Fear, Risk & Originality

  Why do some salon-owners take calculated risks by opening multiple locations and others stay with one? Some take a 6,000 square foot lease and others 1,500? Some hairdressers become platform artists and other content to work behind a chair. There are many reasons to those questions including our mindset, comfort zone, confidence and business […]

Collaboration

We are living at a moment of profound and rapid change, where new technologies are transforming how people live, work and communicate. With all the doom and gloom that is going around our industry, the barriers preventing people from pursuing a big idea or making a new business model has never been lower. We now […]

Burn Your Bridges

Why do thousands of people camp out all night in the cold before the Apple iPhone debuts? Is it driven by a complete understanding of how well the technology will improve one’s workload or personal enjoyment? No! For many the desire to obtain an iPhone stems from an emotional response that is linked to neuronal […]

It’s Time for a New Business Model

It’s Time for a New Business Model Last year, the beauty industry lost over 21,000 salons, almost 9% of the previous years’ total. There are various reasons for this reduction including: salon walkouts, salon suite/loft growth, escalating overheads, standard of work and bored consumers. In other words, the salon didn’t excite the consumer with anything […]

Question Everything And Assume Nothing

We each have a responsibility to elevate the thinking in our industry. We can do that by questioning everything and assume nothing. Have you ever made a decision without questioning why? Steve Jobs, Vidal Sassoon and many other inventors and pioneers questioned the status quo’s thinking within their respective industries. We become better hairdressers, salon […]

The Language Of Body

The Language of Body In business and in our personal life, it isn’t the brain people see, it’s our body language and it has either a positive or negative effect. How we stand or greet someone gives people an impression. We are fortunate in the beauty industry, because it enables us to interact by touching […]

How We Make Decisions

During the course of the day, each salon owner and service provider makes a number of decisions that vary from what to eat for lunch, to fundamental decisions that affect the salon business. But what criteria do we use when making a business decision? And why do we use different criteria for personal decisions?   […]

The Third Place with Subliminal Messaging

The Third Place with Subliminal Messaging The salon of the future will not survive on hair services alone. It will have to be supplemented with other reasons the consumer will want to visit. We need to ensure that consumers view our businesses as “The Third Place.” Your home being the first place, your work is […]

The History and Future of Thinking

Thinking has evolved the beauty industry from the rigid styles of the Egyptian, Greek and Roman times, to the incredibly diverse, ever changing styles of today. At some point in each period, the thinking of one or more people influenced the style and culture of hair fashion and something occurred to change their thinking. From […]

The Art of Creativity

Service providers and retailers outside the beauty industry have had to compete with the increasing growth of Internet sales. This has resulted in a number of retailers led by Apple, implementing a radical business model that required creative thinking. The same consumers that shop at Apple visit our salons. Today’s salon owner will have to […]