Redken Business: Survive and Thrive

[Instrumental music] Wish I would have heard this ten years ago. There's a revolution going on. At the end of the day, your greatest asset are your service providers. [Instrumental music] Hi, welcome to the 360 view. I'm Peter Mahoney, and I'm here today with my friends and colleagues, Kristi Valenzuela and Michael Cole. Our topic today is How to Survive and Thrive Through a Difficult Economy. I don't know about you guys, but as I'm traveling out in the world these days, I'm having constant rapport with salon owners saying to me, "You know, there just doesn't seem to be any money any more. My cash flow's in trouble. I'm not generating the number of new clients I used to and my stylists are constantly complaining that they're not growing." Michael, I know you've been out in the world a lot these days. What are you hearing about this situation? You know, when we were having this conversation before, like getting ready for this one, when we were talking about the 80-20 rule, because that's, the three of us now are kind of coming from that place, and I think that's a wonderful place to start this conversation. Right? That when you go into the salon, you've got 80 percent of the staff, the stylists, surviving on 20 percent of the money or the clients coming in, and then there's that few, that 20 percent, the top 20 that seem to be thriving. They were thriving as we came into the recession, they're thriving now and they'll continue to thrive. And when we look at, you know, the top 20, bottom 80, you know, we were talking about this, we see three characteristics. One, that they're well-trained. The other, that they're keenly aware of what's going on. They're keenly aware of their money, they're keenly aware of the clients they're serving, they're keenly aware of themself. And they're highly skilled. They have the right ideas, they take action on those ideas on a daily basis, they've gotten skillful. So they just seem to be kind of cruising through all these turbulent times in spite of everybody else being upside down. What, I mean, what's your spin? Well, it's interesting, Michael, because what you just said is the top 20, they're still fine, right? And the bottom 80, they're just, they're drowning faster, I think. And you know, the phones have been ringing off the hook about salon owners just wondering, "How can I bring more money? I used to have more money at the bottom line and I don't know what I'm doing differently." But one thing that we know that's happening right now is clients are spreading out their appointments due to their checkbook, due to their awareness and you know, there's more holes in the appointment books now. And so, one of the things that I focus on for the industry is the front desk. And it's an exciting place to focus right now, because owners are wide open to listening to new ideas and to really changing the universe at the front desk. And the probably the biggest thing, Peter, is that we're going from being receptionist-driven to going to being sales-driven and understanding what has to happen behind that. So, we're finding new money with the clients that we already have. Thousands of dollars more every single month in salons with the clients we already have through developing systems of sales through the front desk. So that's really exciting. And we're finding that, you know, there's hope out there. There's hope for, you know, new profitability that we've never seen before. Well, that's awesome, Kristi. You know, from my perspective as a salon owner, I mean, it's interesting because people often ask me, "How do you define success?" And I think, you know, this economy is really crystalizing that definition. And we try to look at it and say to ourselves, if we're going to be successful as salon owners, we need to do three things well. Number one, we need to provide an environment for our service providers to grow and prosper. Number two, we need to be able to create a memorable experience for our customers. So we need to be able to get more customers and then we need to figure out how to hold on to them. And last but not least, we need to be able to manage the money. We need to have great systems so that we're profitable. And so to me, that really sets a context and separates the top 20 percent of salons, to use your language, Michael, from the bottom 80. So for the perspective of the viewer, if we were to focus on the money part of it first and say, okay, specifically what do we do - as it relates to our stylists, our front desk and salon owners, what do we do, first of all, to improve our cash flow so that we can not only survive through this recession but actually thrive? So Michael, from a stylist's point of view, what would we tell our listeners? How do we help them? Well, what came to my mind as I was hearing you kind of set up this question was getting much more intentional with what I'm going to be doing with clients coming my way. We've had this little tool we've been hanging out with forever, you know, we call it a jump journal. Basically, it's a little book that people use to track, they've been using it to track their new client's referral, pre-books. I mean, you guys know what I'm talking about there, right? And we're, we're not using that piece or any other piece in that way anymore. We're getting much, much more conscious of what's coming at us. I want to see what's coming at me today, if I'm a stylist. How many clients do I have coming at me today? And not only today but tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. As a matter of fact, I want to look at what's coming at me this week, and if I really want to get visionary, I'll take a look into next week. And I'm going to start asking myself some questions. First of all, I'm going to start getting conscious about who, who are these people? Are they non-requests, are they referrals, are they repeat clients? If it's a repeat client, have they been hanging out with me forever or is it their second and third visit? And I'm going to start asking myself other questions like what services have