ep31 – Jayson Morgan

My guest this week owns multiple salons, he is a lead educator, and he provides solutions to salons looking to level up. And in his spare time he’s a prize-winning body builder! I’m so pleased to sit down with my personal friend, Jayson Morgan. 

• Jayson started young – his grandmother would give him old mop heads to cut, and she would hunt yard sales for Barbie heads for him to cut and style
• He shares the importance of having a plan and sticking to it
• Jayson talks about his tried and true techniques for coaching salon staff, and his success with 1-on-1 sessions with all of his staff

Complete Transcript

Chris Baran 0:00
We discuss some images in today’s chat and you can see them in the podcast videos at Chrisbaran.com. How great would it be to get up close and personal with the beauty industry heroes? We love and admire and to ask them how did you learn to do what you do? I’m Chris Baran, a hairstylist and educator for 40 plus years, and I’m inviting all our heroes to chat and share the secrets of their success.

If you’re an entrepreneur, a salon owner, or even thinking of becoming successful at any team business game, you’re gonna love this session. This gentleman has been a lead educator at the Redken exchange in New York City. He is the owner of three, soon to be four successful salons. He’s an amazing cutter, educator and team leader, currently a pureology hair artist, and he offers solutions to take salon teams to the next level. I can tell you because he’s a personal friend. And I know that he pours his heart, his soul and his passion into everything that he does. So let’s get into this week’s headcase from J Morgan Salon company, Mr. Jayson Morgan. Mr. Morgan, or, for my friends that have already listening in that it’s Jayson J to me, because we’ve been friends for years. Uh, Jay, what? You know, I’ll tell you, I think the hardest part that’s been is, you know, since we’re not teaching together all the time, all the same time at the exchange. And for everybody who’s listening and watching, we used to teach it together all the time for at the cut and know why programs, and teaching and design. And first of all, my friend for your ability that you have for being an incredible cutter and incredible facilitator. You know, and I want to talk to you about this, but salons etc. I just want to say thank you so much, and welcome to head cases.

Jayson Morgan 2:09
Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me here today. You know, and I missed those times, like working with you, Teaching with you. But it’s good things like this, I still see I still get to keep up with you, you know, social media and all that. So I love it.

Chris Baran 2:23
Jay, I you know, the funniest thing is just for the friends that are out there is that that one thing that is I have to say about you, my friend is when you’re teaching, you’re on point, it’s you’re on point. But when a when you really get to learn, Mr. Morgan is after we would head down to bar cloth a few days down there. And that’s when that’s when everything came out there. But that was all those were the fun times fell

Jayson Morgan 2:54
sideways back to my hotel room. Those days don’t happen as much as they used to, though. So I’m really happy. I’m really happy to have gone a little bit.

Chris Baran 3:06
Yeah, well, I have to tell you, for those of you we’re going to talk, you know, you’re going to talk a little bit more about this later. But you’re also Besides being a great facilitator and teaching all the time and having your three salons that you’re you’re leading in is that is CrossFit. And I mean, you can tell that our I was telling him yesterday, we had a conversation yesterday and I said, you know my body is exactly the same as yours, Jason, except their minds. You know how he’s got that perfect hourglass. It’s my hourglass is upside down. So other net or body shapes are exactly the same.

Jayson Morgan 3:44
How you look at it.

Chris Baran 3:46
It’s all perspective. Perspective. Absolutely. Before we start talking about that, Jay, I always like to know and just for the people that that know you and maybe the people that are hearing you seeing you for the first time just the same as most of us how the hell did you get into hair? What what happened there? What was it?

Jayson Morgan 4:07
Let me tell you, you know, it was it’s, it’s amazing, because it’s something I’ve always wanted to do. Ever since I was little I grew up on a farm out in Christiana, Tennessee and you know, we had tons of farm animals, horses, cows, pigs, goats, chickens, you know, all those kinds of things. My grandfather taught me how to braid hair on a horse’s tail, you know, so or the main. So I kind of learned how to do that. But I was always had an Irish setter. He got lots of haircuts. His name was general. And you know, he got lots of haircuts and there would be red hair across the yard or I would spray paint to Barn Cats, you know, to color them a little bit. Probably kind of toxic for them. But you know, looking back are now going oh my god probably should have been doing that. I never saw that cat again, though. If I ran off

Chris Baran 4:53
the humane society that’s listening right now. It was watersoluble

Jayson Morgan 4:57
salutely. But you know, that was the thing I was always interested in it. And I remember my mom had a she worked at the bank for years. And she had a friend Karen Brown, who on Saturdays, we would go to the mall, you know, or go to town or whatever, you know, on Saturdays and we pick up Karen, sometimes she would hang her hair over and her hair was like crystal Gill, it was down to her ankles. So she would hanging over the seat in the car. And then I would just sit there and just play with it on the way to the mall, like I loved hair, loved it, loved it, loved it from the very beginning, my grandmother always gave me like Oh, mops, turn them upside down and let me cut them. She would buy me those Barbie heads, you remember the heads with a tray. You buy those at rod sells and bring those home for me. And I would cut them I would spray painted them. You name it, I’d wear them out. And then she’d get me another one. You know, so those are kind of things where, you know, even back home to just like perms in the kitchen on Sunday afternoon. You know, my aunt’s would do it. And I was always in there. I still love that smell to this day. You know, it’s late money back. Absolutely. But, you know, I, it’s something I’ve always wanted to do always had an interest in. And I always felt like I had a brother who was very athletic, you know, and I was not growing up, I felt like I was more creative, you know, always was out building forts or, you know, out just running and building anything that you mazes in the barn, you know, those kinds of things, where I always wanted, like build stuff and to do stuff versus, you know, he would ask me to play football with him. And I would do it for a little while. But of course I would get soon bored, you know? And then I’d be like, Okay, let me go figure out how I can jump out of this tree without breaking my ankle or something. You know, there’s a lot of fun. That’s kind of where it came from. You know, I’ve just been a new I loved it from the beginning.

Chris Baran 6:46
That’s awesome. You know, you sparked something in my brain when you were talking about, you know, making a maze of the bales in the barn. Oh, yeah. And I can remember my, my cousin patty and Johnny, they, they we I in the summer times, I used to go to Manitoba for those Americans. That’s the province next door over from Saskatchewan and my my, my cousins, and my obviously my aunt, uncle cousins had a farm out there. And I used to go and spend my my summers out there. And we would always be getting into trouble. And I can remember that that’s when my first indoctrination to smoking. But now obviously we’re in the country didn’t have any cigarettes. So I used to go get Karaganda leaves used and use take the Karaganda leaves when when they were dried, you just pick them off of the ground. And we just take whatever newspaper whatever and we crinkle up the crusher, the caravan leaves and we’d roll them up. And then and we light them on fire and then pretend we’re smoking well actually when smoking or god knows how we but here’s the silly part. What we what we did was just after we had finished bailing the bailing season, and we had taken the loft, and we had that was packed full and so there was one bailout. And so patty and Jodi and I just decided that it was we could make it make a tunnel inside there. So we kept pulling bales out and made actually made a fort inside there. And so this is you know, when you talk about you falling out of trees and wondering how you couldn’t break something and how we’re still alive today. We took those our Karaganda leave newspapers, cigarettes, and a and a lantern. We would take the lantern inside this fort we made in there because obviously it was dark, we needed light. And I can still remember sitting in there sitting on one of the bales and then we lit up these aka Karaganda leave joints and the wood because it was newspaper, it’s everything, everything would fall down on the stray bit straw bales. And we would just take our feet and we’d stomp it out, kept doing that had the kerosene lantern inside there that we could have blown up the whole place. Oh my Oh, we never caught that place on fire and how we’re still alive. I don’t know.

Jayson Morgan 9:03
But you’re mostly on that one.

