said, like it made that education so much more accessible. made learning and like doing everything more accessible as far as the digital side of things go. And I had already kind of had this like weird gut feeling that like I wanted to go off on my own at some point. But in Pennsylvania,

Uh, booth rental is actually illegal. think there’s like four to five states in the United States where, where booth rentals are illegal. the only option is you own the salon or you are an employee, like period. Like that’s the only way that you do hair. Right. And so salon suites, um, I’m not sure if California is the same way. It’s just that

Liam Shea (14:10)
California might be like that. Or like maybe it was like

Charon? No, I’m sorry, it’s commission that I think was not allowed in California.

Hunter Donia (14:17)
Yes.

Yes, I think that like the employment laws are just so insane that it’s like almost like it’s very, very difficult to have an employee salon ⁓ because of how insane the employment laws are is from what my understanding is at this time. yeah, New Jersey is the same way. I forget what the other states are, but there’s it’s like four or five of them in the United States where boot rentals illegal. the loophole is a salon suite because you own the salon like you own the business. It has us.

Liam Shea (14:45)
Sure, that’s the salon.

Hunter Donia (14:47)
Yeah, it’s a salon. You have a salon license and then you have a hair license, right? Like an individual license and then a salon license and you’re working under the salon license. so the salon suite was really my only option if I really wanted to go off on my own. And I had poured it and looked at it when I was totally not ready to do it. When I was in this employee salon, like trying to build my way up. but I don’t know, there was like, there’s just like gut feeling inside of me. Like I was like, if I could be in control of like everything.

client experience from beginning to end. If I could be in control of the color of this wall, which no offense to my, my past owner, that the turquoise wall was just, the turquoise wall was just not give doing it for me and my clients. So like, just was not, it was just not doing it. So, so I just had this gut feeling that like us, we is probably where I wanted to go eventually. And I was thinking maybe like in three years, you know, when I really built up really had a good foundation, then pandemic hit.

Liam Shea (15:22)
No, that’s the jam.

Yeah.

Amen. Yeah. ⁓

Hunter Donia (15:43)
And all of sudden, like you said, like all this education just became very accessible. And I was already really interested in like business, the business side of things. I had actually became a brand educator when I was 19. I started educating for Eufora, if anybody’s familiar. And, oh yeah.

Liam Shea (15:56)
I used Eufora back in the…

Yeah, it’s been 10 years since I was at that shop, but I loved that line at the time.

Hunter Donia (16:04)
Yeah, it was excellent. mean,

it’s still as is an excellent line to this day. I love you for and I love my time with them and they train me very well. when I started with you for they just gave me so much like great business education from like the sales side of things as far as like client experience, but then also like selling retail and upselling with add-ons and things like that. was the very first like corporate corporate situation in which I really was exposed to really good business education. I think at the time and prior most

Most hairlines of most hair brands that were teaching their professionals, they just could not sell business classes because people didn’t give a shit. Like stylists did not want to hear it. They didn’t care about it. And so they didn’t put them out there. Euphora was different where they really cared about it. And so I had to learn a lot of that stuff and I was just super fascinated by it. And I was really good at selling retail and like became really good at selling retail and interested in it. But the one thing that they were missing was like

the marketing side of things, felt. ⁓ And when that pandemic hit and all this education became super accessible, I took a lot of it. And then I was even just listening to outside of industry education and reading up on books outside of the industry about business and particularly marketing. And I was like, okay, I feel super equipped with the knowledge. And I was working a lot marketing myself just over the pandemic, as if I would just be back at the salon I was working at.

It was like two weeks. was ridiculous. It was like three or two, two to three weeks before our quarantine lifted. And I just decided I’m going to go into a salon suite. couldn’t imagine going back to my salon after all that work that I put in all the knowledge I had. couldn’t imagine going and being an employee again. And so I felt super equipped. just took the, took the chance and I opened up my salon suite. And by the way,

wouldn’t recommend. barely had a clientele. I had gaps everywhere. And the only clients that I really had were from my salon owner feeding me some of her old clients. It really was nothing crazy. Would not recommend, but I did it. And with just really strong actual business marketing theory and all that education and work that I did over that summer, I was able to blow that puppy up real fast. And of course, there was a lot of

Liam Shea (18:01)
Ha

Hunter Donia (18:27)
interest and demand from the pandemic as well too. Like people hadn’t gotten their hair done in a long time. So the timing was also very helpful for me as well. I had that as far as my luck goes, but ⁓ I opened up and I blew it up really fast. It was three and a half months book solid, five new client requests a week. And I was doing hair at the Wazoo very quickly. And it was, ⁓ it was awesome. was big blessing.

Liam Shea (18:50)
That’s amazing. Yeah, I shifted into a one room. I mean, the equivalent to a salon suite. A friend of mine had rented like a little one room office that happened to have water access and just made it into a one room salon and offered me her chair on her days off. ⁓ And I needed to leave where I was at because I was renting a chair, but they wanted, they needed people to pay the chair rent for the months that we were shut down. And I just couldn’t.

Hunter Donia (19:08)
Cool.

Mmm.

Y-yeah.

Liam Shea (19:19)
couldn’t do it.

I didn’t have it, like I wasn’t working. ⁓ And so I made that move. And there was an aspect of it that was actually better for my career. It made some people comfortable, first of all, just being in a one-on-one setting and not being in a room full of people, like the people who were really sensitive to the pandemic were very pleased to just not be around a whole bunch of other people. ⁓ And then, you know, when it’s your baby,

I mean, assuming you’re a person who can be motivated, it’s motivating to be like, I have to, I have to, it’s not optional. I can either fail horrifyingly and live in my car or I have to do this. ⁓ Good for you, that’s amazing. So how did it transition to wanting to share that business information with people?

Hunter Donia (19:52)
Yes.

Thank you.

Yeah, I love that you just said that. It’s so true. Like sometimes you need to be like, I had a mentor one time tell me this, like you have to be pushed into the middle of the ocean with a canoe and you just have to row. Like that’s all you got to do, you know? And you’re so right. Like you take it with a different level of responsibility. And I, what I’d wish is that was the case because you did say, you also said like, if you have the motivation, right? Because sometimes people will do it.

Liam Shea (20:24)
Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Hunter Donia (20:35)
as like an escape almost like to leave what they’re doing before instead of like in like, in like, well, of course, like that can be a part of it, right? But with also the understanding that now I’m going to have to run a business, you know, and I don’t, and I think that a lot of people and we’re seeing it are recognizing, like you signed up to run a real business, you know, and if you don’t run it like a business, you’re not going to be able to do this like sustainably for a long time. ⁓ and so that’s really where that came into play for me was like,

I got into the salon suite quickly got kind of hit in the face with the reality of running a business. Although I was definitely ready and I had all that understanding from like the self learning that I had done. I still was not expecting it to be what it was. don’t think anything prepares you for that. Or you’re ever going to know what actually feels like until you actually do it. Right. And it’s interesting how, you know, like being super booked and busy also brings like a whole different set of problems, you know, like

Liam Shea (21:22)
No. Yeah, you can’t. You can’t.

Hunter Donia (21:32)
The first set of problems is like, you just have to grow your customer base. think that’s like the main thing, right? You always have to have like customers coming in, make sure your books are filled, whatever it may be. But then when you have a lot of clients, then that also brings on more admin work for you. It brings on more pressure on your time and how much time you have to spend. It brings on a lot of communication and scheduling back and forth. It means more inventory ordering and all of that stuff, right? And so

That is what really challenged me when I got into the salon suite. wasn’t growing the clientele that came easy because of all the work that I’d done prior, but it was the streamlining, the success that I had and the stress and the overwhelm that it brought me. That was the challenge. And I was able to really like do some alternative, scary, risky things that I like knew needed to happen myself that were very successful for me and like creating like systems, automations, boundaries.

that I could enjoy the success that I created, but also have like a personal life outside of work and make it so I could sustain this success without, ⁓ without burning out basically. I don’t know how I would be able to move forward at that point, like have this as a long-term career if I didn’t make it more sustainable. So I did all of those things. And if you want me to share examples, can, but like, I just, I was integrated with some communities of hairstylists, whether it been

through me being a brand educator, because I was regionally educating and people were asking me questions about how I was doing things. instead of teaching the color, I would go on rants about the business side of things because I loved it. And that’s what people were asking me about. And then I also just were getting to, don’t know if you, were you, did you ever indulge in Clubhouse, Liam? Clubhouse, that social media app?

Liam Shea (23:09)
Hmm.

Yes, absolutely. Yeah,

I certainly spent several months in there and it was a really, at least for a bit, it was a really interesting place in our industry, I found, because everybody went there. I don’t think it, I mean, it was a flash in the pan in general. ⁓

Hunter Donia (23:27)
Yes.

Liam Shea (23:35)
But everybody was there for a hot minute and everyone was accessible. There was no closed doors and you were just in a room chatting and nobody even knew that you could stop half the people from being able to talk in the first place. ⁓ Yeah, yeah, I forgot about that actually. Thank you for that. That was a really, there was just so many facets to sort of being trapped at home that had cool stuff like that. That was cool. Yeah, so you jumped on the clubhouse.

Hunter Donia (23:37)
Yes, everybody. Yes.

Yes

Yeah, dude. I’m so glad you remember it. It was this very interesting, intense popularity of this app. And it was so invigorating to me to have these conversations with other hairstylists. again, that was another place where I had built this little community very quickly and got really great connections with people who are very close friends of mine now, like Nina Tullio and Jay Ladner, who I probably would have never otherwise been able to have a relationship with. ⁓

Basically they kept on asking, everybody kept on asking me how I was doing the stuff that I was doing. And the best way to teach it, especially cause I was teaching a lot of tech was just like a course, know, like a digital step-by-step course. So, ⁓ I launched it and surprisingly 84 people bought it. And that’s kind of what started it all, which was just like, it was so great. I literally was like, if I just have like five people join this, then that would be so exciting and so fun that I get to like teach five hair styles, how to do this stuff. Like that would be so cool.

Cause I loved educating, you know, and I was really excited to like, see how it would work in this facet and also do it without rules because as a brand educator, you know, I’m like doing it within like the parameters of how the brand wants me to teach things and the classes I was teaching. But this time it was like all by my own rules. And the fact that like 84 people signed up was just like, so nuts. And I remember being so scared. I was like, how the hell am I going to manage these 84 people and like make sure that they all had the results and like all the things it was terrifying. ⁓

Liam Shea (25:04)
Yes.

that.

Hunter Donia (25:32)
But that was the start of it all. And then it just grew and grew and grew from there. And it’s been such a beautiful and lovely journey. And I’m so, so appreciative of it and still very appreciative of it today.

Liam Shea (25:44)
It’s so awesome. And it’s super fun just helping people succeed. It’s rarely, I mean, one of the sad things I’ve found over the years is it’s, you know, your success is very rarely due to your skill level, unfortunately. I mean, it absolutely helps, and being terrible at it is gonna be problematic. ⁓ You know, if everybody’s just coming for one…

Hunter Donia (25:50)
Yes.

Right.

Hahaha right.

Liam Shea (26:13)
service and never coming back. That’s a problem. But that’s not… it’s like one part hustler mentality, one part organization. ⁓ Yeah, learning how to use tools. One of the things I do lots of walkthroughs, I do most of the walkthroughs with our new or prospective users with Salon Monster and…

you know, I’ll give them the demo of the app and talk to them about that, but a lot of the time it’s people who are going out on their own for the first time and we’ll always discuss. I’ll show them my website and then I’ll take them to my booking page and I’ll show them my cancellation policy and my booking introduction and how I gatekeep who gets in and the form that I use for some people, you know, for people who want a chemical service and not just a haircut.

Google form I use that they have to fill out before I tell everyone you can steal anything you want. Please have a cancellation policy. For the love of God, have a cancellation policy. And please enforce it. Please make it real, enforce it. You I usually tell them that I have a weird cancellation policy so they don’t have to steal mine, but that if they can. But yeah, I just, you know, I don’t know if you found this. I found when I’m…

Hunter Donia (27:15)
⁓ If anything, if anything, please.

Liam Shea (27:34)
firm about my boundaries with my guests, I get the guests that I want and they don’t have an issue. Yeah.

Hunter Donia (27:42)
true. I say like, I say like, it’s, say if you’re truly like, especially to the people pleasers out there, I normally say, if I say, if you are not holding up a boundary, because you are trying to take care of everybody, right, then you’re actually not taking care of them, like you’re doing them a big disservice, because you can only serve people to your highest level when you are served first, right? And so like, you if you’re stressed about

Karen because, her, she’s, know, you have an appointment with Karen this week. All you’re doing is you’re thinking about how awful Karen is and how disrespectful she is and how she’s probably going to cancel on you again, stressing you out. You take that out on your family. You take that out on your other clients. It, drags you down and you take it out on Karen. know, you’re like terrified doing her hair and you’re just like nervous about her yelling at you and telling you, telling you that she hates, she hates it.

Liam Shea (28:36)
Good job.

Hunter Donia (28:37)
And so you’re not going to be able to do your best work. And so it’s really truly doing a disservice to her to keep her around and to let her stomp all over you. And it’s also doing a disservice to everybody else who deserves you at your best. Right. So I love that you shared that. And it’s so true with like the cancellation policy. like, if you just have one, it just like, let’s please start here. Let’s at least have this one policy in place.

Liam Shea (28:50)
Yeah, agreed.

Yes. Yep.

Yeah. Yeah. I’m a big fan of it.

you started with that course.

You had, what’d say, 84, 87 folks the first time? That’s bananas, I don’t know how you would even keep, I mean, that’s probably like the size of my client, my regular clientele, give or take.

Hunter Donia (29:14)
Hit it 84, special, so lovely, amazing people join us.

Hahaha

Liam Shea (29:29)
So it worked right away. I mean, relatively speaking, I’m not saying you then retired afterwards and now you buy boats for fun, but it worked right away. You got people immediately. ⁓ What was the next step? it grow? I mean, obviously you can’t, it’s a limit to the quantity of people you can grow to within that. As far as your involvement.

Hunter Donia (29:32)
Yeah.

Liam Shea (29:53)
I was taking a look, what was I seeing here? Do you have more than one group now?

Hunter Donia (29:59)
Yeah. So

great question actually. And you bring up an interesting point. yeah, so we kept growing. Demand was pretty intense for us. And what I always really found to be important was for me to be a part of it. And I think that any, any business consultant from outside of the industry, they’d probably say like, no, like you need to remove yourself from this. Like you need to like scale your way out of the business, you know, exactly. And for me, I, you know,

Liam Shea (30:17)
Yes. What’s your exit strategy? Absolutely.

Hunter Donia (30:24)
I never started this because I wanted to make money. And I think that that’s like where a big part of people wanting to do what I’m doing, people start in the wrong way. It’s like, if you’re not passionate about this and genuinely love it, then you’re never going to make it work, you know? Or you’re going to make it work and it’s just like, you’re going to be left with like no fulfillment or like passion, you know? But I really started it because I was so excited to share this information and I had to charge for it. It just was what it was.

But I always wanted to stay an intimate part of it. And it was a big part of the success. And I love the community that I created. And I really liked the impact that I made when I was able to have real conversations with people. And so as we’ve grown, I’ve had to make it a little bit less accessible, like with the price, or I have an application only program. So that way I can stay in it and we can make my business successful, because I have to make money doing it to be able to serve these people.

But then also to serve the people who like are really committed and gonna do the work I think I’m in I’m definitely in a space and time in which like I’m really only interested in working with people who are in this industry who see the potential who are willing to put in the work even though it’s hard ⁓ and I’m here to make that as easy as possible for people as long as they’re willing to meet me halfway and where they’re at so ⁓ as of right now ⁓ we I started with that course it evolved into like a

group program because I started to recognize like a lot of people they come in from such different circumstances whether it be you know, they want to grow the clientele or they’ve already grown the clientele What’s next or I want to do XYZ? This is my real issue over here so instead of like a Linear like this is just take this step one step two step three now I have a program in which you come in I give you a customized plan we have

curriculum that you can choose from and pick and choose from and then you have our group coaching where like I’m there I answer all your questions and ⁓ We have other special stuff that goes in there, but I won’t keep on yapping about it So yeah, we have a group program and then I have a ⁓ smaller intimate program for super high achievers in which we do super like just intimate ⁓

one-to-one coaching and there’s a small group coaching and things like that. So it’s a larger program called Modern Stylist Movement. That’s where you get all the core curriculum. That’s where you can grow the business in all the different ways. And then I have an intimate group where once you achieve like a really high level of success and you’re ready for more advanced stuff, then you join me in there and then we get really cool stuff going. ⁓

Liam Shea (32:56)
Yeah, I mean

it seems like if you’re if you’re lucky enough to reach the right places on on these paths You know you want to you want to grow your clientele you want to get really busy And then you hit this point where you’re like that’s too busy. I don’t want to be that busy. I can’t do ⁓ Five ten hour days of hair and not die a horrible slow death I would like to make more money and work less so how do I do that so like how can I shrink my clientele?

Hunter Donia (33:10)
Yes.

Yes.

Liam Shea (33:26)
and yet make more, right? mean, that’s…

Hunter Donia (33:26)
No.

literally becomes the situation. And maybe, you know, for my, my, my hairstylist friends who are listening to this, you may think that’s crazy. Like I would kill to be that busy, but then you get there and you, you recognize like, this is actually like really overwhelming. ⁓ and you can’t keep going like that. And, know, it’s a shame because I have like students who will join my program and it’s people who have been doing hair for like, as long as you, know, and, but, they’ve been like as stressed and overwhelmed for as long as you, but they’ve never done anything about it. And, ⁓

Liam Shea (33:41)
Yeah.

Hunter Donia (33:55)
And I’m really passionate about helping people get past that point because that was like my core struggle of my career. Like it was, it was really like the, it was like a breaking point of my career where I was like, I don’t know if I can keep doing this hair or not, you know? ⁓ but it’s so cool that like you, think, like you said, there’s a, there’s a cost, a very risky cost of living like that and having your career be like that. And there’s also so much opportunity you’ve created for yourself.

And so net, but you don’t realize it, right? You think that this is just going to be like forever, right? With this career. And you feel super scarce about letting that go or changing anything because you’ve worked so hard to build what you’ve built. ⁓ but what people don’t realize is like, when you have all of that demand in your time, like now you can scale it. Like it’s so you get to scale it now. And, it’s taking big risky swings that a lot of people aren’t, aren’t naturally. Thought to do or have the courage to do.

And I’m just so passionate about helping them take the swings because what happens on the other side of that is just like so magical and beautiful.

Liam Shea (34:56)
Yeah.

awesome. Okay so you’re talking to you as you’ve just entered vocational school or anyone they’ve just entered hair school they’re not sure if it’s a good idea or a bad idea and they’re thinking about what’s gonna happen afterwards what are one or two pieces of advice you give sort of new or up-and-coming stylists whether it be education mentors or whatever it is what one or one or two tidbits you would give anybody listening that just started

Hunter Donia (35:31)
say that you are joining an industry in which the stigma or the general averages, because it’s true, like the general averages are low quote unquote to the majority standard as far as income goes, right? Like when we look at the average income of most hairstylists, it is on the lower scale. And so like that’s okay.

If you want to join this industry and you’re willing to put up with that because like that’s what you want, you’re able to live off of that. And like you enjoy that. That’s great. Right. That is awesome. You can go in and you can just be a hairstylist, be good at what you do, serve your clients. Well, have the same clientele forever. And that’s awesome. Badass. Right. But if you want to sign up, you’re making more than that. Just tapping into the very unlimited potential that you have in this industry. It requires you doing a

above average work. And by that I mean quantity and quality. And when I say work, I don’t mean the hair that you’re doing. As we’ve illustrated in this podcast today, I mean the work outside of doing the clients. I mean, how are you going to market yourself? How are you going to do that strategically? I mean, when you are working with clients, how are you going to raise your average ticket and make the most out of every client that you have? How are you going to create a client experience that gets you organic referrals that people actually are, is, makes it worth talking about?

Liam Shea (36:34)
Yeah. Yes.

Hunter Donia (36:57)
That makes it so getting your hair done is not a chore, but it’s an exciting experience that people are addicted to and want to scream from the rooftops about. that is the work, but it requires you putting in the above average and not everybody is willing to do that. So if you’re signing up in this industry, signing up for this industry to be creative, to do something that you love and make an impact on other humans, think that is so beautiful.

and you get to decide and there’s no right or wrong, you get to decide, am I going to settle for the average because I am only willing to do this average amount of work or are you going to want more for yourself and grow beyond that average by putting in above average work and you get to decide that. And there’s no right or wrong to do it today. But if you’re willing to do the above average work, I am very passionate about helping you make that as easy as possible and to do that.

the best way I know how to teach you. And I know that Salam Monster is there to help you along the way as well too.

Liam Shea (38:00)
Absolutely, I love, yeah, we’ve been starting to work. We’re free for students, schools, and apprentices. ⁓ Yeah, we haven’t advertised it heavily, but we’ve started doing that, and I’m just in the process of trying to squeeze more time out of time so that I can put together something that I could offer to them as far as, you know, I’d be happy to do a 60-minute.

Hunter Donia (38:06)
That is so badass. Thank you for that. That is so cool.

Yes.

Liam Shea (38:26)
class talking about digital tools just so they can understand what that’s going to look like and how to use it. Yeah, it’s just it’s important to help our industries. I mean, that’s why I’m doing it. Certainly didn’t do it for the money.

Hunter Donia (38:35)
Right.

Very cool. Absolutely.

Dude, and that’s the thing, it’s like… like… Period.

Liam Shea (38:47)
Well, there wasn’t any for a long time. So it’s like, don’t do it for the money. Do it because you love it. And then if

you get paid for it, fantastic. Awesome.

Hunter Donia (38:56)
100

% yes. And normally if that’s the approach, you will eventually get paid for it. I think that that’s the case. It’s like, if you are so passionate about something that you like want to put in the work to do it, then the money will eventually come. 100%. I love that perspective.

Liam Shea (39:12)
Yeah, yeah, that’s a fun industry. I love it. I’m cognizant of the time, so I want to just ask a couple more things before we wrap up, but we should do this again for sure.

Hunter Donia (39:24)
Okay.