I been performing on them? What service, services haven't I been performing on them? How can I begin to bring up opportunities to try new services? And that's something, you know, hairdressers have never done before. And not only am I going to be thinking about that as a stylist, I'm going to have that conversation with my manager, the owner, my coach or maybe another stylist, top 20 that gets it. Where now it's I'm predicting, I'm creating a better future by planning it today. So that's my answer. What, what are your...? Well, you know, I'm just going to kind of keep going with your jump journal and being a planner. I love taking a look. So many people use that journal, which is kind of like the Franklin Planner for stylists, right? And have been tracking their past with it, instead of planning their future. And I would just like to take that one step further, since we're on that topic, and say bring it up to the front desk. Show the front desk what you're planning, so that the front desk can help you understand how to best work your day, if you have openings and somebody calls up and needs to get in. I want to have that conversation before you even start your day so that I can help you as a front desk support person, I'm here to support and grow your business. I think that if you're weak in closing the sale of retail, if you tell me that, I've got your back at the front. But to that point, what we are doing now in the salon is we're realizing that we can drive additional sales and additional revenue for the salon through the front desk, but we have to have the right systems to bring people in. So instead of hiring receptionists, we're going to be hiring salespeople. We're going to take our existing receptionist team and turn them into salespeople with systems and structure, with plans of teaching them scripting to sell, through offerings to guests. Scripting to be able to bring up gift cards and things like that like we've never done before, not just at Mother's Day, but all year long for birthdays and, and special occasions and things like that. So we have a sales team at the front desk, but we need to get better at hiring, we need to get better at training, we need to get better at team synergy to get everyone on the same page of what we're all doing in the salon. Well, you know there's an old saying, "The best way to predict the future is to create it." And what I hear both of you saying is exactly that, is instead of doing what the bottom 80 do, which is just sitting around complaining, justifying, denying both the economy that we're currently living in, let's get proactive and say, "what can we do about it?" So stylists, what can we do to get on the front end of this? At the front desk, what can we do to be more proactive? And the same thing is true for the salon owner. I mean, a lot of salon owners out there expect their stylist to be proactive, but they're not proactive. You know, they don't have a plan for their business, they don't have a budget. They're not thinking ahead of how this recession may affect their business. What I see the top 20 percent of salons doing is the complete opposite. I see them planning, looking at their year in advance and saying, what are we going to do in the salon this year? What's affordable to us? You know, can we afford to do this project or should we conserve the cash and pay down our debts? So they're proactively thinking about their business. They're looking at what are the ways I can reduce my credit card charges? They're looking at vacancies in their shopping center and going, "Wow, if there's vacancy here, that means the landlord must be hurting. Now might be a good opportunity for me to go back and renegotiate my lease." And you know, I had a recent example of this in Minnesota, in your hometown, Michael. We worked with a salon for two weeks and we were able to save that salon owner over $100,000 in the next four years, because the landlord was in a position where they needed to be lenient with this salon owner, in terms of their rent. So again, I think the whole message there is, is being proactive in getting in front of this instead of reacting to what's happening in this current economy. I am loving this conversation. I mean, I'm getting goose bumps as I'm listening to you. I'm getting even more goose bumps as I'm talking, because as you know, I love to talk. But the, the idea, I mean, plan, plan, plan, plan. It's almost--and when we're planning, we're not just taking a look at what's coming our way and what we're going to offer. What's coming our way in terms of clients, but I loved your word, "script," "scripting." We are now in what's being called the biggest recession since the Great Depression and it opens us up and creates a willingness in all of us to be open to ideas that we would have blown off before. I'm not going to write down what I'm going to say, I'm not going to... because it's so not me. It's like, shut up, you know what I mean? It's like our assets are on fire here so we, you know, we really need to take action. So if there was an Academy Award for the single greatest idea of what I can do with my downtime, and it sounds like we've got a lot more downtime now, I'm not only going to look at what's coming at me, but I'm going to start writing down what I'm going to say to that person. I'm not just going to think it, I'm going to ink it. I mean, that's so simple, it almost insults our intelligence. You don't need more money to take action on that darn idea. Right. So, if we're going to summarize for the listener out there and we were going to say, what are a couple of ideas we could give the listener about improving cash flow in this economy? Michael, what would you say to our stylists? Rather than waiting to get more clients, let's get more intelligent with doing better things with the clients that we have, planning on what we're going to say and do before they show up, scripting it out. Thinking out loud with somebody else, so that I'm really doing presentations, if you will, for clients sitting in my chair. Do that and it's one of those, you