Chris Baran 9:05
It was but those are kind of the silly things that we did when we were kids and now we’re still alive and and so I don’t smoke. I don’t go into hay bales anymore. And I’m not going anywhere near a barn with bales in it that I can sit on fire but it’s funny how we talk about those things when we’re kids how we’ve changed so dramatically so so you are on the barn you’re you’re around the farm, you know that you’re in hair and you want to do in hair so how did it start? Did you just get out of school and that was the first thing what happened?

Jayson Morgan 9:37
Oh, it was a struggle. Man. My parents like they wanted us to go to college. You know my mom and dad didn’t go to college. So they were like you’re going to college and I’m like okay, what am I going to do you know and so I enrolled for about I was there for about four years. Didn’t quite well. Oh what did not take my major shifted all the time. Like I started out in fashion merchandising because I wanted to like be a buyer for a store and then the visual merchandising because I wanted to do display windows, you know, and then I ended up switching over to vocal performance. And I was in college, the choir there for a long time. And then I was like, I don’t want to teach like music or anything, I’m gonna be a voice teacher. So then I was like, well, let’s drop photography. So I jumped into photography. And that was fun. The darkroom was really awesome, you know, going in there, and I did learn a lot, but I hated somebody telling me like, what I had to take a picture of, that was kind of thing. I was like, No, I don’t, I don’t want to do that. But, you know, I learned a lot doing that. And then after that, I finally ended up in education. So I was like, Alright, I’m gonna teach school. And I was like, third grade was always my favorite. So, and I’m still talking to my third grade teacher today, you know, to date, and I love our city, or when I go home, I’m here at Walmart all the time, give her a big hug. So it’s great. But she really inspired me and, you know, kind of pushed me. So that was my big goal there. I was like, Alright, I’m gonna do that. And then, but the whole time, I kept griping and bitches about it. And I was like, Can I go to cosmetology school and my parents were like, no, and then kind of go and of course, my grades suffered. You know, in college. I joined a fraternity that didn’t help. So my grades suffered. I had a lot of fun, though. Let me tell you, I had a lot of fun. But like, okay, so then finally, I was like, please let me go, please, let me go, please. Let me go. My dad’s like, Look, if you can go, and you made sure that you keep like your score above 90 degrees and our 90, you know, percent and everything that you do, why don’t you do it? You know? And I was like, yes, yes, I will do it. I’ll do it. So finally, they let me go out to do it, or let me you know, do that. And there’s a salon in town called what’s new. And I had, she would let me work there. Like when I was 13, or 14, just shampooing on Saturdays and helping out and doing that. And so, my mom had called her and we had talked and we were like, Okay, what’s the best school to go to? So I ended up going to a place called John Nade University. It was in Nashville on Charlotte Ave. No longer there. But Mr. nade man, he was awesome. He, you know, because if it was like you had to do manicures, pedicures facials, and those were things I didn’t want to do. I wanted to do hair. So if I didn’t do it, he would send me home. And then the next day, of course, I would get charged, you know, and I would come in the next day. He’s like, Hey, Jay, thanks for putting that new speaker around my, my pool this weekend for all the money that you’ve given me. And, you know, he made fun of me to do that. But I made it through. And, you know, I did what I had to do, but I would say out of everybody in school right now that I went to school with. I’m the only one left that’s doing hair. I’m still in contact with a few of them. And it’s been so fun. You know, that talk about the old days, kind of like how crazy and wild that we used to be. But yeah, you know why they’re not doing it? And it’s a little, I’m like, come on, they were great. You know, I know a lot of them were, were really good stylists, but it just didn’t work out for them that way. And I just knew that if I was going to do it, I’m gonna give it my all. And really, that’s every you can ask anybody, you know, if I’m, if I say I’m going to do something, I’m going to do it. And I’m going to do it to the fullest extent. You know,

Chris Baran 13:16
yeah, you know, I that’s what I know, you forever have to say, I’ve got something I can’t I can’t let this go. But the one thing that I I have noticed out of this is I’m learning stuff that after How long have I known you for? We’ve been friends for what? Yeah, I don’t know. 20 some odd years. Yeah. And and then I’m learning stuff about you that I didn’t know before. But one thing that you just hit something that really spoke smack me between the eyes. Is that you said none of those people are still on in the industry anymore. I mean, even though that was what 30 years ago, 30 plus years ago, I’m when you started when you were 431. For any? Yeah, if you’re if you’re doing the math, but there’s a new study that I heard out. Recently were they used to say, and this was like 1015 20 years ago that they said the average mortality rate was was five years for a hairdresser, meaning not their death, but they would come into the business and five years that majority a lot of the people were gone just wasn’t the right fit wasn’t right, whatever. But they said recently, it’s changed to three years.

Jayson Morgan 14:22
Oh, wow.

Chris Baran 14:23
Why did what? I don’t know if you’ve heard that before, but as a salon owner, and no one I want to set people up on this. I know we talked about it in the intro that you’ve got three successful salons and even though you’ve been you know, when everybody was closing down or wanting to get rid of their businesses, you were starting more businesses so you’ve proven your success rate and this and I want to really talk a lot about that for right now. But I want to just hit on that one subject first of all, why do you think that so many people why is it that people are getting into our, into our industry and then jumping Now, even before they get a chance to be successful at it,

Jayson Morgan 15:03
um, I don’t know, I think a lot of salons, that, you know, maybe they go into, maybe they go in with, like, some empty promises, and, you know, they owners tell them these things to get them in there. Because I know some people that have come to work for me from other places are like, Oh, they always talk about how they have education, and then we never have any, or, you know, I’ll be in the salon, and I haven’t seen the owner in like, five weeks, you know, those kind of things. And that’s something I will say, also, as the secret of our success, Jamie and I both are hands on owners, we are in the salon all the time, like, they see our face, they know us, they know, they can call us, you know, up until like nine o’clock. But you know, they know that they can call us and I think just the fact that we actually, and I’m not saying these other people don’t care, but the fact that we do care, and that we we put we have an interest in them. That’s what I think helps them stay with us. You know, and I do love our team. And we’ve had some that have come and gone, you know, throughout the years and has it as it is, you know, what I would say, the majority of our turnover rate is very, very little, you know, because I feel like we do just show interest in them. And we want to see them grow, you know, and like I said, anytime I teach, or I share or whatever, it’s those light bulb moments, you know, when when they get it or when it happens, you know, and we celebrate those things. And I don’t think, you know, people want to be appreciated. People want to be told they’re doing a good job. And I don’t think they get told that enough. Yeah, so I think that could be, you know, kind of, well, you know, they just kind of like, okay, maybe it’s not the thing for me. And maybe also I think like if they do have screw ups, which can happen in your first three years, I think of you know, that one lady out turn, Nancy Mathis, I turned her blue, you know, back in the day, but we got it right. But I don’t think they have anybody there to really coach them, and to talk them through. So it turns out to be a learning experience versus a mistake. And then, you know, those kinds of things.

Chris Baran 17:07
You know, the I think it’s really interesting how our industry right now is, we hear about the use, and we hear about the young kids that are joining on and I hear this from everybody thereafter, quality of life, and they only want to work so many hours and so on. And, you know, I think it’s like, I’m sure you came in just that generation after I did. But for me, it was like I was a baby boomer and I went work hard, you know, put 1314 hours in, and I don’t think that that was then. And it’s not now. And and I think that it’s we have to change those people have that. You know, there’s a there’s a meeting, but I don’t think it has to be like 5050 I mean, we were we were fanatics. You know, you’d work 1214 hours a day, go home, sleep about a dream about it, come back and do it. Again. It wasn’t really a work life balance. And to be clear, I want everybody to hear this that work life balance does not mean equality, meaning I’ve got eight hours at work, I get eight hours of home, got eight hours of sleep, I got eight hours of this, that that it means the quality that you have when you’re at work, the quality that you have when you’re at home. And I think that’s what they’re going for it I think we have to change. And part of it, I think it is is that, that if we can tell people what their future is, then it they have something to fall back on. And when they screw up or something goes wrong, or they make a mistake or in their in a training session where they’re going, oh, you know, oh my god, I’m, you know, you can see him you’re training and they’re crying, because they made a mistake and her fear of being judged. But if we can say, Listen, okay, stop for a second and just take a look at let’s take a look at where is it we have already said that, here’s where you want to be. And so when you’re screwing up, or you’re making mistakes, you can still have your focus on the future. And I think that’s one thing that I’ve always noticed about you when I could I’ve been out to help. And I’d be at your salon where we’ve all trained. And you’ve always had a good future plan for your people. And I think that’s that if I had to make an assumption, and knowing what I know about education, I think that partly wonder why you’re so successful, successful at what you do.

