Business Ups & Downs [EP:148]

Navigating the Highs and Lows of Business Entrepreneurship: Insights from Jen and Todd

In this episode, Jen and Todd dive deep into the rollercoaster journey of business entrepreneurship, sharing relatable personal experiences from starting and managing their salon, Hello. 

They discuss the struggles of finding the right space, the impact of COVID-19, and the intricacies of managing people and implementing systems. 

On the positive side, they highlight the importance of community involvement, the benefits of having a structured pricing system, and the rewarding aspects of building and leading a supportive and creative team. 

They also touch on the pros and cons of working with a business partner, maintaining a work-life balance, and handling both supportive and challenging clients. 

Overall, they provide a candid and comprehensive view of what it takes to run a successful small business.

00:00 Introduction and Greetings
00:06 Starting the Business Journey
00:54 Challenges in Finding a Space
01:38 Renovation Struggles
03:14 COVID-19 Impact
06:34 Implementing New Systems
07:32 Pricing Integrity
12:50 Hiring and Building a Team
17:36 Navigating Business Reputation
18:57 The Pros and Cons of Business Partnerships
19:43 Balancing Work and Personal Life
23:43 Community Involvement and Giving Back
27:52 Managing Employees and Compliance
32:45 Final Thoughts and Reflections
33:42 Handling Client Challenges

Links and Stuff:
Our (weekly) Email List

Find more of our things:
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Hello Hair Pro Website

Transcript

148
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[00:00:00] 

Todd: All right. Happy Monday. What's up, everyone? Hey, Jen. How's it going?

Jen: great. How are you?

Todd: Good. So today we are talking about business entrepreneurship ups and downs highs and lows Pros and cons, I guess,

Jen: Sure.

Todd: sort of through there. Where do we want to start? Do we want to start with like the beginning of hello and like our experiences or we just, are we talking in general, like what people can expect from any business? 

Jen: I think to talk maybe a little bit about our own, cause it's always relatable or sometimes people find, feel I don't know the word, but like when they hear someone else's struggle or they hear what other people went through, they're like, Oh, I'm not alone. You know, you could tell them what to do, or you could tell them like, Hey, you're going to expect this, but without a story, I feel like it's unrelatable.

Todd: Okay. Let's start from the beginning then.

Jen: Ooh. Okay. 

Todd: Finding a place for us was down a negative

Jen: Yeah,

Todd: con, wherever you want it, whatever [00:01:00] category you want to put it in. So we had looked at a space that was, it needed a lot of work and we knew it needed a lot of work just by walking into it. And we were going to have to basically strip it down, but it was pretty much stripped down.

We had an engineer come in and they looked under the building and they were like, this building's not even level. So I have to get under here and level this. And that's where we cut ties with that first deal. Then we looked at several, or I tried to look at several other spaces and we kept getting hit with, we're not going to let you put a salon in here because there's already a salon in this Plaza or in this area or whatever.

Which is interesting as we look back, because they've put now salons and barber shops in those plazas, because they ran out of, they thought they had enough people, tenants coming in, they did not, so, and then we found our current space and we had to take that down pretty much to the studs, we had to gut that place, so, we're talking bathrooms, floors, I took out,

Jen: everything. Yeah.[00:02:00] 

Todd: yeah, all the flooring, walls most of the walls we needed to strip down, so we had some drywall except for like the exterior walls of the space.

It was very choppy.

Jen: Yeah. There was no flow.

Todd: There was like a wall down the middle dividing.

Jen: or yeah.

Todd: come in at all. It was like really boxed off and it was almost like they, it was a salon for anybody listening that hasn't been to our space. It was a salon before and it was a salon for, there were salons in there for like 30 years, right?

Yeah.

Jen: I would say that's exactly the number I was thinking. Yeah. I

Todd: Yeah.

Jen: 30 years.

Todd: So that

Jen: in for that too, to show us what walls could be taken down and what needed to stay.