Dude, I would love to.

Liam Shea (39:29)
You did a podcast about ADHD. I’m assuming you did it because you got diagnosed at some point. I’m not sure. I certainly did. I was talking to everyone in my chair for the last five years about it, but did about two years ago actually get ⁓ the diagnosis and it was certainly life altering. Medication was life altering for me. And thank you. Yeah, yeah, it was awesome. It the best thing that ever happened by far.

Hunter Donia (39:31)
Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah, congratulations, it’s a big deal.

Liam Shea (39:57)
it puts a name to it, it made me understand things. It would have been great to have known at the beginning of my career so you could find out it’s not just that you’re a garbage person, but you just can’t approach everything this way, know, like dealing with taxes and all the things that were like, I’ll just put that over there, we’ll figure that out later. ⁓ What did you find, how did you find that changed things for you, that diagnosis?

Hunter Donia (40:07)
Right, I totally get it.

Hahaha! ⁓

Yeah, well, okay. So another thing where, again, super privileged, especially, you know, in so many factors, but I was diagnosed from a young age. I had a very sweet teacher, ⁓ Mrs. Maloney. She was, she was like, this kid’s nuts. Like she was like, this kid is crazy and suggested to my parents that I get evaluated. And so I was very lucky to be diagnosed from a young age and, ⁓

That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t still come with its challenges. And I’m sure that you can absolutely still stay that, you know? Like a diagnosis is awesome because it allows you to properly manage it. It also helps you understand like why you are the way that you are and like why you think the way that you think. And it’s so interesting how I like learn more about myself and how it affects my life every single day. And it’s so powerful to be validated.

with the diagnosis 100%. And so I would absolutely, and I’m sure that you would relate, I would absolutely recommend if you believe that that’s the situation for you, to try if you can, if you have the resources, to get diagnosed. Because definitely understanding from a young age that I had AHG helped a lot. But nonetheless, the condition still brings about so many struggles.

⁓ not being able to pay attention is the classic situation, but it’s like, it’s so much more than that. It’s like. I remember my, my, that boy that I moved to rural Pennsylvania, ⁓ for he actually had OCD. so OCD and ADHD in the same household is very interesting combo. And this is like very, this is diagnosed OCD and it’s also very traditional stereotypical OCD. So it’s like, it’s like, I want everything clean and pristine and perfect. Like it’s very that.

Liam Shea (41:56)
Yes.

Hunter Donia (42:05)
And that’s when I became extremely aware of my ADHD because it was like in my face every single day. ⁓ but the way that I like the way that like, it even affects how people perceive you, especially loved ones and close ones. For example, like my ex would feel so disrespected when he had to tell me like a million times to like put this thing in this place every single time I do it. When in reality, it’s just like, I don’t, my brain doesn’t even

think about. I don’t even have time to even think about that thing that I’m doing. Like, for example, taking off my shoes when I walk in the door, my brain is not thinking about taking off my shoes when I walk in the door. It’s thinking about the next room that I’m going to be in to go brush my teeth or to go like open up the computer. Like, and then even when I get to the computer, it’s thinking about making dinner. And then when I go to make dinner, I’m thinking about going to brush my teeth. Like, and like none of it gets done. None of it gets done.

Liam Shea (43:00)
Mm-hmm. No, no, no, it’s too overwhelming.

That’s too the overwhelm is real. I can’t I couldn’t Yeah, and it’s funny when you when you talk about the OCD side of things that having that person around me It’s not that I don’t want I want to live in the same environment you want to live in

Hunter Donia (43:03)
It’s way too overwhelming.

Yes.

Liam Shea (43:23)
I’m not consciously not doing the things that you’re asking. I can’t. And it sounds like a cop-out. ⁓ You know, I’ve gotten better. I’ve learned how to create systems for myself. And it’s interesting because on every page on your website, as I’m looking, I’m like, systems, systems, systems, systems. Yes. Learning how, not just how to get medicated, but I can’t do it that way. I had my partner the other day had said to me,

Hunter Donia (43:29)
Yes.

Yes.

Liam Shea (43:53)
You know, can you go and do, I don’t know, can you go and wash these dishes? Great, I’m washing the dishes. And then said to me, can you do this other thing? And I said, sure. And I walked away to do the other thing. like, no, no, no, not right now, after. And I’ve started to learn about myself a little better. And I said, well, there is no, there’s no after. I don’t have, I don’t have an after, I have a right now. So you can either, I can either go do the other thing or I can do this thing.

Hunter Donia (44:12)
Yes!

Liam Shea (44:22)
But you’re gonna have to tell me about the other thing after. can’t, I don’t have a batter’s box with me. can’t like, I’ll leave this idea here and I’ll just get to it when I’m done this. It’s gone forever. I don’t know where it’s gone. Some other place. You know, it’s like my never ending to-do list. I realize I have to stop doing just a to-do list. It’s just a place where things go to die. Yeah.

Hunter Donia (44:36)
Hahaha.

Dude,

yes, you’re like preaching like 100%. I really so hard. it’s so, think like one of the biggest parts about it is like being realistic with yourself and expecting and knowing what is going to work, right? And like not trying to sign up for something that’s not going to work because it’s like, it’s just like, you’re signing yourself up for failure and disappointment. And that disappointment makes the, makes the cycle of ADHD 10 times worse.

Liam Shea (44:48)
Yes.

Hunter Donia (45:14)
So I love that you’re just like, this is the realistic situation. Like I would love to do this for you. And you’re meeting me halfway by, by sharing with me, like by, by asking me to do this when it’s going to be best for me to be asked to do this. So that I actually get it done. Like, I love that. And again, like even, even in the broader definition of the word that is a system, right. ⁓ and so yeah, that’s actually what has really, I think brought me to where I am today, as far as teaching those systems. Absolutely is my ADHD. It has.

Liam Shea (45:33)
Yes.

Hunter Donia (45:43)
So much to do with it. has to do with like, I know that this is how I normally show up within these spaces or within this behavior or within this boundary. And I want to create parameters like bowling alley, you know, lanes. I forget what those things are called, right? The bumpers, right? So that way, like I have no choice or it’s very easy for me to follow through on the thing that is normally not easy for me. So for example,

Online booking, right? Like online booking is so powerful for me because let’s say that Suzy texts me at 9 a.m. and I’m like, okay, I’ll totally get back to Suzy. I’m not getting back to Suzy.

Liam Shea (46:24)
No. No. Well, I would if I did immediately. If I respond right then, the minute that message comes through, as I see the notification, if I click it and respond, we’re good.

Hunter Donia (46:26)
So, for me, go ahead. Exactly, exactly.

100%.

Liam Shea (46:43)
Otherwise it’s gone forever.

Hunter Donia (46:44)
It’s gone. so like, especially as business owners, you know, and it’s interesting. I think that, I mean, there is statistics out there that a lot of successful CEOs have ADHD. And I think that a lot of this industry attracts people with ADHD. think that this industry is really excellent. Just the actual craft and the basic job of doing hair. I think it’s really great because you have no choice but to be doing the job right then and there, right? Like the client is in your chair.

You have no excuses, no distractions, and you are held accountable to that person who booked that appointment with you, who is going to spend money with you. There is no time for getting lost or distracted or anything like that. You have to do what’s right in front of you. I think that that’s why this job is so great for neurodivergent people. But when it comes to, like I said, the above average work, which is outside of that, that’s when it becomes a little bit more difficult. mean, even when it comes to that client communication, like,

going back to like the online booking situation, even beyond just like the ADHD, like let’s talk about like the people pleasing side of things, right? Like if I’m like, if I’m talking to this person back and forth and they say, well, this date and time works best for me, I now have the option as a business owner who’s in full control of my schedule, I now have the option of squeezing Susie into a time and date that I know I probably shouldn’t be working, but I love Susie so much. So I’m going to put her in there, you know?

versus if I make it so online booking is the only way that you can book with me or in person, I pull up the online booking link and I share with her like, okay, these are my times and days. Then I have that system holding me accountable to my boundaries. So yes, like throughout my life, whether it, whatever my, my negative behavior or self-destructive tendencies may be in all aspects, especially of course, also in my personal life, but definitely in business, I’ve

I’ve had to be able to survive and function like a normal human being and like be happy, like had to create systems for myself. And it sounds like that you’re very much, you’ve done this, you’ve done those things and you’re also now even doing it even more because of your diagnosis.

Liam Shea (48:51)
Yeah, yeah, and it’s amazing when you, for somebody that’s sort of like a late diagnosis, looking back and realizing what systems you put in place. that was a system. When I started to take my career really seriously, when I wanted to be busy, I realized the best I could do was, I was taking the bus to get to the shop I worked at and I…

Hunter Donia (49:02)
Yes!

Liam Shea (49:16)
would either be exactly on time if I caught the bus or a couple of minutes late. And that’s all I could do. And then I decided I had to show up to work 90 minutes early. But right, I need to be there. It’s like when I go to the airport, I’d like to be there the day before and stay at the hotel and the airport on the other side of security and then just walk onto the plane. And so I started showing up to work an hour and a half early every day and I had a breakfast sandwich across the street and it came over and I set up what my chef clients call my mise en place.

Hunter Donia (49:21)
Uh-huh.

Mmm.

Yes! Yes!

Liam Shea (49:46)
my tools out and laid them out and everything was ready and then I got 30 minutes just to meet and I sat in my chair in silence and I was ready to go. I don’t actually take my meds when I do hair. don’t, I can always do the task in front of me. Like if it’s non-optional, you showed up and I know I have to be done at this time because the next person shows up and the fear of not being available for the next person is.

Hunter Donia (50:02)
Yes.

Liam Shea (50:14)
so outweighs my brain’s ability to screw me. That one helps. And then I think for me, was listening to Trevor Noah being interviewed the other day talking about ADHD. And I did something for my career that I’m now doing for myself since my diagnosis, which was learning to say no. Just learning to say no. It was one of the best tools that ever. You know, can you do this type of service? No. No, I’m not gonna get good at that. I don’t like doing that.

Hunter Donia (50:17)
Yes.

Yes

Liam Shea (50:41)
And so I’m just gonna do it badly and you’re gonna be displeased and I’m gonna want to commit seppuku because I can’t take anyone being disappointed in anything that I do and it’ll just be this horrible slippery. No, I need to, these are the things I’m great at and that I love to do and this is what I do. I don’t do anything else. No. Can you come in on your day off? No. Can you work outside your hours? No. And everything’s better when you…

Hunter Donia (50:57)
Yeah, dude.

100%. And I think that it’s taking me, it still takes you to learning those lessons and messing it up every now and then to be reminded of, this is why I need to say no in the future. And this is why I normally say no to the situation. From the past year or two, I’ve been much more viscerally protective of my time and how my calendar is even.

Liam Shea (51:11)
Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Hunter Donia (51:29)
like, functioning because like, for example, and this is like another thing that I become aware of with my ADHD. And I don’t think this is like an uncommon thing for any neurodivergent or, ⁓ neurotypical person, but especially when you’re neurodivergent, like having like, let’s say a meeting in the morning, trying to work on a project and then another call and then, and then going back into the project and then another call, like going in and out of those spaces is just.

Liam Shea (51:55)
No.

Hunter Donia (51:57)
so impossible. It’s so hard for me to go into the project. It’s so hard for me to be present with the person. So I’ve been like very protective over like, no, sorry, this is my day that I’m doing this and I’m just focusing on this. Like you have to book with me on these other days. It just is what it is. And I mean, I’m definitely seeing the benefits of it. So I love that you said like the power of no and like really protecting your time. ⁓ And I love also you said too, like every time you say yes to this thing, like

Liam Shea (52:12)
Yeah.

Hunter Donia (52:23)
you always end up being miserable doing it and nobody wins at the end of the day because you’re probably not going to love it. So like, what’s the point? Yeah. No, no.

Liam Shea (52:25)
Yeah. No. It’s the worst. Nobody wants bad hair on purpose. Why

would I do that to myself on purpose and to that person? It’s a terrible idea just because I don’t want to say no. It was hard, but it’s great. Like you’re saying, it’s better for everyone. The power of no is it is real. Learn to use it. Yeah. Well, I sure appreciate you ⁓ taking the time to do this with me.

Hunter Donia (52:40)
Yes. Yes.

Very real. Hell yeah.

Dude, thank you

so much.

Liam Shea (52:53)
Super fun. I would love to ⁓ delve into something else again before we wrap up What’s next with you what’s going on? We can talk about where people could find you or what’s the next course? What do we got going on? What’s on the?

Hunter Donia (53:08)
Yeah, so

anybody who’s listening to this, can tune in, you can hang out with me at Hair by Huntie on Instagram. I also have a podcast, it’s very helpful, the Modern Hair Stylist podcast. post every week ⁓ and it is, we just give away really bad ass strategy and advice within 20 minutes every week. And I just recommend that you guys, I’m biased, I know, but we put a lot of work into the things that we put up there and it’s just like, why wouldn’t you listen to it? So tune into the Modern Hair Stylist podcast, we’re on all streaming platforms.

⁓ and that’s where you can hang out with me. If you, heard me on this podcast, I would love for you to shoot me a DM at hair by hunting on Instagram so we can get connected. Liam, thank you so much for having me on here. I absolutely love getting to, like I said, like collaborate with other people and have relationships with other people who are, are, are also making an impact in the industry and also as passionate of doing about doing it as well too. So really honored to be within this space with you. ⁓ and thank you so much for today. I really appreciate it.

Liam Shea (54:02)
My pleasure, thank you. All right.

There are interviews where you hit record, ask a few questions, and everything stays nicely on the surface. And then there are the ones where you blink… and suddenly you’re talking about bleach chemistry, mental health, and the very real art of putting your “human suit” back on before you greet a client.

That’s what happened when I sat down one-on-one with Allison Webber —Charlotte, North Carolina, vivid + blonding specialist, educator, suite owner, and yes, proudly known online as “the green-haired stylist.” She’s about 13 years into her career and somehow has the energy of someone who’s still curious, still experimenting, and still willing to say the quiet parts out loud.

The part where my jaw hit the floor (early)

Allison didn’t sugarcoat her first salon experience. She described it as “awful… an awful training program,” and then dropped the kind of line that makes every stylist watching go, Wait—WHAT? She told me, “I literally had an educator call me a little bitch on the floor.”

Not only is that brutal… It’s also the spark for why she became so intentional about education later. She “jumped ship,” helped open a salon with a friend, and ended up running their training program for most of seven years. When she talks about education now, it’s not performative. It’s protective. It’s personal.

Allison’s educator brain is… chef’s kiss

One of my favorite threads in our conversation was how deeply she thinks about how people learn — because she’s lived the reality of being thrown into the deep end.

She told me she once aimed to become an Aveda corporate educator, and she still credits that training for drilling learning styles into her brain. And then she shared a detail I’m still thinking about: she’s “still the person who gives out workbooks… in every class,” plus PDFs, because people leave education hyped—but miss half of it in the moment.

Also, her honesty about teaching rooms full of humans? Refreshing. She said she had classes that were so quiet that her running joke became: “Do you guys hate me?”

Going suite-life: the fear, the math, the trust fall

We got into the real-world business side too—especially the leap from salon to suite.

Allison talked about the fear a lot of stylists don’t admit out loud: Will my clients actually follow me? She was worried about losing the ability to double-book without an assistant, and she had to learn overhead from the other side of the counter.

Then she hit me with the stat that made me grin: she said she “only lost two clients” when she left—after hearing you can lose up to 25% with a move. That’s not luck. That’s relationship equity.

And she didn’t romanticize it either. The suite glow-up comes with sweeping, mopping, and suddenly realizing how much the support staff used to quietly carry.

“Human suit” moments (aka: the realest part of the whole convo)

At one point we started talking about introvert recovery—how the chair can be your whole social life, and then you’re absolutely cooked by the end of the day.

Allison said, “You gotta put like your human suit back on.” And when she described the post-work decompression negotiations with her fiancé, I laughed because it was so familiar: they landed on “10 minutes of silence” before she could be a person again.

If you’ve ever sat in your car outside your house like it’s a recovery pod… you’re among friends here.

The nerdy color talk you actually want

And yes—we got into the juicy technical stuff, too.

Allison shared that she deals with bleach sensitivity and prefers products designed with scalp comfort in mind—she mentioned seaweed in a lightener as an anti-inflammatory support. She’s also strict about developer choices: “I don’t use anything over 20 volume with bleach at all.”

My favorite behind-the-scenes gem: when she wants a little extra “movement” in foils, she’ll use towel warmth—dry towel, then hot wet towel—because the humidity helps keep lightener from drying out. It’s one of those practical, in-the-trenches tips you only get from someone who’s done the reps.

You can find Allison at:
https://www.instagram.com/thegreenhairedstylist/?hl=en

Transcript:

Liam Shea (00:01)
Okay, fantastic. So I’m here with Allison Weber. Allison, would you like to just tell us a little, know, a little like 10 to 30 seconds snippet about you?

Allison Webber (00:14)
Yeah, so I’m in Charlotte, North Carolina. I’m a vivid and blonding specialist and educator. I have a suite with two stylists and they also assist me. And I’m the green haired stylist on Instagram, if you don’t already know.

Liam Shea (00:30)
I love

it, outstanding. How long have you been doing hair for?

Allison Webber (00:35)
⁓ 13 years, which is crazy. I was just talking to a friend before this and we went to hair school together and I was like, my god, it’s been 13 years. Like it’s so crazy to think about.

Liam Shea (00:37)
Nice.

It, uh, time

makes no sense and it will always do that in your career. I mean, I think I’ve been doing hair. I started in January of 1999. So, you know, 26 years. It’s, um, it’s bananas and I swear I just started sort of. Kind of not quite, but kind of. Yeah. Um, okay. So, uh, 13 years ago, did you, did you know you wanted to do hair right away?

Allison Webber (00:59)
Yeah.

Yeah, it feels that way sometimes.

Yeah, I did. ⁓ My parents made me go to college first, which did not last very long. I came home and I was like, no, I’m going to hair school. ⁓ That’s been an uphill battle for a long time, ⁓ now I’m, now I think they’re happy that I do hair and they get good hair out of it. So, but if I didn’t do hair, I wanted to be a journalist. I loved writing and I did, I did like the yearbook, ⁓ a newspaper.

Liam Shea (01:21)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

There you go. Yep.

Okay.

Allison Webber (01:46)
like design work all through high school so I liked that part of it too which I guess kind of makes sense like designing hair.

Liam Shea (01:49)
awesome.

Yeah. The writing thing’s

unusual though. I don’t find there’s a truckload of people in our industry that ⁓ came from a writing background before doing this. ⁓ Yes, creative. Yeah. ⁓ That’s amazing. So you went to college for a period of time.

Allison Webber (02:05)
Yeah, definitely. Yeah, it’s definitely far and few between.

Liam Shea (02:16)
however long you felt like you had to before you could say, don’t want to do this anymore. ⁓ And then how did it begin? Was it straight up just going to like the local hair school or?

Allison Webber (02:18)
Yep.

Yeah, I went to an Aveda Institute here in Charlotte and then that was a year and then I worked ⁓ at another Aveda salon in Charlotte for about a year. I went through their training program. I think I made it maybe a year and a half. ⁓

I had been on the floor for a very short period of time and I just I really hated it there. It was awful. It was an awful place. It was an awful training program. I literally had an educator call me a little bitch on the floor. ⁓ Like crazy. And ⁓ so I… No, no, it’s so bad. It’s so bad. Yeah, thankfully. Yeah.

Liam Shea (02:49)
Yeah.

and yet not uncommon. I get that you say crazy, but like it’s less common now. Like it keeps changing. But yeah, yeah.

Allison Webber (03:10)
I, ⁓ so I left there. I had another friend from hair school whose parents were opening a salon, ⁓ in the same like general area. ⁓ and my contract was almost up. So I jumped ship and we opened and I helped them with their like social media and figuring out, you know, training programs and stuff like that. So I was there for seven years and I ran our training program there, ⁓ for most of that time. And then I just decided I,

I love educating, but with, I think COVID changed a lot with education and with like just hair school in general, like there was no hands-on education, there were no clients, you know, so everyone was coming out of hair school less and less experienced. And like, I feel like our job as educators got so much harder, but we were getting paid the same and doing more work. And I was just like, I feel like I could be doing something different that would be a lot more.

Liam Shea (03:46)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Allison Webber (04:10)
rewarding. So I got a suite, it was so small. And I got an assistant that was working with me part time and she was very temporary. And then I started doing more independent education. And then

Liam Shea (04:14)
Hahaha

Allison Webber (04:25)
That was 2023 that I started it and all of last year I was doing classes all over the place. And now I’m focusing more on like virtual classes just because I feel like it’s more accessible for people and it doesn’t have to cost so much for everyone.

Liam Shea (04:38)
Mm-hmm.

Allison Webber (04:41)
and you can do it on your own time. So it’s a lot more beneficial and you can, you know, if you like don’t hear something you can rewind it and go back to it and not have to like be the person in the class that’s like scared to ask a question and scared to be like, can you say that again? So it’s a lot better. Yeah.

Liam Shea (04:49)
Yes.

Yeah, that was me. Yeah, early on. No,

I mean, you know, mean, early on in my career because

and there wasn’t even social media. So there was no video of anything. The only like video you would ever get would be the occasional like DVD that came with a product line. And really it was just a series of ads about each product. It didn’t really tell you anything helpful. And that was it. And you would have to it would have to be in your area or you or you’d have to travel. ⁓ And even when I did do classes, I found I tended to do

Allison Webber (05:05)
Right.

Yep.

Yeah.

Liam Shea (05:34)
just the look and learns, because I never wanted to do it in front of anyone after it, and I never asked any questions. ⁓ So yeah, I’ve found digital education really helpful. Not that it isn’t nice to do it in person.

Allison Webber (05:38)
Yeah. Yep.

Yeah, it’s really funny like all last year I probably did

a class almost every two weeks and it was really nice like meeting so many people and but every class had like a different dynamic and I don’t know if it was just like you know different like regions of the country or whatever but there were always like some classes that were like completely silent and like my running joke is like if it’s so silent I’m talking and like no one’s asked any questions everyone’s just kind of staring at me I’m like do you guys hate me like do you guys hate me are you listening do you care do you want to leave like you’re free to go if you want like but then I would have

Liam Shea (06:16)
Yes.

