Ever felt like your hairstyling routine has become, well, routine? Let me whisk you away from the monotony of root touch-ups and trims into a world brimming with creativity. With a treasure trove of experience from running four award-winning salons, I'll share a goldmine of practical advice to reignite your passion for hair art. Discover how a simple inspiration contest in the salon can transform the every day into the extraordinary, fostering growth and excellence in our craft. From channeling the wild energy of '80s hair bands to capturing the tranquility of a fall forest in a hairstyle, this episode of All About Hair is your ticket to rekindling that creative spark.
Join us as we dissect the details of these innovative salon exercises, shedding light on how to keep pushing the boundaries even when resources seem scarce. You'll hear stories of stylists who've leaped beyond their comfort zones, producing stunning results that breathe new life into their work and delight their clients. Whether you're a veteran stylist or new to the game, this episode is packed with actionable tips and heartfelt encouragement to help you elevate your hairstyling game to an art form. Tune in for a burst of inspiration that'll have you reaching for your shears with a renewed sense of purpose and artistry.
Ever felt like your hairstyling routine has become, well, routine? Let me whisk you away from the monotony of root touch-ups and trims into a world brimming with creativity. With a treasure trove of experience from running four award-winning salons, I'll share a goldmine of practical advice to reignite your passion for hair art. Discover how a simple inspiration contest in the salon can transform the every day into the extraordinary, fostering growth and excellence in our craft. From channeling the wild energy of '80s hair bands to capturing the tranquility of a fall forest in a hairstyle, this episode of All About Hair is your ticket to rekindling that creative spark.
Join us as we dissect the details of these innovative salon exercises, shedding light on how to keep pushing the boundaries even when resources seem scarce. You'll hear stories of stylists who've leaped beyond their comfort zones, producing stunning results that breathe new life into their work and delight their clients. Whether you're a veteran stylist or new to the game, this episode is packed with actionable tips and heartfelt encouragement to help you elevate your hairstyling game to an art form. Tune in for a burst of inspiration that'll have you reaching for your shears with a renewed sense of purpose and artistry.
Welcome to All About Hair, the go-to podcast for stylists, salon owners and anyone passionate about hairstyling. Whether you're a seasoned stylist refining your skills or a curious listener looking to enhance your hair knowledge, we've got you covered. I'm your host, denise Kylitz, a former stylist and salon owner with four award-winning salons under my belt, with over 30 years of experience, I've dedicated myself to helping stylists excel in foundational haircutting, color theory, client communication and more, enabling them to build six-figure careers they can be proud of. My mission is to uplift our industry by sharing valuable insights gathered along my journey. Get ready for enlightening discussions, captivating interviews and practical advice on marketing, sales and technical skills. This is the podcast all about hair.
Speaker 1:
As a hairstylist, don't you find sometimes it's really hard to stay inspired? You know these same people come in and they want their roots touched up and you're doing six in grade coverage all day long. Or they just want to trim and nothing's really motivating you to step out of your comfort zone to experiment Unless you have a friend who likes unicorn hair or I don't know and they always say go to education classes, keep yourself inspired, right? I totally agree, totally agree. However, sometimes you either don't have the funding to do that or the time, or there's just not the education that you're craving in your area. So what are you supposed to do? Let me share some tips on what we used to do in my salon, because every once in a while I know that the team would start, you know, kind of just getting I don't know. They just were showing up, they were doing great work, but every once in a while you need to shake things up. So we used to have these things, and we did it probably every two or three years, and it was an inspiration contest. Let me tell you how this works.
Speaker 1:
The first year, what I did is I just got like I don't know, I think I had 12 stylists at the time and so I got 20 pictures and they were all kinds of pictures. Let me think what they were. Let me just I'm opening up my files right now. Okay, so I had pictures of, like, big hair bands in the eighties. You know think Motley Crue, twisted Sister, something like that. I printed that out. I printed Lady Gaga out. I printed, um, uh, comic book superheroes out. I printed out evil step mothers from Disney. I'm actually looking at at the things I printed out. So, um, I printed out kittens, I printed out the ocean, I printed out some avant-garde hairstyles. I printed out nature pictures whatever you think could inspire something in you as an artist. That's what I printed out.
Speaker 1:
So I printed out like 20 pictures, random, totally random, and at our staff meeting I handed out numbers 1 through 12, because there was 12 stylists, or they drew it out of a hat or whatever and what that was was 1 through 12. That was the order they got to choose, and so then I told them that I'm going to lay out these pictures on the floor and number one's going to draw first, number two, so on and so forth. You could choose any of these pictures that were laying on the floor, and what it was is you were going to take that picture as inspiration to create a look on your doll head or a model, if you prefer, to an actual person, and you can do anything you wanted to do. So say if you drew the comic book superhero, the person who drew that I'm looking at her work right now and if you're watching this on YouTube, you can actually see. I'll go through these and we'll explain them. So she drew a superhero and it looks kind of like a female Flash Gordon I don't know who that is, but what she decided to do on her model's hair was a block coloring that looks like the color of fire on top of her head, so that way when the hair moves it looked like a fire pattern in the hair.
