ep140-Gordon Miller 2026

Show Notes

Welcome to another episode of Headcases. Our guest today is a threepeat – one of the very few people we’ve had on the pod three times. Every time he joins us, he brings priceless insight into where our industry is at, and where it’s going.

Today’s conversation matters, whether you’re an independent stylist, a salon owner, an educator, or involved with the school system. Education and data are gold, and knowing how to put them to work for you let’s you move forward with confidence in a rapidly changing industry.

We’ll talk about the Wild West days of the industry and how it has evolved to this wildly different post-COVID landscape. What does it all mean for your future? This is one of those episodes you’ll want to listen to more than once.

He calls himself a dispassionate observer but I have such admiration for his commitment to an informed perspective. For me, he is also a friend, a teacher, and a mentor. Let’s get into this week’s Headcases with the ever-observing, passionately dispassionate Mr Gordon Miller.

6:05 Changes and Challenges in the Beauty Industry

24:39 The Role of Education and Mentorship

25:00 Balancing Work and Personal Life

50:25 Self Discipline

Complete Transcript

Chris Baran 0:00
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 hair stylist and educator for 40 plus years, and I’m inviting all our heroes to chat and share the secrets of their success. I

Chris Baran 0:26
Well, welcome to another episode of head cases. And I’m really excited about this one because we have a three peat on here, meaning this guest is one of the only ones I believe, that we’ve had on three times, and he’s here to talk us one to us one more time about the State of the Union. Now, why do I want to why do I think that you should be listening to this? Well, whether you’re an independent stylist or a salon owner, whether you’ve been in, whether you’re involved in the school side of what we do in our industry, or a stylist working in a salon, if you understand that data and education is gold, and how to use that to move yourself forward in this changing device of time that we’ve got in our world and in the industry, I have to say this that I’m not going to give you a lot of insights into this. We’re going to talk a bit more about it. You’ll learn more about this gentleman in just a second here when you’re watching but the there’s so many nuggets that in this particular episode that you’re going to want to listen to this over and over and over again, so that you take everything away. We’re going to talk about the wild wild west that happens is years and years back, and how it turned pro, and what that means to where we are now, particular with the balance that’s happening in our district post covid. But all of that is the reason why I’ve invited this person back time and time and time again, because he’s the qualified person who can talk to us, about us, and create some context to what this is all about. He labels himself as the dispassionate observer. And so I just want to get back into head cases and this week’s episode. And so let me introduce to you one more time the forever, the Forever observant, the passionately dispassionate person who is a friend, teacher, mentor of mine, Mr. Gordon Miller. Gordon is, I don’t know who I enjoy more, you know, and I have to say you’re holding the record, because you’re the first person to have a three peat with us. So I just want to say, welcome back to head cases, and as always, I’m sitting on pins and needles waiting to hear what your report is for the industry. So welcome me

Gordon Miller 2:59
as well. Thank you. And I think the 3p is like a sports metaphor, and as the as the old gay guy in the beauty industry, I have no idea what that is, but I’ll take

Chris Baran 3:08
it as a compliment. Well, listen, you’re ranking up there with Michael Jordan right now, so

Gordon Miller 3:13
I do know who that is. Yeah, I’m a Chicago win. So of course, I know Michael is

Chris Baran 3:19
oh Gordon, so it’s, it’s great to have you on and but you know, like, and I know that there’s some people out there that that, that know you, you’ve been on twice before. I’m going to ask everybody, if you don’t, if this is your first time listening to Gordon, you’re going to want to go back and listen to the other ones. They were only, I think you were number 27 and number 77 I think it was. And now you’re we should have had one earlier, and then you could be 137 which is our episodes. So it’s great to have you on here, but for those people who might not know who the heck that Gordon Miller is, why don’t you just give us, like, a brief summary of why here

Gordon Miller 3:59
the really brief one, because it’s been many decades of time in this industry. My whole adult life has been in a professional beauty industry. I’m not a hairdresser, never been a salon owner, but always on the business side. And feel so lucky to be here and to know people like you. Chris Baran, I mean, what? 37 episodes?