Todd: was the architect.

Jen: Oh, architect. Yes.

Todd: yeah, we went through that.

Jen: the, the company in our area that does all commercial [00:03:00] leasing. I do her hair and now when she's in there, she's like, if this space looked like this, we would have rented it in like two seconds.

Todd: Yeah, no kidding. Yeah, you're welcome.

Jen: She says it all the time. Like, it's just amazing. 

Todd: So then we fast forward. I don't want to get stuck on covid, but that was the next sort of thing. So we had our business. We were getting close to it being completed. We had. We were running into some issues as far as like when supplies started to drop off and we just couldn't get things. Like I remember needing ceiling tiles and being frustrated because I'm like, I need four ceiling tiles.

And I just like, nobody had them.

Jen: Right.

Todd: had to wait on stuff like that. What else?

Any ups so far? It's been all down.

Jen: no, not the beginning. I

Todd: The beginning was rough because of stupid COVID. And I, but I don't want to

Jen: even

Todd: talk about that.

Jen: COVID, it's enough stresses like on just stupid things that come up dealing with plumbers that give you a quote and come out and then are complaining about the work when they were the ones that told us how much to pay them and they didn't want to do the work [00:04:00] and they're bitching about the work.

So you have to fire a plumber and hire someone else, which now changes your budget. Like so many things. That can occur that you just can't account for. And we were really organized in, in what we were looking for, what we were doing very honest about what we needed and whatever, but there's still things that you a curve ball.

And then you add COVID on top of that, which was just a curve ball with being shut down the week we were supposed to open and then not

Todd: I don't want to talk about COVID. I don't want to talk about COVID. I hate COVID.

Jen: about it.

Todd: You keep bringing it back up. Let's move past COVID. So, we were open,

Jen: opening a business is hard enough, and then

Todd: la la la la la.

Jen: it.

Stop.

Todd: It is, yeah, opening a business is difficult, but I don't want to talk about just negative stuff, and I definitely, I'm so over COVID.

The whole COVID thing, like the whole world was there, you know, was it a smart time to open a business? No, but we were already halfway done building this place out when they shut us down. So what were we going to do? Try to recoup our money? Like, [00:05:00] you know, stuff was already ordered. Everything, like, The majority of the stuff we had coming in was custom to fit the space because

Jen: Yeah.

Todd: we had to do so much work in the space.

It was like we need the stuff to like fit. We didn't want to just like, you know, pick, pick from a catalog. Excuse me. We didn't want to just pick from a catalog. We wanted it to have a very specific look and feel to it, which I think we got right because we did get a lot of compliments when we were finished dealing with the Thing we're not going to speak about anymore.

A lot of people said that they felt really great about coming in because our space was so clean and we designed it that way. So it's very white, it's very open, it's very light colored, and by design it shows. Like if you, if the floor needs to be, excuse me, sweat better somewhere, it's, it's easy to see. In our space, and that was by design because we want to, I guess, sort of circumvent the complacency that come [00:06:00] or complacency that comes with just day to day.

When you're in a space day to day, you sort of get used to looking past stuff. It's like, yeah, dust always accumulates in that corner. I'll just leave it. But if it's visual, you know, for you, and you have to

Jen: clean

Todd: look at it. Yeah, you have to clean it. So not that you wouldn't if you had dark floors, but I think people pick specific stuff because it shows Less, you know, so fast forward to when, what do you want to talk about in our,

Jen: Not go to now, or you want to be in between? I don't know. 

Todd: I don't care. What do you got?

Jen: So let's go in between we switched up some things to strategically make it easier for a client when they come in to have a consultation and understand a price point, right? So. That was really great for me, personally, because I was getting a call every 10 minutes of like, somebody wants a balayage with a few foils, or just service situations that became like, this should not be rocket science. [00:07:00] So, we kind of used all of these scenarios with the young staff we had. To make it a lot easier for them to price out their services and make it really clear to a client what they were paying for. And that I thought was really wonderful because what I had been through previously was pricing was all over the place and you kind of would price on.