Jayson Morgan 19:29
And I love you know, goal setting, and they all know that, you know, in my personal life I go set and in the salon, my you know, we set goals and those kinds of things. That’s like, you know, we have three salons right now. We’re looking for a fourth, you know, we’re actively just keeping our eyes open because we know that’s the next step or that’s the next goal for our future. And that’s, you know, Jamie and I both talked about that, like, where do we see ourselves in five years and you know, those kinds of things. And when people ask me that question, sometimes I’m like, No, you know what? It, it is nice, like when I do work, you know, with a partner or have a common goal, that it’s easier to get there when you have somebody else with you and sharing that goal and supporting you and holding you accountable for it.

Chris Baran 20:12
Yeah, would you would you say are like, because just so everybody knows, like, Jamie is your Jamie is your life and your business partner, right? And, and but do you find are you better as a collaborator, or as I’m wondering what the other word I’m thinking for is like, I know, people that just they’re better on their own. And then they tell people what they want, or there’s people that collaborate and say, here’s what I’m thinking, what do you think? And then putting it together? How do you

Jayson Morgan 20:41
figure out what the other one because I can tell you, I’m better as a collaborator. You know, we always say we’re a power couple, we come with it, and we bring it, Jamie’s got a background in marketing and restaurant management. So between that, and then Mike, my more creative brain, you know, he comes up with things and then I’ll come up and then we meet in the middle and we talk about it, we discuss and figure out how it can work for us. I will say, Jamie is the glue that holds this place together. You know, it’s funny, when you were talking to me about business questions, I was like, Okay, awesome. You know, I can handle this. But I know Jamie is the one who really is like, he’s the money man, he’s the man behind the curtain, pulling all the strings, make it everything happen for us. We talked about it, you know, we definitely have our, we definitely have our roles that we play in the salon. But we also have that common, you know, goal or common, like we come together on that common ground. And we discuss, like, what do you think about this? And, you know, maybe like, Okay, I don’t agree with that, but I like this aspect of it. So okay, how can we use this aspect, and the use his aspect? And when we come up with both, you know, what we want to achieve there?

Chris Baran 21:56
What I, what I liked that you said was is that about the collaboration, I mean, I’m a collaborator, I’m better if, if I can come up with an idea, you say something, and then I say something that builds on that, and so on, I find that that’s that one plus one can be three or seven, you know. But obviously, what I think is critical is you said that each of you have your roles. The but you said that you’re that business is his area. But I want to be I want to be clear on that like, and just as an FYI, the main reason why I thought it was so important for us to have you on this program, Jason was because of your ability in the training area and the people development area, right, which includes training, personal development, goal setting, making sure there’s future what you know, what, what’s the development plan that you have for people, because I think that the biggest way to, if you’re, let me put it in a different way, in the salon business, or any business quite matter. If people don’t see that there is a future for them, and a path to go forward to get something that they want, then that it’s just you might as well kiss them goodbye, because they’re there, that’s when they’re going to leave. But if you what I think is so brilliant about what you’re doing is look at one and two, then three. Now you’re saying four? What do you do? How do you get the people to manage those people? Like do you take it from your staff? Do you get new people? If somebody was wanting to do what you’re doing and have multiple businesses? What What would you suggest?

Jayson Morgan 23:41
You know, I would say, Yeah, your second winter, gonna be your hardest. Your third, you’re already there. So it’s like, boom, alright, you’ve got it figured out. So I know going the second loom was definitely the hardest because we were open six weeks, and then we got shut down for COVID. And then it was like, Okay, now we’re off for four months. And we put all our money into this, you know, spot over here. Okay, how do we recoup? And how do we, you know, keep the staff that we just hired that we don’t really know, because we hired all new people. So I will say, during that time with that staff, and with all the staff, we had communication, where either I would do programs or classes, you know, online, or we would go through redkin or anything, we would have stuff every like day, like maybe every other day that they could join in, and we all just jumped in as a team and did that. But as far as like, you know, open the second like I said, it’s just easier once you get past the second and then you go to the third and then you know, hopefully the fourth to open those and then wait a second. I’m gonna go back when you’re telling your question again.

Chris Baran 24:45
Yeah, your question was is about that you’re you went from one to four. And how do you how do you manage them? I mean, just to get to set this up. We also have another we have this salon team training website. It’s a closed, it’s closed for just for business owners, for salon owners, etc. And to join, you have to ask a question. And I will say that probably 50% of the questions that we get asked in their opening questions is, where do I find staff? How do I find good staff? How do I keep my staff and everything the staff related? So you have now four businesses? How do you, you have one sawn bit up? And you have that that’s all good to go? How do you scale? What do you get your, your staff from? How do you how do you get them?

Jayson Morgan 25:32
So how do we get them as we go to cosmetology schools, and we do a lot of like training out there. So we’ll do classes, there’s like three or four schools here in town or three schools and then see it, man, so we go out there, and we hit those hard, and we let them know we keep contact, and we keep a relationship with those schools. If it’s not myself going out, then we’ll send other people out. So that’s how we found a lot of staff. And we’ve have had staff who have joined us that are say older, but I’ll tell you what it it’s also we’ve had a lot that come from the schools. And then what we do is we start them, you know, in the junior stylist program, and then we moved him forward that way, as far as like management, so it management was tough at first, you know, because we would have a manager, and then I felt like, things wouldn’t work out. And then we would fall back to Jamie and myself. And then we have another manager, and then it would fall back to Jamie and myself for different reasons, you know, but then I had a client, Jill, who’s been with me for a long time, she worked for a cosmetic company. And so we were looking and of course, I’d asked her a long time ago, and she was like, No, I’m kind of happy where I’m at doing what she’s doing. So then we had posted that we were looking for a manager. And then she applied and I was like, Oh, I didn’t know you were you know, instance, because yeah, you know, I’m at the place in my life where this is what I want to do now. So it worked out, it was a beautiful relationship, because I’d already I’d known her for 15 years, I’ve been cutting her hair, you know, she’s familiar with the salon, she knows the staff, because she would come in, have a cup of coffee, you know, get her bangs trimmed or whatever. And then, you know, walk around and talk to people. So she already was familiar with people. And then just with her background, it was easy to bring on, then what we did for management is we were looking to increase because now that we have three salons, we needed at least three managers because myself and Jamie can’t be everywhere. And then Joe can be everywhere at one time. So then we had Megan who was Guest Services, she was taking a really big role with guest services and organizing and leading Guest Services. And then we had my assistant Theresa, who was with me for, I don’t know, three or four years, she’s been my assistant at the salon. So they have both expressed interest. And so we thought about that. And we talked Jamie and I went back and forth. And we were like, do we come from the outside? Do we bring people in that don’t? Or is it best to bring people up from the inside. And so for us, it was like, let’s bring people up from the inside who are already aware of our culture, the things that we like, the things that we don’t like, they know, the standards that we have. And they’re used to them, and they can help us to, you know, spread the word out through the stamp. So that’s worked brilliantly for us. We’ve had, you know, other stylist, you know, I’ve got some who are maybe on the out part of their career, and they’re like, you know, but I’ve still want to be in the slot. And so they’re, they’ve expressed interest to me, like maybe in a couple years, they might be interested in a management role. You know, so it’s just, I think creating that atmosphere and that environment in the salon. And that people want to stay and it makes me proud and happy that they want to work for us and to stay with us for a long time. And even thinking about, like you said, the path of like, what do you do next? Or how do you move forward? What’s your goal? You know, by doing that, it allows them to, you know, achieve those paths or that goal that they’re on?