Chris Baran 4:15
You’ll be 138

Gordon Miller 4:18
as a fellow podcaster, I love it. So spent most of my career in the education space. Like over 20 years, I kind of came into the industry by accident and beauty schools. But pivot point for 10 years, Leo passage is still to this day, my most important mentor. We lost him many years ago, but pivot point left as VP after 10 years, and I became president of my lady publishing. So I was deep in the weeds in the school world. And then I had the great joy for 10 years of being Executive Director of the National cosmetology Association, which is now part of PBA. But so I did Association work community, you know, I just love it so much to this day. And then, because I was so obsessed with the community, when it was time for me to do do the next part of my career, Facebook had just happened. Happened, and I, I was like, oh my god, this is the modern community. This is where everything is going. I was the first person in the industry to teach a Facebook class, which, you know, I jumped in the deep end really quickly, and then start going into consulting. That led me to media. And I was publisher of market salon magazine. And then for five years, I was CEO and President of hair brain that was one of the partners of the founders and slid out of that, and now I am the General Manager with intercoiff Your which is probably my last chapter in the industry. Time to slow down a little bit and but intercoiff Your being excites the heck out of me because it is a Association nonprofit for employment based salons of a certain size, some of the best salons in the entire industry. And I believe that employment based salons are I love every opportunity anybody has to do what they want to do with their careers. But I know factually that employment based salons are the foundation of everything so many people I who are my friends, who are very successful in suites, well, they came up through employment based salons. They got trained, they got educated, they got smart, as both hairdressers and business people. So again, final chapter, and I’m having a blast with intercourse. Your America, Canada. Well, you know, I know that

Chris Baran 6:08
we’re going to be friends, no matter whether it’s a final chapter and where that ends. I do have to say this. I hope that it’s not for a while, because, yeah, but you know, I want to set this up because I do want I’m, you’re my go to guy to find out what the hell is going on in our industry, and and, and what is the state of our industry, as it said. But I want to set this up for whether you’re a salon owner, whether you’re an independent whether you’re a stylist, knowing what’s going on is really, really important, and know where that where our industry is going, so you can make your adjustments, whether in whatever side of the business that you’re in now. But I want to set this up with two individual instances that I’ve run across in the last while. The first one was from a salon owner, good friend out of the Midwest, and I was doing a gig with them, and he they have multiple salons, huge staff, and he gave me this observation. He said, Chris, you know keys. He calls me that because we’re good friends. He says, Chris. He says, My observation was in, like in the 70s, the the hair industry was like the wild wild west. Everybody did everything. It was one company would do one thing. All the hairdressers were doing on whatever they needed, on, on their own. But it’s like, you know, poo poo shoot. That was my guns, by the way, Boo Boo. You tell them much of a hunter I am. But he said, it’s like, was the wild wild west. Then a manufacturer came in, taught us, educated us, made us like professionals, and we became professionals. And then he said whether it was covid or what it was, but he said that he has so many people coming in and say, I’m just here for the education, and then I’m going to go on my own. So as the salon professional, obviously a little disheartening. And I, quite frankly, said to him, Well, then why don’t you just not hire them? And he said, Well, if I didn’t hire them, I wouldn’t have anybody. So, you know, there is, there is a, there is an upside to that. But that’s one instance that he talked about. He says, now it’s, we’re back to the wild, wild west. And then I was talking to somebody that was in the manufacturing business, on the on the the equipment side. And this person said he jumped out of the business now going in on his own, because he said that a lot of the big salons that would normally have major renovations and they would do their making their brand more current, etc, and now they’re, they’re going back to just fixing what might be broken, and, you know, just onesie twosie things, just to make my salon up, get the salon up to par. But it was more from an aspect of, I don’t know where the industry is going, so I’m afraid to put these 50, 6070, $100,000 renovations that are going into my business, if it’s not going to be lucrative, and not giving me an ROI. So based on that, you know, you and I had a conversation about some of the things that are going on. Could you what does that mean, what we just talked about, and what should people be aware of?