Your feelings, very emotional, right? Like somebody might give you a little pushback. Like, well, I don't know if I can afford that. It's like, Oh, I'll do it for this today. So this made it very clear cut where every client that comes into our business is going to be treated the same. And there was a lot of integrity with that.

And it's something that I'm really extremely proud of because if you sit in any of our stylist chair, whatever their price point is, everybody's being charged the same and it's fair where. I'm sure a lot of people can relate me talking about this because most salons don't do that. I've seen at my last salon, people be like, well, you know oh, they, they carry a nice purse.

So they can definitely pay my prices [00:08:00] or somebody that they're like, I don't know, they, they don't look like they could afford it. So I'm going to charge them less. So you'd have that. People sitting in the same chair with the same stylist and their prices are all over the place. And then they have to be like, what did I charge them last time?

Okay, just do the same where it's just like, Hey, here's my prices. This is what it is. If you can't afford that, I can offer you someone else in the salon, but it's when you're with that stylist, everybody's treated the exact same and charge the same for whatever service they're getting. And I do think that's extremely unique. I think the old way of like what I was saying is what a lot of people do and they emotionally discount and the discount on feelings that aren't even real. Like it's just. You gotta have your price is your price. then do you have anything on that?

Todd: No. So this is a pro, right?

Jen: Wicked Pro. Yeah. And now it makes it really simple for even for Todd and I to project what's coming in for the week and help really set goals based on so many easy parameters for the stylists that are under our roof to now understand what they need to do to make [00:09:00] whatever dollars is in their goals for the year, the week, the month. Very seamless and easy, which I think is important.

Todd: I think the coming up with these systems can be viewed as either way, the more I think about it. So I think somebody might listen to that and go, I don't know how to do that. That sounds overwhelming. That's a con to me, but the probe becomes the feeling of the work or the reward from the work that you've put in.

Jen: Mm

Todd: And then the reward from watching your staff be able to execute their job and not stress out about figuring out pricing or, or whatever. I, I think another thing that we have and we need to get better at, The execution of this, but we have iPads on the stations that people can book at, but they can also show in real time if, if a client wants to change their service, like somebody goes online and what do you hear about the biggest con about online booking?

They're going to make

Jen: the

Todd: a mistake. They booked the wrong service. So that should be irrelevant if you know how to do a consultation. [00:10:00] So during the consultation, you would just explain to that person, like, based on what you're telling me, your lifestyle, your work, all this stuff, and what you want, this is what it's going to be.

I have time to do this today, or I don't, we can, you know, slide you in tomorrow or wherever. But I think once you have those systems in place, it's a pro for sure. So agree, agree, a hundred percent. The con does come from sometimes when you put. new systems in place, people just can't handle change.

Jen: Yeah,

Todd: you might have turnover.

And

Jen: pushback on change.

Todd: yep. And that's on you. Yes. But some people just are never going to be happy, no matter what they're going to complain, or they were waiting to complain about something. And this just happened to be there. So whatever. We had somebody complain one time about the way that our sink was operating. Like to wash dishes.

And I was like, that's your complaint. Like, you don't realize how fucking good you have it here. If that's your, like, I didn't fix something on the sink quick enough, and [00:11:00] this was just a sink to rinse dishes out. It's still worked. So,

Jen: fine.

Todd: You're always going to have that, which another thing, I guess, and I keep going to these pros and cons, but the people that you deal with,

Jen: Mm

Todd: if you have the right people in place, that's a, it's a major pro on that should be obvious to anybody, but not having the right place or worse.

The right people or having just flat out the wrong people. We saw that at your last business. I've dealt with that in the past and it's just awful.

Jen: Yeah, it puts more stress on your life where these people should be in place to put to ease whatever it is you're doing like, you know, we threw all that found like an accountant that works really well for us a lawyer that works really well for us. So when we run into situations that cause stress, we now can easily reach out and eliminate our stress and then put whatever the problems are in them.