Right?

Allison Webber (06:23)
classes that would run like an hour and a half over because everyone wanted to talk the whole time and like those were always so nice because it like really makes you feel like you know you’re like actually connecting with people instead of just like talking at people.

Liam Shea (06:33)
Yeah.

I mean it’s not… it’s not…

that different necessarily than doing hair for a guest in a chair. It can be much more difficult to do it if they never say words or tell you anything and you sit in silence the whole time and they leave and you don’t know if they liked it or if it’s what they wanted whereas the feedback person now again that could be too much feedback too but ⁓ both exist.

Allison Webber (06:49)
Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I mean the silent appointment is okay as long as you know what you’re signing up for. Yeah, that’s great.

Liam Shea (07:06)
yes if you’ve booked one with me i’m much more comfortable with it sort of

yeah i’m not good at dead air but ⁓ but i i try ⁓ okay so you had so you had that first salon that was less than ideal of an experience and i think that fits in with lots of people’s experiences which is

Allison Webber (07:14)
Yeah.

You

Right.

Liam Shea (07:28)
very few places have good training programs. think education, there’s just a limited amount of people that are good at educating in general across the board. ⁓ And then salons usually have education programs that seems to me set up more as like a pipeline to just get more junior staff that they can take as much money from as possible as opposed to like, I always think of a

Allison Webber (07:36)
Yeah.

Yep.

Liam Shea (07:56)
a new stylist, like if I had somebody working with me or for me, to me, the goal is getting you so you can leave. I mean, it’s like having a kid. I mean, I’m not saying it feels good, but the whole point is to teach this person to do it without you. ⁓ And then, okay. And then you went and you started doing more education. At what point did you realize, I mean, I know you liked education, but at what point did you realize you were

Allison Webber (08:05)
Right. Yeah. To let them grow. Yeah, exactly.

Liam Shea (08:26)
I mean, I want to say good at educating, but that’s a weird question to ask you. What point did you realize it was working as an educator?

Allison Webber (08:33)
⁓

I mean, it was definitely like discouraging at first going out on my own. feel like I had a lot of people that were always because I worked for an Aveda salon, you I was doing mostly Aveda education at the salon. So I was kind of like in a box. And I think it was more like when I started getting bigger on Instagram, doing more with social media that people were like, I would love to watch you. And I’m like, oh, well, you can’t, know, because like I was in an Aveda salon and like it was a big salon and we were busy and I was busy. So once I left, I feel like it was

Liam Shea (08:57)
Yeah.

Allison Webber (09:04)
little discouraging at first trying to like figure out how I was gonna do it. But I was pleasantly surprised with how many people in my area actually wanted to learn from me and I have a few friends that own salons so they were willing to host me and you know just trying to you know see if it worked. And I think the big thing especially in my area is that there’s not a lot of education for vivids but we do have a fairly I would say fairly large like vivid community like I feel like there’s a lot

of clients and obviously like you know everyone’s price point is different but I feel like there’s not a ton of people that do vivids well and people that I mean like I learned as I went you know just thankfully having clients who love me and are willing to let me experiment on them but you know there were times that I messed up people’s hair because I did something that I look back now and I’m like wow I should have known that but ⁓

You know, like one time my friend who still comes to me, it’s almost been 10 years, but I messed up her hair the first time I did it because I gave her like hot pink hot roots when I was trying to make like a deep like orchid color because I lifted her to a 10. You know, it’s like just like simple things like that that like people don’t teach and like that’s such an undervalued like.

specialty but it’s in high demand. So I feel like offering that with like the color theory portion made a big difference. And then I’ve always had a high influx of like people wanting to learn from me I think because I’m fairly approachable. I don’t always look it but I feel like I try really hard to like

Liam Shea (10:28)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Allison Webber (10:51)
let people know that I’m willing to help where I can. ⁓ So I think that is something that like, I don’t really feel like we have that many educators in our area either. Like lot of them are salon specific. So I think the demand is there. It’s just the specialty is a little less looked at.

Liam Shea (11:11)
Yeah.

And okay, so, so you’ve started doing educate, you started teaching. do you, are you someone that preps more or someone that more goes in and figures it out based on the people in front of you? Both. Okay.

Allison Webber (11:26)
both. So

I went through, was originally, my goal for a long time was to become an Aveda educator for corporate. That did not really work out because I look like this, but you know, like they, back then too, it was like before it changed a lot. They’re probably a lot more open now, but like you couldn’t wear, you couldn’t have long nails. You couldn’t have nail polish. couldn’t have, you were always wearing black, you know, not a lot of like crazy makeup, you know. And, but when I was going through

Liam Shea (11:36)
Yes.

Yes. Yup. Understood.

Allison Webber (11:58)
their training program you would like go through all these classes and then you would go to this last class and after this last class they would teach you basically how to teach and that was one thing that like really was something they did really well was going through like the different learning types and i yeah yeah

Liam Shea (12:13)
Yeah.

It’s what those strict systems are good for. I mean, they’re not good

for everything or everyone, but, but being able to break down how you do a thing.

Allison Webber (12:23)
Yeah.

Yeah. And so they really kind of like drilled that into me and

after that last class, you’re supposed to be invited to audition. And at the time, you were invited to audition. And then it was going to be one of six class curriculums that you had to memorize, but you didn’t know which one they were going to give you. So at that point, I was like, OK, I’m done. Thank you. ⁓ But that was something that I feel like was really valuable to me, figuring out how to work around everyone’s learning style.

Liam Shea (13:00)
Mm-hmm.

Allison Webber (13:01)
I always prep a lot of, like I’m still the person who gives out workbooks, like in every class. And it costs a ton of money to print and half the time it probably goes in the trash, whatever. But I also give like PDFs. ⁓ Just because I feel like, like sometimes you leave a class and you’re like so excited, you’re so into it, but you miss so much. And there’s also things that like, you know, when I’m, I know when I get talking, like sometimes I forget stuff. it kind of makes it so that everybody gets like the whole class to like

Liam Shea (13:07)
Love it.

Mm-hmm.

Allison Webber (13:31)
home ⁓ but yeah it’s like a handbook like a guidebook and it’s like

Liam Shea (13:32)
Yeah. Is it pre-filled out? Like, it like, this isn’t just a book they put? Okay. That’s amazing.

Allison Webber (13:40)
Like from two of my classes to the class types I do, it’s like 25 pages. So yeah, it’s, she’s thick. But, and I started towards like the end of last year instead of automatically printing, every one’s copy. Like I would send out an email and be like, who wants PDF? Who wants, cause they’re like, I those things are like $23 to print. It’s crazy. So, ⁓ a lot of people like having the PDFs. They have it on their phone. They can, you know, share it, whatever. So.

Liam Shea (13:46)
That’s amazing.

Yeah.

Allison Webber (14:10)
⁓ So I always have that and then once class starts I kind of like try to like get everybody at the beginning to like ask any like burning questions they have so that I know for a fact that like I’m gonna answer them because I never want anyone to leave like thinking I had this one question it never got answered.

So that’s kind of where I start and like gauge what people kind of are feeling and doing and where they kind of are as far as like comfortability. And then from there, I really wing the whole class. I really do. I just kind of go with the flow from there because I feel like when you try and be structured, like I keep one of my like workbooks with me so that I don’t get lost. But I feel like when you try and do it too structured, like…

Liam Shea (14:43)
Okay.

Yeah.

Allison Webber (14:57)
It ends up, you just end up losing people. Like I feel like you, and then you kind of lose your own kind of sense of educating because you’re so focused on like staying on this like strict schedule and you know, we’re strict scheduled all the time behind the chair. Like why, why not make it more like free and like custom, I guess. Yeah.

Liam Shea (15:00)
Yeah.

Yeah, that makes sense.

mean, I love those workbooks. That sounds amazing. It took me years to figure out because I went to college a little bit. It was more for fun after I was already doing hair. And I was just taking the odd course here or there. And one of the things I couldn’t figure out was ⁓ I couldn’t take notes. I that’s not true. I could take notes. I can either write or I can be present, but I can’t.

Allison Webber (15:31)
you

Yeah.

Liam Shea (15:48)
do, I can’t do both. Now, you know, with an ADHD diagnosis, I’ve started to like, put things together and figure out what was going on there. But like, I can, I can, I can be present and I can listen to you, or I can write down what you’re saying, but I’m not taking it in. I’m just writing down what you’re saying and reading my notes isn’t good enough. ⁓ so the idea being able to follow along or look later, that’s amazing. That’s going to be so helpful for so many different, ⁓ learning types out there.

Allison Webber (16:08)
Right.

Liam Shea (16:18)
I that. Okay, so I want to take just a quick step back. After you left that Aveda salon, the next shop you went to, were you renting a chair there or were you commissioned?

Allison Webber (16:18)
Yeah, for sure. ⁓

I have been commissioned, so every salon I’ve worked at I’ve been commissioned. ⁓

Liam Shea (16:35)
Okay. Okay.

And then you went and rented a booth after that. What was that transition like going to being self-employed? mean, I know you were probably, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Were you fairly booked up at that point?

Allison Webber (16:40)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

terrifying terrifying

Yeah, so I think I owe, I mean, not to like make it good, but I think I owe COVID a lot of my business because, you know, when we came back, like I was busy before, but I had never seen anything like what it was like when we came back from COVID. And we were only closed for, I want to say eight weeks. And like I had done, like there were a few clients that like I had been doing long enough. I was comfortable like with them. So like I went to their house and stuff, but yeah, I mean, it was so busy. I,

Liam Shea (17:01)
yeah.

Allison Webber (17:22)
I think the scariest part for me leaving was, you know, the owners and a lot of my coworkers became like family to me. So, and not in like the toxic, like, we’re a salon family way, but they were like, like family. And so that was really tough to like, like I felt like I was, you know, just like being mean and leaving, but I was just like, I’m just not happy anymore. And it’s not anything that can be changed. It’s not a you problem. It’s a me problem. And I just want to change the

Liam Shea (17:32)
I don’t know. Yeah.

Allison Webber (17:52)
that things are going and I truly fell out of love with Aveda. Especially through COVID. You have to get Aveda through a Aveda salon. it’s not like I was going to Cosmoprofen buying Aveda color. I was having to figure out other stuff. And that was a big pushing factor because I think that’s what was making me stay a lot too. Because I was like, I love Aveda. It’s the only thing I’ve ever used. My best friend, if she sees this, she’ll shit on me about it. But that was my excuse to her. She was like, you should

just try something else you you can do something else and I’m like no I have to stay with the beta but yeah yeah right

Liam Shea (18:27)
Yeah, well, it’s a safety blanket, right? You know it. You don’t quite

realize at that point that, yeah, there’s absolutely differences, big differences between color lines. But the theory you’ve been using, you just need to figure out where the adjustments are. Is this one a gold or an ash heavy line? What are the reds like in this, that stuff? Once you start sorting that out, it gets a little easier, but it is scary. But it’s also tough because if you’re gonna…

Allison Webber (18:41)
right.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Liam Shea (18:54)
you go out on your own, can’t really do something like Aveda, because they still had, I think they become much more flexible, but they had those like minimum buy-ins where you’re like, I’m one person, I can’t have $10,000 of retail sitting on a shelf. I don’t even have room. Where do want me to put it? ⁓ Whereas I think,

Allison Webber (19:04)
yeah. Well…

my god. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, and they

have such a big like color line that like you because you buy, you know, your bases and then you buy the tones and then you buy the developers and you know, it’s not just like pulling a tube and like I think that was the scariest thing for me. And like once I switched to I think my first original color line was Redken and I was like, my God, this color is neutral because Aveda is so warm. It is the warmest freaking color line. And like it’s beautiful. It’s shiny. It’s great. Don’t get me wrong. But I was like,

Liam Shea (19:19)
Yeah.

Yeah, yes, yes.

Allison Webber (19:44)
my god this isn’t orange like I’m like huh

Liam Shea (19:46)
Yeah, you suddenly realize those people are like, can I have something ashier? And you’re like, this

is the ashiest I have. It’s orange. You like it? Yeah.

Allison Webber (19:51)
Like, yeah. Yeah, right. Right.

Yeah. But I think ⁓ I think the scariest part for me was like hoping that my clients liked me enough to follow me and trying to figure out how I was going to double book. I’m a double booking stylist for most services and not having an assistant was a really scary thought. And, you know, I went into it and I was like, OK, like I don’t have to double book right off the bat. I’ll figure it out.

Liam Shea (20:08)
you

Allison Webber (20:19)
not knowing what I could afford because I had never been on that side of the business. You know, like I’ve been handling my books for so long. Like I was a micromanager. I would not let the front desk mess with them. And so like that part, the social media, like all of that, even like buying color and all that, like I knew what to do in that aspect, but I had no idea how much money I could actually like spend on overhead. So I picked like the cheapest suite that I could find that was unreasonably small and

It was just like, was such a big adjustment and I only lost two clients when I left that stayed. Yeah, they stayed at the salon and my old boss, you know, he always says like, every time you move and every year you can expect to lose like up to 25 % of your clientele. And when I left and I only lost two, I was like, holy crap. I was like, these people do really like me. Like, this is great. You know, they love hanging out with me, obviously. ⁓

Liam Shea (20:57)
That’s impressive.

Right?

Allison Webber (21:19)
So yeah, I think that was the scariest part and just knowing if it was gonna work and I mean, thankfully it did. I’ve been gone for three and a half years now. So I’m doing well and I’ve upsized my suite and I’ve got, you know, I have two assistants now that they both work part-time and my best friend is one of my assistants and she is…

Liam Shea (21:30)
Yeah.

Allison Webber (21:43)
growing out of our suite and getting her own in January. So that’s a very like happy, sad thought, you know, like it’s bittersweet, but she’s staying, ⁓ she couldn’t go too far. She’s going right down the hall. she can’t leave me yet, but that to me is like.

Liam Shea (21:47)
rate.

Always bittersweet. Yeah.

nice.

Allison Webber (22:03)
a really nice feeling. mean, as sad as I am to not work with her every day, it’s like knowing that she after only two years is confident that she can like do this on her own.

Liam Shea (22:15)
That speaks

volumes.

Allison Webber (22:16)
Yeah, I mean that’s not something that most people, especially after working for somebody else and especially if you work in a big salon, like that’s not something that’s very common. So most people still are very scared and have doubts and they stay longer because of that and I certainly did. I I didn’t think, I never wanted to own a salon. I never wanted to be

self-employed and I don’t know at some point I just decided that doing independent education was more important than that and I’m glad I did. I really do enjoy working by myself versus being in like a big salon and my clients are a lot happier which is not something that I ever really thought about. Like I I never realized like and I have so many clients now that when I get new clients I don’t take very many but like they’re like I’m so glad that you’re in a sweet

Liam Shea (22:59)
That’s what I found.

Allison Webber (23:09)
And I’m like, huh, that’s interesting. Which as a new client, I would be scared because it’s like, okay, what if I don’t like this person, then I’m stuck here this whole time with one person, you But I get it.

Liam Shea (23:19)
Yeah, I mean that that’s true. I mean, I think

I think there’s a few things that make that easier. You have a social media presence, so there’s going to be a certain amount of people who, whether this is true or not, think they know you beforehand. Again, do they? But they feel like they do. So there’s a level of comfort that comes from being able to see you before they see you. ⁓ I think doing it at the point you did, you said two and a half years?

Allison Webber (23:34)
Right.

Mm-hmm.

⁓

Liam Shea (23:49)
give or take

you’ve been doing it or like you’ve been on your own.

Allison Webber (23:52)
It’s been,

it’s been I think three and a half, yeah.

Liam Shea (23:54)
or three, three and a half years.

So that was early or sort of like peak COVID. I think there was also a comfort level. I mean, I, we were shut down for I think three months here. I’m in Vancouver, I think.

Allison Webber (24:02)
Mm-hmm.

wow.

Liam Shea (24:14)
and I decided, I’d been renting a chair, I’d been self-employed for years, but I’d been at a salon and I decided to go take my friend’s days off in her suite. And I was a little freaked out both about being alone, which is a little funny because you aren’t. mean, like that’s just not how this works. You’re never actually alone. And I think there were a bunch of people, not everybody’s clientele, that were more comfortable at that point in a pandemic to not be around 15 people.

Allison Webber (24:27)
Right. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Liam Shea (24:45)
Yeah, and I’m like you, there were two like distinct groups of people it feels like to me during COVID. Those that ⁓ either left the business or did or lost money because of it, separate from being shut down. And those that just got busier. Like I got busier, way busier. I started inheriting clients from people who decided to stop doing hair and or wanted to be in a one room space and not. ⁓

Allison Webber (25:00)
Yeah.

Yeah, it was like… Yeah. Yep.

Mm-hmm

Liam Shea (25:15)
Yeah, so I mean, I feel like there’s a bunch of us actually did really well. Plus the digital education, the platform changes, all that stuff. If you were able to use that either for education or for your business, then that’s awesome. That’s awesome.

Allison Webber (25:22)
Mm-hmm

Yeah,

I think too with COVID, like, I think, you know, we obviously are not essential, like getting your hair done is not essential, but I feel like it does kind of like put it into perspective for a lot of people that were like, oh, I could go six months without getting my hair done. And they’re like, no, I absolutely fucking couldn’t. Like I cannot. And I think that’s, you know, we went, yeah, like people got desperate. Yeah.

Liam Shea (25:38)
Hmm.

Yeah. Right?

Half of them did their own hair. Do know what I mean? Half of people went and did stuff. made,

⁓ I was doing take-home color kits for people, like for the gray coverage crowd. I wouldn’t be doing a Vivids take-home color kit, but I mean, go for it, but yeah, I found people were so excited to be back. Also, I had a certain amount of people and I’m sure you did to a degree.

Allison Webber (25:59)
Yeah. For great coverage. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Liam Shea (26:16)
I was the only person they actually saw outside of the people they lived with for 18 months or something like that, depend again, depending on the sort of community you’re in. ⁓ so I think you’re right. It’s not essential. No one’s going to die not having us around, but, ⁓ they sure were happy to be back at least in my world. Yeah.

Allison Webber (26:26)
Yeah.

Yeah, definitely.

And I think like the mental health part of it too, like, you know, now we talk so much about mental health and ADHD is normalized now. Like we actually get to be like represented and you know, it’s like.

Liam Shea (26:49)
Yeah.

Allison Webber (26:52)
we don’t think about the small things like that. Like for me, it’s my nails. I get my nails done every three weeks, sometimes two. And like I get designs. That’s like the thing that I do for myself. And you know, it’s like for some people that’s hair and like getting out, getting to either go somewhere and just sit in silence or go somewhere and listen to someone else talk about their life or be able to share things that they don’t normally get to share. Like that goes a lot into mental health. And I think that that…

helped our industry a lot because I think that I personally connect a lot more with my clients now than I did before COVID. And I think it’s a lot more personal for all of us. And like, I’m very thankful and very blessed that my clientele, like I don’t have anyone I don’t like. Like I’ve kind of weeded everybody out that like wasn’t necessarily my person. And like, I would call almost every single one of my clients a friend, you know, like I, I could literally like when that trend

Liam Shea (27:31)
Yes.

You and me both.

Allison Webber (27:52)
was

going around on TikTok, like text your hairstylist or text your client saying, we were here until, you know, 10 PM last night, right? My boyfriend’s asking, like, I feel like I could do that with any of my clients. And they’d like, yeah, I was with you, you know, like, you know, like, I feel like that connection became so much stronger for a lot of people.

Liam Shea (28:03)
Yes, obviously. Yeah.

Yeah. My guess is you’re probably also comfortable being personal in the salon. mean, I don’t know what it was like at the first shop you were at, but probably similar to mine in that, you know, there were the rules around you don’t talk about like sex politics or I’m trying to remember what the other thing was. And I’m like, but yeah, like that those are the only things I want to. are the other things? What do you I don’t understand? Just sports like what? Yes.

Allison Webber (28:30)
legend. Yep. Yeah. Like how am I supposed to get to know someone? Like yeah. Yeah.

Liam Shea (28:40)
Those are like three primary things I want to get into. No matter what you’re feeling about any of them are, I would like to openly talk about those things and then some other stuff. ⁓ That’s awesome. I love it.

Allison Webber (28:44)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, my first

salon was very, ⁓ they wanted to be very high end. And I mean, they were, it was just like an older, a little bit older of a salon. So it was like outdated, but they were still like trying to be like luxury. And it’s just a different brand of luxury than like we have now in luxury salons. But, ⁓

like they were very much like, you don’t talk about your personal life. you, like we weren’t even allowed to bring our phones on the floor. Like if we had our phone in our back pocket, like someone would come take it and put it in the break room. Like it was so bizarre. And so my second salon, the one I was at for seven years, like they wanted very much to focus on like the employee side of things to make it like a better environment for people to work, not just for clients. So I was able to be a lot more personal, but I definitely wouldn’t have

I don’t think as personal as I am now with my clients being in like a bigger salon

Liam Shea (29:48)
Yeah, yeah, there were some strange salons to come up in, weren’t there? Man, I I get it. You know, it happened in multiple industries, that shift, right? Like fine dining disappeared to a degree. It exists, kind of, but it turned into casual fine dining. Nobody wanted to be at the restaurant where you weren’t allowed to speak, where staff couldn’t speak, and you never made eye contact with them. I mean, I can’t do that. Are you kidding me? I can’t.

Allison Webber (29:52)
Yeah. Yup.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

It’s so weird.

Liam Shea (30:16)
I’m not supposed to look at you and just let you do things for me? I would rather help and start working with them than I would be in that situation. ⁓ Did you, either early on or further into your career, did you ever have any mentors?

Allison Webber (30:18)
Right.

Right? Yeah.

Yeah, I had…

Liam Shea (30:34)
or anybody you feel like.

don’t mean, it doesn’t have to be official. I don’t mean did you have a coach? can answer that too, but did you have anybody that sort of spoke to you that helped you along, taught you stuff?