Gordon Miller 9:20
Well, let me start by saying one of my favorite words that I think should matter to all of us is context, and that is to just kind of understand how anything that we’re thinking about at some sort of deep level, or personal lives or professional lives, pretty much anything context is kind of connecting the dots between that idea and the larger world. Yeah, what’s happening? And I’ve long said, you know, and as someone who’s not a hairdresser, you know, not as long I’ve been really fortunate to work for some really smart people and work with some really smart people who’ve taught me so many things about the larger industry. When I went to work for pivot point a million years ago, I was so curious about all this people. I was. Eating and seeing. And the founder, Leo passage, was so wonderful. And teaching me the history and the connecting what brands are doing and what they used to do, and and he introduced me a lot of older hairdressers, one of my favorite people ever, whose name was Ruth Aiken. And when I was probably in my 40s, she was literally 99 years old, and she had sold her salon, but she still kept a chair in it, and once a week, she would do hairdressing, she would hairdress. She would do hairdressing, she would do clients. And I said to her one day, I was like, Miss Ruth, as they called her. I said, you’re still at your age. And she says, until either I die or they die, this is what I love. I’m going to keep doing, but she taught me about the history of hairdressing from her own perspective, going back to the 1920s Wow, which was just amazing. And so I love context. I love understanding something bigger than what we are in this moment. And when you understand history, about anything the world, you know our country, you know our industry, I just think it informs you as you think about everything that you just asked Chris and what’s happening today, I think is very much rooted in what’s always rooted in the larger world we are very much and it has been proven to be over and over and over again, decade by decade. Whenever we’re experiencing it, take a step back and say what’s happening in our larger world. There’s a good chance you’re going to see a dotted line maybe, obviously, maybe have to ponder a little bit harder or squint, but you’ll start to see it. And today I’m going to start with the larger world we live in, a larger world that is very confusing. You know, it’s very divisive. And no matter what side of life people are on or what their belief systems are relative to all kinds of stuff. One thing that we know about the world today and about human beings today is we, we don’t necessarily know what to believe and who to believe. We just don’t. There’s so much information social media. There’s old school media. I mean, there’s just, there’s opinions, you know, because today, more than ever, because of social we can express our opinions and we can express them loudly or not. And so it’s a confusing world. And going to the industry, I find it to be the most confusing. Not that I feel confused, but I look at the marketplace and I go, wow, like people are on all sides of things. You know, rental versus chair, rental versus suites versus commission versus big versus small. There’s just a lot of divisiveness between it all people, kind of throwing rocks, you know, at another group often, I believe, because they just don’t maybe understand the other group. Social media, there’s businesses that that gain by putting clickbait out, you know, which is these crazy headlines you see it on Instagram posts. So we live in confused times. I think we’re a confused industry. Somebody I know, you know, is an old good friend of mine. Is Sam Baran, New York salon, you know, iconic hair transfer, just amazing guy. He said to me, probably, I don’t know, 15 or more years ago, talking about the industry, he said, the one thing I just know, you know, like in my gut, you know, is that this is not a complicated industry, being in the salon, buying the chair, owning a salon, owning your business, you know, even if it’s a business or what not complicated, he said, but it’s hard. You know, it’s hard. And when things are hard, sometimes we get confused about what are the fundamentals of business. And as the industry, you know, I love that you talked about the 70s. And your friend, you know, because I came into the industry, I wasn’t

Chris Baran 13:29
born that by then,

Gordon Miller 13:30
you’re young, young. I came in in 1978 actually, I think it beat me by a year or two. I could be wrong about that, but I came in in 78 and to your point, a few moments ago. I mean, the brands weren’t quite here yet, you know, they were just redkin was here. They were kind of the first of the big brands to make it in Clairol was very present. But, you know, they started in mass, and they found the salon, and there wasn’t a whole lot more, you know, there was a few, a few things, you know, Jerry reading was starting to pop a little bit, and so. And then we came into the 80s, and then you and I lived through this time where all the big brands that we know today happened, you know, Paul Mitchell happened, Horace happened, Arnie Miller happened. He’s entrepreneurial. Many of them. Well, all of them. Well, Arnie wasn’t a hairdresser, you know, was Arnie hairdresser. Now that I said that, I