And we know they're going to give us the information we need and they understand how our business works. So the information comes, to what hello needs, which is really amazing. It takes a [00:12:00] lot of stress off as you're leading a team and owning a business. But yes, my last salon, it was a bunch of shitheads. Just

Todd: is what it is. Like we've, we've had people that are at hello, that weren't good fits. They needed to go.

Jen: Yeah.

Todd: That happens at every business. I know people stress about turnover and whatever, just have the things. I would say that you, you know, this is another pro, but we have very firm core values for our business.

If something doesn't work. Or isn't working or it doesn't align with who we are. We just, we change it. And what about, what are some other like positives? I feel like

Jen: I think currently the way we grow

Todd: I have, I feel like I have negatives, so I want to do some positives.

Jen: So this is a good one. I think, and I see. Honestly, like everywhere I look, people having trouble hiring. Like, how do you hire? How do you hire? And I think. way we have evolved in our hiring at hello from the beginning, we open to where we are [00:13:00] now is truly amazing and is a extreme positive.

Now again, somebody could look at as a con because it's a lot of work and it's constantly changing. But because we're able to do the work and constantly change and innovate and pivot, we're able to, at this point, build a Really amazing culture with a really big staff to help all of the different needs within the business and help each one of those stylists really live under hello the way they want to. And that takes leadership systems and really understanding each stylist and what what they bring that is under hello and what they need to be the stylist they want to be and do their work creatively. a lot in that to probably kind of, you could go either way, but for us, it's really just now being in schools, always interviewing so we can see what the young professionals coming out of school, what their needs are, what [00:14:00] their desires are for their future. Then it's, you know, kind of, you know, Sitting back in hello and looking at what are these stylists doing? What does it seem like they're they want? And, you know, is, are, are we doing that? And are we giving enough? Are they giving enough under hello? And if not, there's some hard conversations that are to be had. Like, Hey, you know, this is what we need. This is where it's at. And it up creating really strong stylists that push past even what they thought they could do. And they're doing things that they didn't even see in their future. And they're super pumped about it.

Todd: Yeah, I think it's cool to see the stuff that we've been able to create for people, which I would put as a pro and it makes it really easy. I guess we're in a position where, where we are as far as hiring, like we have a small wait list of people and I have people reach out all the time. It's been actually a little slow over the last couple weeks now that I think of it, but generally somebody is reaching out every week.

Like, are you hiring and being able to offer and [00:15:00] taking the time to work with you, Jen, and then. You know, even talking to other people in the industry, outside of the industry, business people, not business people, and figure out what people are looking for. Like you're saying, we allow a lot of flexibility.

For example, we want people to have the schedules they want. And if we have the ability to do that, we do that.

Jen: Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

Todd: some shifts are going to get filled in. And those are going to be the shifts everyone wants. And we don't have. Unlimited chairs. So we get tied down by that sort of thing. But if there is a possibility or there is a way to make something work we make that work and even down to week to week, like we have, we just had somebody that was like, can I work on Monday?

Jen: Mm

Todd: It doesn't typically. So if we have a chair open, yeah, you can work on Monday. So it's, it's, it's building your team, and it's treating them in a way that gives them that [00:16:00] freedom to play within your rules that you, you always say all the time, Jen, that people, you want people to have The ability to, I guess, explore their creative freedom or their creative side and have that creative like reward, I guess.

Jen: Yeah.

Todd: industry is creative. We get to do a lot of fun stuff, meet a lot of cool people, talk to people. And what we're building is a system that where people can. always feel like support. So they have that ability to sort of push the boundaries a little more because they know that there's a support. They know that there's a net there,

Jen: hmm.

Todd: to catch them if they fall, if that makes sense.

And I think that's really cool. And I think even now our staff is, I would say protective of that. So,

Jen: Yes, for sure.