Chris Baran 29:00
Yeah. Because it’s interesting, because, you know, I talked to so many owners and they’ll some some like and they that’s first thing to do is go to the schools and bring them in but they want to how do they get them up to speed as fast as possible? Tell me what what’s it like? Like if somebody is doing this or thinking about training programs right now what is what is it? How do you handle the training to get them from you walked in the door, just got them out of school, and getting them to a financially viable position where they’re actually being a part of the of creating money for the salon process?

Jayson Morgan 29:39
Because, you know, if they’re not creating money for the salon, we can’t have, you know, like, and if they definitely got to work that way. And so what we’ve done is probably the last I would say before I was running just in a regular bike associate program. So I had my top stylist who I would place you know, I would match up after I hired them I would match them up with the right person who I thought they would fit with the best. And then we would take them through anywhere to say like a nine month training program. And they would go through each module of you know, haircutting, color, barley odds foiling, perming, you name it, they’d go through all these different modules, what we’ve done after COVID, and stuff like that, I felt like it was kind of a after that it’s a brand new day, and it’s a brand new game, because you can’t treat it like and that was our, that’s what I think helped with us, we didn’t get stuck in the old way, we were willing to move forward and be adjustable for the people that we want it to have come into work for us. So with the training program, what we do is a Wednesday, so I work behind the chair, I work down there Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. And then on Wednesdays, I’ve stepped away from the chair this year, and I will have the junior Junior stylists, they’ll come to the salon, and it’ll be anywhere from like 9am to one o’clock or 10 to two or whatever. But what we will do is I will take them myself, so they are getting it, you know, they have their associate or their person that they’re working with. But then one day a week, they also have training with me. And then we go through and get a little bit more in depth on things. And, you know, we do mannequin work is I make sure they all have tripods, I all have mannequins, you know, it’s definitely putting the money and time into it, you know, I do PowerPoints for the presentations for them, you know, flip charts, you know, those kinds of things, to help them learn better. And just to think of different activities, you know, I saw on Instagram, one time somebody had some yard, they were pulling down and cutting, you know, the different lines, you know, horizontal vertical dipole, those kinds of things. So those exercises always look forward to kind of bring that fun to it. But that’s what we do. And now we’ve taken it anywhere from like, nine months, I would say usually like a six month program, and that helps get them out on the floor faster. I also test them out at the end, so I just don’t go, Okay, you’re done. You know, and then also require an amount of models that they have. So you’ve got to maybe have 10, barley arches, that in your chair, and then I’m gonna see like three of them that pass, you know, you know, you’ve got to have, you know, foil, you got to have haircuts, you know, short layer, long layer, you know, mid, Bob, whatever. So we go through each one and I do have a checkoff list that we go through, and then what we do, as well as we’ll have one on ones with them during that time. And I know staff meeting with staff, one on ones with your staff is important, but one on ones with the your junior stylist, or your associates are even more important, you know, because it gets them set up for what’s going to happen. Once they get on the floor. You talk about tracking, you know, we go through and they track their numbers, we ask them definitely to go out and market themselves. And this is a case it’s happened where you know, as somebody that, you know, I’ve liked, but they were out, they weren’t able to market themselves, they couldn’t bring people in. So I’m like, I can’t feed you people all the time, if I see that you’re not doing a little bit of the work here. You know, so we really stress that, how to do that through social media. You know, just, you know, even just walking up to people and hand in a card. And I know, for a while they’re like, you can’t just walk up to people. And I’m like, Yeah, you can’t, you know, we’re still in. I mean, you can do that I smile at people at the grocery store all the time. And I’ll tell you what, sometimes the parking lot, they don’t smile back at me, but it’s okay. But, but I’m like, yeah, just a friendly face saying, Hey, I’m Jay Morgan, this is what I do. I got three salons, I’d love to see you in something quite, you know, simple and small, boom, get them in there. You know, I think with our social media presence, like definitely works with our Instagram. We just dropped a lot of people to that so they can see the work. We promote our junior stylist on there as well. So that way they can, you know, and honestly, that they can know who they want to maybe book with. But then here’s another key thing is when, like, we teach our stylists, you know, to be transparent about pricing. As soon as they’re in for a consultation. That’s the first time right there. Because in the past, it’s been, you know, in the butts of time where they come in, they’re like, Okay, well, they didn’t tell me I was gonna have a Fusio dose today or I didn’t know it’s got to pay for an extra glaze. You know, so we’ve really, recently in the last a year or two we’ve focused on, you’ve got to be up front with your pricing from the beginning. Don’t be afraid of it. Don’t be ashamed of it like it you are what you’re, you know, you’re it’s what it is. It’s what you charge and some level that you you’re at. And you know, really working through that and my staff has done a great job. I will have to say with that in taking it on because I don’t want to hide anything. And that’s one thing Jamie we’ve even said throughout this whole time. We’re very transparent about our business like you ask us anything. We’ll help you we’ll tell you you know with us out. And I think that’s the thing is because that helps people to stage because Jamie and I are very approachable. And, you know, like I said, if they need us any time, I can’t tell you how many texts I get from some of them just, Hey, how you doing somebody when I’m texting me Happy Father’s Day the other day? Not even her dad, you know, but it was it made me feel great. And I was like, good. You know, I love the relationship that I have with my team.

Chris Baran 35:23
Yeah, well, you probably treat them like Like, like, they’re your kids to go back to your one on ones. Because I know when I talk to people that sometimes they have a really hard time with doing one on ones because there’s not a formula, they don’t know what to do with their one on ones. What do you if you had to say there was a couple of key things that you have to cover in your one on one with them? And what are they? What what is the primary purpose behind that? What do you want to get out of them?

Jayson Morgan 35:53
So probably the key things we asked you, though, are like, what wins? Did you have this month? What can we celebrate? So we start off with that, you know, and then we move into? Okay, what could you use work with? You know, how can we help you to grow better? And then we also ask them, like, what’s your expectations for, you know, moving forward, like, what do you want to do that we can help you get to that point, you know, so we want to know, you know, what’s working, what they need help with, and then maybe what they want to do in the future, you know, so that we can know, like, okay, you know, this person wants to know more about like, products, that the chemistry makeup behind the product, you know, I know Chelsea, she’s amazing. And she wants to know, every ingredient in the product. So you know, maybe if I have a class, or I can put her in contact with somebody that will help her that way. It allows me to, I’m like, okay, she’ll be the perfect person for that, you know, to go do that. So I really listened to them, and try to understand what their aspirations are, and you know, how I can help them best grow. And that really, that’s the one on ones. I mean, we don’t, you know, it can be it can be a 10 minute conversation, it doesn’t have to be. And I feel like in the past, we used to go down the list of Okay, what about blah, blah, blah, you know, and I feel like that’s just too mundane and too, like, I don’t think corporately, but just, it seems like okay, I feel like I’m just asking the same questions. And I’m not really getting to know the person and celebrating that person that they are.

Chris Baran 37:16
This episode is sponsored by the salon associate accelerator from trainers, playbook.com. Are you struggling with the time and cost of associate training? Do you feel like your salon is running, you will get your associates on the floor, all with 90% Less time from you. So you can get back to building your business. Get them world class design, finishing color, and client care skills they’ll use every day for the rest of their career. While you focus on realizing your vision, go to trainers playbook.com and get the salon associate accelerator. And now, back to the show. Yeah, because what I liked that you did was you said Well, first of all that, to me is celebrations is the moment that you start celebrating what they’ve been doing, then you’re coming from a from a place of where they know that you’ve got their best interests in mind. So that’s number one, then the second part of it is is finding out where they want to be, so that you can help them get there. That’s where I that’s the second part that I took away that you do with them. So there’s, this is another thing that people throw at me all the time is, how do you hold them accountable? Because obviously, if you’re saying, okay, Chris, you said that you told me in the last session that we had that you wanted to do XYZ, you wanted to create have this much more in your service dollars, you wanted to be able to do this amount of classes or whatever that might have been. I’m just making stuff up here.