Allison Webber (30:40)
You

I

So I had educators at my first salon and there were a couple that like I felt like I could trust a little more than others, but for the most part I didn’t really have Like I feel like it was I mean for lack of a better word like a pretty toxic environment so I felt like it was like you know people that would make you think that you could trust them and then they would turn around and just get you in trouble and I feel like the people that I looked up to the most were people that you know, I saw online and like

Liam Shea (31:03)
Yeah, sure it was.

Allison Webber (31:18)
It’s so crazy, I had a full circle moment last year. ⁓ Pinup Jordan followed me back and she was the first Vivid artist I had ever followed and I looked up to her so much over the years and when I first started doing hair. And so when she followed me back last year I sent her a message, I like, you have no idea what this means to me. So it’s so funny and now I’m going to Rainbow Convention, I went last year and we’re friendly, we don’t talk all the time but she’s so nice to everyone and she’s just one of those people.

Liam Shea (31:23)
Mm-hmm, awesome.

Right?

Allison Webber (31:48)
people

that’s like so passionate about being like good, you know, like she really tries to help the community and help the even outside of the industry, you know, like she does so much and like she’s so talented. And so I think she’s probably one of the biggest people that I looked up to, but I don’t really feel like I had any big like mentors like.

in person like physically because I just don’t really feel like there were many people around me that

wanted me to succeed in the beginning. And I had some pretty good instructors in school. Like I don’t feel like school was a terrible experience for me like it was for a lot of people. Like of course there’s drama, but you know like I feel like the instructors were decent, decent people and like actually like cared about us, which was nice. But that’s not the experience I think that most people have, which sucks. ⁓

Liam Shea (32:46)
That’s great.

No. Did you feel

educated at the end of it? mean, nobody finishes hair school going, I’m confident with everything or anything for that matter. ⁓

Allison Webber (32:56)
Yeah. Yeah. I felt like

I had a good grasp on color and like, formulating and color theory. I don’t feel like cutting was ever my strong suit in school. Yeah, probably. Yeah.

Liam Shea (33:06)
That’s great.

Yeah, it’s probably your brain, right? I mean, you’re probably just like wired, right? Like, for instance, color theory.

⁓ It’s still a work in progress for me. I don’t inherently understand it. I have to do a lot of effort to get from point A to point B. I really have to not just do the, you know, what’s the underlying pigment? What’s the target? But really

Allison Webber (33:22)
you

Yeah.

Liam Shea (33:35)
okay what’s going on here what am i looking at thinking about it i don’t no no whereas i can visualize cutting now not to begin with i think i spent most of the beginning of my i didn’t apprenticeship i didn’t go to school and i think i spent most of my apprenticeship doing the same thing i’ve done through school before that which was masking and giving people the impression they were really good educators so that we could get

Allison Webber (33:38)
You can’t visualize it.

Yeah.

Liam Shea (34:03)
past the part where I don’t know what you’re talking about. Especially the gifted people. The gifted people ⁓ made assumptions about steps. Like the more gifted someone is, a lot of the time they skip a step because it’s intuitive to them. They’re not thinking about it as an actual step. And so they would teach me and there would always be something missing. ⁓ Whereas I remember my aha moments. I had somebody that came in. I did a lot of scissor over comb cutting to begin with.

Allison Webber (34:05)
Yeah.

Yeah.

It’s not always like broken down all the way, yeah.

Liam Shea (34:33)
At the salon I came up in, you weren’t even allowed to touch clippers to begin with. You had to be able to do a full clipper cut with scissor over comb before you could do that. And I got this one client, Alec, and he came every two weeks. I did his hair for close to 15 years and that, like it was that repetition that I was like, okay, I just inherent, I started to understand it. I could start to look at it and got growth direction and that stuff made sense to me.

Allison Webber (34:38)
Mm-hmm

Mm-hmm.

Liam Shea (35:01)
the color theory. Yeah, that’s a work in progress. Yeah, exactly. Yes. Yeah.

Allison Webber (35:03)
You see shapes, not colors.

That could be why, yeah. I

can’t really see shapes like that. I don’t dislike cutting, but I don’t love it. I love it when it’s pertaining to my color. I don’t wanna do the color and pass my cut off to somebody else. I could never departmentalize, but I have one, I don’t do men’s cuts, but my family, and I have one male client, his name is Joel,

He has been coming to me every three weeks for 12 years. And he is like, I used the same thing. Like we were taught only scissor over comb, only like fingers and scissors, like no clippers. And I didn’t even really learn to use clippers until maybe like three or four years in to doing his hair. And I had had knee surgery and he had to see a coworker of mine. ⁓

Liam Shea (35:42)
Amazing.

Yeah.

Allison Webber (36:06)
she had used clippers on him and

I did it like one time and I was like, ah, I think I just like the way it looks better with the scissor over comb. Really, I just had no idea what I was doing and it took so much less time. Yeah, like it took so much less time. I was like, I’ve got to figure these out. And so now we use clippers. We do a fade and it always looks it looks the same every time, which is great. It’s just so funny. Like he was literally in two days ago and it’s just so funny. Like I’m like, I’m a vivid stylist. I look like this. I have

Liam Shea (36:19)
Yeah, you like the feeling of knowing. Yeah. Yes.

Yes.

There you go.

Your one fade.

Allison Webber (36:40)
Mostly vivid clients and blonde clients. And then here’s Joel. He will never leave me. Yep. He says he’s my VIP client every time he comes in. He’s like, I’m the VIP. I’m like…

Liam Shea (36:44)
and Joel. I have these people and Joel and he’s attached and that’s it forever.

You did you spend several

years wondering why he comes back? Because you’re like, I’m not, I don’t know how to, I’m not good at this. What are you doing? It’s like literally anyone else could do this better, better than me. Yes.

Allison Webber (36:57)
Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

He’s

seen so many people too, like he saw Stylist before me at my first salon and then he just somehow landed with me and then he stuck with me and I left and I had given him my phone number and

Like I left that salon only with like four clients. And when I went to my new salon, he lived across the street and he just happened to walk in because he was like, this is a new salon. I’ll check it out. And there I am like standing at the front. So, yeah, it does make me wonder sometimes even still. like, anyone could cut your hair, man. Like, why me? You know, like so funny. But now I think it’s like the highlight of his month, like every three weeks he comes in and he gets to chat with me and my assistants and, you know, gets his like social time.

Liam Shea (37:44)
Yeah. Well, and you build a

relationship and especially when you have assistance, like when you have, when you get to be that person that comes into, you know, cheers and everybody says your name when you walk in the door and you’re, sort of, get a feeling you don’t get in other places. I remember.

Allison Webber (37:56)
Yeah. Yup.

Liam Shea (38:03)
I apprenticed under somebody that was always adamant about never turning your guest away from the mirror while you do their hair. Now, barbering and fades and stuff, there’s a technical purpose to that, to looking in the mirror. he just had this, he was big on customer service, not hoity-toity fake high-end customer service, but guest experience. And he talked a lot about… ⁓

Allison Webber (38:09)
Mm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Liam Shea (38:29)
the importance of greeting people right when they walk in the door, because people are inherently, you know, they think we’re super cool, which ⁓ you and I will have a different feeling about where it’s like, okay, I guess. ⁓ And so it’s an intimidating place to walk into. So I have a feeling for someone like Joel, when you get to walk into what feels like a really cool space and be part of it, which we just, most of us don’t get to do in the

Allison Webber (38:38)
Obviously.

Yeah.

Liam Shea (38:58)
bulk of our life. It can be such a good feeling. That guest experience thing. I’m so adamant. I remember when I first went to, have you ever been to an izakaya restaurant? Like a Japanese izakaya restaurant? ⁓ Sort of. ⁓ It was a type of, I might get this wrong, but it was almost like a Western North American style bar in Japan. It’s like pub food. And when you walk in the door,

Allison Webber (38:59)
Yeah.

Like a hibachi place?

Okay. Okay.

Liam Shea (39:27)
all staff are turn and greet you. Everyone in the whole restaurant shouts out a greeting to you. So every person there’s just a huge you just hear it from across the place and look the first time you do it when you don’t expect it it’s a touch on the off-putting side. You’re like my god I’m gonna leave. Yeah why is everybody looking at me? Okay but there was a sense of you knew you were supposed to be there.

Allison Webber (39:34)
my gosh.

You’re like, whoa. It’s kind of like welcome to Cece’s like when Cece’s was a thing. ⁓

Liam Shea (39:53)
You weren’t standing wondering, I supposed to wait here or does no one want me here? Like what’s going on? Yeah.

Allison Webber (39:53)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm That is the worst feeling when you like walk in like

we we had a receptionist at ⁓ my last salon who All my clients still bring her up to this day, but she was so nice to us like we loved her She was great. But like she was one of those people that like Just kind of had like a hard

Liam Shea (40:09)
Yeah.

Allison Webber (40:18)
shell on the outside. Like she was always wearing a hat. Her head was always down, you know, looking at the computer, not really looking at the client. She’d just be like, hey, you know, like, and like clients would be like, what do I do? You know, like new clients, especially it’d be like, do I go sit over there? Like what, you know, where’s the bathroom? So it is, it is true. Like that does make people feel. And I think like the guest experience, like, like you were saying, like hoity toity, like it doesn’t, that’s not everyone’s desired experience. Like it, it’s personal, ⁓

Liam Shea (40:19)
Yeah.

No.

Allison Webber (40:48)
especially with hair salons, I feel like, it’s nice when you wanna go to the spa and they’re treating you like a princess. But when you go get your hair done and you have the same person, you want it to feel friendly, you want it to feel low-key, you don’t want it to feel like you don’t belong there or they’re treating you so fake.

Liam Shea (40:54)
Sure.

Yeah, yeah, I mean I love the relations. It is my social life, for better or worse, right? I mean, it’s what I, I don’t do much outside of that because that fills my social cup and then, you know, the introvert that I am, I need to go recharge alone, silently. It’s not silent. I have two kids, so there’s nothing silent about it, but…

Allison Webber (41:11)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yep.

Yes. Yeah, it’s like

the silent, like, sit in the car for half an hour before you even, like, turn it on. Before you leave the salon.

Liam Shea (41:33)
I do it all the time and I was just talking about

it yesterday. They’re like, what do you do for personal care? I’m like, well, I drive home and I sit in the car for 15 to 20 minutes. Maybe in silence. I might look at my phone, but mostly I just sort of stare and hope that my neighbors see me and want to interact. And then I’m like…

Allison Webber (41:43)
In silence. Yeah.

It’s like sometimes when

you leave and you make it home and you’re like pulling in your driveway and then you’re like, wow, I didn’t even put any music on. how did I get here? Like what happened? I used to have… Oh my God, yeah, that makes sense.

Liam Shea (42:01)
Yeah, right? Yeah. I come to work 90 minutes early now because I need like transition time. have to. I

can’t just start. I need to remember how to be the way they need me to be.

Allison Webber (42:13)
Yeah.

You gotta put like your human suit back on. Yeah, that’s like when I first left my salon I You know

Liam Shea (42:19)
Yes, exactly.

Allison Webber (42:27)
You underappreciate your assistants and your support staff so much when you’re in a salon. You can say thank you as much as you want, but you do not truly appreciate them until you leave and you have to sweep and you have to mop and you have to make sure you have color for the next day. so I would like, it is our social time, but I was also stressed because I would be there half an hour later than usual trying to clean up and make sure, like it’s either like I do it now or I do it in the morning. And that’s like when you leave and

you get home and you’re like, shit I forgot to get gas, I’ll do it in the morning, that’s tomorrow me’s problem and tomorrow me is never happy. Ever. And you know what? Tomorrow me will be mad. And I have an electric car for that reason because tomorrow me is never unhappy. ⁓ Except for yesterday when I forgot to charge my car. But…

Liam Shea (43:04)
Tomorrow, may also avoid it the same way today me did. Yeah.

Yes, that’s great. Well,

it turns out you can do the same thing.

Allison Webber (43:21)
Joke’s

on me, joke’s on me. But ⁓ when I used to come home and my fiance was working at home for a short period of time and he hated his job and it was just like, he, it was kind of like a bait and switch. Like he thought he was taking this job as like a stepping stone into like the career he has now and that was not really it. It was, it ended up being like a customer service position. So he’s like dealing with like,

customer service with like old people that like can’t figure out how to use their computers and they’re trying to manage their finances and that’s what he does but he’s like I like I can’t tell you how to reset your password eight more times like so he I get home from work and he wouldn’t have talked to anyone normal all day and he wants to talk and I’m like we would get into so many arguments and finally we just decided like 10 minutes of silence for me to be on my phone catch up on my shit and then we can talk all you want now we don’t have to do that anymore, but ⁓

Liam Shea (44:05)
Mm-hmm. Stop.

Yes.

Allison Webber (44:17)
That really like was like the adjustment period of like, okay, 10 minutes of silence, then we can talk. Then I can be a person for you. Yes, yeah. Yep. Yep. And now we’re both kind of…

Liam Shea (44:24)
Exactly. We have the opposite problem at the end of the day. I’m done and you want to start. Yeah. Yeah, I can feel that.

Allison Webber (44:36)
in the same page. mean, he still deals with a lot of old people all day long, but he actually does what he wants to do now. So we get home and we’re both tired. We’re both like, let’s watch TV and not talk.

Liam Shea (44:42)
great there you go yep yep yep I go yeah I go

home and it’s the witching hour in the house with the kids so it’s just like help my partner out she’s been in the weeds for an extended period of time and just get to 9 p.m. when everybody’s in their bed make dinner watch a show maybe we talk I guess kind of like a bit yeah yeah I love it yeah

Allison Webber (44:52)
I bet.

You

Yep.

Zone out. Watch some trash TV.

Liam Shea (45:12)
⁓ You mentioned that when you went to your suite at first you didn’t have an assistant ⁓ and you were going to not double book, you were just going to do your appointments. ⁓ How long did that last for? No? Right.

Allison Webber (45:27)
Not long, like a couple months maybe.

I was double booking like people that I knew I had double booked before at the salon. had stations, like I had one station that was like mine and then I would like take everybody else’s stations. So like if they weren’t there, I would put my clients there and. ⁓

So like clients that I knew had like interacted before, I would kind of double book them or like root retouches, things that I could do. You it doesn’t matter if they sit for 45 minutes instead of 30 kind of thing. Or people that I knew sat for a full, you know, however long, but yeah, it did not last long. I found an assistant, what I thought was luckily after maybe…

a month and a half. ⁓ She did not last very long. had some, she was really young. I think she turned 21 when she was working for me. And she was working for another salon at the time that she had very obviously decided she was gonna work for them, which was fine, but long term. But she could only work certain days, which was okay. I’m used to working my schedule around that. But…

We just had a lot of issues with like…

professionalism and attendance. And it got to the point where like, it just wasn’t reliable for me. And thankfully like, was kind of like, it kind of like diffused on its own because she was like moving into, she graduated school, was moving into a position where she could booth rent at this place. They were gonna like let her assist them so that she could get the room for free or whatever. So I was like, cool, we’re good.

Liam Shea (47:14)
That’s a better system for that

person. That stuff’s really hard to teach. A lot of that, and this is not a, I’m not trying to blame parents, but a lot of that is just, it was either mirrored to you or you were around it or you weren’t. Like if you were around, you know, you have two white collar parents that have never dealt with the public and you were never expected to do anything and you don’t know, you know, you never did your own laundry or wash dishes or did anything. ⁓

Allison Webber (47:17)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Liam Shea (47:43)
you can just have this gap where you just don’t get it. And then I think there’s the other side where it doesn’t actually matter how old they are, you just know they understand how to see their surroundings and do, yeah, well, good, you dodged a bullet there.

Allison Webber (47:47)
Yeah, it’s a big disconnect.

Yeah. Yeah.

So I ended up in the process of phasing her out. My now best friend Sloan, she was a client at my old salon. She was a family friend of the owners as well. And so I had seen her in passing, you know, over the last, you know, seven, eight years. And she told me at

one of their daughter’s weddings that she was gonna go to hair school. And I was like, that was in, I don’t was probably only like a month and a half after I left. And I was like, well, if you go, let me know. Like I’m gonna need an assistant. And it was like a month later that she started working for me like two days a week. And then she was working for them one day a week with school. And then it got to the point where we both kind of knew we had clicked and that she wanted to stay with me. And right around that same time, my old boss

called her and was like, look, like we’ve been doing this, but we know that like, you’re probably gonna wanna stay with Allison, so we need you to decide now. So she switched to me full time and she’s been with me since and I’ve never, I mean, I’ve never had such a good assistant. She’s, we’re very lucky, like she…

Liam Shea (49:06)
amazing.

And that’s.

Allison Webber (49:14)
We’re on the same wavelength. Our birthdays are only like 15 days apart. We’re very much like, we can read each other’s minds. She knows exactly what I need. It’s been very difficult to imagine not having her as my assistant, but I have another assistant that has since moved in and that’s helped. But ⁓ I got very, very, very lucky with her, for sure. Yeah.

Liam Shea (49:21)
Yeah.

Yeah, well the stars align. You don’t always have

a bunch of restaurateur clients, but one in particular I’ve talked to him a lot about how you usually only hit this moment once. He’s had a few restaurants, but one in particular where everyone that worked for him in the kitchen is a superstar now. The stars aligned, he’s a good educator, and he just happened to be surrounded with like seven or eight.

Allison Webber (50:01)
Mm-hmm.

Liam Shea (50:04)
people that all could run kitchens on their own eventually. And it’s hard to know in that moment that… ⁓

Allison Webber (50:07)
Yeah.

Liam Shea (50:14)
how lucky you are and how difficult it is to replace that kind of a thing. Just plugging in my phone. ⁓

Allison Webber (50:22)
Mm-hmm.

Liam Shea (50:27)
Yeah, I mean you’ll have more good people. Will you ever have somebody like that again? It’s hard to say, right? You’ll find out, but… but yeah.

Allison Webber (50:33)
Yeah, yeah. It’s definitely

gonna be an adjustment, but my other assistant is really great. She’s really, really good with my clients and we’ve become friends too, but I think Sloan was the first assistant of mine that I’ve ever become like actual real life friends with and not just like working friends. I mean, obviously like, you know, you spend, I spend more time with her than I do at home. So we don’t, it’s not like we do stuff outside of work that often anymore, but ⁓ you know, it’s like,

Liam Shea (50:41)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Allison Webber (51:02)
interesting seeing that dynamic and like you know obviously like I when she told me that she was this was always the plan so like she was always going to get her own suite but you know when she told me it was so much sooner than I had anticipated and I was like I was like I feel like you just broke up with me you know like I was like damn man like I was like I’m so proud of you but like my feelings are sad you know but I’m

Liam Shea (51:21)
I know.

Allison Webber (51:30)
really excited to see what she does because I don’t know like what I don’t know if her only goal is to do hair or if she wants to do more down the road with you know other people or if she just wants to stay solo so I’m interested to see how that like unfolds for her too and if she’ll eventually have an assistant or if she’ll just keep doing her own thing.

Liam Shea (51:47)
Yeah.

you were part of that, get to see it and it sounds like they were exactly the right person for that time. Like getting you through that being out on your own for a period of time, you’re probably vastly more confident as a business owner than you were when started with you. So that’s great.

Allison Webber (52:01)
Yeah, for sure.

yeah.

yeah. And that’s

what I’ve said to her. like, you know, I want to help you because I want, you know, like, I mean, owning a business, regardless of how long you’ve been doing it, like you can know it like the back of your hand, but you still learn something every day. So like, I’m like, I just want to make sure you’re set up better than I was because I went into this knowing nothing. I mean, if my other friend ⁓ helped me, she had left the salon like…

six, five or six years before me. So she had been on her own and she helped me get everything started and I still felt like I didn’t know anything, you know? Like I’m like, still, even today, like we were out of something the other day and I was just like, my God, I feel so dull. Like it was like a five N or something. Like I was like something so, you know, necessary to have on hand all the time and like there it went, you know? Like it’s just stupid stuff.

Liam Shea (53:07)
Cognizant, it does, every now and then it does that. It’s like your hand goes by it and it started focusing on really up close and then if you cover it completely and take your hand off it, it might do it.

Allison Webber (53:10)
Yeah. Maybe if I back up.

I guess I’m just gonna be blurry.

Liam Shea (53:20)
Hmm

is it on your phone or tablet or computer? Is it a Mac or Windows? There’s a little green glowing button up top with the camera on it. Do you see it? ⁓ And does it have center stage on or off? Is that highlighted?

Allison Webber (53:23)
It’s on a camera on my computer.

Okay, I see it. Yeah.

⁓ well I’m using a webcam thing, so maybe that’s why.

Liam Shea (53:44)
It still might have that

if you click on that green camera, is there a drop down with a picture of you and if you hover over the picture, do you see the recenter button?

Allison Webber (53:51)
Yeah.

Nope. I have like this like portrait mode thing that I can do but…

Liam Shea (54:04)
Try the Portrait Mode

and then turn it back off. So above the portrait mode it doesn’t say center stage? Okay.

Allison Webber (54:10)
Mm-mm.

weird.

Liam Shea (54:16)
you can

always turn the camera off and then back on. We’ll wrap up pretty quick here too.

Allison Webber (54:20)
Thank

Okay. Nope, it’s pissed, huh? I guess we’re stuck like this. That’s so weird.

Liam Shea (54:36)
then we’ll just live with it.

Allison Webber (54:40)
It’s a little better. There we go.

Liam Shea (54:41)
there you go.

⁓ And then that green camera button, if you click on that, select the portrait one again. there we go. I just figured let’s have the same light as before. Beautiful. ⁓ Well, only a couple more things I wanted to ask you about. ⁓ I saw, I mean, a thousand things, but obviously we don’t need to talk for seven days. ⁓ It looks so I see Danger Jones creative in your bio.

Allison Webber (54:51)
Yeah, I don’t know what it was doing. There we go.

you

Mm-hmm.

Liam Shea (55:11)
How long have you been working with them or being a certified? I don’t know if you work with them. Is that like a certification process?

Allison Webber (55:21)
Both. So they just launched their certification program maybe like a month and a half ago. So you can go online and like learn about all of their products and take a test and then you get the certification. They have like different like, they like different tiers of like social media kind of certifications for people that like, cause they’re all about like building the community. So like the more you tag them and post about them, the more that

you can get different certificates basically. ⁓ But I’ve been working with them for two years now, I think. Yeah. Yeah.