know, 20 percent of my time in that activity's going to get me a 80 percent payoff. What do you say? Well, I think that we need to get really focused on who we're bringing on our team to make sure that we have the right position for the right person. So, even in sight of the interview of bringing somebody onto the front desk, we want to make sure that they're confident in sales, confident in sales, right? So the idea of hiring a receptionist doesn't live in our world anymore. A receptionist would answer the phone, they're nice to people and they're going to take money, but if you ask them to sell, sometimes they, you know, they freak out and they just don't perform and it leads us to disappointment. We used to have a saying in the salon that I came from, "Just go ahead and hire the best smile that shows up in the interview," right? Because they'll make a good front desk person. They have to smile a lot at the front. Well, what we didn't realize is that a lot of psychos smile, right? Or you know, they were probably a nice person until they made a mistake in the book, and then you know, the service provider team became unglued and you know, we ran them out the door. So we had high turnover. So owners, my call to action would be to hire a sales person, put in sales interview questions into that to make sure we have strong people at the front desk. And then second, to bring more money to the bottom line, we need things like um, it's, we have a similar system, the Front Desk Doctor System that offers specific goals to the front desk. So it's similar to your jump journal for stylists. It offers goals inside of gift card sales, additional services, where you need to be at pre-booking, all of those different things for the front desk and puts some goals into motion at the front desk. That's awesome. Thank you, Kristi. What I would say to the salon owner is, you know, to use your language, Michael, "what you can see, you can manage; what you can't see manages you." So get out in front of this recession. In other words, take that financial statement from last year, don't wait until next year to see what happened, take that statement from last year and map out what it's going to look like 12 months from now. In other words, you predict what your P and L statement's going to look like a year before it happens. So that if you can design it on paper to thrive in this economy, then you've got a much better chance at hitting the mark. And then once you do that, it's going to show you where you need to make decisions, where you need to make changes. You need to conserve cash and pay down debt. The less debt you have in this economy, the better. The better you're going to be able to manage your cash and cash flow through this. You need to have efficient systems, inventory systems in place and you need to get really proactive with all of those different cash management strategies. If this is foreign to you, if you feel that your level of financial intelligence isn't there, then you need to go and get help. There's many resources available, especially through our association with Redken or Redken Business Partners, Summit Salon business center, all the people we're involved with, there is a lot of resources out there to help salon owners in that area. So you know what I want to do? I want to start zeroing in on the goose that laid the golden eggs, you know, the clients. So Peter, what do you, what's your spin on how we take better care of clients? Well, three words come to mind for me: retention, re-book and referral. And I think, you know, these concepts or systems have been around for decades in this industry, but I think these principles are probably more relevant today than ever before, because I think that we kind of pay them lip service a lot of times. And I see in a lot of salons, you know, they tell me that they have these programs in place, but they're hit or miss and they're inconsistent. I think in this economy, if you're going to grow clients, you're going to have to be doing these things 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. And so, let's just talk about them briefly. So for example, with retention, what we do in our salons is we give a welcome package to every new guest and we actually track them. We track 'em how many we give out and we track how many come back. And what these welcome packages do is give clients an opportunity to come in and sample other parts of our service. So we may give them a complimentary eyebrow wax. Why? Because we want them to go sit in the treatment room with their skin therapist so that we can get them on a skin routine. And so we're doing that consistently. As far as the re-booking goes, we start training, in our company, we start training our service providers in school to learn how to re-book. Why? Because we know that a client that re-books comes into the salon probably two times a year more often than if they don't. So what that means to the service provider is additional revenue with no extra clients. The third thing we do is a referral program. And what we're doing now is we're being more aggressive than ever in terms of the offering. So you know, years ago, you could get away with offering 10 percent. You know, "Michael, here's three of my cards, send me in your friends." Now we're saying no. You know, "Michael, here's a referral card. If you give it to Kristi and she comes in to see me, we'll give Kristi $20 off her service. And oh, by the way, when you come back next time, Michael, we'll give you $20 off as well." So, we're having to be much more aggressive to get traction with those. But if we do, we're seeing an opportunity to steal market share from our competitors. What about you? Well, you know what, I think you're right on. I think that so many times we've had great systems in place, right? They're even in our guidelines, we talk about them a lot in the salon meetings, yet we see hit or miss things happening. So I believe consistency is key with that. But I'd like to bring up another point, I'd like to bring up as it, in regards to the client, we really need to