Chris Baran 14:19
I can’t

Gordon Miller 14:21
remember, but you had these entrepreneurs love the industry. I know that they were a salon owner before they were anything else, the Millers. And so they brought economic power to the industry by way of the industry, because they were fascinated. They saw opportunity. I think Paula Kent Meehan, the founder of reg and led the way, because she and Jerry reading came into the industry and said, Paul said to me, I drove around Beverly Hills with Paula one day, and she was like 80 and very she’s very tiny, and she drove, the steering wheel was like in front of her kill us. It was

Chris Baran 14:55
like an aiming device as she’s

Gordon Miller 14:56
driving us around, and she’s telling me the history of. Not only Redken, but again, the industry in that era. And she said, I just really, I loved my hairdresser, and I started to learn about hairdressing because she was an actress at the time and a model and, and she said, I wanted them to have better lives. And this retail thing, I got fascinated. She met Jerry reading and, and I think they all had a passion, you know, for the hairdresser and for the salon. And they saw, they saw an opportunity to raise the bar for everybody, to make it a more professional industry. As you said, the 80s is where, really the professional salon that we know today was kind of born when I was a kid. It was the beauty parlor, you know, Benny’s beauty box, with your operator. And, yeah, everybody had the little like, almost like nurses outfits, like a more fashionable nurse outfit and weird little shoes, you know, most like orthopedic that was pre 1980 you know. And then we come into the 80s, and all of a sudden we grow up, you know, we come this professional thing. And in 90s, it really took off. And you had more and more economic power, more and more brands going, oh my gosh, there’s opportunity. But let’s come up with something new. Hairdressers who watched the arnies and the horse start their little brands. Many of them became big brands. You know, we had, we had Jerry Crescenzi and Sebastian, just so much. And all of those things helped bring up the little salon, you know, the that became the big salon, and the multi million dollar salons, you know, started popping so you had all this happening and distribution, which was the way that people got stuff, those product companies got matched up with distributors. Well, distributors were already selling end papers and things back in the day, and hairspray, which was the only thing that salons were selling, along with rainbowness. And so the product companies, together grew distribution, and then distribution started to get bought up, and the little family businesses started to become parts of bigger businesses. Then you have Swan centric and BSG, so you had this evolution of the industry that kind of takes us where we were, I’ll say pre covid, which was big corporations, big economic power, some small ones too, bringing all kinds of resource education. I mean, I again, I grew up in the education side. I watched education that was mostly provided through hairdressing clubs, which were part of the national cosmetology Association on the ground, not product driven, no fancy shows, no fancy lights. That was the time. But they were learning from one another. Brands and distributors saw that and said, that’s an opportunity we can do. We can do that better. We can we can add some pizzazz to it, you know, we can train trainers to be better, because we have that economic power, and everybody rose up, you know, because of that, I always say when people today because of social media, which, again, I think that’s that confusing stuff that’s in in the moment that we’re living through. There’s a lot of chatter on social media, which I pay a lot of attention to. This anti brand. Brands are bad. You know, brands are brands are hurting you. Brands are trying to take advantage of you. And I’m like, you know, there’s always been tension between different types of businesses and small businesses people. You know, before today, I would say to young people, it’s not a new idea. But without brands and the innovation that they bring to the industry, volleys didn’t happen by itself. First, someone had to first develop the hair color, right, right? All kinds of dry shampoo, you know, that was that happened in a laboratory. You know, all these so product so brands are so essential today. You know, apps, you know, all the technology. These are big companies bringing all kinds of resources. So, so there’s this chatter about the negativity about many parts of our industry, including salons against salons and employment, categories against categories. Again, going to, where are we today? You know, in this confused time, you know, pre covid, I think we had the institutions. And I’ll say brands, distribution, those would be categories of what I think of, kind of industry institutions. I you know, in the larger world, you know, we have government, you know, and we have lots of things that happened there. And then we have businesses and, you know, technology companies, and they’re so big that they’re like institutional in our industry, it is the brands, it is the distributors. It’s schools, you know, the schools are its own, you know, part of the industry, and it has its own power, you know, and so, and then we have the regulatory agencies and what they mean for the industry. And it feels like, once we came out of covid, that we saw each of those entities groups morph, just like we saw hairdressers morph and individual human beings morph. We came out of covid a little bit different than looking and feeling different than before covid, we were best trustful. We watched the media for other reasons, not covid per se, but the larger economy start to get fractured and politicized. And again, it all just becomes very confusing. I see all that in the industry brands because of covid and because of the digital innovations in the world that were happening simultaneously. We all jumped on clubhouse. Nobody thought anybody would be on something like clubhouse, pre covid. If somebody said it to you, be like, that’s never going to happen in the beauty industry, no, no, no. But. I go back 25 years, and you look at the beginning of the internet for the professional beauty industry, specifically behind the chair.com many conversations with my friend Mary Rector over the years, he was like, all the companies said, You’re crazy, Mary, hairdressers are never going to be on the internet. It’s not going to happen. Well, 25 years later, Mary was right. Hairdressers would be there. They would be empowered by it. They would they would find resources. You know, it’s just like, but just like the rest of the world, right? We mirror the image of the larger world. And so coming out of covid, we saw media companies get smaller. You know, we had like six big media companies. Now we have two. You know, we saw brands who were employing 10s of 1000s of educators on the ground at one time. I think the number I saw was like about 30,000 educators across all the brands. I mean, a company like Oreo had like 10,000 educators across brands on the ground.