Jayson Morgan 38:53
I mean, how are we?

Chris Baran 38:56
What do you do for accountability level Alexei Chris hasn’t done it. How do you handle the accountability with Chris, when Chris comes in and what I what I said that I wanted to do what I said that I wanted to achieve? And I’m just not doing it?

Jayson Morgan 39:13
Yeah, sometimes we just have that real conversation, you know, and it’s like, okay, this is what you said you wanted and what you needed. But in reality, this is what’s happening. So let’s figure out like, what is a roadblock for you, and then it’s keeping you from that and then how we can, you know, move around it so that we can get you to your goal, if that’s still your goal. Because you know, this month, your goal may have changed from last month. You know, you want that anymore, you know, so we definitely try to figure out if they’re not doing it, what the roadblock is and how we can get around it. But as far as like accountability, you know, it just goes back to being an active in salon boss, you know, I mean, we’re there. We’ve seen them if they’re not doing something or they tell us something that they want to do, or their numbers say their numbers bad they need to meet a certain amount of Fusio doses. So what we’ll do is halfway through the month, we’ll print off their physio doses, and we’ll let them know like, I don’t want to hold them back when I help them. So if we can do that on the 15th of the month, and they’ve still got 15 more days to try to, you know, kind of reignite the fire under them that that was their goal. So we’re not just saying, Okay, we talked about it in the month, and we’re going to revisit, Oh, you didn’t get that done? Okay, you know, kind of thing. We’re figuring out. So at the petite, you’ve got maybe 14 Fusio doses, you need six more, how are you going to get those in the next 15 days? Yeah, yeah. All right, a retail goal? How are we going to do that? And they love level jumping in they? It is, it’s fun, because they’ll be like, Oh, my gosh, don’t text me and say, Did you see what my retail was today? And I’m like, I did, you know, in the mall, hands up, or high five or something like that. And those things, I love hearing it because they get excited. You know, I’ve got one that I wouldn’t say it’s competitive. But man, she loves to share with me what her retail is all the time. And she’s right up there. And, you know, I’m super proud of that.

Chris Baran 41:05
You know, what I love? Is the culture that you’ve got set up that were there, they’re talking to you about retail? Or do you want my service dollars, or what I need to what I I’m proud of where I’m at? I talked to some people, school owners, etc. And they, there is a stigma out there, that if I’m, if you want me to retail, because that makes more money for you, the salon owner? Absolutely. And how do you like, is there a bonus

Jayson Morgan 41:35
that over 60%, like our guys bonus, you know, so they get to go home, you know, the extra, I don’t know, a couple of $1,000 a year in their paycheck, you know, just by, you know, offering what they should be offering to their client anyway. You know, we have them set it up front, before they leave, you know, definitely talk about it, the chair. But as you walk out, put it up and let Guest Services close that sale for you. You know, what we do? And this is one thing that I think some places miss out on, you don’t they don’t train their guests services on product knowledge. So what we do is we have special product knowledge classes just for guest services. So they come in, they learn all about it. So that way, if somebody does walk in the salon that is a client of say mine, and I’m not able to talk to them, they can go okay, you know, I know exactly about Pureology hydrate right here, I can share with you exactly what it does for your hair, and why you need it. You know,

Chris Baran 42:28
the, you know, I jump back to like half a step here, because I think it fits in really well. You mentioned before about, it’s so important that you’re bringing up the numbers before you hit the end of the month. So it’s not, you’re not just saying Oh, hit list, you didn’t one more time you didn’t hit your numbers, oh, boy, boy, you’re helping them along the way. Because I know this one thing that when you’re in thing in a business that you want to have it scalable, in other words that you can do more create more people create more businesses, is that you have to have systems in place. And then so you know, what I took away out of that was that if you can have the stats ready for your one on one meetings, so that you know if they you know, pardon my language, but if they’re trying to bullshit you on stuff that they are doing, you’ve got the numbers that tell them that it’s true, they’ve surpassed it, or they haven’t made up to it. The numbers? Yeah, yeah, the numbers don’t lie. And that’s what I think those are one of the biggest things I think that do hold people accountable. And if we, you know, we’re we become from such a an artistic environment environments such a creative environment where, you know, yes, it’s about inclusivity. And yes, it’s all about the things that we do together, regardless of who you’re who you are, who you’re from color of skin, et cetera, I find our group tends to be so inclusive, but the more that we can get them into the business side of it, and to mix with that. And that is about knowing your numbers. And I think that’s where, whether that’s coming from you or from Jamie or from whomever. I think that that’s how you get people ready. And I and I think that, you know, we always talk about, maybe it’s just me because of my age. But I think that if we can let the youth know that look at you. Even if you’re single right now, you’re eventually going to have a partner, you’re hopefully you’re eventually going to be in a position down the road where you’re going to want to retire, quit whatever you’re going to, but if they can, if they can understand that you’re building your business, whether it’s solo, whether it’s I’m just working for somebody whether I’m, you know, I have my own businesses, I’m doing it for my family, and I’m doing it for the ones that I love that are around me Even if they’re not with me yet. And I think that if we can, the more that we can help kids that are coming up now understand their future of where they can be if they just apply themselves. There was an interesting thing as we you probably heard about it right now that this whole thing about gainful employment and for a lot of people out there that are going, what the hell is gainful employment, just a thing that that’s going on with schools right now. And we say that we could be losing anywhere up to two to three, two thirds of the schools that are out there, right, fully wrong, whatever your opinion is, but it’s because of this whole thing called that you have to prove that people are gainfully employed and making x amount of dollars. Hold another subject. However, what the scary part that I think is when people are coming into our hairdressing industry, is they think they think that all they’re gonna make is $25,000 a year. Right? Let me tell me some figures that of your people, what are the figures that you don’t

Jayson Morgan 46:01
know, exact figures, but I know they definitely do over that, like our level ones, you know, coming in, you know, I see them when they go out and they get their own apartment, or they get so I know, they’re doing doing nice figures that they can go out and do things at a level one Silas, you know, and I think it only gets better from there, you know, just with, with the ability to, you know, just coming in and, and showing up and being accountable and doing your job there. So,

Chris Baran 46:31
yeah, so that people can make the amount of money that other you know, what they call I’m in for the viewer just listening in, I’m using air quotes right now, when they call them professions, aka, you know, say, lawyers or pick a profession out there, but no hairdressers, you can match that stuff, because we can get, we can create our own tickets, just by working better, working faster, working harder. You know, if you’re getting paid just by the hour, you can’t do that, you know, it’s

Jayson Morgan 47:06
another reason I think to like, it brings people in, because they do see, you know, the success of the staff, and, you know, the younger ones that do start and they see, okay, you know, they hear the stories like that they share, you know, when they get their first car, or they get their first apartment, and, you know, they can go on vacations and do those things that they want to do for themselves. Or, you know, like, I had a whole sixth group that just went to symposium, you know, they were like, Okay, this is awesome, and they were able to go down, have fun, you know, spend a little extra money and, and then take the days off of work, you know, that they asked to come back. So, you know, it was, it’s good to see that and knowing that yeah, in this career, I mean, you can, you can make whatever you want, it can

Chris Baran 47:50
and you hit it, you hit a really good point on there is that, that and for those people listening that are out there, whether you’re just listening, whether you’re listening as somebody that’s working for somebody working on your own, or whether you’re in commission based business or or an entrepreneur is that the what our industry that we need to be as owners is the thing that I’m really hearing that really attracts people in for people that want to have more people that work for them. I had a conversation just with an I believe it was I think it was with Damian Kearney just the other day, and he was talking about how in the businesses that they’re in now, you just have to give flexibility, somebody wants to work three days a week, and a place for working three days a week, fill that fill that, you know, there’s got to be a space in there with your timing that you can say, I can give that person three days a week and just shift shift chairs around. And we have to be flexible in what we’re doing with the with the the people you want to hire.