start understanding the client, right? What are they going through right now, and how can we be the salon for them? Because let's face it, you talked about our competition, there's tons of competition out there. The last ten years, you know, in any ABC Salon America town, there's tons of beautiful salons, talented service providers, but they're all kind of doing the same thing out there. And you know, clients are really conscious of their checkbook right now and they're also customer service savvy. So it's kind of like whoever plays the hardest, the most consistent, will win. And so what we need to do is retain the guests that come through the doors by actually being new, better, bigger, different than anybody else in your area. So like, to the point of the things that you brought up, Peter. There's something that we know we should do called Client Tours, right? So we probably have that in a playbook as well, probably somebody at the front desk is supposed to do the tour, but for whatever reason, we're not doing them. And I know there's one thing that drives owners crazy, and that's if we have some spa services or a spa area and a guest that's been in the salon for two years looks over at the door and says, "You know what? I never knew you had a spa here." Now there's nothing that will make, you know, an owner's hair go grey faster than to hear a client say that, that's walked through the door so many different times. So we need to get better at understanding how can we show up on the radar, and I think it's through simple things like breathing life into your tours. So actually, you know, greeting the guests, telling them a little bit of a history of what the salon where it came from, what you specialize in, bringing them through the treatment rooms, if there is treatment rooms or a spa area, talking about the talented people on the team, talking about the special services, walking them through a menu, and things like that. If we just do what we're always supposed to do in a way that brings in million dollar words and great offerings along the way, clients are going to go on those tours and say, "Oh wow, this salon's different." And I think if we can get a client to say that was new, that was better, that was bigger or different, we've won them for another visit. So it's not only things like bringing them back with incentives to come back in, it's bringing them back because they enjoyed the ride with your people because they're highly skilled, inside of--what they need to do inside of the systems that we're putting into place. You guys gave me just an awesome on-ramp. I mean, your three R's. What was it, retention, re-book, referral? I'm going to throw another R in there, retail. You know, and then, of course, you talked about the services. What I was, what was coming up in me as I'm listening to you is going back to what we said in the last segment, the scripting, the words. And to me, the focus these days is the consultation. And yeah, I know we've been talking about consultation forever, but now it's way, way, way different. I made what I thought was a brilliant connection a few weeks ago and that is show me someone that's kung fu at retention, re-book, referral, retail, services, and I'll show you someone that is full-on in consultation. That when you're on the receiving end of that consultation as a client, or you're watching it, you really get a sense that they're, they've mastered that. And what I also saw was the language that they're using in a consultation, and I hope the viewers will be hanging onto this, that language is coming from technical training. So I really, if you're watching this program, when you go to--you know, Redken wrote the book on principle based training. You know, Chris Baran has his DVD's now and Sam has his and there's all kinds of stuff coming, when you go and you're on the receiving end of whether it's a video or you come to the Learning Exchange, pay as much attention to the language that's being used as, you know, people and artists would demonstrate a technique or a process, as you are in that process, because that same language is showing up in the consultation. That's what's really sweeping the client in. So there's a corollary these days that I'm seeing between technical skill, consultation and your three R's, my fourth R, the service thing, and so it's like getting on that consultation big time. Well, you know, it's interesting is I couldn't agree with you more. It's fascinating to me because we talk a lot, you know, we all teach from a set of principles. And one of the biggest principles we all teach from is that whole concept of cause and effect. You know, I put a cause in motion, it has an effect that shows up in my life. If I like the effect, I should do more of it. If I don't, I should do less. And people say to me, "But what if I've been doing this stuff all along?" Because what we're really saying is look, we're not saying you need to do anything new, we're just saying you need to do all the things that have always worked, but you need to do them really well. And here's the truth, the people who've been doing it all along, there is no recession for them. They've just gone from being booked six weeks in advance to being booked four weeks in advance. They couldn't handle the business they had anyway. But the people who've been paying it lip service have gone from being booked a week in advance to being booked a day in advance. And those people are freaking out right now. And the cause that they've put in motion clearly isn't working. And there has to be a consciousness amongst people to wake up and go, you know what? You could slide by with half an effort up until now, but in my opinion, the next 18 to 24 months in this industry is going to be a humbling experience for people who don't get on the front end of their own behavior and aren't willing to hold that mirror up and say, you know what? What I'm doing isn't working and I need to get back into the details, and I need to take a long, hard look. Look around at my station. Is it clean? Look around at my salon. You