Gordon Miller 20:56
60, 70% of those are gone today. We came out of covid. There was a belief that digital education would take over, kind of naturally. Because of covid, a lot of people left the industry. A lot of people changed how they what they wanted to do with themselves in the industry. So again, all these changes, and it left, I believe, the country kind of less than we were less connected as human beings. We were less trustful as human beings. Businesses got wonky. The economy had its own challenges because of covid and again, a lot of residue, kind of negativity in all of it. Also all kinds of new opportunities. That’s the other fascinating part about it is just all kinds of new opportunities. So in the industry again, with the manufacturers pulling back to distributors, pulling back from really being the primary source of great quality education to kind of less than just because fewer bodies on the ground more digital. And I would say, as someone who loves digital, that it didn’t do for us what we hoped, like we haven’t caught up, I think with the innovation, most of our professionals, yeah, they’re in it, but that’s not where they want to live, and it’s not where they want to necessarily get their education. So I think a lot of opportunity to teach has kind of been left on the table, and people aren’t getting the resources, and then, because of social media, and I’m I think we’re all a victim of this. We’ve become confused about what is education, and a lot of people think that watching a three minute social media Tiktok is education. And I would argue as again, as somebody deep in the weeds, and someone who, by the way, just loves wasting two hours on Tiktok. Okay, crazy cat videos. You know, it’s like, I can do that

Chris Baran 22:34
all day. Hi. My name is Chris, and I love cat videos, right?