Todd: you know,

Jen: all realize the freedom and flexibility, but also they also realize we have to run a business. So they, they kind of see those things and they look at them as, [00:17:00] wow, this is an amazing environment and these rewards were given. And we also realize like Jen and Todd have a business to run because if they don't run the business right, the business isn't here tomorrow.

Todd: yeah. And I, I, I do think it's unique. I'm sure there are plenty of other salon and barbershops out there that operate the way we do. I haven't seen many. If we're being honest from the inside, a lot of times when you look at the outside, everyone makes it so that it's a party or this is a family or look at us.

We're so glamorous or whatever. But then you talk to people and you're like, no, it's wicked fucking toxic. Like, nobody likes each other. Everyone talks trash. Everyone's trying to steal each other's clients and everyone's

Jen: it's

Todd: talking about that one girl or whatever. And like, yeah, we don't.

Jen: The smoke and mirrors are so easy through social media

Todd: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And

Jen: do, but the actions of what you actually do inside your business is, is the true story period. And our actions are the true story.

Todd: it's easy for people outside of your business to hear that stuff. So that's the reputation we [00:18:00] get, you know, there's always going to be the person that they're like, yeah, that person is crazy. Nobody wants to work for them. Or there's the people that are good at making it look like they're amazing, but then once you're in there, you're not treated how they say or whatever, you know, we've all heard those.

So to be able to create something that is genuine and actually does Does the things that we say that it does it goes so far to the point where if somebody now I I don't want to give people the wrong idea like our staff runs the business or anything like that because they don't but I mentioned earlier that they're protective so when stuff does come in that goes against our values.

We have staff that have come right to us and they're like, Hey, this happened. They'll show us like, here, here's my phone. This happened. This is like a thing. And so then we have to get rid of that, you know, the person that committed whatever infraction. I'll just say so. Yeah. I have a [00:19:00] one that was a pro for me, but then was a con.

And I would say now it's a pro again. And it's working with a business partner. I always wanted to work with a business partner because I was just like, I think it would be cool to run the things that you're good at and have somebody compliment you on the things that you're bad at. And then it became you.

So my wife, and that was even more of a pro. And I was like, I really want to build a business with Jen. This is amazing. And everybody was like, don't do it. You're going to get divorced. And I was like, nah, we got this. And then I went through a period where it was a con. But not because of really either one of us per se, it was just, we weren't good at keeping home, home and work, work.

Jen: Right.

Todd: And sometimes like we're recording this podcast from our, from our home, we have meetings, like we'll have meetings. I would say typically when the kids are back in school, like where we'll sit down you know, and talk for an hour about the business and things, but then [00:20:00] it has to, you have to be able to turn that stuff off because it's no fun to just talk about business all day long.

Jen: Right.

Todd: what I would do is everything reminds me of like business, everything reminds me because I would get into that headspace and it would be like, we need to do this. We need to change this. We need to try this. And it would be overwhelming to myself and I'm trying to get it off of my chest, which I have different ways to cope with stuff.

Now I do a lot of writing like just notes and then I would put that on you. And then that I don't want to say it strained our relationship, but there's times where you're like, I guess just take the business like you can take it over. I don't want to talk about it to the point where you can just have it.

Like,

Jen: Yeah,

Todd: and that's silly. Yeah. I just don't want to, I just don't want to deal with this. So that was for me, something that was a pro then a con, and then I would say now it's a pro. And being able to look at it, we're heading into this year for yeah. We're in year four. We're about halfway through. And to be able to [00:21:00] look at it, step back and look at it and go, wow, I built this with my wife.

Like that's pretty freaking cool. I don't know how many people get to truly build something like that with their spouse or significant other or best friend or whatever, you know,

Jen: I would agree. And I, I think, I feel the same on that. I think anything you go into with a partner, Not even married. It is, you have to have hard conversations. You have to realize or commit to the relationship or commit to the project. And I think for us, there are times where, yeah, like one of us, like I'm out, this is way too much, but we were committed to the project.