Jayson Morgan 48:55
Exactly. And that is a key thing too. I mean, we are so flexible, you know, we have people come in and we have some that only want to work two days, you know, they want to work three days or they only want to work, you know, nights or, you know, they don’t want to work Saturday like that’s the thing. I feel like nowadays you have to be flexible with your with your stylist. It’s not like when, you know I was coming up, but you got to be there like, you know, yes, I’ve worked late every night, like tend to tend to nine or 10 to eight every day, you know? No, that’s not the way it is anymore. You know, they come into work and we have two shifts. So we do an eight o’clock to three o’clock shift in the we have a three to nine shift. So I do ask them to you know, pick a shift and stick to that shift. But you know if they want to do you know, morning or afternoon two or three days a week, that’s fine. You know, figure it out. I’ve got some that I got one, you know, she works at another job. And then she just started and she went on to on one to work two days with us. After she’s been working there. She’s been picking up now she’s at three days she’s getting ready to go to four days. And here’s the thing too with a lot of the Uh, the younger ones, or the newer ones that we’re building, I encourage them to do two or three days. Because that way, it puts the capacity of the people, you know, smaller, so they’re not stressed out, and they’re not hanging out at work getting bored or in the backroom, you know, as much kind of thing. So that way when they’re, they’re maximizing their time on those two days, and I say, You know what, let’s fill out those two days, fill up those two days, then let’s open you up to a third day. And then you know, we are we’ll talk about like, what’s your night? You know, I think you would really do well, at nighttime at this salon, because, you know, your growth and your personality and where I think he would fit really well there. So, you know, we do talk about that, and that personal growth and what works best for them. Because sometimes somebody starting off, it’s not great for them to be there five days a week, you know, you’ll lose them fast.

Chris Baran 50:50
I’m gonna, I’m gonna bring up a flash from the past here. A mutual friend of both of ours, Leah Freeman, with her dad had always called them Yeah, I know, we both love her to death. But her dad always loved her dad always called, like, if you had somebody that was sitting around, and let’s say they were only booked for two, but they got three days of sitting on in the back room reading romance magazines. And then you knew you were going to have a meeting with all the staff and Leah’s Dad always called them, it’s you can’t have staph infections, Staph infections, infections, because if you’re not coming to the meeting, and you can pitch but you can’t you have to have a solution. Absolutely, you know, so. But that point, that’s what I love that you said that we’ve got to be more flexible as owners now so that we can number one have staff that’s happy number two, so that that they’ve got a place to go to. But most importantly, is here’s the part that the one that really rang home for me the other day, and I was talking to a coach, and he was saying, look at when you’re when you have your staff, and they’re beginning, at when you’re at the very beginning of their tenure, is that you suggest to them the times of optimal client flow. So in other words, let’s just say, I, Chris comes to start with you. And you would say, Chris, I know you’re gonna, I would suggest that you start with two or three days, what would you like to do? Okay, good. Well, so here’s what’s going to happen. When you’re at this level, we’re going to put your dates we’re gonna let we’re gonna give you those two, three days, because we want you in when you have the highest impact. With client flow, there’s no sense and I’m just picking arbitrary dates, if Wednesday is the slowest day of the week, no sense of you being new and being here on Wednesday, we can’t feed you you can’t generate clients on those days. But if Monday and Tuesday are the our high revenue flow, then we’re going to have you come in on Monday and Tuesday or Wednesday, and Friday, whatever those two days are.

Jayson Morgan 53:01
For that stylist, you know, start to create that demand early for them, you know, where I feel like, with me, it’s like a long time, you know, fill up and then you know, creating that demand, but now it’s like, okay, hey, these guys got two days, like, which one do you want? So, okay, boom, it’s gonna fill them up. And then you know, going from there. Yeah, I love that.

Chris Baran 53:20
Yeah. So the the, Jason, I want to I want to talk about this is right now, because you’ve always been driven. And I think that’s, it’ll be much more understandable when I’m talking about, we’re going to do a little shift in here right now. Because I believe if you’re going to be truly successful at what you do, it’s all it is about your physical, your mental, and your spiritual being that you have. And by spiritual, I don’t mean that it necessarily has to be about a religion, it’s just about the energy that you have the energy that you give out the energy that you take in. But in the last number of years, I’ve seen a great a huge, and when I talk about physical, I don’t mean just the fact about that you can work 1420 hours a day, but from when I was teaching with you all the time, your physical being has changed I talked about alluded to at the beginning, we have the same V shaped body positioning, except that mine’s upside down from yours. So I remember when you first started talking about CrossFit. Yeah. Tell him that because here’s where I want to go with this as I just for everybody’s edification, if you’re listening right now, I’m going to ask you you might want to go back because I’m going to show some pictures of Jason Lee in just a second here. I want if you could bring up there’s just a before and after. Of when you started off with here it is right here.

Jayson Morgan 54:53
Let me tell you, that one right there was right when I exited. redkin Yeah, so that was fine. Have a last one. And the thing that I laugh about with that, because all those fun times that we had to think scenes and stuff, Leah Freeman and I would get up and we would go run down Fifth Avenue, like, for our class in the morning, and, or we’d go home and get on the treadmill before we would go. We couldn’t like I was like, I can’t get thin enough. I can’t get thin enough. And that was in my brain. You know, it was like, Okay, I gotta get word and get that was the look I was going for. Then when I look at my picture now. They’re like, Okay, I don’t think I was the running was working for me. But

Chris Baran 55:31
well, I think I think the running was working. But I think that hanging out with me in the bar? Wasn’t Yeah, so

Jayson Morgan 55:37
I know. Right? I love it. And then the one on the left. So yeah, when I left redkin that was the, the funny thing because I was kind of like, oh, man, and you know, I was left to focus on my salons. And to really figure out like, okay, how can I get these guys are to get it up and running and be successful, because the first one opened in 2009. And it was 400 square feet. So it was small. And then we moved down. And then we expanded. So at that point I had left and I was kind of struggling, because, you know, for, I don’t know, 1920 years, that’s I educated and I was like, Okay, you guys were my friends, you know, on the weekends. And, or, you know, that I saw out on the road, you know, and I wasn’t really home that much. And if I was home, I was behind the chair. So I didn’t feel like I had a community of friends. So I was like, oh, okay, what I need to do, well, then, my one client came in, she was like, Please join CrossFit with me. And I was like, No, I’m not doing that. And then after, like, the 10th time, I was like, shut up. I’ll just go. And so I went. And then I really, really enjoyed it. I did that for about three years. And then at that point, one of my clients was another client was sitting in my chair, Courtney, and she was like, Have you ever thought about doing physique shows? She goes, I think you should be men’s physique. And I was like, we made like bodybuilding shows. She goes, yeah. And I was like, Oh, I don’t know she does. I think you’d be great up there. And I was like, Well, I probably would be great there. But it’s all the same stuff. I

Chris Baran 57:07
was like modesty aside,

Jayson Morgan 57:09
right? That’s one thing I was like, because some of these guys backstage will be like, Oh, I’m so nervous to walk out on stage. I’m like, Are you kidding? I got it. I’m walking out there. I’m like, yes. So but it she was like, Okay, you want us to do that. And that’s when I got it personal like a coach. And then got a coach who I’ve been working with now for about seven going on, maybe eight years, six, seven years, something like that. It’s been a while, but we’ve been together a long time. And the thing that I love is because he’s gotten to know my body like so well. And he writes my nutrition out for me, he tells me what to eat like every three hours I eat and you know, certain amount of chicken you know, my carbs are three cards and that’s it and then you know, my vegetables or anything under the glycemic index at 15. At first I was like whoa, you know, that’s kind of extreme, but not really because I’ve eaten a lot and I’m eating more than I was in the first picture. And I’m like whoa looking at the results and then designing my my workout routines as well. I mean, he really has I would say he but we both have transformed myself into that

Chris Baran 58:18
yeah we bring up bring up because obviously you have gone into that and you have now won competitions etc. Yeah there’s the picture there’s you on stage