Gordon Miller 22:41
But we’ve become we’ve become confused because we’ll watch education, and there’s lots of education on Tiktok and on Instagram, and we’re just kind of making an assumption because I watched that I learned something, and I think it’s important that we understand how we learn, and very few of us are, you know, Albert Einstein level, people who can learn something in three minutes. You know, even old school, whatever it took to get it into our heads, we then had to get it into our hands. As professionals, and I’m not the hairdresser, but I’ve been around hairdresser. I always say, I think I’ve been in more hair cutting classes than most professionals, just because I lived in the education space for so long. And at pivot point, you studied how people learn, and I know the power of muscle memory, and how repetition, how important it is and and how profoundly great it can be, or how kind of screwed up it can be, because if you, if you get the wrong technique in your hands, and you leave that Tiktok video, or even a beauty show class, and you just don’t quite have your technique down. I always, always fascinated hair cutting class when, when a great educator starts showing how the movement how you stand, affects what happens when you cut, the fact that you’re standing crooked has an implication for the cut. Most people, I think, until they’re taught that they don’t know that. So again, you watch something, maybe you go to a trade show. You watch somebody in a booth on a crowded floor, and you’re observing, you pick something up, and you go home, and you start doing it well, until you’re around a great educator or a great coach, you can say, not this way, that way, you know, yep. And I would say, then you really didn’t learn. So I think we’re confused about how we learn, and we’re confused about the amount of time and amount of effort it takes to learn, and what most important I think we lost coming out of covid. Not that everybody knew it, but I think more knew it is what we have to invest in ourselves to be good at anything. Yeah, there’s a lot of this is probably one of the most important ideas, and I’ll stop after this and let you jump in here. But talking about where we are pre covid, there wasn’t a lot of conversation about that. The Hustle was bad for you coming out of covid, it was a serious industry wide conversation that. The Hustle was was a bad thing that we were encouraged, you know, generationally, you know, to work hard, hard, hard, and maybe not focus enough on balance at our bias in our professional time. And I think what got lost in that conversation to me, as someone who kind of spends my life dealing with and engaging with and observing the larger industry. But I get to hang with a lot of really professional people, people like Chris Baran, you know, and I get to be like, Okay, I see what they you all have in common across generations. I have not met a person who’s successful in this industry, truly successful, and whatever that looks like for them, because we’re usually I’m seeing it in them, because we all measure success differently. I haven’t met anybody in all of these years who I didn’t walk away going, they hustle. They hustle. Now today, I think it’s important to recognize that, you know, because of balance, and balance is so important, we all have different versions of what makes us balanced. I love being a workaholic. I mean, I truly do. It makes me happy when I’m not working hard, I’m not as happy. Some people would judge me for that. That’s okay. I feel good about myself and the life that I’ve lived. But I know people who are 20 hours a week and who are very successful in their minds and in how they value life, and when I spend time with them. What I recognize about them and their attitude towards that 20 hours, they hustle for 20 hours, and then they spend time with their family and their children, whatever else they would go do, volunteer, whatever makes them happy. And so I think we’ve lost this idea that the hustle is not only a bad thing, but if you want to get to a certain place in life, high level within whatever category of the industry you live in, you got to hustle, but your hustle and my hustle don’t have to be the same. They do not have to be the same, and I think that’s important. And then the last thing I would say about that connected to kind of everything I said,

Gordon Miller 26:56
we’ve never seen turnover in the industry like we’ve seen today. It’s always been a challenge for us, and I think the turnover is so often because of our expectations are not aligned with the reality that we’re facing every day, but too often we don’t know what that reality is supposed to be, because information is so disconnected and we don’t know what to grab on to. And I think generationally, a lot of us are afraid to say the truth to younger people, you know, and I, I feel blessed in a sense that in our generation, our folks, for better or for worse, just said it the way it was. Sometimes it took us a while to catch up to them, and they weren’t always right. But now, I think we’re a little bit more sensitive as humans, and there’s good in that. But I keep saying, you know that we owe it to young people coming up behind us to at least share what we really believe and not be afraid to say it, let them process it. A mutual friend, Michael Cole said to me, we’re talking about this one day. He said, you know, Gordon, when I was 20, he said, and he said, We’re the same generation. It was peace, love and happiness. That was the goal, you know, end the war. You know, it was kind of a hippie era. And you know, we wanted to live in peace, you know. And he said, when I was 30, he’s like, I was about the money, yeah, he says, because that’s what it took to have a happy life, and that’s what I figured out. And he said, so we change, you know, we learned, we changed. And I think it’s important to recognize that, that young people are always going to change, and always and I think I feel like we owe it to share our experience the knowledge as it comes through us, and they can do what they want with it, but I feel like too much of the industry has gone quiet on what we’ve learned again, they’ll judge it and do what they want with it, but I think we owe it to them to say it a little louder than we’re saying Today, and because we’re not we’re more fractured than ever.