We were committed to the idea of hello. And we were committed to building something that really was unique to the industry. And I feel like I can say that and I can stand behind it. And I think when you have an idea or something you're doing that you're Both people that are partners or any, any partners are going together and they commit to what's actually happening Even in the midst of like where things aren't being agreeable or you're [00:22:00] just like not you're butting heads you still Believe in that project.

So you're like we're gonna get through this Even if it takes a couple weeks or months to get there like this is what's working What's not like anything I say within those struggles I don't always mean because I know we're committed to getting this done Ground up and running. And we believe that the future of it is so important for what we're doing. that helped even on like the, the ebbs and flows of the business partnership being great, then not great. Then why are we doing this? Then why is this still struggling? And now I think we're at a point where the boundaries we've laid out organically, you know, through, through those struggles and can understand there's times where it's just like, okay, I'm done with this.

Like, okay, we'll just back bar it, make some notes, whatever. And to look at what we've grown over four years, I, like, it's impressive and it's something we're both super proud of, like what we're doing and still doing it at the level of integrity of where we started and what we set out to do. And now with the staff, that's just like loving all of these things.

When we just hired [00:23:00] someone a couple of months ago and she's like, I didn't even know. business like this existed, like a place to work where I really feel like a stylist, where I'm super creative, where I'm supported not only educationally, but anything else I need. And she's like, I just think you two are amazing humans. And it's nice to hear, because there was a lot of hard work and a lot of hard conversations to keep going and be where we are. Yeah,

Todd: I know another another pro I guess is your ability to, when you have a small business and you set it up properly. And I'm not saying that. We don't worry about hello and we don't worry about stuff and we don't even need to be there. I'm not saying that exists quite yet, but we are in a position where we can do things for the community.

We can help, for example, the library needed something, we help them out. The schools, we volunteer time and, and materials at the schools for father daughter dances. And to see [00:24:00] the impact that we can have, you know, we get to bring our staff because, well, because of the work that you did with working with the schools to go into You know, raise money for the PTO and show off our team and show off what hello is boat, which is part of, you know, just giving back to the community when we can.

Right. You always want to try to help others. So to be able to provide, I guess, the opportunity for our staff, you know, people that want to be involved in that stuff. And I would say a good amount of them do. It's not just like the new people coming to events.

Jen: right.

Todd: It to be able to provide that and for them to be involved in the community is just that's pretty cool thing too.

Jen: I absolutely agree. Cause I think there's a lot of probably business out there. Like, you know, Get in your community, do all these things, but then they're not actually doing it. They're just talking about it. And we do it every year. There's something in the community, different ways of getting the staff in there.

And I think we have a, a young professional [00:25:00] staff. So showing them also how you can make people feel when you just are donating your time or your services. Like that's really neat. And it's just another part of being in the hair industry that you can, like, Just love about it, right? We just can go out and do these things.

It's really cool. We just donated even for a school to help some people in need of prom hair. Right? Like, here's what we can do. And it's, it's cool to be able to offer this in your community. And then it's great to have a staff that supports it.

Todd: Yeah. For example, we had recently somebody knows that we work with Katie's closet. So they brought in a bag of clothing for donations. And a few weeks later, there was like a wall. Donations. I just brought it down last week and it just hello, sort of like our foyer where you walk in and just turned into a collection spot and I called Katie's closet the other day and said, Hey, I'm coming down.

I've got, I think we had 15 or 16. Big bags of clothing and shoes [00:26:00] for to help some kids and families in need. So it's just like having that stuff. It's very rewarding to have that stuff sort of just happen organically. Somebody brought a bag and said, I know you guys do some work with Katie's closet. Can you get this to them?

And we were like, yeah, sure. Just leave it there. And then all of a sudden everyone was bringing bags. They were, Oh, they must be collecting again. And we didn't even have a signup and it just happened. And I think that stuff is really cool. Yeah. Obviously there are some more generic like pros and cons for businesses.