Liam Shea (55:53)
Yeah. Do you use?

love it. Loving those products. I mean,

it must be nice. mean, it’s been a while. Do you like now that you’ve left a salon using a specific brand that you get to do whatever you want, use anything you want?

Allison Webber (56:15)
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I will say I am mostly Danger Jones. I use their bleach, their toners, their vivids. ⁓ The permanent color comes out next year, so I’m excited to see that. ⁓

Liam Shea (56:21)
Yeah.

Cool.

Allison Webber (56:31)
But yeah, mean, it’s been really nice being able to experiment with different product lines. for the most part, I’ve stuck with the same things, but I do really like, the thing that sucks about working at a branded salon is if there’s one product that you really like from something else, you don’t have it. But also, like, so we use, we do mostly virtual retail, but ⁓

Liam Shea (56:42)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Allison Webber (57:00)
We use Amica, Unite, ⁓ Moroccanoil, Kenra. There’s certain products that if they work great and they’re from different brands, I’m just gonna get them. So we have so many different things. Yeah.

Liam Shea (57:12)
Yeah.

Some brands just make the best version of a thing and I don’t

want the third best. I want the best version of the thing. I don’t need the knockoff of it. want the thing. Yeah, no, I remember when I wasn’t able to use like shades EQ at a place where I couldn’t use Redken. Now, I don’t really use it that much at this point, but I loved getting the chance to and I love choosing individual things. That is awesome. The bleach, they do? Is it on scalp bleach?

Allison Webber (57:25)
Yeah, yeah.

Mm-hmm. ⁓

Liam Shea (57:45)
Or both?

Allison Webber (57:45)
Yeah,

so you can do on scalp or in a foil. ⁓ They have a cream lightener that just came out. That one’s really nice. They…

Liam Shea (57:52)
Nice.

Allison Webber (57:56)
focus a lot on like scalp comfort. everything, mean, especially cause they started with making Vivids first. So, ⁓ you know, we’re using a ton of bleach on the scalp and I have a bleach sensitivity and there is seaweed in the powder lightener and in the cream. And that is a big like anti-inflammatory product. So that helps a lot with like soothing everything. ⁓ And I don’t have nearly the only time

Liam Shea (58:06)
Yeah.

Yes.

Amazing.

Yeah.

Allison Webber (58:26)
really have reactions now.

if we’re doing it really fast and rough, ⁓ know like stimulating the scalp a little too much or if I’ve washed like too recently. ⁓ We just did my color on Sunday and my other assistant did it and she’s so gentle that like I didn’t have any issues but I hadn’t washed my hair in over a week so I was like we didn’t we weren’t sure what day we were gonna do it so then I kept not washing it so I was like sorry but it’s yep.

Liam Shea (58:33)
Yes, but I mean…

Right. You’ve done a scalp oil treatment beforehand,

essentially. Yeah. I mean, that’s great. I mean, that’s, that’s awesome. Are you a, okay. So on scalp bleach, are you somebody that follows those rules that are always like, you never use above 20 volume on the scalp?

Allison Webber (58:59)
Yep, exactly. Yep.

Yes, I

that is one time I do follow rules. I actually so I don’t use anything over 20 volume with bleach at all I am not we don’t even own 30 or 40 volume not this long the only one

Liam Shea (59:25)
Okay.

Interesting. So is it just about time?

it’s just waiting longer for it to process? Or are you using heat? Are you putting caps on things? Are you…

Allison Webber (59:38)
I’m not using heat.

So the only time that I use 40 volume is with a high lift color. I do have a couple clients that I do like, like.

Liam Shea (59:48)
Right.

Allison Webber (59:51)
just like very natural highlights on for blending gray. yeah, I so with Aveda, we were not supposed to use heat because we were told that because it has so many like essential oils in it to protect the hair. If you use heat, those evaporate and then it just turns into a regular powder bleach. So that was always kind of something that like resonated enough with me that like it made sense. And now we have, you know, there’s bond builders in all of our lighteners now. There’s all kinds of stuff that

Liam Shea (1:00:10)
Right.

Allison Webber (1:00:21)
you know is supposed to help protect the hair and a lot of manufacturers are putting in their packaging like don’t use heat so I use I find that the better the powder the lower the developer so this is nine levels up to nine levels I was using blonde me before from sports cough same thing ⁓

Liam Shea (1:00:42)
Yep.

Allison Webber (1:00:44)
And because the powder’s so powerful, I don’t really need a lot. like even today, I didn’t use 20 volume on anybody. I used five and 10. ⁓ So for on the scalp, I will use 20 always because obviously it’s open air processing. And I have some people that like to go a little longer between their retouches than they should. ⁓ So they’re always, yeah, yeah.

Liam Shea (1:01:06)
Yes, all of mine do is the problem I run into where I’m like,

what am I supposed to do with that? And you want to be out when? I’m not sure I can make chemistry be different.

Allison Webber (1:01:13)
Yep, I’m like, cool. Yeah.

Right, right. I’m like, can your head be any hotter? ⁓ So I’ll use a processing cap for on the scalp. But when it comes to foiling, the only thing that I will do for heat is I will do a dry towel over the foils and then I’ll do a hot wet towel.

Liam Shea (1:01:22)
Yeah.

Allison Webber (1:01:37)
and I have like a towel warmer and then I’ll put a dry towel on top and that like was something that I learned from a coworker at my old salon but it you know the wet heat doesn’t make the oils evaporate as much keeps it moving so the lightener is not drying out and yeah so it’s a lot safer and you don’t get over processed as much because it’s not drying the lightener out so that is how I do it and I have never really had any challenges with it anytime I’ve used

Liam Shea (1:01:39)
Yeah, love it.

Yeah, that’s humidity, I mean.

Allison Webber (1:02:06)
30 or 40 volume, it’s always so much warmer and so much drier. So I’ve just never really, maybe with a clay lightener if I did that, but honestly, I hate clay lightener. I hate it so much. ⁓

Liam Shea (1:02:12)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I didn’t. never I

would love to say I was somebody that really got into hand painting. I when when foliage started to become a thing was like that that one that one I I want it in a foil. I don’t I had too many clients at dark bases. I’m like, I just they didn’t say carrot. That’s not a color they described when they wanted.

Allison Webber (1:02:23)
Yeah.

Like, yes, here we are. Yep. Yeah.

No.

Liam Shea (1:02:40)
And I’m like, I

don’t, get it, but all the videos you’re watching are on like natural level seven, eight clients. Yeah, right. It gets to almost 10 for sure, but I can’t do that with your level three. ⁓ yeah.

Allison Webber (1:02:45)
Yes, exactly, exactly.

Yeah. Well then you have

the people that are like so good at doing that that’s like their specialty and they’re mixing like they’re mixing regular lightener in with the clay lightener so like and then they’re using the saran wrap and then they’re and I’m just like I’m just gonna stick in a foil. I’m just gonna tease it.

Liam Shea (1:03:04)
Yeah, I can’t. No, no, No, like when

I was coming up, Highlights had only been around for so long when I started. Like when the people around me, there were cap experts around me, right? You would watch this person put a cap on someone’s head and do a full head of highlights. took 10 minutes for them to do it. And then they were just like, their assistant would take over and that’d be $150 back in 1990, whatever. We were toning. In fact, the greatest toner that I’ve ever used.

Allison Webber (1:03:11)
Yeah, I’m sure you weren’t toning. Yeah.

So crazy. ⁓

Mm-hmm.

Liam Shea (1:03:33)
was in the late 90s, early 2000s and then disappeared. I’m trying to remember what it was. It was a Wella product. It was a true semi.

because then they came out with their Color Touch Demi, but before that there was, I’m drawing a blank on the name, but it was like, it’s the greatest toner that I’d ever used and I’ve never used one that good since, yeah. Well, I’m cognizant of time. I really appreciate you coming and doing this. I would love to do it again at some point. I also think I’m gonna have to go and find one of your classes because I would like to do more. ⁓

Allison Webber (1:03:47)
Yeah.

You

Yeah.

Liam Shea (1:04:09)
in the world of vivids and just bleaching. Just get better at that in general. ⁓ Where can folks find you on the internet? I know you said your Instagram handle, but let’s hear it again. ⁓

Allison Webber (1:04:11)
Yeah.

Yeah, I get that.

Yeah, I’m

mostly on Instagram. I’m at the green haired stylist and my TikTok is the green haired stylist, but there’s not much going on over there. There’s really not. I like to scroll. I don’t like to post on TikTok. TikTok’s for fun.

Liam Shea (1:04:26)
Yep.

It’s interesting. Yes, I spend more time on

it and I did create a work account, but nobody’s doing that. They’ve tried and I see people. Yeah, exactly. Yep. All right. Fair enough. You and me both. Well, thanks so much for taking the time. I really appreciate it. And we’ll do it again one day. Okay. Take care.

Allison Webber (1:04:40)
Yep. I just want to watch funny videos. I really do. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Sounds good.

Cool. Thanks.

When I sat down with balayage artist and educator Sarah Cabral, it felt less like an interview and more like catching up with a stylist friend who has quietly built a powerhouse career behind the chair — and behind the camera. From trade school teenager to BTC team educator with 100K+ Instagram followers, Sarah’s story is one a lot of stylists will see themselves in.

From vocational high school to 23 years behind the chair

Sarah started early — as in, vocational high school early. While her classmates were stressing over math tests, she was in the shop week, shampooing, sectioning, and learning the basics of hair.

“I actually almost dropped out junior year,” she told me, “but I loved hair too much. I stayed just to get my hairdressing license.”

From there, she jumped through a bunch of salons — chain shops, home salons, larger brands — trying to find “her place” at a time when salons weren’t exactly known for generosity toward new stylists. Education wasn’t as accessible, social media wasn’t a thing, and a lot of seasoned pros guarded their formulas like state secrets.

It wasn’t until around age 20 that she landed in a salon she’d stay at for seven years — long enough to hone her craft, figure out who she was behind the chair, and eventually feel brave enough to go out on her own. She’s been independent since 2010.

When hair color and art finally clicked

If you look at Sarah’s work today — soft, lived-in color, seamless blends, brunettes turned bright without looking over-processed-it – it’s easy to assume she was just “naturally good” at balayage. She’d be the first to tell you that’s not true.

“You should have seen my first ombrés,” she laughed. “They were really bad. My sister was my model… bless her.”

The turning point came around 2017–2018, when balayage really started to explode and Instagram shifted from food pics to serious hair education and marketing. That’s when her two worlds finally fused:

• Her family are painters — her dad, her brother, and Sarah herself all love painting.
• She discovered painting hair felt just like painting a canvas — only with foils and lightener instead of acrylics.
• She learned to film her work, and that after-video became her “reward” at the end of a long service.

“Something about painting the hair really clicked with me,” she said. “My dad is so special to me, my whole family paints… it felt like I got to do both things I love at the same time.”

By pairing that painter’s eye with Instagram, she grew her page to over 100K followers, largely by documenting her balayage and foiliage work and sharing what she was learning along the way.

Balayage, foiliage, and choosing the right tool

For all the balayage hype, Sarah is super honest about one thing a lot of stylists need to hear:

“There’s no magic behind lifting level 2 with clay lightener.”

She loves balayage, especially on brunettes who like warmth or lighter-haired guests who want that soft, lived-in vibe. But when a deep brunette wants to go legit blonde? She’s foiliage all the way.

Right now she says her book is probably 80% foiliage, 20% open-air painting. It’s all about choosing the right tool for the result:

• Balayage for softer lift, warmth, and lived-in texture.
• Foiliage for serious lift and control on darker levels.
• Mixing techniques for dimension — she calls one favorite combo “the trifle”: balayage, a foiliage panel, and a lowlight all in one section.

She also drops those practical geeky nuggets stylists love, like:

• Only mixing two scoops of lightener at a time so it doesn’t oxidize and die in the bowl.
• Preferring clay lightener for open-air painting to reduce bleeding.
• Using cheap chip brushes from Home Depot as paint brushes for balayage because the bristles give her the blend she loves.

It’s the kind of nerdy, real-world color talk you only get from someone who’s done thousands of heads and still isn’t precious about her process.

From “I’ll never go back to that school” to educator

One of my favorite parts of our conversation was hearing how she fell into education.

Remember that vocational high school, she could not wait to leave? A few years later, a fellow stylist invited her back to teach a balayage class there.

“I swore I’d never go back,” she said. “I was so scared. I didn’t know how to teach. These students wouldn’t even know if I was doing it ‘right.’”

She did it anyway. And something clicked.

• The second time she taught there, she realized she had a real calling to teach.
• She started offering independent classes — no brand backing, just her, her techniques, and whoever wanted to learn.
• She battled classic imposter syndrome: “Who am I to call myself an educator?”
• Her first independent class sold 10–15 tickets — and many of those stylists still attend her classes today.

That consistency — tagging @behindthechair for three straight years, creating educational content from every BTC box they sent, and staying patient — eventually led to her being invited onto the BTC Team. Now she creates paid campaigns, goes to One Shot, and still stays brand-independent so she can collaborate with multiple companies instead of being locked into just one.

The reality of money, rent, and knowing your worth

We also got into the unsexy side of our industry: money.

Sarah is blunt about the fact that she “made no money for a lot of my career” and that actually earning a good living only came in the last several years — thanks to a mix of:

• Raising her prices in line with her demand and skill,
• Building a strong independent clientele,
• Teaching classes, and
• Paid brand collaborations and content work.

She’s a big believer in actually doing the math — breaking down your overhead, product costs, and time so you’re not charging 1990s apprentice prices in 2025. If you’re booked solid for a service and known for it, your pricing should reflect that.

“Life is more expensive every year,” she said. “If you’re not raising your prices, you’re literally losing money.”

Hard truth. Necessary truth.

Building a drama-free education hub

Today, Sarah works in a small, 600-square-foot salon in Franklin, Massachusetts with two other heavy hitters — Taylor (Taylor Did My Hair) and Steph (Vivids and Balayage). All three are on the BTC Team, all three teach, and the space is designed around that.

Her favorite part? Having the freedom to say, “Hey, I’m teaching a class this Monday,” and actually having a salon that supports it.

She and Steph have a joint class coming up, demoing two different foiling techniques side-by-side on two models — a look-and-learn that blends their approaches and gives stylists a ton of practical ideas to take back behind the chair. Tickets are linked in her bio at @sarahstyles.

Advice for new (and not-so-new) stylists

If Sarah could talk directly to younger her — or any stylist just starting out — here’s the heart of what she’d say:

• Find a salon that truly feeds into you. Look for places with structured education, regular classes, and owners who want you on the floor — not just as a glorified assistant forever.
• Don’t be afraid to move on. Your first salon doesn’t have to be your forever home. You’ll know when you’ve found the right fit.
• Stay out of drama, stay busy. If you’re not with a guest, be posting, learning, practicing — not living in the back room.
• Work hard, especially when no one’s watching. Do the laundry, clean the windows, sweep the floors. You’re building work ethic and a reputation, not just passing time.
• Invest in your own education. Don’t wait for your boss to hand it to you. Pay for classes, take online education, use all the free content we never had 20 years ago.
• Build your own business. Social media is your storefront now. Your clientele is increasingly yours —not the salon’s. Treat it that way.

“Trade school can take you anywhere in this industry,” she told me near the end of our chat. “Just don’t give up, and stay passionate about what you do.”

Spending this time with Sarah reminded me how much quiet grit sits behind every beautiful blend you see on Instagram. The failed ombrés, the midnight notebook of client phone numbers, the classes taught while shaking from nerves, the price increases you agonize over — that’s the real story of a working stylist.

If you want to hear the full conversation, dig into the technical color talk, and soak up more of Sarah’s honesty about education, pricing, and independence, hit play on the video. This is one you’ll want to watch with a coffee in hand and a notebook nearby.

You can find Sarah at:

https://www.instagram.com/sarahzstylz/?hl=en

Transcript:

Liam Shea (00:03)
Fantastic. ⁓ So welcome to Salon Monsters podcast. ⁓ I’m here with Sarah. Is it Cabral? Fantastic. I’m here with Sarah Cabral. ⁓ Sarah, thanks so much for joining us. Can you tell me a little bit about how you got your start?

Sarah Cabral (00:11)
Good luck. ⁓

Yep.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah, actually, I started really early. I went to vocational high school. So I started doing hair in high school.

Liam Shea (00:31)
Okay.

Okay, awesome, that’s rad, I always love that.

Sarah Cabral (00:36)
Mm.

Liam Shea (00:40)
I love that that exists. There used to be a school where I am that had that. It’s such a great thing. I wish there was more trades in school.

Sarah Cabral (00:47)
yeah, it’s like getting really big around where I live. It’s like really hard to get into them now.

Liam Shea (00:52)
Like those high schools in particular? Right. Okay, well guess that makes sense. ⁓ Where are you located? Okay, whereabouts?

Sarah Cabral (00:55)
Yeah.

I’m a Massachusetts. ⁓

I live in Blackstone, but I work in Franklin.

Liam Shea (01:05)
Okay.

Okay. Awesome. So you started right out the gate early on and did you when you finished high school, did you continue with your career in the hair industry at that point?

Sarah Cabral (01:16)
Yes, I’ve actually never stopped doing hair. I’ve been doing hair for 23 years, to be exact. A long time.

Liam Shea (01:20)
amazing i love it

yeah yeah i think i’m at 26 years it’s a weird number to think about because i’m pretty sure i’m still in my early 20s

Sarah Cabral (01:28)
Yeah.

Same.

Liam Shea (01:34)
minus all the gray hairs that I have. Okay, so you got your start there. Where did you go after high school? What was the next step?

Sarah Cabral (01:44)
So I started like being a shampoo girl when I was like 14. So I was in a salon for like, feels like my whole life basically. Like right out of school. I’m trying to remember what my, I mean, I like hopped around a lot at the beginning. So I found a hard time to like really just find my place. I feel like back then other hairstylists weren’t so generous as we are now. Like we love sharing, like educating each other, just like helping each other out I feel like.

Liam Shea (01:50)
Okay.

Sarah Cabral (02:12)
Like the hair industry is a lot different now. We’re very much a community. Back then, like no one was really willing to help the new stylist out. It was very competitive. So I had a hard time just like finding a place that would really just feed, like feed me and like give me that chance. So I from like, I did like cost cutters. I worked at some ladies salon in her house. I worked at Delaria salon. I definitely worked at a good amount of salons until

Liam Shea (02:14)
Yes. Yes.

Sarah Cabral (02:41)
I think I was about 20 when I finally found one that I stuck at for like seven years before I started growing off on my own. So it was definitely a journey.

Liam Shea (02:46)
Okay. Yep. Okay, so after that seven… So

after that you went independent after that seven year stint.

Sarah Cabral (02:54)
Yeah,

yeah, I’ve been independent since 2010. ⁓

Liam Shea (02:59)
Okay, yeah, amazing,

amazing. Yeah, that’s so cool. ⁓ Hey, is there any way, I’ve got a message coming up from my podcast thing saying that asking if I can ask you to turn, can your phone turn to side by side? Yeah, like, yeah, exactly. If it can’t, don’t worry about it. It doesn’t matter.

Sarah Cabral (03:08)
Yeah.

Horizontal. I can try. Yeah. You can try.

But on.

lights.

Liam Shea (03:33)
weird does it just now does it just want to stay sideways is it gonna we’ll see if it asks you a mess it asks you if you want to turn it and if it doesn’t then we’ll just stick with that

Sarah Cabral (03:33)
Is it angle wear now?

You’re like up and down, but I’m sideways. Does it matter? Okay.

Liam Shea (03:46)
Yeah.

That doesn’t make much sense. Switch orientation. Yeah, just turn it back. It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. Yeah. I mean, if the system’s not going to switch it, then who cares? Right?

Sarah Cabral (03:52)
Yeah, it’s kind of weird looking.

Okay, magnetic sending, here we go.

Liam Shea (04:08)
Okay, so…

Yeah.

Sarah Cabral (04:13)
Now we both look the same to me on my end. Okay. Okay.

Liam Shea (04:15)
Right? Exactly. No, no, no, it’s totally good. It was just a message

came up on my screen. I’m like, all right, whatever. ⁓ Okay, so you from 20 to around 27, you were working at your first sort of stay there salon for an extended period of time. ⁓ At what point did you feel like…

Sarah Cabral (04:20)
Bye it.

Yes. Yes.

Liam Shea (04:37)
So you would consider, mean, you specialize in what? Balletage work at this point or for liage or.

Sarah Cabral (04:42)
Yeah, like I love I’d

say like balayage. mean, a lot of it’s more like foiling foil work these days, but lived in color is definitely something I’m passionate about blonde blonding.

Liam Shea (04:49)
Yes. Yes.

At what point did you sort of find that early on? Did it take a while?

Sarah Cabral (05:01)
you should have seen my first, my first ombres. They’re really bad. My sister has always been my model. I think like in 2018 ish around there is when like I started really working with balayage and the funny thing, fun fact, my dad is a painter. So like I grew up with, I love painting. I’ve always liked painting walls. I like actually like, like artwork painting, like acrylic and stuff. So like something about like painting the hair.

Liam Shea (05:04)
Yes.

Okay.

Sarah Cabral (05:30)
really clicked with me. And I feel like it’s like a special thing to me just because my dad is so special to me. My brother’s a painter. Like we’re all like painters in my family. So I thought that was kind of cool that like we’re all very artistic in different ways. And I just love something about like creating a blend is just, it’s so satisfying to me and I’m very passionate about it. So when I paired Balayage and like learning how to use Instagram, kind of at the same time.

Liam Shea (05:43)
Yeah.

Yes.

Yes.

Sarah Cabral (05:58)
is kind of how I grew my page to 100,000 followers basically. This is I really learned how to film my work and be passionate about what I was doing and like the after, the video, that’s like the reward for me is like seeing it on camera kind of.

Liam Shea (06:13)
Yeah.

Yeah. That’s so cool. Yeah. It’s interesting because what so you

Sarah Cabral (06:17)
Yeah, so they kind of like blend together.

Liam Shea (06:23)
You started, you started that salon, okay, so you said you went independent about 2010, did you say? Okay.