know, what kind of customer service are we providing at the front of our salon? Are we paying attention to what we're doing? Do we understand the business we're in or are we just showing up every day and hoping that something good happens? You know, I'm listening, and one of the dangers in this business is we fall into what I call hallucination, self-delusion. I run across hairdressers all the time, "Oh yeah, my consultation is awesome." You know what, if you contend to have an awesome consultation, the last thing I need to watch is your consultation. I want to see your re-books. I want to see your retail. I want to see your service add-on's. I want to see how, how your abilities to turn a new client into a lifelong repeat, because that really is where the rubber meets the road. Now we're taking all of the hallucination out and if there's a gap between your numbers, where you need to be and want to be, to where you're at, I'm going to suggest that you're not as cool at consultation as you think you are. What's your spin? You know, I, I love it and I'm just going to go back to being a client for a second. Like, what are they thinking when they walk in the door? It's, a human being goes through a process in any experience, whether it's going into a salon, getting your oil changed or eating dinner at a restaurant, you're saying, like/don't like, for me/not for me. And they're consciously making these decisions from the minute they walk in to meet the front desk to sitting down at the station, to having the consultation. And we have all of these opportunities to show up and be different than the salons that they've visited before. And let's face it, when we have a new guest that comes in the door, there's a good chance that they were a new guest at the last six salons they've been to. Right? They've been somebody's new guest the last six visits and all they're asking for is for somebody to show up on the radar and get them to stop, drop and roll. Because they want to stay, but we have to give them the value and the value needs to pour out of everything that we know. And we need to get ourself into being a top 20, not being successful by accident, but being successful on purpose and being laser focused on our skills, talents and abilities, as well as relating to people. And you know, you guys, I want to conclude this portion for me by saying one thing, is I've had the privilege as an entrepreneur, we have 21 salons. We have the same strategy in every one of them through this recession. I mean, we got on the front end of this eight months ago. Here's what's interesting: 10 weeks into this year, our top 16 salons are up 18 percent. Would you just say that again, Peter? Because I want make sure that if the viewer was like, island hopping, they need to land because we're in a big recession and what did you say, 18 points? Yeah, through the first 10 weeks of 2009, our top 16 salons are up 18 percent. But here's the truth, the other 5 salons are flat, okay? Now, why? Same strategy, okay, but it's about three things, it's about strategy, it's about execution and it's about measuring results. The fact that we measure results is the reason I can tell you that, but the difference between the top 16 and the other 5 is execution. So I can guarantee you, when we look at the details, the execution in those 5 salons is not happening at the same level it is in those other 16. So my point to the listener is, having a strategy... we've had these strategies for, for 50 years. The problem, this difference between the top 20 and the bottom 80 is their ability to execute on the strategy and their willingness to measure the results and hold themselves accountable. And unless you're willing to do that, in my opinion, you're going to struggle through this economy. I want to end this section with something that came up in me as I was listening to you. If you're an owner, right, the, the last thing I want you to do is go back to your salon and have a meeting and, "we're going to have consultation training." Right, it's like, well, no, not yet. How about if we're going to get more about technical training, but when we show up with the technical training, we're not going to sleep with our eyes open or we're just not going to watch a process, we're going to be as conscious of the language as we are of that technical process, and then we're going to see if we can put some of that language in our consultation. And we're going to script it, and we're going to put it on that planner, and we're going to begin to get as awesome on that consultation as anything else until we find it showing up in those numbers. When, when we're at 18 percent growth, we can go, you know what, I think we're catching on to this consultation stuff. Absolutely, and you know, I think that the days of being successful by accident are gone. Those salons are gonna open and close as fast as they open. And you know, just getting everybody on board with dumping the puzzle pieces out, right? So, here's what we currently do and let's dump the puzzle pieces out together and say, every little microsystem that we do, from answering the phone to how we say hello to that guest, we need to really take it apart, all commit to doing it different, but then sharing how are we going to do it different and can everyone step into everyone's place so everyone knows the rules. And if our front desk person is having lunch, do they ever get lunch, right? They're having lunch, we usually don't let them go from the front desk, because nobody else knows how to handle the front desk. Someone is able to step into that role, not only book clients, but do the tours and things like that, being responsible for that. And creating an environment that has enormous willingness to step into those roles is also important. And I think, Kristi, from my perspective as a salon owner, you know, the key to making this all come together is a mentor of mine once told me, "Peter, decisions should always be made at the point of richest information." And the richest information as to what's working and not working in our salons is from