Chris Baran 28:43
Yeah, great words. I mean, there was, there was a lot in there. And I talk a lot No, no and that, well, that’s why we have you on here, is it makes my job easier. But the reality, there was so many great nuggets in there. And, you know, I think that it’s, you know, I think education is the part that put us in there. Yeah, there is a lot of great education that is on internet now. Internet. I meant social media, I mean Yeah. And I meant, even in social media, there’s good nuggets, yes, nuggets that see the what when I and if maybe we can tie some of this together for people that I have to tell you this even myself. Now I’m fine. I’ve been watching so much social media going on. I’m taking, trying to take bigger nuggets of information that took me months and months and months, years to learn. I’m trying to condense it down, because I know that the listener wants like these. They used to say, on TV, if you watch my dad always said this to me. She said, if you watch TV, each scene is roughly about seven seconds, and then there’s a change in the scene to keep your mind active. And even if you’re watching videos that are going on. Where people are giving information, they have to have this collateral information that’s out there for visual stimulus. Yes, yes. And I want to talk about how that about education, just for a second, because you use that word, and that’s really was the the hook that took us from the 70s the 80s and to where we were in the 2000s

Speaker 1 30:19
Yep, and it didn’t evolve each decade. It was the thing, exactly.

Chris Baran 30:24
And the point being is that if you really think about it, from manufacturer to the salon, from the salon to the stylist, from the stylist to the consumer, it was that connection that happened, and it happened because of education, yes, and I don’t know if this ever happened to you. Do you ever are you that kind of person like me, where you read this interesting quote and it’s impactful for you, and then all of a sudden you see it in everything that you’re doing? Oh, yeah. And I was just, I was talking to my son, who’s producing this right now, and we were was talking about something. I was proud of him for not giving up. And this morning, I was going through some of my archives, and I found this quote from Usain Bolt that obviously one of the fastest runners in the world. And he said, and I want everybody listen real close to this. He said, I practice for four years for a nine second event. Wow, wow. And he said, and I see people giving up because they don’t do it right the first time. And I think, and you know how I stored that? I took a picture of it in my computer, and I had it go there, and I was going through, through some stuff, and I went, oh my god, the universe just threw this at me, and it’s so profound, based on what we’re talking about right now. So, you know, I think there’s that hook, and I’m hoping in our industry, we can take this, this, this seven second turnaround, where I’ve got to be stimulated, combine that with the in from the education that we have that was so integral, and the fact that we had to do things over and over and over and over again, to use that muscle memory analogy that you gave, that that has to happen. And that’s why I think even myself, I found, if I’m getting so involved with just this stimulus that I have to have every seven seconds, 10 seconds, or whatever. I’m not willing to practice it like I did before, and I can get depressed over it. Yeah, so, and I think there’s that that’s a really key point, yeah, that there’s this depression that’s going on in our industry. I’ve been feeling it that that because things are either happening quicker or different or everything shifting. And I find myself I’m trying to climb this ladder of this success that goes up, and you keep moving, where the top of the ladder is and and I think that that’s really affected us. And I’m hoping, because I really believe that everything is cyclical. Oh yeah, everything is cyclical, I think. And I don’t know how long it’s gonna go You and I have talked about this, but I I think it might. I’m hoping it doesn’t take a generation, because, and that’s where I kind of want you to take us next, is because you and I had a great conversation about the Gen Z’s and the information and and I want to leave it with this, and I’m going to turn it over to you, because I hear about balance. I heard you talk about it, and I somebody said something to me one time, and I’m going to try to fit that into this right now, because they talked about, they talked about this feel good thing. And he said, I never saw a feel good thing that would buy butter when I was at a at a grocery store, and I wanted to kind of take that, and if we could give some context, I love that word that you started off with. If we give some context to what’s happening into our industry, working lesser hours, making less money, and when we talk about balance, and I’ve never you can’t take balance to a grocery store or to a mortgage department or to a bank to get a new car. Can you give some context? Because I know you’ve had some great insight from the Kim report and so on. Could you give us some more insight to what you see is going on? And then maybe we can talk about what do people need to do to make a shift inside there?