You're always going to have, so if you're someone that's listening and you're like, those are fun stories, but like, what does it really look like?

Jen: Mm.

Todd: you start your business, you're going to have, there's financial risk. Right? You're going to put money in and you're going to try to recoup that, but when is that going to happen?

Like, how soon is that stuff going to happen? Work life balance, we talked about, I had a [00:27:00] really tough time with separating that, especially when you start out, when you start out, it's, you go through this exciting honeymoon sort of phase with your business,

Jen: Or

Todd: then you hit that sort of like messy middle people refer to it as where you're just like,

Jen: the

Todd: not exactly sure what to do,

Jen: getting clients.

Todd: I feel stuck, or the worst one is probably the people that are like, this is fine.

So they don't do anything and they just let their business kind of coast. And it's like, you got to try to be recouping those dollars that you put in. And you've got to stay foot on the gas the whole time. You know, even when we were shut down in the, in the beginning, we were still working, we were still training.

We were still writing our handbooks. We were still getting clients, the things they needed, trying to help them solve the problems that they were facing during COVID now and try to just help our community and keep, you A few people, you know, sane.

Jen: Yeah. 

Todd: Another, so we talked about people to employee management is on my negative list. It is what it is. It's you're going to have to [00:28:00] deal with it. We have situations where people make mistakes. I don't think anybody on our current team I'll say is doing anything that's malicious, but people make mistakes.

People leave stuff on people forget to plug things in and you can make as many lists as you want. It's just, it's.

Jen: nature.

Todd: You have to stay on top of people, and I always am, like, I do not want to micromanage people, so often I'm like, I don't even know how to really deal with this, because I'm the type of person that you just tell me, and then it's, that's just the way that I do it, moving forward.

Jen: hmm.

Todd: But there are times where people forget stuff, you know, you leave the hot towel caddy on or whatever, you know, you forget to click the door on the cooler all the way shut and then it's open and running like stuff like that's just going to happen and people aren't trying to hurt you, but it does take you correcting them and nudging them along

Jen: Mm hmm.

Todd: constantly and it's not that anybody is a bad person.

I mean, if you're listening, you might have someone bad on your team [00:29:00] that needs to go.

Jen: Yeah. that's your conversation to have.

Todd: Yeah, that's, we could talk about that a different time too, but

Jen: But yeah, I think managing people is, is to me one of the most difficult things, but I think there's a way you can do it and do it and still have your hard conversations and no feelings have to be hurt and you're just heard and they understand. And these are the rules we play by here. And that's that.

And whether you want them on your team or not, if you don't, then it's a different conversation. You're like, I want you here, but this is what you have to do to stay here, you know? And there's some of these things are non negotiable.

Todd: yeah. And they're still like, even running a, a well run business, you can have the best run business. There still are going to be times where repercussions are necessary. I don't know if that's like taking a shift away. It, it might just be doing something that's unsettling to somebody enough that they're like, I, okay.

I messed up to the point where they're trying to make a point to me

Jen: Get

Todd: pay attention. Yeah.

Jen: Mm

Todd: again, it's, there needs to be repercussions. Just the world we live in.

Jen: [00:30:00] hmm.

Todd: if you let stuff go, let stuff go, let stuff go, because you can't lead a team, or you don't want to disrupt the team, or whatever, I've heard that one from people too, like, I don't really want to do much to my staff,

Jen: to

Todd: because,

Jen: either way.

Todd: yeah, something is gonna eventually, something's gonna break, or they're eventually gonna leave anyways, and like, you're screwed, you didn't have the business that you wanted to have, Because of someone else that isn't even really invested in your business.

Jen: Mm hmm.

Todd: So that happens as well. I had on here to regulatory stuff. So like just compliance, because we're in a licensed industry. I view that as a con we can talk about it a different day. I know. Yeah. I know that even the whole licensure thing, I've said it a million times, we don't need it. I could come up with a different system and probably 90 minutes.