our service providers. So these are not things that we need to go back and do to them, because all it does is upset them. These are things we need to do with them. In other words, we need to get our key people together and say, "Okay look, how do we improve what we're doing?" Because what we're talking about, they already know, and what people get involved in, they get committed to. And so involving, I think salons owners have this misperception that they have to have all the answers, and they don't, they just have to have the right intention, and then allow their people to get involved in helping them to co-create the next generation of their business. So, this is great stuff. I think we've done a lot of work talking about money, bringing in more money during the times that we're going through right now to really thrive as a salon. And we've talked about, you know, where's the client coming from now. Now, I can't wait to hear what you guys have been doing in the world to really help stylists thrive. Well, I know Peter's got some great teachings around managing stylists, but I work with stylists, so it's about managing self. Right? Top 20's are well trained, keenly aware and highly skilled at managing self. And to me, self, we've already started talking about it, managing our time better with planning and the appointment book, clients in the chair knowing what we're going to be offering. But there's other part of self is around impulse, managing my impulses, that inner urge to act without conscious thought. And we know that bottom 80's are very impulsive, right? I've got one or two hours in my book and my inner urge to act is to mark out early, go to the mall, spend money I don't have on crap I don't need to impress people I don't like, right? And then wonder why I have too much month at the end of the money and why, you know, repo man's in the driveway with the tow truck looking for my car. And so I make light of that, but it's so true that at some point we need to take actions and that how we feel does not have to correlate with the actions we take. We don't have to feel like taking a great action in order to take it. And we talk about this, you and I did that class not long ago, bold initiatives. You know, courageous actions encourages just the willingness to disobey the impulse and to do the right thing. You know, for the last couple of segments in this program, we've been giving lots of great ideas. We've been talking to people about knowing what to do, but that's way, way different than doing what you know and to do what I know I need to be aware of the impulse and to stop obeying them. What, what's your spin on that? Well, I love that whole concept of impulse. You know, the way I look at that is, we've been talking about this for years is when emotion is high, intelligence is low. But I think it still all comes back to having a plan because I know I'm an impulsive person. I mean, I may appear to be structured and organized but that's a learned behavior. My natural behavior is to be completely disorganized and impulsive. But I've learned the hard way that that doesn't get me very far in life. So what I've learned to do to curb my impulses is to have a plan. See, if I'm thinking cognitively about my plan then I'm replacing the impulsive thoughts. So when I have an impulsive thought I go, "Okay relax, I don't need to worry about that because I have a plan." But if you don't have a plan, the impulse comes from responding to what's happening in front of you. So again, you're at the back of the boat looking at what's happening, instead of in the front of the boat guiding your direction. So it's interesting how these things are all connected together, but when we're unconscious, we don't see any of that. We really believe that life is what's happening in front of us, when the truth is, we're actually creating what's happening in front of us. That's true, that's true. And one way to really take control of that, I think, is to really think of yourself as not just alone in this and that you have other people around you, as a stylist, to help move you forward inside of that plan. And so, I love the two words put together, team synergy. Now, if you look up the word synergy in the dictionary, I know you love the dictionary, synergy means when two or more things come together to achieve one sum. So that's kind of mathematical. But if you put team in front of it, now we make it personal, we make it about the people that surround us that can help pull us forward into our future. And when you put team in front of synergy, now the definition becomes when two or more people come together to achieve one common goal. Now the goal could be amazing customer service in the tours like we talked about earlier, or it could be something that we could measure. So it could be coming together to achieve the goal of pre-booking, which is a plan to assure that we're going to have clients in our book. Right? So when we all understand the system and then a goal. So say our team goal is pre-booking 60 percent of all guests that walk out the door. Now, now we're in this together and we can have a conversation about the plan. We can have an internal conversations to avoid the impulse to just run to the back of the room because we have a two-hour break, put our head on the table and take a nap and then sing the back room blues because we're not busy. Right? You know, it would, the word that went clunk for me as I'm listening to you is culture. That whole idea that I have to do it for myself, but it's like way, way hard to do it by myself. So when I can surround myself with like-minded people, that there's going to be times where I'm going to go unconscious and I need somebody around me that loves me enough to wake me up. Because 75 percent of doing the right thing is becoming conscious that I'm not, right? So this whole idea, and, and I know to your, you know, you do a lot of work leadership management, I think that that's the role of leaders, that's the role of the managers, to get the culture cooking, because that's what keeps us awake longer