Sarah Cabral (06:29)
Yeah,

so like balayage wasn’t like huge when I first, mean, yes, I was still like slowly like learning how to post on Facebook a little bit, but like I didn’t really grow on Instagram until whenever I think it was around 2018 or 17 maybe. I’m 40 my timeline might be off.

Liam Shea (06:45)
Yeah.

No, no. No, you’re about right. I’m just trying to remember. think it was like… Well, I think it came… Exactly. I think it came out in like 2010, 2011, somewhere around there.

Sarah Cabral (06:51)
I’m trying to see when Instagram really became popular. Because that’s when I slowly started, like for hairstylists, yeah.

Yeah, I was definitely after,

I was after, when I didn’t even have it for as a personal account. I literally just started it for my hair business.

Liam Shea (07:12)
Okay,

okay, yeah, because yeah, no, and nobody was even using it for hair to begin with. I mean, I think I took pictures of food and I don’t know. Yeah, my wife or something like that. I that’s about the extent of it. ⁓ Okay, cool. So yeah, right. You were saying hombres. I mean, really, I remember starting with hombre and then moving into balayage is my recollection of it. ⁓

Sarah Cabral (07:16)
Exactly.

Exactly.

Yeah, yes, definitely. Because my ombres

would be like very like uneven because all we did was like tease the bottom of the hair and hope for the best. I have some funny pictures.

Liam Shea (07:44)
Totally. ⁓ my god. Yes Yes,

some like frightening level two on the roots sort of turning into some muddy mid-range color and then yeah And then trying to figure out well, how do you repeat it? How do you keep that light moving up? Yeah, it was horrifying Yeah, mine were so bad to begin with ⁓ Okay, so you started with the ombrés you liked it you obviously had

Sarah Cabral (07:50)
Yeah.

bad.

My god, I know.

Hahaha

Liam Shea (08:12)
Do you feel like you already had a grip on color theory because of your dad being a painter or did that come later? Because I know it’s not the same color theory exactly, but it is sort of.

Sarah Cabral (08:18)
Anyway. Yeah.

I think, yeah, I think like obviously the technical part is more, mean, color theory is just like, you have to learn by experience, basically. And I definitely always loved like the science of hair color theory. But I think the more like the actual act of the painting is something, the physical part is what I really connected with, with my, just, I don’t know, I love painting. So painting hair, how fun. I can do both things I love at the same time. Yeah.

Liam Shea (08:46)
Yes. Yes.

Yes, that’s amazing.

okay, so you shifted like many of us did into balayage and foliage. I know for myself, I actually never got comfortable with hand painting and balayage. didn’t have a chance to get a lot of education with it. But when yes, true. But I’m one of those people who won’t do it. I don’t like not being good at something. So unless I’m ⁓

Sarah Cabral (08:57)
Yeah.

A lot of people don’t actually.

Hmm.

Liam Shea (09:19)
at least vaguely competent or have some level of education. So I found balayage didn’t come natural to me. But when foliage started to begin to happen, I could wrap my head around that better. I also had a lot of guests with really dark color. So I struggled with the sort of the lack of lift with hand painting. And whereas once it was in a foil, I found like I had way more control over it. Did you

Sarah Cabral (09:21)
Yeah.

Exactly.

Liam Shea (09:50)
Did you love balayage right away? Yeah.

Sarah Cabral (09:54)
Yes, I mean, yeah, I was

like, I mean, obviously you wash it out like oops, there’s a spot. No one’s perfect takes practice. I mean, I still like I’m not perfect. You might have a bleeder like a little spot do a root smudge like those ways to perfect the end result. But I would still agree with you that balayage is not for every client. I like to paint a brunette who wants warmth or a level seven. I can get nice and icy blonde, but

Liam Shea (10:00)
Yes. Yes.

Yes. Yes.

Sarah Cabral (10:22)
If you’re looking for that lift, I’m definitely like 80 % doing foliage right now versus actual physical hand painting on my clients. So it’s still like a great tool to have. You can like mix up techniques. I do that all the time. I love mixing different techniques. I just posted this, I call it the trifle, when I do like balayage and a foliage panel in a low light, so three colors at once. It’s so beautiful because like balayage you get like

Liam Shea (10:27)
Yes.

Sarah Cabral (10:52)
the warmer tone, the foil, get the light more lift and then like the low light. So I just love like dimension. It’s just fun, getting creative and like mixing your techniques and having fun with it.

Liam Shea (10:59)
Yeah.

Yes, that’s so cool. That’s so cool. ⁓

Denver, one of my amazing colleagues, who’s probably who you spoke with the most, Denver handles a lot of our social media, ⁓ wanted me to ask about ⁓ a good way to learn balayage on really dark hair, particularly Asian hair. ⁓ But it sounds like probably foilage makes more sense for that unless of course,

you’re trying to get warm.

Sarah Cabral (11:33)
Exactly,

there’s no magic behind lifting level two with clay lightener. It’s not going to, it’s only going to lift up to like five levels, they say. So definitely I would 100 % use foiliage on my darker brunettes that want a blonde result. And that’s what I do behind the chair.

Liam Shea (11:48)
Yeah.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Sarah Cabral (11:51)
Yeah, so it’s just like knowing

what tool to use for what look you’re trying to achieve.

Liam Shea (11:57)
Yeah. And so did you, did you have the opportunity to take a lot of education or was a lot of it trial and error for you?

Sarah Cabral (12:06)
I yeah, I do like I do love taking education. I was obsessed with Lisa loves balayage. She’s like my favorite. I learned so much color theory from her also, honestly. So I’ve like took her. I I love camouflage and balayage. All the old school like painters from back in the day, like Catherine Lowe’s color. I’ve always like followed all them and like learned from everyone who’s teaching. I take classes. I do online education. So you definitely have to like

Liam Shea (12:11)
Yeah.

Sarah Cabral (12:36)
keep learning, but trial and error is the only way to get there, basically.

Liam Shea (12:41)
know, I know it’s painful. I Well, and I also

found when I like since there was such a huge shift in ⁓ the digital side of our industry through COVID, like the shift towards digital education, I feel like ⁓ when Balayage first started coming out on the scene, either somebody came to the salon you worked at or came through town to another salon, or you traveled somewhere.

Sarah Cabral (12:56)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Liam Shea (13:10)
or you

just weren’t getting. And you know, the smaller the place you’re in, or the more out of the way it is, the less likely it is you get certain people coming through unless you’re at one of those shops where they bring in people. ⁓ Yeah, I know I struggled with that side of things. was, only ever had one class with balletage and it helped a lot, but it taught me. like foyerage. That’s what it taught me.

Sarah Cabral (13:22)
Exactly.

Yeah,

that’s fine. Like I take one. I can go to a class. Everyone paints different too. mean, Joyco has sent me to California a few times and every time we go somebody’s teaching a balayage class and it’s like, all I already paint, but like this person paints differently. So I take like something from what I learned from them and I like make it my own. So like everyone has their own. We all paint differently too. So there’s no like right or wrong way. I teach that in my classes all the time. This is how I do it, but you guys do it however you want.

Just take something from what I’m teaching you and make it your own.

Liam Shea (14:06)
Yeah, that makes sense to me. mean, yeah. At what point did you get into education yourself?

Sarah Cabral (14:15)
So funny story. So like when I went to high school, I actually, I hated school. Like I was not a good academic student. I actually almost dropped out junior year because I just like was miserable, but like I loved hair. So I’m like, I can’t drop out. I have to get my hairdressing license. So that’s kind of like what kept me like in high school because we had shop week and then academic week. So every other week you’d go back and forth. So I’d want to skip all of academic week and go to shop week.

Liam Shea (14:21)
Yes. Nope.

Sarah Cabral (14:43)
So then I finally graduated and I was like, I’ll never return to that school again. And then like a few years later, this girl reached out to me and was like, hey, I’m going to try County Millet High School. Like, do you want to come and teach a balayage class with me? And I was like, ah, I’m like, I guess so. Even though I swore I’d never go back there again. So I actually, I did not know how to teach. I was like so scared, even though these students like wouldn’t know if I’m not telling them the right way. They’re literally just in hairdressing school.

Liam Shea (14:57)
wow.

Sarah Cabral (15:13)
So I actually offered to go teach a class there and I taught my first class with her. So scary out of my comfort zone, but I was like, wow, that was like pretty cool. So then the next year she invited me again. So then by the second time I was like, I just knew I had a calling to teach. So I just really wanted to, I started teaching independently. I didn’t have a brand backing me up. I remember saying like, I wasn’t on the BTC team yet.

Liam Shea (15:21)
Yeah.

Sarah Cabral (15:43)
So I just felt like insignificant, like who’s gonna, who am I to like say I’m a teacher? Like, and then I was like, you know what? I just felt like I was supposed to do it. So I like posted my first class and had like 10, 15 students the first time. It was incredible. So like, just like the feedback, I still have the same people that came to my first class, like still coming to my classes. It’s like so, exactly, so I’m like, who am I that like people would still keep?

Liam Shea (16:07)
That’s amazing.

Sarah Cabral (16:12)
think I’m a good educator and keep coming to me. But I feel like when you have like a calling, like you don’t have to have anybody else telling you to do it. Like you just do it.

Liam Shea (16:21)
That’s ⁓

That’s so amazing. It’s interesting listening to you talk about, ⁓ well, what sounds like imposter syndrome when you show up for your first course. It’s such a typical trait in those that get into our industry. It’s like it’s an industry filled with 95 % people who don’t think they can be it. There is that small 5 % of people who are usually… ⁓

Sarah Cabral (16:33)
so much. I still have it. So bad.

Mm-hmm.

Liam Shea (16:49)
beyond overconfident and think they’re vastly better than they are. And then everyone else just lacks the confidence. But it is fascinating with education when you first realize, especially probably at the end of that first class that you taught, the fact that no one was heckling you or saying this is the worst thing ever or you’re an idiot. And they’re asking you questions and they’re looking at you like the expert that you don’t feel like you are, but that you probably are. ⁓ It’s just never what

Sarah Cabral (16:51)
yeah.

Yeah, they never said give me my money back.

Liam Shea (17:19)
you like the feeling of ⁓ being knowledgeable is never what you think it’s going to feel like, I find.

Sarah Cabral (17:25)
You’re

always like, we’ll question yourself forever. I just taught a class a couple of weeks ago and I was at another salon in a different town and that’s like scary because you’re putting your name out there and you’re selling tickets to a salon that’s not your own. So like you could look like the biggest idiot if you don’t sell any tickets. I say that’s the scariest part of teaching is you put your class out there and then like, all right, you sell one ticket. You’re like, all right. And then a week goes by like, oh shoot, what am going to do? I have one student.

Liam Shea (17:28)
Yeah.

Sarah Cabral (17:52)
So then like all of sudden at the last minute it filled in, which was incredible, but it’s still like scary every time. And the ladies there were like, we like loved having you, like you’re welcome back anytime. And I’m like, really? I’m still like always in awe when people like tell me I did a good job. You know? Who am I?

Liam Shea (18:09)
I know it’s…

Yeah, what are you gonna do? I don’t know how much therapy it’s gonna require before that feeling goes away. Maybe there isn’t a quantity and it’s just… Yes. No, I think it’s great. It’s much better than the opposite. So you were independent, educating for quite a while. At what point… So was BTC the first group you became a part of?

Sarah Cabral (18:21)
It’s okay to stay humble, I think. You know?

Mm-hmm.

They’re…

Yeah, and it took me three years of tagging them to get recognized. Yeah. So it’s not like overnight, like every post I’m like, BTC team, behind the chair, BTC team, behind the chair. Then they’ll send you the boxes for anyone that’s interested. Like you reach out to the like BTC team account and you can fill out something to get a box. And then once you get the content box, they want to see you posting. They’re looking for educational videos basically. So like it took me so long of just doing the free boxes.

Liam Shea (18:42)
really? Well, yeah.

Right.

Right? Right.

Sarah Cabral (19:07)
for that phone call and they’re like, Sarah, we wanna get on a call with you. I’m like, this must be it. So then like they invite you to be on the team, but it took like three years of being diligent and not giving up.

Liam Shea (19:17)
Yeah,

that’s awesome. That’s awesome. So how long have you been with them now?

Sarah Cabral (19:19)
Mm-hmm.

⁓ like four years, I think, or three or four years. Yeah.

Liam Shea (19:25)
Amazing. Amazing.

Have you gotten to do a bunch of travel with it?

Sarah Cabral (19:30)
no, like they still like you get paid, you get paid boxes now. So now I get campaigns. It’s basically like influencer team. I go like the I go to the BTC. I got like the one shot hair awards every year. But ⁓ no, it’s not even like you have do much like besides like being an influencer for them. Some people will pull out and have like do different things. But I think it’s because I’m as I’m not working under a brand, a lot of the stuff is like brand specific.

Liam Shea (19:35)
Right.

Yeah.

Sarah Cabral (20:00)
But I like want to be independent. I don’t want to be exclusive to one brand. So that’s OK. Yeah.

Liam Shea (20:03)
Yeah.

that makes sense bear with me one moment I’m just going

to ⁓ plug in

Plugged in? Is it? Hang on.

It is not. Why is it not plugged in?

I feel super zoomed in.

Sarah Cabral (20:54)
Yeah,

you’re little better. ⁓

Liam Shea (20:59)
So what have you done to me?

Sarah Cabral (21:03)
Don’t zoom in on me. ⁓ he’s gone. There you are.

Liam Shea (21:07)
I’m just clicking it seeing if I can make

it. Why are you so zoomed in? It’s because I did something funny with this. ⁓

Let’s see, can I change it? No. Are you going to let me?

It’s frustrating.

I I’ll just have to be crazy zoomed in. That seems weird. That can’t be.

Sarah Cabral (22:03)
I can back up if you hang

up and do you want to start it? Can you save this and then restart the call so you can fix it? I don’t mind.

Liam Shea (22:10)
I can,

I can. Yeah, I can. I’m just wondering if there’s a way to…

that off, turn that back on.

Hmm.

than resume.

That’s weird. Alright, fine. We’ll just keep going. That’s just fine. That’s just fine. I’ve actually got the camera covering me so I can’t actually see it. Doesn’t seem quite as bad.

Sarah Cabral (22:46)
You have to look at yourself.

Yeah, yeah, doesn’t look that zoomed in on my end.

Liam Shea (22:57)
⁓ Yeah, okay. Love it. Hilarious. Good job. ⁓ Okay, where was I? So we were talking about being you want to… Yeah, and you were saying like, to some degree, you like staying independent from from a specific brand. ⁓

Sarah Cabral (23:06)
BTC team.

Independent. Yes.

Liam Shea (23:17)
Is that particularly just so you have the option to be using whatever products you want to be using? Yeah.

Sarah Cabral (23:20)
Yes, I

can explain why because I get a lot of Instagram paid collaborations with different brands. So if I was exclusive to one brand, wouldn’t be able to, unless they want to pay me a million dollars. If they want to pay me enough where I don’t have to make money through other means, go for it. No one’s offered me that yet. Exactly.

Liam Shea (23:36)
Right, which is just rare in those situ.

100 % no no no it’s just it’s it’s completely rare Unfortunately,

Sarah Cabral (23:48)
And ⁓

Liam Shea (23:48)
that’d be great

Sarah Cabral (23:49)
I love content creation, so I like being able to work with any brand I want to.

Liam Shea (23:54)
Yeah, yeah. When did you start getting comfortable with content creation, with video in particular?

Sarah Cabral (24:02)
I’m to think. Probably just when I started posting on Instagram, you kind of like have to. You buy a tripod, that’s your best friend. I’ve never had an assistant anywhere I’ve worked, so I’ve been on my own forever. So I just had my little tripod that’s always like standing over my shoulder. Then you just start filming.

Liam Shea (24:05)
Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Nope. Okay.

So

you weren’t making those videos where no one knows that somebody was holding your foils for you and that’s how you did that like 100 % stacked full platinum card where you’re like, it took me 45 minutes. What? That doesn’t…

Sarah Cabral (24:24)
No. Yeah. I don’t have that like assistance

sticking the foil under the strand that I’m no no help ever.

Liam Shea (24:36)
gosh.

Yeah, that’s such a foreign concept to me. I don’t want anybody doing that for me.

Sarah Cabral (24:41)
No, me neither. too

much of a control freak. Like I don’t even want somebody blow drying my client. I’m like, no, thank you. I’ll do the whole thing.

Liam Shea (24:47)
Yep. I actually,

I did an apprenticeship. And when I was coming up the one of the primary people I was sort of I was the salon apprentice. And it was a 12 chair salon, but there were a couple of people in particular that were educators that were just natural educators. And one of them was, was really adamant. He didn’t do book backs. He didn’t like taking appointments in between appointments. He liked being he found

Sarah Cabral (25:12)
Yeah. Present when it’s client.

Yeah.

Liam Shea (25:15)
Yeah, his guests were paying to be with him as much as they were paying

for their service. He was very strong, strongly advocating ⁓ for making sure they stay facing the mirror. Like he said, don’t, I feel like when I turn them away from the mirror, I’m telling them, I don’t want you to see what I’m doing or it doesn’t look good. Obviously, like in barbering and things where you need to be turning and looking at.

Sarah Cabral (25:36)
it.

Yeah. ⁓

Liam Shea (25:42)
shadows

and you’re blending there’s a purpose to it but I always sort of I came away from that with that just independent sense of I’m not I don’t need to be doing anything for me I do things for me and I do things for

Sarah Cabral (25:53)
Yeah, mm-hmm. I’m kind of like that too,

just because I’ve never had an assistant.

Liam Shea (25:58)
yeah

yeah like i’m not saying i’d be opposed to the concept of it but ⁓ yeah yeah fascinating ⁓ okay so

when it came to choosing products, ⁓ have things changed dramatically for you from like when you began doing balayage and foillage to now? I mean, it seems like when balayage began, I don’t even know if there were clay lighteners to begin with.

Sarah Cabral (26:27)
Yeah, ⁓

yeah, I definitely like have my specific products I like for different reasons. I, some people paint with regular lightener. I personally don’t like to, cause I feel like I get more bleeding that way. I love the clay shell that it creates. I paint with actually a paint brush. ⁓ I like to paint with a paint brush. I’ll buy chip brushes from Amazon. They’re my favorite. They’re like the throw away ones cause they have like the neck.

Liam Shea (26:34)
Yeah.

you do? Love it. Love it.

Okay.

Sarah Cabral (26:56)
They’re like the lightest bristle. I do like the Power Painter from like From R and those types for like thicker hair. But like sometimes I just love like an actual chip brush, which is funny.

Liam Shea (26:58)
Okay.

Yep. Yep.

Okay, what do you, and for

those that don’t know what exactly is a chip brush.

Sarah Cabral (27:10)
It’s like from like an arts and crafts store. I don’t know what they’re really for. Probably like, ⁓ I don’t know, painting wood. It’s like you can get them at Home Depot. They look ⁓ like wood and they’re just like very like soft bristles. they like get the bleach eats away at them. So you don’t want to keep reusing it. Just chuck it. It’s so cheap.

Liam Shea (27:13)
Okay. Yeah, fair enough. Yeah. I love it.

Right, fair enough.

⁓ Do you use clay lightener for inside foils as well when doing foilage or just for open air? No. Yeah, okay. Yes. Yes. Yes. Anything that takes seven minutes, I would like it to take seven minutes. Yeah.

Sarah Cabral (27:41)
No, I use like traditional lightener. Give me that nine levels of lift and I’m happy. I have a lot of brunette clients that want to be blonde. Yes, exactly.

Liam Shea (27:54)
I remember when I first learned, like, you can start with a low volume of peroxide and remix and finish with a higher volume of peroxide. That blew my mind. Like what? Or actually blew my mind even when I found out. I mean, when I started, I don’t ever remember anybody mixing more color except for when they ran out. Nobody was mixing more bleach ⁓ to have it be fresher. Nobody was doing that. They were just mixing it.

Sarah Cabral (28:01)
Yeah. Yeah.

Thank you.

Yeah, that’s right. That’s true.

Liam Shea (28:22)
I’d see somebody after like 90 minutes of applications with that all bubbled out, lifted up, and you’re like, okay, cool.

Sarah Cabral (28:24)
It’s like, yes.

I always

say like I only I do two scoops at a time. Like I’m not mixing more than that. If somebody mixes a whole bowl, it’s going to be like 10 inches high when it pops out.

Liam Shea (28:31)
yeah yeah i know you’re also going to be pouring a whole bowl out ⁓

it’s not like it doesn’t begin oxidizing immediately and loses that thing yeah i know it’s fun when you start discovering those little things it also saves you money and time ⁓ and then you don’t have to deal with that whole i remember when when bleach foils for because when i started doing hair my apprenticeship began

january 2nd 1999 and there was still a percentage foils had only been around for so long at that point there was still a bunch of people using caps yeah yeah okay you know yeah yeah i remember doing caps and ⁓ you know discovering the the hard way you don’t actually know where the hair is coming from yeah maybe it’s to the root maybe i’m coloring i’m putting it here and it’s coming from over here i don’t know

Sarah Cabral (29:07)
Yeah, I did caps out of school. graduated in 2002. So yeah, we did caps still.

I was just telling my client that you like do this and you hope for the best. Exactly. You

Liam Shea (29:30)
⁓

Sarah Cabral (29:30)
might get a cheetah spot here and there.

Liam Shea (29:32)
Although I don’t know if you ever, I also remember seeing people who could do a crazy full cap in like five, six minutes. They could do, and they would add additional holes to their caps so they could essentially do a full head of foils in like five, six, seven minutes. ⁓ That blew my mind, but yeah, no, when foils came out it was amazing. ⁓ Yes, big time.

Sarah Cabral (29:44)
Bye bye. Yeah.

That’s a good thing.

Liam Shea (29:58)
OK, so if.

I’m a brand new stylist or somebody thinking about becoming a stylist. ⁓ What type of advice would you give someone either who’s about to get into the industry or has just completed education? ⁓ You know, obviously it’s very different now than it was when both you and I got out of school and apprenticeships. it doesn’t really, I mean, social media wasn’t there at the beginning. ⁓

and getting things like mentors was much more complex because it just had to be a person you knew. If you were you beginning all over again and wanted to fast track to where you are, what would you tell yourself?