And it's probably already in my head, but we could not have that. I think the schools would flourish and I don't want to go down the rabbit hole so we could talk about it at a different time, but

Jen: Sure.

Todd: [00:31:00] having that compliance and making sure everything. So when you have a staff, you've got to make sure their stuff is all because of everything sort of trickles back to you, you know, you're responsible.

So we had staff that plop their licenses up on the wall. And for some odd reason I didn't notice, but they didn't have pictures on them.

Jen: Right.

Todd: Well, the state notices

Jen: I

Todd: You know, which to me is great. If this, if the state board comes in to inspect you and your worst thing is that someone forgot to put a picture on their license, you're doing pretty good.

It's not that anything was wrong. It's not that we were putting the public in harm's way or anything, which is what the state board's mission says that they do. That's what they found though. They found a picture missing. So stuff like that, I put as a con just because it's. It's annoying. There's already so much stuff to do licenses.

Wow.

Jen: Agreed.

Todd: And I know people will kill me over that, but it is what it is. That's the way I feel. [00:32:00] And it's my show

Jen: on it and you can, I think Again, it would be change and people push back on change. And if you highlight some of the things that could occur that change, I think people would be like, Oh, I never thought of that. Oh, I never thought of that. They just look at like what it's going to, they think it's going to do to them, harm them in some way or take away some

Todd: away their clients.

Jen: of, of what, yeah, of like what they offer,

Todd: I think so reading some of people's pushback on the licensure thing in the past is a lot of it is they think it deprofessionalizes the industry to remove the license.

Jen: both believe it would do the opposite. And I think the amount of talent that could come out of, if, if you If we didn't have a board would be really amazing. I know I would be able to a bunch of people really quickly.

Todd: Yeah, exactly. Anything else? I feel like that's good.

Jen: I think the biggest takeaway to me is that they're sort of what you said in the beginning, there will be highs and there will be lows ride the high. When you have it, when things are going great, really enjoy it. Like take a minute, take a breath, pat yourself [00:33:00] on the back, whatever you

Todd: Great point.

Jen: every, every high. There's a low up, there's a low coming. You just don't know when it is. It could be years. It could be months, who knows. So if you don't enjoy the good stuff, when it's in front of you, you will not be able to endure some of those lows that will come and that's just running a business, that's just life.

Like there's highs and lows. And so it's, to me, when you're in a good space, really be proud of that good space and get ready for what's coming next. Don't get complacent during it. You know, like, okay, we're doing great. What are, what could we change to make it even better? And if you keep doing that, when the low comes, it's not so low.

Todd: I agree. And I, I have one last

Jen: Yeah,

Todd: pro con cause I'm, I'm split on a lot of these, but just the people. So your clients can be absolutely amazing. You are going to have difficult clients throughout your journey. And to recognize that and to make it, it's to, to make it so that you're in a position mentally to understand that it's not you.

Sometimes people are coming into your [00:34:00] business. They're not happy with themselves. They have gone to 19. We had someone recently that was complaining about their hair, but they went to a different salon for their last 20 appointments or whatever. So you have to look at it like, so for that, that's that person.

Jen: Yeah,

Todd: You can't find a single person to make you happy, you know what I mean? There's always going to be the person that freaks out because they don't get their way. There's always going to be the pissed off person that doesn't understand what you understand as a professional. So no, you can't have your hair lightened to like today to that level.

There's going to be the people that are going to leave one star reviews because that's what they were born to do. Right? There's going to be the people that didn't get their way through their review. So they go to the better business bureau because they think that's an agency or something. They think that there's some sort of government power there.

You're going to have those people because those people just exist. It's not on you. And when you realize that, that's a, that's a,

Jen: Agreed.[00:35:00] 

Todd: that's all I got. We're out of here. Thanks for listening people. Hit like, subscribe, check us out. We are on YouTube now as well.

Jen: Sweet!

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