and wakes us up when we go unconscious. Yeah, absolutely. And I think a key point of that too is-- and I loved what you said about having a team goal, because I know as a leader, one of the things sometimes, leaders have expectations and they have standards or they wouldn't be leaders to begin with. I mean, we all have an expectation of ourselves and a standard, and I think sometimes where we get into trouble as salon leaders is that we tend to paint everybody with the same brush. And we need to learn to separate the difference between a standard and an expectation. For example, the team goal might be, the standard for a salon might be to re-book 70 percent of our guests, but my expectation for you as a brand new service provider needs to be different than my expectation of Kristi, if she's been hanging around with us for five or six years. And if I can't learn to do that as a leader, I'm going to punish you instead of helping you. And maybe not give you the motivation you need to get to the next level. So again, it comes back to the consciousness of the leader and understanding the difference between the standard and the expectation. So that everybody can find their own place inside of that system and thrive in it. I think something that we need to do better in this industry is help ourselves by creating more systems. So we know that pre-booking is a good idea. We know that we need to close the sale in retail. We know that we want more of our guests taking advantage of Redken chemistry. Yet, what we're not doing is team meetings that focus on those principles in a strong way, that's zeroed in and focused. So instead of calling a team meeting and say, "We need to get better at pre-booking. We need to make more Redken Chemistry offerings." What we need to do is have breakout sessions, talk about role playing, set goals, set rewards because what gets rewarded gets repeated. And if, and as hard as it is and as funny as role playing feels sometimes, you know what, if you can create that action inside of a team meeting and get the weirdness out of it, then I can go back to my world, whether I'm a front desk person, whether I'm a service provider, and make those offerings because I just did it three times in the salon meeting. So I think we need to start setting ourselves up for success with really, you know, saying what do we want to accomplish and how do we do this together? And let's practice it together first. You know I'm listening to you guys, you know, you talk about the expectation standard to a salon versus new and then there's the vet, you know, the newer people. I mean, they come in, most of them, in the Jerry Maguire, "You had me at hello, you just tell me what to do." Then you've got the vet that's been, I'm behind the chair 20 years, right? And I'm in my late 30s, early 40s, I got another 10, 15 years of shelf life left and this is not new anymore, this is hard. I've got purple lines blowing out the back of my legs, I've got multiple personality syndrome and look at me, I've got carpal tunnel, right? And it's like, how do I stay fresh? And this whole idea of the well trained part of top 20 that you really want to get. I think we're in a day and age now that we want to get compulsive/obsessive training disorder. And you know Redken, I mean very program we're on right now, EOD, like you're able to pipe profound wisdom into the salon. You don't need to bring what is it, the mountain to Mohammed anymore. Or is it Mohammed to the mountain, I don't know, I'm dyslexic. But the point I'm making is you don't need to leave your habitat. You know, there's program after program. And now they're also pioneering this, you know, Webinar, Redken Webinar series. So, to me, if somebody's saying, "Look, I only got 30 seconds, cut to the chase in two words or less, give me the answer." Redken EOD, Education on Demand. Redken Webinar, I don't know if that's two words, but you get the point, right? - Absolutely. Yeah, and I think, you know, there are so many opportunities out there for new learning and new development. And I say to our salons owners out there, the veteran salon owners, I mean, we've got hardening of the arteries too. I mean, we've long ago forgot how to listen. And I think what happens is a lot of, a lot of salon owners, you know, who are around, I'll say my age, who've been hanging around this business for a long time, we've now moved into the phase of our development called the benevolent dictator. So we're benevolent, we want everyone to grow, we love everybody, but we've become a dictator because we really believe that everything we know, everybody else already knows. We've forgotten the learning curve we went through ourselves. And we don't want to give that same opportunity to the young people that come into our salons and we set way too high an expectation for them. And as a result, you know, they either fail or they turn over, because it, we sound like their parents. We're telling them what to do instead of teaching them and enrolling them in the process. And I think there's a huge learning curve there for a lot of salon owners. You know, going back to the client for just a second, when we survey clients, they say that they want an educated salon professional that's up on the trends, that understands the products that they're using, that plays well with others, that keeps, you know, things neat and clean. These are things that clients ask for, and you know, I think that stylists, service providers forget to share with their clients how educated they are. They expect that that's going to show up in their skills, talents and abilities of that end result so that the client will know, you know, that they must be good. But I think clients want to know where are you getting your education? How do you stay fresh? And I would just like to encourage owners and front desks and the stylist team to let the clients know that they have been involved in a continuing education program online, not only in business but also in their technical skills on Redken Education on Demand. And bring that up, "Did you know that there's