Jayson Morgan 58:29
Yeah, that was my most recent are the second one I just did one last weekend. That’s the one before that

Chris Baran 58:36
and then show the neck This was after that this is what the taken home all the all the metal Yeah. So yeah, so I’ll take just a second to come up there. But the idea behind that is is what I want to talk to you about is is just how this the competition of that has how’s that help your mindset like here you are with those trophies? That was just off one competition Correct? Yeah,

Jayson Morgan 59:00
yeah, that was awful in competition so that was last weekend right there and I got what I got there for 5677 awards, I got two first place in 50 plus so I got first place in 50 Plus I got two second places in 40 Plus I got a third and then I think two fourths or something like that. I don’t know but I’ll tell you what I love anytime you play some guys are like I don’t get first I’m out of here. I’m like dude, I’m happy to be up here in number five spot amongst all these people. It’s amazing. So I think it comes through when I’m up there and it does come through you know in the salon as well. Because I think it does help me when I’m like just with breathing and like you know learning how to like handle stressful situations. That definitely working out takes my stress away. You know and it gives me another outlet for you know, to get rid of stuff and to think about it and to clear my mind before I go to bed or you know sometimes overtime Like sometimes I get up in the morning, just depending on the day. I love to do it during the day, that way, it just sets me up for success for the rest of the day.

Chris Baran 1:00:08
First of all, how many hours of the date and what’s your reg? What’s the regimen that you have?

Jayson Morgan 1:00:14
It’s not really great. I mean, I say it’s not crazy. But Jamie and say it’s crazy. I go in, let’s say, I’ll work like an hour, hour. 15 minutes. That’s it a day. You know, I’ll say another day. I do like, maybe five to six days a week. And I’ll take like, Sundays off. I’ll at least do something whether it’s, you know, I don’t know. Just go hit the weights for a little bit or therefore while I was doing peloton, but I’m really hate riding the bike, and I only do that when I have to because I have to drop weight. You know, do the water cut, but I would say that’s six hours. I mean, I would do six days a week for about an hour a day. Yeah.

Chris Baran 1:00:57
No, that’s Well, yeah. For me, like, that’s, I remember the days when I would work six days a week for one out? Oh, no, that wasn’t me.

Speaker 2 1:01:05
Yeah. I can tell you though, like to like, right when I was leaving redken. You know, we were opening this line in the new salon. And I will say it was very stressful. And, you know, there were times I remember at that last symposium that I talked with you and Adina. Yeah, I think we’re doing face shapes. You know, I was up there. And I don’t know what it what the cause of it was. But you’re talking about like headspace and stuff. I got in my own headspace, you know, and I felt like I was having a panic attack. I remember walking through those halls in Vegas. And just seeing all those people come coming at me. And I’m like, Oh, my God, what am I doing? You know, because I’ve got the salon, I’m thinking about here, I’m opening. Here, I need to focus on going up on stage there. And I remember, like, I was supposed to be up there. I think it was for maybe like a 30 minute segment. And I ended up staying up there for 15 minutes, and I walked off. And you and Adina were like, what? Okay, somebody get up there, you know, kind of thing. But it was just I was at that breaking point where I was like, I can’t be up here anymore. Like I had needed to make a change. And I needed to figure out what to do. And so I think that was kind of like, when I got back home. I was like, Okay, I know, I need to focus on the salons right now. This is where my path is meant to be right now. And I will say, you know that kind of for a while, like I was getting a little anxious. But I’ll tell you what, since I started, wait working out and stuff like that hadn’t had any problems like that at all. So

Chris Baran 1:02:33
we just gotta have something like, I know that should I go out? And what should I be in CrossFit training? Yes, I probably shouldn’t. However, the one what I do, even though it’s gonna sound weird, and you’re saying that’s all BS, Chris, when I what it for me, I need something to take my mind off of it. And for me that I might if I want to make a hairpiece, I’ll just go downstairs and I’ll turn the TV on. And I’ll braid hair for hours just not knowing. I know I want to make something but I’ll just do like I was just telling some people the other day I just I’ve got this vision I want to have in my brain of a piece. I don’t know what it is yet. But it’s going to include microwaves that are all woven together and put into something I don’t know what it is. Yeah, so but I can go downstairs and like the other day that I went down to make micro braids that are anywhere up to like two and a half feet long. It for one braid is going to take me like 15 to 20 minutes to make one braid that is the size of a pencil pencil lead out of a pencil. And, um, so far, like I’ve had to make about 40 or 50. And I need to make about four or 500 your hands cramping. Well, they do. That’s a whole different. This is I’ll give you the there’s my trigger finger coming out here. So but that’s where I’m what I’m getting to is if it’s exercise that, that lets you level out your brain in your mind. Whether it’s it’s doing something that is mind numbing with an end goal, and I’m very I know people that can’t do that. But I’m very good at mundane things that take a long time when I can see the final vision in it because that changes my mindset. Yeah.

Jayson Morgan 1:04:21
In the last couple of years, I’ve been working with pureology now and they have a program called inner peace, our prosperity, and it’s all about like, you know, meditation and finding your inner peace and your reach. So I was talking to Yuresh today and I was like they were making us lay down and meditate on these things. I was like, I can’t do it. Like I can’t just quiet my mind. And I’ve struggled with it because I was like, why can I not do this? That’s it. Other people do it. You know, I see people and they look so peaceful and I’m sitting there looking around the room. Like I can’t relax, I can’t relax and then it started to bother me for a minute and he goes, Hey, you know, don’t worry about it. He goes your gym is your meditation and that’s where you like you find your like quiet time and I was like You know, you’re right. That’s like when you go down to do your braids. That’s your moment to just like meditate and to get it. And I think that I’ve never been into that. But now I think that I know that I do do it. I think it’s very important. Yeah. So.

Chris Baran 1:05:15
So on that in mind, like with meditation and where you and moving forward and, and just moving ahead in your life, what pushes you what pushes you like you’re able to force salons, you’ve got after this, you’ll say, Well, look, I’m, I’m, if I’m going to do CrossFit, and I’m going after, you know, physical, I might as well compete. What pushes you to do that?

Jayson Morgan 1:05:39
I just always want to know what the next level is. And then like, Okay, if I can do this, then what else can I do? So let’s see, if I like doing this part of it, then let’s see what the next level is there. You know, what, somebody else out the door? Cannot? No, no, you know, take it to the next. That’s it. I think that just pushes me I love like, I love setting a goal and then achieving it, you know, and I’ll work to do, you know, or figure out. And that’s the thing, like, it’s a system, like we were talking about systems earlier, and plans and like the salon and working out, you know, those kind of things. For me, it’s the same, it’s a system, you know, that I get up and I go and I do and, you know, it’s like cutting hair, you know, I watch my form. When I’m doing my scissors, my elevation, your overdrive, finger angle, all those things. Same thing, when I’m lifting weights, I got to make sure that I’ve got, you know, my form correct when I’m doing it, so I’m going to do it properly, I’m gonna have the best outcome, you know,

Chris Baran 1:06:34
so it’s all foundation isn’t it? It is all foundation,

Jayson Morgan 1:06:37
you know, and just having that really pushes me to see, I don’t know, I think my parents has always told me to you can be whatever you want to be, you can do whatever you want to do. And I’m like, Okay, let’s see, what can I do next? Yeah, sometimes I think it drives me crazy. Because I would say over our 30 years of being together, I’ve done a lot of things. And he’s like, Okay, what’s the next slide? Bad you’re gonna be into for a little while.

Chris Baran 1:07:04
Right? Where are we going now?

Jayson Morgan 1:07:06
Exactly.