Sarah Cabral (30:43)
Well, I’d definitely find a salon that offers education. ⁓ It’s not all the one. mean, the one I stayed at for seven years, we had the Palmetto education, but definitely find people that have like a program where they really feed into their younger stylist. Like I know a few salons around where I live that they love, like they have, they like train the new stylist. They have education, week, bi-weekly, like somebody who really like wants to teach.

and move, don’t work for somebody who’s just looking for a glorified assistant that’s just gonna be their assistant forever and not care about you getting, moving onto the floor and actually like growing in your own career. Does that make sense? Like find people that like want, aren’t gonna keep you forever. Some people hold onto those assistants because they don’t wanna let them go. You find somebody who’s gonna feed into you basically.

Liam Shea (31:24)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Sarah Cabral (31:36)
And it’s okay to not find your salon home in the first job that you get out of school. It may take a while to find like where you really belong. You’ll know when you find the right place. Now, I just stay out of drama, like stay out of the drama. Like just don’t find a find a place that’s like really like a family, you know.

Liam Shea (31:45)
Yes, yes, it’s very different when you first discover it. You don’t really, that feels new. ⁓

Yeah.

And be busy. I mean, the thing I found, even at the low drama places that I worked at, I found if you were busy, you weren’t in the back room. And if you weren’t in the back room not being busy, you weren’t part of talking about whoever wasn’t in the back room at that point or whatever I found. if you just get, even for me, when you’re not with a guest,

Sarah Cabral (32:15)
It’s true.

Yeah.

Liam Shea (32:31)
Do something else. Be posting.

Sarah Cabral (32:33)
Exactly. That’s another thing. I

just feel like the work ethic’s a little different these days. When I started assisting, was the coffee girl. I was the laundry girl. I was sweeping the floors. I was window-syncing the windows. I was cleaning. There’s nothing I didn’t have to do for my boss, but doing that, I learned how to work hard. And don’t expect somebody to just hand you everything. you what mean? Be a hard worker, basically, and it will pay off.

Liam Shea (32:38)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And for yourself, be a hard worker for yourself. I mean, I know one of the problems, of course, I see is there’s way less shops that are built.

Sarah Cabral (33:04)
Exactly.

Liam Shea (33:15)
to have that level of education and taking students right out of school. So while it feels sometimes like people aren’t working as hard, there also aren’t the shops probably you and I came up in don’t exist in the same way. People can’t afford as much to have a full-time assistant around. I mean, they exist, they happen, but not to the say it was when I was coming up, I felt like every good salon had at least one assistant, if not two, and they had, you then you became a junior and they’d have two

Sarah Cabral (33:33)
Yeah, very true.

yeah.

Liam Shea (33:45)
three juniors and then you could work your way into either renting a chair or not being a junior anymore whereas it feels like they’re trying to get people out of school and then just tossing them out on the floor and expecting them to be good at it and make money.

Sarah Cabral (33:59)
Yes, I

mean, I would not want to be in that position. It’s scary when you first starting out. And I would say like to students like you need to like go like an amazing example is like the class I just taught. had four girls who are still in hairdressing school like one girl invited three other of her student friends. So four of them were not even graduated from cosmetology school and they came to my yes.

Liam Shea (34:04)
Yeah. Yeah.

they were already taking… wow!

Sarah Cabral (34:28)
This girl’s

blowing my mind. This one girl, she’s just really into education. She’s not even out of school yet. So she’s kind of rubbing off on her whole school and they’re all like, yeah, just like pay for your own education. know nobody has a lot of money, but I would say like invest in yourself as much as you can and don’t rely on your boss or your salon. Don’t rely on anyone else to build your clientele. Like get on social media, post your work. You have to like build your own business.

Liam Shea (34:36)
That’s so great.

figure out how.

No.

Even

even though I have this strong feeling that like if you’re gonna run a commission salon it should be your duty to be putting this in place as a ⁓

service provider and staff member at that place. Yes, it’s unfair if they’re not sorting out the education, but to just complain about it and not do anything about it’s only gonna hurt you anyways. So yeah, I mean, I completely agree. Just figure it out. Also, there’s a lot of free… There was no such…

Sarah Cabral (35:15)
Exactly.

So much free, so much free. Exactly.

We got ripped off.

Liam Shea (35:29)
I remember at the beginning, if you

were lucky, if you were lucky, a product company just happened to make a VHS or a DVD that’s mostly education, like most of its education, ⁓ like product knowledge education, every now and then you’d see someone doing hair. They might not describe what they’re doing it, but you’re like, what’s that? That’s interesting. ⁓ Yeah.

Sarah Cabral (35:33)
Yes.

⁓ huh.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. We don’t have any free. No free.

Liam Shea (35:56)
Yeah, and if you didn’t work around people that liked educating or knew how to, then it was just, it was really, really hard. But yeah, you’ve got video now, so that’s great. ⁓ Okay, and then, so you did seven years at that first salon that you stayed at, and then you went independent. What motivated the move to independence?

Sarah Cabral (36:12)
Amen.

Um, I was just kind of sick of my boss. Exactly. It’s the point where you just like want to work for yourself. And I was like really looking into it. It was like the weirdest thing in my situation because I started like I didn’t even know how much rent was so I’m like, all right, how do I find out like how much does it cost to rent a chair? So then I like I this trip my church that I went to my the pastor’s wife was a hairstylist who owned a salon.

Liam Shea (36:21)
Yeah. Or a boss.

Right.

Sarah Cabral (36:46)
And I came in one Sunday and I was going to be like, oh, I’m like, hey, Mary Ann, I have to ask you a question. I want to ask her because I knew her salon was in a town that wasn’t anywhere near where I was working. I just knew that she knew about like renting, obviously, because she was the owner. And I was like, have a question for you. And she’s like, Sarah, I just bought a new like a bigger salon. And she’s like, I didn’t tell her what my question was. She’s like, Sarah, I have to tell you something. I just bought a huge new salon like

Liam Shea (36:46)
Okay

Right.

Sarah Cabral (37:14)
Would you be willing to come rent a chair? And I was like, huh? And I was like, okay. I just answered yes without even thinking about it. So it was just my personal situation was like crazy because it just like happened. I literally moved my whole clientele a half an hour away from where I was, which is also risky because people don’t want to drive five more minutes. I had to print out postcards because we didn’t even have Instagram yet or anything.

Liam Shea (37:17)
Ugh.

Yeah.

Sarah Cabral (37:42)
So I print out postcards, mailed it to every single one of my clients, like announcing where I was moving. It was like crazy, the whole thing, because they didn’t have my cell phone number because I was an employee. So that’s another tricky thing. It’s hard to like, some salons do not, if you leave back then, they are not telling anybody where you went. So I had to like slowly collect my clientele myself and send them a postcard to tell them where I was moving.

Liam Shea (37:56)
rights.

yeah.

That’s

why the midnight moves used to happen, I found. I know when I left the shop, I did my apprenticeship app. And it’s not like they knew I was, I had given notice. There were two bosses. One just said, yep, okay, sorry to see you go. And the other one said, you know what?

You’ve never worked as hard as I wanted you to, so for these next two weeks I want you to work harder than you’ve ever worked.” I’m like, okay, yeah, that’s a good way to end things. But the first one had said, basically, when you… ⁓

If you don’t have any clients, you can be done whenever you want. do anybody that’s on the books for you and then otherwise. And so I went in and because I had been the assistant, I had keys. So I did go in at like 11 o’clock at night and, and hand sit at the book at the front, hand writing down every single person’s name and just trying to like, hopefully their number was there. ⁓ I

Sarah Cabral (38:49)
Really?

Yeah, oh yeah, handwritten. That’s what I had to do. Yeah. You just gave me

PTSD because I forgot my boss wouldn’t let me work my two weeks. She was like, none can be done. I was like, okay. She like fired me basically.

Liam Shea (39:14)
Yes, and that’s common. That’s common, right? It’s like,

I understand from the drama perspective, because sometimes it can be messy having a person that’s leaving for two weeks. And sometimes it’s it’s best to just say, here, I’m going to pay you for the two weeks. But you should first you should be paying the person out. Like if you’re going to tell them to leave, you say, here’s your money. And you can go but it also ⁓ I still see it.

Sarah Cabral (39:30)
Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Liam Shea (39:41)
so often in the job that I do I mean I do hair two days a week but I also run salon monster and I see it often still the I don’t want people knowing where this stylist is going and it’s so funny because I can just look on Instagram like it’s not it’s yeah when I started yeah if someone left and you didn’t tell their clients where they went they don’t know how to find out

Sarah Cabral (39:47)
Yeah.

Exactly. You can find anybody now.

I know.

Liam Shea (40:09)
But now I’m like, why would you do that? They’re gonna find out and then you’re gonna look silly for telling them ⁓ But yeah, yes the trauma of the midnight moves

Sarah Cabral (40:14)
Exactly.

Yeah, it was kind of scary like quitting a job back then because you you might lose everything. No, so no, me and my my best friend has opened a salon a year like a year and a couple months ago. So it’s me and two other girls. We all we have a little mini salon together. Just three of us. Yeah. No, it’s like a building. My friend bought a building and she did like demoed it and

Liam Shea (40:23)
Yeah. So are you still renting a chair at that shop? No.

Okay.

Love it. Like in a studio suite or you just rented a little space. Okay.

Sarah Cabral (40:48)
It’s like 600 square feet, but that’s enough for three of us. Yeah.

Liam Shea (40:50)
It’s great.

I’m not, you know, I’ve just got two rooms here. I found this spot upstairs, little office space, one chair salon is outside of the window. My friend rents the chair from me when I’m doing this. And then this side’s the office. It’s whatever you can find works. Yeah.

Sarah Cabral (41:01)
Yeah.

Exactly. So like we’re

so happy. You probably, you know who they are. They have huge followings. Taylor did my hair and Vivids and Balayage, Steph, Steph and Taylor. So it’s us three in our own salon in Franklin. So we just had our one year anniversary. ⁓ you want to know what it was?

Liam Shea (41:12)
yeah. Yeah.

Love it.

love it. What was that? Did you? Did you open?

Well, I was gonna say, did you open it together? Did one of you open it? Okay. Okay. So

Sarah Cabral (41:26)
No, like, yeah, one opened it and we rent. And we all teach

so we can teach out of it, which is my goal. It was to be in a place where I could just be like, hey, I’m teaching this class this Monday. And she’s like completely like, that’s why we’re here. So anyone who wants to do a class whenever you want to do that was like another thing why I left my last salon. Like that the past his wife retired, she was older, so she gave it to her son. And like they didn’t really like that. I was teaching, I think, because

Liam Shea (41:40)
Right.

Right.

Sarah Cabral (41:56)
They didn’t really want, he didn’t want me to like have like strangers and cause they’re all renters. He didn’t want to be liable for everyone’s like stuff or whatever. He just gave me a hard time. So I just felt like, all right, I did it like for a couple of years, but I just felt like that was, it felt like it wasn’t like, I knew they didn’t want me teaching there. So I’m like, all right. And I always told Taylor, which is funny cause I met her back up story.

Liam Shea (42:06)
Okay.

Yeah. You knew they didn’t want you to. Yeah.

Sarah Cabral (42:24)
When I went to teach my second class at my old high school is when I met her. So she was a student there. And I knew she was special. And I was like, all right, this girl’s going to go places in this industry. So then she like randomly DM’d me and was like, hey, Sarah, like, can I come shadow you someday? And I was like, of course. So she came and shadowed me. And that’s how we became friends. And here we are. I’m working in her salon now, which is crazy. Yeah, like all these like crazy little connections have happened.

Liam Shea (42:27)
Okay.

Amazing.

Yeah.

That’s so cool.

It’s amazing when you spot it. The first time you see it in a person, you’re like, whoa, that’s a, there’s like a level of hustle. There’s a, like a tenacity and almost like, I mean, not everyone’s like this, but almost a blind ignorance to how difficult things are. Like it doesn’t occur to them.

Sarah Cabral (42:58)
Yeah, I knew I can spot somebody special. I knew it.

Yeah.

Liam Shea (43:17)
Well, you can’t do that. That’s too hard. People don’t do that. They just do things. And wow, OK, you’re just doing a thing. Good for you. Yeah.

Sarah Cabral (43:19)
Exactly.

Exactly.

You just tell them somebody’s a natural and you’re like, all right, they’re going to like do really well. So like long story short, like we opened this salon together and we all like love teaching. We’re all in the BTC team together. We’re kind of very, very, very lucky because we really respect each other. There’s no drama. Like we’re very, very blessed to all three be together. Yeah, exactly. ⁓ Yeah.

Liam Shea (43:34)
Awesome.

Yeah, you’re all professionals running a professional career trying to make a living off of it, which is rare.

Most people leave and most people don’t make money doing this, unfortunately. And they don’t, they don’t tell you either when you start. mean, maybe, maybe they did when you started, but I found you would, you would tend to get told how much you could make.

Sarah Cabral (43:54)
Yeah, it’s a lot of hustle.

Liam Shea (44:05)
but no one would ever tell you what you’ll probably make. They’ll be like, you could make, you could charge a thousand dollars a haircut. And they don’t be like, but you’ll probably make $22,000 a year. yeah. Yes.

Sarah Cabral (44:05)
Yeah, like how? Not like your partner.

Yeah.

I made no money for like a lot of my career, honestly.

I’m finally like the past few years, like you know what it is, like obviously like Ballyage helped blow up my business. Instagram getting paid through like other means like collaborations and teaching. So ⁓ I mean, there are ways to make good money in this industry, but you can’t expect it right out of school.

Liam Shea (44:34)
Yes. Yeah.

No. And it’s rare, it’s even more rare that it’ll come from just doing hair. For me, it’s probably really only the last 10 years. It required a shift from me. I had to sort of shift my perspective and look at it a different way, get comfortable with charging actual money.

Sarah Cabral (44:44)
because I made no money for like 10 years.

Exactly. So true.

Liam Shea (45:07)
and not having prices that were 10 % higher than when I did my apprenticeship. Do you know what I mean? And like, still meet people. ⁓ Well, Brittany, my coworker that rents my chair over there, they got out of hair school. ⁓ And I’ve done a podcast with them and talking about how they grew their business. They’re like the hustler of hustlers. They made it happen so fast. ⁓ But when I first heard that they had done hair school, ⁓ I heard they were like,

Sarah Cabral (45:17)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Liam Shea (45:36)
doing haircuts out of their kitchen for $15. And I contacted them. I’m like, please don’t do that. When I did my apprenticeship in the late 90s, it was, you know, $30 and $40 for haircuts. Don’t charge less or the same as an apprentice from 45 years ago. You can’t do that. It has to be higher. And I get wanting to not rip people off or wanting to be able to have people afford to come in. But yeah, pricing properly and then just…

Sarah Cabral (45:38)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, that’s crazy.

Liam Shea (46:05)
you know, specializing in things, all that stuff. Yeah. Did you find as you stepped further into not just as you stepped further into education and realizing you specialize that you were able to make money off doing hair as well?

Sarah Cabral (46:07)
Exactly.

Yes, definitely. So obviously over the years, I mean, like you said, it’s hard, like especially working for yourself. You like go up 10, maybe five to $10 a year. People complain. But like knowing your worth, I know this is like the cliche, know your worth, but definitely supply and demand. If somebody, if I’m like booking, if you’re like filled with a certain service and you’re known for it, you deserve to be charging more for that.

Liam Shea (46:33)
Yes.

Yeah.

Sarah Cabral (46:49)
And

obviously you can really break down the math of what your overhead is. And have salon scale as ways to see how much you’re spending in product. There’s a lot of ways to do it, but I’m comfortable with my prices today. I think we should always keep going up every year a little bit with inflation and everything. Obviously we have to.

Liam Shea (47:07)
Well, yes.

Yeah. I know, because if you don’t, and this is what I see when I see like labor movements asking for money and people like that’s too much. Like that doesn’t even cover inflation. That’s actually making less money. Like if you’re not raising your your wage every year, you are making less money every year. I get that the numbers are the same, but that’s not how this game works. One of the things I found.

Sarah Cabral (47:19)
Exactly. Yeah.

You’re like losing money. Exactly.

No, because life is more expensive every year.

Liam Shea (47:35)
that was a big shift for me when I start figured out how to make a not horrifying living off of this but but actually like getting paid was ⁓ I got more comfortable with numbers which was not a thing but I didn’t do well in school math was not my strong suit but I but I decided actually start doing my own business taxes and and by doing that I

Sarah Cabral (47:48)
Hmm.

Same.

Liam Shea (48:00)
realized I had the numbers to be able to tell me exactly what my job cost me per hour. Like here’s all my expenses. Yeah. And so like if my job costs me $50 an hour and I’m charging $60 an hour on average, that’s dumb. That’s not why would I want to make below minimum wage or and especially when you’re I mean what that was 10 years ago. So I was over 15 years into it. So I’m like, you can’t be making

Sarah Cabral (48:06)
Yeah, I tried doing that once. Breaking it down. Yeah.

Yeah, you’re making town box.

Liam Shea (48:30)
$16 an hour 15 years into a specialized career. That’s ridiculous

Sarah Cabral (48:35)
Exactly.

But I think that’s, I don’t know why hairstylists in general have struggled with like the pricing thing, but like people will pay boat, give me some Botox, it takes two seconds injection for $400 as nobody complains. But people still complain about our prices. I don’t understand that.

Liam Shea (48:51)
Yeah,

I mean, yeah, I mean, think it’s been getting better the last five years. Like, I think that the movement that happened at the beginning of COVID when everybody was at home for a few months or a few weeks, depending on where each person was and just had time to share information, like there was this crazy thing that happened briefly when we all figured out how to use Zoom at one point. And there was suddenly classes happening and people were talking and coaches were coming up and all sorts of things were happening.

Sarah Cabral (49:04)
Yeah.

you

It’s perfect.

Liam Shea (49:21)
and a big shift happened there. ⁓ But yeah, understanding your numbers, understanding how to charge. I saw ⁓ Tabitha Coffey one time at a hair show here in Vancouver. And I remember somebody asked her, what do you charge? ⁓ And she says, doesn’t matter what I charge for what you charge. And one of the things she was big about was real estate. And what she meant by that is, where are you?

Sarah Cabral (49:32)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly where

you live.

Liam Shea (49:51)
You

know, if you’re in uptown Manhattan, you’re gonna be charging more at the same point in your career than somebody who’s in a small town, or it doesn’t have to be small, in a town where the square footage of commercial real estate is a tenth the cost. So if your costs, yeah. So you don’t need to be charging $160 for a haircut five years into your career if you’re in a place where…

Sarah Cabral (50:08)
Yeah, that makes so much sense.

Liam Shea (50:19)
chair rentals $600 a month. But if you’re paying, you know, $2,500 for chair rental, yeah, you’re gonna need to do that. Yeah, I know that made a big difference for me. And it sounds like you had similar experiences. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s amazing. Okay, what’s next for you? What’s the next what’s the next thing on? What do want to learn next? What are you going to do next?

Sarah Cabral (50:25)
Exactly.

Yeah, it’s all relative to like where you’re living, cost of living.

Liam Shea (50:45)
What’s, do you have any classes coming up that you’re teaching or anything you’re excited about?

Sarah Cabral (50:48)
Yeah, have me and um,

me and Steph, Viviz and Balayage are teaching a class together in November. We’re teaching, um, we’re going to show on two different foiling techniques at the same time with like two different models. Um, it’s like a look and learn class. I’m very excited about that. Our tickets are for sale right now. Buy them people. The link is in my bio on my Instagram. Sarah, it’s Sarah Styles.

Liam Shea (50:54)
Okay.

yeah i love it where would people buy the tickets where do they find the tickets okay what is your instagram handle

okay love it i’m sure we’ll have that connected to descriptions and whatnot but ⁓ i figured i would ask ⁓ how many classes do you find you do per year these days give or take i’m

Sarah Cabral (51:19)
Thank you.

⁓ probably like

my goal would be amazing if I could do like once a month, but I’d probably say like maybe half of that six depending. It is a lot. It’s like a lot goes into classes. Just like the whole preparation, like getting all the swag bag stuff. I have to email all the brands to get sponsors. just a lot. So exactly. But I would love to teach. mean, I just went to another salon, so I’m

Liam Shea (51:37)
Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah Cabral (51:55)
so open to like traveling to other salons in my area, also to see.

Liam Shea (51:59)
I was just gonna

ask I mean I’m sure if people paid you you’d be open to traveling to salons literally anywhere yes that’s right yes I accept trips to warm places in the colder months I’m even willing to discount my cost if you pay for my flight and hotel ⁓ yeah okay great I love it well thanks a lot for doing this I really appreciate it yeah I will probably check in with you down the road to see

Sarah Cabral (52:02)
Yeah, I know. ⁓ please invite me to Florida.

Exactly, in the winter. There you go.

Thanks for having me.

Liam Shea (52:28)
If classes have expanded, I’m hoping that I look this time next year and you’re teaching a class every month. yeah, ⁓ yeah, this is really fun. If there’s, is there anything else you wanna tell folks or ask folks or throw out there or are we good?

Sarah Cabral (52:35)
Thank you, Anna.

Yeah, thanks for having me. I hope I encourage some new hairstyles out there. You can start from your trade school and really do anything with this career. So just don’t give up and just be passionate about what you do because it really makes a big difference. That’s it. You’re welcome. Thank you.

Liam Shea (52:56)
Yeah.

love it yeah thank you appreciate it all right take care

When I sat down with Rhino Gaudet, I knew we were in for a good conversation—but I didn’t realize just how much ground we’d cover, from rock-star dreams and livestock show floors to closing a salon and falling back in love with the basics of our craft.

Rhino’s story starts in Calgary and lands on the West Coast, where he moved in the mid-90s “to get away from the snow.” He didn’t come for hair—he came for the weather. Hair came later, at 26, after a couple of university degrees and a desire to be a platform artist. He laughs about it now: he didn’t actually know if he liked doing hair yet—he just wanted weird hair, cool clothes, and a stage.

What hooked him wasn’t the spotlight. It was the work.

From “rock star” dreams to commercial craft

Today, Rhino describes himself as a “commercial hairdresser” working independently in a seven-chair salon where everyone is 40+. Half his business is colour, and he has a soft spot for fixing broken colour and solving tricky technical problems.