a place now that we can actually sharpen our skills online?" So I'm always staying fresh and I think that they need to share that with the client, because a client's never heard that before. Right. And that could be the thing that gets them to come back the next time. Good point. You know I'm listening to what you said, I know what I've said, and if I'm a cynical, skeptical, you know, viewer, I'm thinking, you know what, these guys are clever, they're doing a pitch for you know, Redken EOD. And I want the viewer to know that, no, I'm not. That I really believe in my heart of hearts that education, training, whatever you want to call that profound knowledge, is to the mind, the heart, the soul what oxygen and food is to the body. I mean, if you really look at the thrivers, in spite of it all, the top 20's, whether it's an individual, a salon, they have many things in common, but the biggie is they perpetually train, they never stop training. And if you fall into a mode that, "I don't want to go to training anymore," there's, there's an energy, there's a consciousness in that salon that says you know what, you can't hang out here if that's what you're about, because you're going to get, you know, psychological leprosy, right? You're going to get, you know, all kinds of the "-isms," the pessimisms and the sarcasms. So I really hope that the viewer's taking what we're saying to heart. This is crucial, this business about continuing to expose yourself to profound knowledge. Well, and I think it's essential for survival because I believe what this recession or this economy has done in effect is drawn a line in the sand. And so now everybody is on high alert and people's behavior is going to go one way or the other. They're either going to follow the pattern of the bottom 80 and just sit around and complain away the business or they're going to get pro-active. And there's more tools available than ever before to help them. And the people who get themselves educated and who learn to be good listeners and who take action on these ideas, they're going to lead the next generation of salon owners in this industry. And many of those people are probably watching this segment right now, and you know, to the people who aren't, they're going to struggle. So how do you want to wrap this in terms of kind of bringing this conversation to an end? Who'd like to start? Well from my point of view, I mean, we talked about what owners need to do to manage money. We talked about how to drive more clients in, but I would say to salon owners, look, at the end of the day, your greatest assets are your service providers. They're the people at the frontline every day, in the trenches taking the bullets for you. They need to be nurtured, they need to be listened to and they need to be involved in your business. You don't have to do this by yourself. I'd just like to say from the front desk point of view that, you know, there's a revolution going on and it's about changing business through the front desk. And the front desk needs to be looked at more than just as a receptionist team, they are our micro business managers. When they show up on set in the morning, it's about taking a look at the book, it's about taking a look at the computer and being conscious of not who's on the books, but who needs our help. So, the thing that I'm going to focus on is those spaces in the book and the people that I need to grow. So really, the front desk is turning into a place of a profit center. It can drive amazing customer service, increase our retention and um, you know, also bring bottom line profits into the salon. And what's coming up from me is a good, you know, final note is for whatever reasons the stylist veteran is coming up in me. That, that wherever we go when we do these big in-salon things for Redken, the owner invariably says, "Can you spend like, about three hours with my vets?" You know, that because they're powerful people, they've been around, they've got the seniority, and there's oftentimes, as I listen to a 20 year vet, it's almost like, "I wish I would have heard this 10 years ago, 20 years ago." But it's almost like, too late for me. I now, you know, I've got another 10 years of shelf life left in me, but I'm really going to go out of this deal kind of with a wasted career. And what I want the viewer to really get is, no, it's never too late. You can jump time. I mean, we see this all the time, so many vets, you know, in their 40s with a couple of kids, single moms, and all of a sudden they get it. And in that 12 months, 18 months, I'm getting goose bumps right now, that they just, they soar. They, they're 10 years ahead in the next 18 months. And you know, you can do that if you have that kind of belief. The willingness to believe that first of all, you're wired for top 20 and you're going to surround yourself with enough awake people, and that to me, this industry, in spite of the recession, is still this gigantic, red, juicy, delicious apple hanging on a low branch, right? You don't need to climb up the tree or out on a limb to pluck the apple, but what you really do need is to just believe. It all starts in your mind, right? Well, Michael and Kristi, you know, it's been an absolute blast hanging out with you guys today. We're all so busy, we never really get a chance to sit and kibitz, so it's been great. And I want to thank you for that. I really want to thank you guys for all of the profound knowledge and insight that you've been able to share through this conversation today. It's really been insightful and I know I've learned a lot as well. And so now, I say to you, our listeners, it's really up to you. And the question I want to leave you with or the thought as we wrap up this session of the 360 view, is will you be one of those people in the bottom 80 who listens to all this profound knowledge and then does nothing about it? Or will you make the decision to adopt the mindset of a top 20 and actually take these strategies and ideas and go out and implement them, not only into your business but into your life? [Instrumental music]