Chris Baran 1:07:09
Yeah, yeah. Love it, because I’ve seen this evolution that you’ve went through in there. Was there? Is there something that you did along the way that you? You wish you wouldn’t have done? I mean, already, it was gives me the standard response. If I ask a question like that, they always go, Well, you know, if I wouldn’t have done the things that I did all the way, I wouldn’t be where I’m at. But, you know, I always think that there’s got to be something along the way that, you know, we could have sped things up if we would have done something differently. Or if, you know, we did something along the way that kind of held us back. What would What do you Was there any of that for you? If

Jayson Morgan 1:07:52
Oh, my gosh, I’m sure there’s got to be something that held me back. Yeah, I would take my own head, like being in my headspace like mine, right there. Sometimes that holds me back. Because, you know, sometimes I think I’m not good enough. Or I’m afraid of the failure, you know, and I’m like, Okay, what if I do do this and fail, but I will say the older I’ve gotten, the more I’m like, let’s just do this and have fun with it, you know, kind of thing. And but yeah, I mean, it really has, like you said, You’ve known me a long time. And I know you could, I don’t know if you ever remember but just being my first time presenting or getting up there, you know, going off of I remember, you guys would tell me something and coaching you and Sam and I would get up there and say it you’re like No, say it like you do. And I’m like, oh, but you gave me the word. So I was just using your words. So I think eventually finding my own words, you know, and not being afraid of failure as much, because I used to really worry a lot about that as like, what do people think of me because, you know, we all want to be liked, we all want to be loved. And, but that doesn’t happen all the time. And I think that was a huge hang up for me a lot. And it kind of held me back because I was afraid to do stuff because I thought either people would make fun of me, or it wasn’t good enough. Or they would look at it and say, Oh, that’s not creative, you know, or things like that. So,

Chris Baran 1:09:12
yeah. Oh, you know,

Jayson Morgan 1:09:15
I’m starting to overcome it. So I’m glad.

Chris Baran 1:09:18
And I’m glad that that the there’s another thing I want to ask you here, and it’s kind of a standard. You know, I don’t classify these as interviews or just more conversations. But I always hear this one thing that somebody always says, Well, if somebody was starting out in this business, what would you what advice would you give them and so I’m not going to ask you that. You look good. But if you had to go back and talk to have a little conversation or give some advice bullet points to that young Jason Morgan that started off at the beginning. What would you tell them?

Jayson Morgan 1:09:56
When I say to young me Notice I just try it all go out there and just at least jump in and give it a shot.

Chris Baran 1:10:10
Nice okay, I’ve got some rapid fire stuff. Just ones quick ones just one word responses one sentence responses here we go. Okay good. Here we go. Okay. What turns you on in the creative process?

Jayson Morgan 1:10:28
I don’t know why but Kool Aid comes to my head.

Chris Baran 1:10:33
Drink it, right.

Jayson Morgan 1:10:34
I don’t know what turns me on the creative process I don’t know just the ability to see that I’ve done something

Chris Baran 1:10:42
nice what stifles it for you.

Jayson Morgan 1:10:44
Somebody tells me no. Oh, love it.

Chris Baran 1:10:47
An event to show or anything that came out love that you loved first one that comes to my mind even though the show event to show a thing that came out comes to your brain that you just loved?

Jayson Morgan 1:11:01
Yeah, I’d probably say the last physique show I did.

Chris Baran 1:11:03
Nice thing in life that you dislike the most.

Jayson Morgan 1:11:11
Probably cucumbers.

Chris Baran 1:11:13
Things that you love the most love the most.

Jayson Morgan 1:11:16
Personal mom.

Chris Baran 1:11:21
softy,

Jayson Morgan 1:11:22
right. I’m a mama’s boy.

Chris Baran 1:11:26
thing that you hate most about our industry. Let me rephrase that thing that you dislike the most about our industry? Just

Jayson Morgan 1:11:34
things I dislike the most about our industry?

I don’t know. I feel like I want to say it. But I don’t know if I should say Don’t say it.

Like, I feel like the thing I don’t really like right now is the way like influencers are going. And one way with everything because I felt like it’s all like, based on like a bunch of influencers out there that. I don’t know, I feel like it. Like I feel like I’ve got a ton of influencers in my salon. And I just hate sometimes a bit that people put so much focus on what this one person has to say when I’m like, Dude, I’ve got so many people here that have great things to say.

Chris Baran 1:12:17
Interesting person that you admire the most.

Jayson Morgan 1:12:22
Oh, probably Jamie. Nice.

Chris Baran 1:12:25
And just so that we qualify, you’re

Jayson Morgan 1:12:28
probably I would say Jamie Yeah.

Chris Baran 1:12:31
Person A person living or dead that you wish you could meet.

Jayson Morgan 1:12:35
living or dead I wish I could meet you know, I always I used to say like, probably Garth Brooks because I loved his like showmanship on stage and the way he would come out with his energy and rowdiness. So yeah, I’d probably stick with that. I’d still like to meet him

Chris Baran 1:12:54
like it. Something that people don’t know about you.

Jayson Morgan 1:12:58
Um, I took piano lessons for 11 years.

Chris Baran 1:13:01
Wow. I didn’t do so. Do you have a piano? No.

Jayson Morgan 1:13:05
I do not. But I can still play. I was loved gone with when when I was little loved Scarlett O’Hara. Mother and I can still play the theme from Dominique. Wow, is the word out my dad used to get so mad because I play truly from Lionel Richie and I would sing it to the top of my life to be like

Chris Baran 1:13:28
okay, I’ll give you a month off. Where would you go? What would you do? Oh, my thing to do his hair. Or would you do

Jayson Morgan 1:13:36
I wouldn’t even talk about it. Let’s say I do love Puerto Rico. So I go there a lot. I probably would go down to Puerto Rico for a month or hit some islands for sure.

Chris Baran 1:13:46
Love it. Things that you’re terrified of

Jayson Morgan 1:13:52
terrified and you don’t say be involved

Chris Baran 1:14:04
when you’re not controlling it right? Yeah. Okay, your your favorite curse word? Oh. Okay, good. Soften easy one right? Your favorite comfort food that like you know you’re it’s all about fitness but if you’re gonna have the biggest juiciest something meal that you couldn’t that wouldn’t normally have. What would it be?

Jayson Morgan 1:14:27
I would say probably a big bowl of ice cream. Like no ice cream, something like that. Yes.

Chris Baran 1:14:34
Something in the industry that you haven’t done so far but want to

Jayson Morgan 1:14:41
something in the industry I haven’t done let’s see. I would say nah ha definitely comes to mind. We’d love to do that or attempt that because I’ve seen my friends do it and I’m like, Why haven’t I done this yet?

Chris Baran 1:14:59
Well go for it. It just make that happen. A do over something that you know, like you’ve done you wish you would have done differently in the past, what would it be? A do over in your life?

Jayson Morgan 1:15:12
Probably do over, I would say, probably working for somebody at one time. I wish I could do that over and not work there again.

Chris Baran 1:15:24
I love that. Okay, tomorrow, you couldn’t do hair. You can’t do hair can’t be in the business. What would you do?

Jayson Morgan 1:15:32
So I always tell my coach to I’m like, can you just train me so I can be like your assistant. So I would love to be like an assistant coach. You know, blow the whistle. Here would be good though.

Chris Baran 1:15:45
Okay, last question. Yep. In our industry, one thing that people should people that are listening or watching what should they let go of or stop doing?

Jayson Morgan 1:16:01
When are in our industry, what should they let go of or stop doing? I would just say, doubting yourself.

Chris Baran 1:16:14
Interesting. Yeah, that imposter syndrome that always coming up on its head.

Jayson Morgan 1:16:19
I know. Right? That little voice on your shoulder, you know, going through this.

Chris Baran 1:16:24
That blade that space that lives between that seven inches between her ears. Listen, my friend. Jason, I just want to thank you. I know you’re busy. swamped in the salon. I just want to thank you for giving up your time and being with us here. Jason, thank you so much for being on board with us and giving up your time.

Jayson Morgan 1:16:44
Well, thank you so much. I thoroughly enjoyed it. And I loved all the questions rapid fire man I was I was a little quicker though.

Chris Baran 1:16:53
All good. All right. Thanks, my friend. All of us. Good luck.

Jayson Morgan 1:16:56
Have a good night. Cheers.