“I don’t think of myself as artistic the way I used to,” he told me. “I’m more technical—but there’s creativity in that too.”

That technical creativity shows up in how he approaches a haircut: like a puzzle. Instead of seeing some grand Michelangelo-style vision in the hair, he’s thinking through steps, sequences, and alternatives—sometimes skipping step two and coming back to it later if that’s what the head of hair needs.

One of my favourite moments was when he told a story about a co-worker who used to say, “The first side I cut is my creative side; the second side is my ‘oh no’ side,” because he couldn’t remember what he did the first time. That was Rhino’s cue to lean into repeatable systems: step one/step one, step two/step two—so the art is supported by structure.

Onstage, backstage, and in the classroom

Rhino did get his platform moment—but it started in a very un-glam way. His first show? He was the AV guy because there was no budget. The venue? A livestock show barn in Regina, complete with flies and horse manure on the floor.

From there, he moved into education, working shows with legends like Chris Barron and Sam Villa, travelling across Canada, into the U.S., and even Taiwan. In the process, he realized something important: he preferred being a classroom educator to being a “rock star.” One-to-one and small groups, where he could really teach and connect, felt more satisfying than big-stage performance.

That theme—connection over ego—runs through his whole career.

Opening, closing, and redefining “success”

Rhino owned his own salon, Licrish, in downtown Victoria. He built it from a team of one to a team of eight over eight years. Later, he’d go on to own salons for close to 20 years total. Opening his first salon was a huge turning point: “It opened my eyes to everything I didn’t know about running a business.”

Closing was just as big.

When his lease came up in 2023, he chose not to renew. At first, it felt like failure. Over time, he realized it wasn’t. “It’s just a business—it’s not who you are,” he said. Closing wasn’t losing; staying in something that’s nose-diving, just because you’re afraid to let go, is often the bigger mistake.

Now, working independently, he’s using all that experience—minus the overhead and extra stress.

Retail, rebooking, and reframing “sales”

When I asked what he wishes he’d known earlier, Rhino didn’t hesitate: retail and rebooking are not greed—they’re service.

He used to resist recommending products and pushing pre-booking because it felt like “selling.” Now he sees it differently. Recommending a shampoo or bond builder is about protecting the work you’ve done and helping clients keep their hair looking and feeling great between visits. Booking the next appointment isn’t a hustle—it’s helping someone avoid bad hair days.

He also pointed out that he doesn’t earn commission on retail, and he still recommends it—because clients need good stuff and clear guidance.

Let your favourite clients help you grow

One of Rhino’s most practical business tips is beautifully simple: ask your long-time clients for help.

These are the people who’ve been with you 10, 15, 20 years. They already love you. Ask them for Google reviews, a short testimonial, or to send their friends. “They’ve already drunk the Kool-Aid,” he joked. “You might as well ask.”

But there’s strategy in it too: don’t ask difficult clients to send you their difficult friends. We tend to hang out with people like us, so if you want more dream clients, ask your dream clients to spread the word.

Mentors, education, and getting back into real classrooms

Rhino’s had both business coaches and hair mentors. He credits Summit Salon Systems with giving him a “business plan in a box” and raves about working with icons like Sam Villa and Chris Barron—Sam for his gift of explaining things in multiple ways until it clicks, Chris for his long-term creativity and passion. He also shouted out Vancouver educator Sarah Burke (@blacktoblonde) for her fresh, modern eye.

But the part that really stuck with me was his take on education in 2025 and beyond.

Online education, he says, is the gravy, not the meal. It’s amazing to have so much content at our fingertips—but you don’t get called out on your mistakes watching a video. Hands-on classes give you a safe place to mess up, get feedback, and grow. His mentor once challenged him to take two “big” in-person classes a year—full, one- or two-day immersions—and he passes that challenge on to other stylists now.

Why he runs on salonMonster

We also chatted about how he runs his business today. Rhino works in a salon where some of the team still use pen and paper, but he runs his column entirely on salonMonster.

The biggest win for him? Client communication and reminders. “I’m a terrible receptionist,” he laughed. If he accidentally books someone at 1:30 instead of 1:00, the confirmation catches it. Automated reminders mean his clients don’t forget, and he sees far fewer no-shows than his paper-based teammates.

He loves that he can access everything remotely, doesn’t have to do mental math at the end of the day, and can hand clean, organized reports to his accountant. Before SalonMonster, his software didn’t have texting or remote access; when he went independent, he knew he needed something that could do more of the heavy lifting. Knowing SalonMonster was local, he didn’t even shop around.

His advice to stylists considering us? Don’t overthink it. Try it for a month or two, see how it supports you, and let the results speak.

“We share what we know.”

If I had to sum up my chat with Rhino, it’s this: he came into hair to be “cool,” with weird hair and rock-star dreams, and stayed for the relationships, the puzzle-solving, and the chance to share what he’s learned—with clients, with fellow stylists, and with the next generation.

From opening and closing a salon, to teaching on manure-covered show floors, to rebuilding colour and rebuilding confidence, his journey is packed with real-world lessons on growth, humility, and redefining success on your own terms.

If you’re a stylist—especially if you’re independent or thinking about it—you’ll get a ton out of hearing Rhino tell these stories in his own words. Hit play on the interview, settle in with a coffee, and come hang out with us for the full conversation.

You can find Rhino at:

https://www.instagram.com/rhinogaudet/?hl=en

Transcript

Stephen Parslow (00:00)
interviews. I’m like, I’ve never had a job interview. That’s the weird thing, right? Like I’m now at this point where I’ve worked for myself for 25 years and it’s like, don’t know what that would be like. Yeah. I have no idea. So with that in mind, please tell me a little bit about yourself. All right. Well, should I look in the camera? No, just be whatever is comfortable for you. I was, I’m from Calgary.

I’ve lived on the coast now since about 94, so about 30 years. I moved here after university. I love the city. like to ride motorcycles. I like to ride bicycles. I’m a bit of a city guy, but not completely, but yeah, I love living here. Was it hair that brought you out here? No, originally it was weather. It’s time to get away from the snow and move away from the snow. And then I got into hair after I moved here. Yeah, I actually came here from Calgary as well.

It’s a nice move out here. like Calgary still, but I like the memories of Calgary. Totally. And so how did you get started in hairdressing? I had a good friend of mine who was in the business and he was dabbling in being a guest artist. His mentor was a guest artist.

I wanted to be a rock star and my first idea was I wanted to be a platform artist. I had no idea whether I liked hair or not but I wanted to have weird hair and stand in front of people and teach. Little did I know I would end up really liking the hair part of it and the service part of it more but yeah that’s how I originally got into it. That’s really cool. It’s so interesting what attracts people and then the number of people I’ve heard say that once they really get into it it just this passion holds.

I had no idea what being a hairdresser meant, but what it ended up being. What sort of age were you when you started? I would have been about 26 when I got into it. So little, I felt like I was a late bloomer, but in retrospect maybe not. What were you doing before that? High school, then into university. So I got a couple degrees under my belt before I got into hairdressing and then got into hairdressing. That’s really cool.

So tell me bit about your business. My business? Well I work independently in a salon of seven. Most of us are 40, well we’re all 40 plus. The majority are over 50. And I’m a commercial hairdresser. That’s another part I didn’t realize that I would enjoy the commercial work. Do a lot of retouches.

And I would say I do about half my business is colour. yeah. And I like fixing broken colours. I’ve realised like the technical side of it. I don’t think of myself as artistic in the real, in the way that I used to think of artisticness. I think of myself as more technical, which has its creative elements to it as well.

That’s really cool. Did you end up going and trying some platform work as well? I’ve had a lot of good luck doing that. was able to, my first time doing anything with a show, I was the AV guy. Yep. And because there was no budget for an AV guy and we worked a show, it would have been in Vancouver, once with Chris Barron and once with Sam Via.

the two best in the industry. then from that point I just sort of jumped in and became an educator and got to do some platform work. Been lucky all across Canada, I’ve been to Taiwan and a bit of the US. So yeah, I was able to try some of the things that I wanted to try, which is really That’s really cool. ⁓ it’s amazing to get out there and to get to explore like that. Funny part about it is like I say, I enjoyed teaching, but I liked it more.

When I realized I was a classroom teacher, I like a little bit closer one -on -one with people as opposed to the rock star side of it. I found if I was on stage, I was trying to teach too much, which is kind of contrary to what they want. So yeah. That’s really cool. And so when and why did you go independent? I went independent, I would say, just shy of a year ago.

And I’d owned a salon for combined probably about 20 plus years, or close to 20 years, I guess. And we closed our salon in 2023, and it just made sense. I had the skills, I had the knowledge, I had the background in helping coach young stylists after I was coached by my mentors. And I just thought it would be a good transition.

to just take care of myself. And how have you found it now that you’ve made that transition? It’s been good. It’s been good. The adjustments haven’t really affected me. For instance, we don’t get walk -in traffic. But working downtown, we haven’t had much walk -in traffic for the last few years anyway. So some of those things weren’t too difficult. Yeah, and just the reporting and taking care of, you know…

taxation and stuff like that were things I already did so it’s fairly straightforward for me anyway. Maybe just less of a burden of it than you used to have? Yeah, I’m not writing checks. Or as many checks. Just hopefully to yourself. Yeah, exactly. So what’s one thing you wish you’d known before you first started in hair? That recommending a shampoo or a styling product to my client.

not sales. It’s full service. I don’t want to sell things. Well, that’s not the way I think of it now. I’m not selling anything. I don’t even get commission off of what I sell, but I’m still selling because people need good stuff. I couldn’t agree more. Yeah. It really is. It’s part of helping your client protect and continue that work you’ve done in this salon. And I also think too, it’s just a recommendation.

If it becomes sales, if I’m really heavy handed, I just want the views to be good If you, again, treat it like education. completely. That’s really cool to hear. Is it something we come across a lot? Yeah. People’s fear over selling. Yeah, completely. And I think the other was a lot of the numbers that I was told growing up in hairdressing that were important, things like pre -booking and claim attention and those things.

that I thought were my boss’s greed, that’s not, that’s again, just understanding like how to keep your clients, you know, and me booking their next appointment just means I’m helping them out, you know, so they don’t have a bad hair day, that kind of stuff. Yeah.

Yeah, it is running a business too. I mean, you’re an artist, a technician and a business owner all wrapped in one package. And we don’t get that education on that business side as much. No, yeah. And like I say, I was lucky because I worked with business partners and business coaches and things. Yeah, it would have been a little bit steeper of a learning curve, I think, if I hadn’t have. But I still think that those resources are out there for us to learn from. Yeah, that’s really cool.

And so what’s one or two tips that helped you manage and grow your business throughout your career? I think using not being afraid to ask my clients for help. If those people who’ve been coming to me for 15, 20 years, they already like me, they already like what I do and asking them for some help with things like today’s Google reviews or

getting a testimonial from them that I can post or even just getting them to send their friends and things like that. That was a big one is to use that as a resource to just tell the people, just tell anybody that needs their hair done. Yeah. That’s brilliant. Cause it is a network, isn’t it? Yeah, it is. And they’ve already drank the Kool -Aid. They already like you. So, you you might as well ask for help. And a friend’s going to trust their friends review so much more than any ad or any. But on that same note.

don’t ask my difficult clients to send me their difficult friends. Because I find we tend to associate with like minded people. So I ask my favourite clients to send me their friends. There’s an element of curation and a good client list isn’t there? Yeah, exactly. That’s good. Have you ever had a mentor or a coach? Yeah, I have. I’ve had a couple coaches. I’ve had business coaches that I’ve met along the way that I’ve

not necessarily been hairstylists anymore, but they’ve run successful businesses. And I think when I my own salon outright, I had a coach and she was great because she didn’t listen to my BS and she called me on things because she didn’t have a vested interest in my business the same as I did. But she was able to say, you said you were going to do this. Did you do it? So the business coach was a great reward. And then I have, I’ve had.

the best in the business as a personal mentor. We’ve sort of lost track of one another because I’m no longer working for the same brand as I did. But Sammy, I got to work with Sammy like right from the beginning. I wasn’t even on the floor yet. And then right up to being able to stand beside him and doing platform work with him. So was pretty cool. So yeah, that’s incredible. a lot from that guy. Yeah, that’s been phenomenal to have that. those

Friendships as well as mentorships are just so powerful. And for business coach, was that something you hired a formal business coach or was that more just someone that you knew? I worked in the past in a couple salons through Redken, a company or a brand called Summit Salon Systems. The Summit System. Summit is, I kind of call it a business plan in a box.

And they have done a lot of the thinking for salon owners. And that way you can take it and just adjust it a little bit to yours. And a lot of that material has really, really helped me and I still use it today. It’s terrific. Yeah. that’s really, that’s a good one to know. I’ve definitely heard some good stuff about what they It’s really in depth. Yeah. there’s a lot of good stuff. And so for you, what’s your favorite thing about being a hairstylist?

It’s the relationships. Yeah, completely. Relationships with my suppliers. Over the years, you get to be friends with them, especially for the same people. But your clients become coaches, friends. They’ve also become my cooking instructors and gardening instructors. The other day, I having a hard time with a bunch of negativity in my…

client was a counselor so she gave me a little bit of on the fly so I get so much value from the people I work with and just they know stuff I don’t know I know stuff they don’t know and we just share so yeah I’d say relationships completely. Absolutely and it is the amazingly unique thing about being a hairstylist is you get to work with this cross -section of our population with so many different skill sets and so many different knowledge. Yeah very much so.

That’s really cool. And that sounds like it wasn’t an area that at the beginning you thought would really be a No, that is not. I got into hairdressing because I wanted to be cool. I wanted to have weird hair and dress weird and be a rock star. And then I lost my hair and I dressed more conservatively and I worked one on one with clients, but I couldn’t be happier. That’s so cool. It’s amazing where these journeys take us. Completely.

And so for you, I think you’ve alluded a little bit to this before, but what were some of the key turning points in your career? I think one of the key points would have been my first hair show. That I was the person doing some teaching. That was a big one. I remember it so well. was in Regina, Saskatchewan. Yeah. And the location doubled as a livestock

show barn. So there were flies and horse manure all over the place. But yeah, that was a turning point, unrelated to the location, but just being able to do that. So that was the first one. And then I’d say the next two would have been when I opened my own salon. That was a turning point. That opened my eyes a lot to everything I didn’t know about how to run a salon. And was that art here? No, the first salon I opened was called Licrish.

Yes. it was downtown Victoria. And it was a really good experience. We were open for eight years and saw it start with a team of one and grow to a team of eight. And yeah, that was a huge impact on me. I’d say the next would be closing the same salon. Yeah. Realizing that times have changed.

for me personally in my business, my lease was due and just deciding that it was a good idea to close it and to learn that I didn’t really fail, although I felt like it as I was closing. But yeah, opening and closing for different reasons were both big things. Yeah, and I think we need to generally talk more about the fact that closing something isn’t a failure. We move through different phases in our life and there are different things that are appropriate at different times.

Yeah, there’s always like a scale and things add on one side and move on the other and you just have to adjust and it’s just a business. It’s not who you are. Yeah. It’s so important for everyone to understand and hard to internalize. Yeah, it took me a year or two to realize, it took me longer than that to realize that it was okay and it was actually a positive. Yeah. Good on you. Yeah. Yeah. That’s really cool because that is, yeah, that’s something I think we could all

share a lot more of and that would help a lot of people. You don’t win every race. And closing isn’t losing. That’s the other bit. Yeah. Staying in something that is taking a nose dive, that’s probably a bigger mistake than closing. Exactly. Because there’s always opportunity cost in everything in this as well. Yeah, I agree. That’s really cool. Thanks for sharing that. So do you have any favorite tools or treatments that you like to use? Yeah.

I don’t use it enough, but I love my straight razor. I love the fact that I have to hold it different. I love the fact that it can cut me. I love the fact that I respect it. It’s a real free -form tool as opposed to my shears, which are a little more technical. yeah, I am thinking of that. I think I need to pick that up a bit more often.

But that’s one of my tools that I love the most. And in terms of treatments I love the most, I’m using a product that’s called MMC. And it’s a bond rebuilder from Lodeo Citi. And yeah, I think the bond rebuilders that we have right now have been game changers because we can do great work and have great care afterwards, within reason.

There’s been a lot of progress in that area. has and I’m anticipating more over the years, the next few years because we’ve seen those changes a little bit since they were introduced a few years ago. So from between the start of your career and now you really notice the difference in terms of what’s available for that? The products have just made my life so much easier. Color and the tech products for the most part I don’t have to work as hard and it takes a bunch of the guessing out of it.

And the hair feels better. That’s cool. And that’s a LaBiosteq product? That’s a LaBiosteq product. Wonderful. And so for you when you’re at work, how do you balance creativity with meeting client expectations? Yeah, I feel my creativity comes from trying to solve their problems. So when I look at a head of hair, don’t all of a sudden think like what I imagined.

Michelangelo thought, see a finished product that will look amazing. That’s not who I am or my skills. I look at it as being a puzzle and there are multiple ways to put that puzzle together. So I could go step one, two, three, but if I’m feeling creative, I might skip step two and go back to it after I’ve done step three. So that’s mostly how I work is I try to make them like their hair and pick out.

what’s going to make that happen for them as opposed to creating a work of art just off of the campus. I wish I had that other side of creativity as a skill. Maybe I will as time goes on, but I look at my creativity as being technical as opposed to being artistic. And that’s the amazing thing when you have that technical foundation, it frees you up to be artistic too. And there is that whole technical artistry side. I remember.

I remember one of my coworkers talking about the first side of the haircut he cuts as his creative side. And then the second side of it as being, no side. Because he said he had to remember, he was so creative, he couldn’t remember what he did on side one to get to side two. And that was the eye opener of like, okay, step one, step one, step two, step two, so that way I can.

make them look the same on both sides. mean asymmetry’s got its moments. Yeah, completely. There’s asymmetry and then there’s just crooked. ⁓ that’s really cool. And so we really love having you on the Salon Monster platform. Obviously, I was sort of wondering what for you are the most beneficial features or working with Salon Monster? Salon Monster, number one is the interface with my clients.

They’re getting reminders of when they book it and they’re also getting reminders of when their appointments are coming. It also helps me because I’m a terrible receptionist. So if they say, can I come at one and I accidentally put 130, they usually catch it, you know, with that. But yeah, that’s the biggest one is that being able to communicate with them and not have to do it on my own. I work with a team that still likes to use pen and paper.

and I have way fewer no -shows than they do. And it’s just because my clients aren’t forgetting because they’re getting the reminders. That’s wonderful to hear. Yeah. I don’t have to do any math. It does it all for me. We didn’t get into hair to do math. Yeah, no, we didn’t. Although I can add, I much prefer having all my reports giving me all the numbers that I need when I pass those on to my accountant, then they can take care of it. it doesn’t do it all, but it…

makes it nice and organized so that when somebody needs to set it up, they can. Perfect. How would you compare running your business now before you started using Slum Monster?

Well, before I started using SalonMonster, I was using more traditional software. And the software that we were using had, it great software, but it didn’t have the texting features. We couldn’t access it remotely. So that was the biggest one. I haven’t worked independently without SalonMonster. I knew before I even went independent that I needed a leica. I needed some software that would do some of those things because I just didn’t want to spend the time.

over and above cutting hair. So yeah, that really, really helped. And then knowing that it’s a local brand, I didn’t even look at another brand, which was great because it’s been great for me. Well, thanks. We so love getting to have the opportunity to work with you. And what would you say to someone considering signing up for Salon Monster? I would say don’t even think twice about it. I think the support is there.

Personally, I haven’t needed too much of that support because it’s fairly straightforward. memory serves me correctly, there are some trial times where you can, you know, get your fingers in and start using it and things. And yeah, it’s great. know, sign up for a month or two, give it a shot, but you won’t be disappointed because it does everything you need it to. Thanks. Yeah. And yeah, that was kind of what I had for questions. Were there any other things that you were interested in chatting about or?

Anything you’d like to share with up -and -coming stylists? I think, well with up -and -coming stylists, right now it’s amazing. We have so much online education out there and you know can look at classes ongoing and keep up to date. But I challenge us all to go to some classes. I think the online education is the gravy, but we need the meat and potatoes because you’re not getting called out.

on your mistakes when you’re doing it just watching online. And when you do it on a mannequin or a model or whatever the classes you’re going to hands on, you get to make some errors in a safe place. Whereas when you do online education, I don’t see those errors don’t happen or we get nervous, you know, to try these things on clients. So COVID is passed or at least the pandemic era of COVID is passed and it’s time to get into some of the classrooms.

and find, you know, it doesn’t have to be the brand you use. Like you just get into a class because bleach is bleach. Things don’t change that much. So find some education. That’s the big one. That’s terrific. Yeah. There’s something completely different about a hands -on applied situation where you’re getting that one -on -one feedback. It’s just so different. And yeah, it’s worth pushing ourselves that little bit. Get out of our comfort zone of it. I think my mentor challenged me a few years back to two.

a year, two big ones. That’s a nice idea. So when I say a big one, that’s a one to two day immersed, you where you’re actually investing some time into it. And do you have any educators that you particularly love or would like to recommend to people? Yeah, I’m a big fan of her name is Sarah Burke.

She’s a young stylist out of Vancouver, black to blonde. And I got to work with her during my time educating with reviews to teeth. And she’s young and vibrant and still on the cutting edge. Yeah, she’s great because she’s looking at everything through a very today set of eyes. Samvia, I’ve never in my life met somebody who is so gifted in explaining things as Sammy.

If you don’t understand it, he doesn’t just say it louder. He says it a different way and he’ll find a way to make it work for you. And then third is Papa Bear, Mr. Chris Barron. Chris is from Victoria and I’m good friends with his son too, which is super lucky to have those, I consider them friends. his, I wouldn’t say Sammy is so amazing at explaining, whereas Chris is

just so creative. The work he does just blows my mind. Like how did you think of that? And the fact that he’s been so passionate for so many years. Yeah, those are my top three right now. Those are some terrific recommendations. Thank you so much. Wonderful. Well, thanks so much for taking the time to chat with us today. you’re welcome. appreciate it. Thanks for chatting.