Speaker 1:
Another one was nature. It was like a fall scenery, beautiful nature inspired in the woods, and someone did kind of like a nature inspired hairstyle. Someone else drew the beach and so they ended up doing the hair like in the color of the ocean and then they put seashells and different things inside the hairstyle. Let's see, somebody else took an avant-garde hairstyle and did their own avant-garde hairstyle, which was just stunning and what this was, and I'll talk about another contest we had as well, but in this one and I think the other one too, and I think it was like a two week period. So you had two weeks and there was a deadline and we were making a big deal about this and of course, we put it on our social media. We had our guest vote. What was truly wonderful is I sent these pictures to some of the icons in our industry. I think Beth Minardi chimed in the owner and founder of Euphora, some of the national educators that we had had in our salon. They chimed in and they actually picked the winners. So it wasn't me picking it, it was an unbiased. They didn't know who it was. They took the description of whatever the stylist wrote out on there with their inspiration photo and they actually picked the winners. It was so cool. And then, with this contest, what they were competing for was, I think at the time, competing for was, I think at the time yeah, that's what it was At the time I had two tickets to New York city for an editorial shoot how to do an editorial shoot. One of our manufacturers, because we supported them, they gave us two tickets to New York City to this education event. So that's actually what the prize was for first and second. I think third prize was I don't know like a gift certificate to Cosmoprof or you know something like that.
Speaker 1:
All right, let me talk to you about the second time we did this. So we learned a lot from the first time we did this. We learned what made people excited, the time frame, things like that. So the second time we did this, we did it at Halloween time. That was a lot of fun. So what I ended up doing was printing out scary movies or family scary movies of Halloween movies, right. So Jason and we did Casper and we did ET. That's not scary but that's kind of you know, a movie like that, charlie Brown's Charlie Brown. We did Edward Scissorhands, we did American Horror Story. We did a bunch right, and what I did was I again printed them out and I put them on the floor and again we drew names and I think we had people did not have to participate because at this time we had a lot more stylists instead of just 12. We had, like, I think, 22 stylists at the time and not everybody digs this kind of thing, but some people really enjoy the inspiration, and so this was a total Halloween theme. I think we had the pictures printed out and we had our clients vote.
Speaker 1:
This time I'm trying to think what the prize was. I don't know. You can make up your own prizes. It could. If you don't have a gift certificate to some big educational thing or if your salon can't afford that, what I would do is maybe give them a gift certificate at the beauty supply or maybe a free makeover in your salon If you charge for that. Some people do, some people don't. You could give them a gift certificate for a restaurant in your area. It doesn't have to be a lot.
Speaker 1:
What you're trying to do is just make it a lot of fun, right, it builds your culture, it builds your team, it builds relationships within the salon. It's a lot of fun. It's just different than what another salon down the road might be doing, and it's just a great idea to keep your staff, your stylist, motivated, current thinking outside the box. They can use anything in the salon, outside the salon, however they want to do it. They could do a professional photo shoot, they could do it on people, they could do it on doll heads, they could be as creative as they want. Or, like I said the second time, they didn't even have to do it, and the reason for that is because the first go around, there was a couple of of stylists, whoists, who were like that's not my cup of tea, and we kind of made them do it and they didn't really stretch their wings too far, if you know what I mean. I think they still had a lot of fun, but they just didn't care. So you have to know your team, you have to know what's going on. But I think this is a great idea.
Speaker 1:
And again, if you're watching this on YouTube, you'll see that I'm going through some of our contest winners. Some of the ideas they had you can tell like, on the Halloween ones, you could tell what show they're from. It's so cool. There was a lot, a lot of creativity. Anyway, I hope this helps you.
Speaker 1:
I know being a salon owner, being in our industry sometimes. I hope this helps you. I know being a salon owner, being in our industry sometimes yes, it's a lot of fun. It is a lot of fun. I always think we are the most special people. We get to create things, touch people, make relationships, listen to fun music all day long. We have a really great job, right, but sometimes it just becomes another job and we need to find things that help us stay excited, wouldn't you agree? So anyway, I hope this helps and remember when you know better, you do better. I'll see you next time. Thank you for tuning in to today's episode of all about hair. Don't forget to subscribe to stay updated on future episodes and to continue your journey with us. If you have any questions, feedback or topics you'd like us to cover, feel free to reach out. You can find us on Instagram or our website at denisekeilitzcom. Until next time, remember when you know better, you do better.