Gordon Miller 34:21
Yeah, absolutely. Let me throw one quick thing related to what you were just talking about, and then jump quickly into that. And something else, I think that’s happening in education, or in how we perceive learning, and then perhaps what the institutions are teaching us, you know, which, again, are so important, but it’s changed with time.

Gordon Miller 34:43
Something I’ve observed over time is those who are lucky enough to be taught the kind of foundational information they need to be really masterful in their craft, a lot of that’s disappeared. And I’m talking about things like angles, you know, just that concept. Of an angle. If you have a great teacher who Iris H Pope, you know there’s a great, great educator in the industry, and I already uses the clock. He says, Because angles is too complicated for me, I learned angles by by referencing the clock, which is such a great idea, because that leverages things that people already know. And goes, Okay, you know the clock. Now, let’s talk about, where are the where are the hands on the clock to understand 90 and 45 but a lot of us being skipped over these days. We’re in a hurry, you know. And even on the educational side, a lot of the education is reactive to what excites people, you know, they want to jump right to technique. So it’s another one of those institutional problems in the industry where I think this generation, you know, potentially because of not themselves, but because how people are choosing to teach them. A lot of stuff’s getting left out, which makes you feel less competent, and to hear that point of depression when we go part time, there’s a great quote, and I don’t remember who said it, but it has to do with to master a craft. And I’ve heard different numbers, but you need, like, 5000 hours of training. Somebody else said 10,000 but it’s so not even training doing you must. It takes the doing of hair cutting and hair cutting and hair cutting for 1000s of hours before you master it. Well, let’s say you come into the industry, and unlike you know, 1020 years ago, you come in at 20 hours a week, or 24 the average in the industry collectively, that was 24 hours a week, and you come in at 20, you come in at half what we used to come in, it’s going to take you twice as long to get to 5000 hours. Yeah, twice as long. A lot of us aren’t built to have that much patience in life. We’re just not. Life isn’t as long. The older you get, the more you realize that we have so much time on this earth, and I think career wise, again, we’re in a hurry. We want balance, but we’re still in a hurry, you know, that’s a generational thing, right? And so balance, but hurry up. Gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme, what you promised me. And I get that, you know? But I just think again, contextually, I just have to say that on average, it is taking twice as long because we cut our work weeks in half, and that means, by just simple math, it takes twice as long to master anything. And that’s a big idea, because I think we need to be saying to those who want to go part time or more, we’ve always had part time. It’s one of the most beautiful things about this industry is you can choose to work part time. You know, we’re an industry that’s 85% female. We’re an industry that many of the women who work in the city want to have families, have children, and they need some time to dedicate to their children. And I always say when, when the big argument for balance came up, we’ve always had balance. You know, 2030, years ago, I knew young moms who said to the owners in busy salons, I need to cut back for a while. What? What? Well, Johnny’s growing up, and they did, and they found their way to success. But again, we’ve never had as many people part time, and that means it’s going to take a lot longer to become successful. I think we should be teaching patients in beauty school. Yeah. I think we should be choosing patience as a value of small businesses, because if everybody in the salon is working part time, we kind of have to embrace patients as a group of people, because it’s just going to take longer, you know. So I think that’s important statistics, the numbers, the KPIs. That’s the Kim report. So the Kim report is an industry report is owned or been built through a collaborative effort with the big tech companies, but hosted by salon interactive, which is a retail platform that’s really cool, allows independents and salons, all kinds of salons, to be able to sell stuff online, and does it in a really innovative way. So they bring all the POS systems, the big the vagaros, the forests, the mevos, the boulevards, many, many others, and they contribute that in a really organized, kind of almost scientific way, and that allows the larger industry to go what’s happening like really, what’s happening not the information that we can’t trust. Because this stuff has all kinds of people with their hands in it, including myself, who are looking My role is to look at it and say, Okay, this is being done the right way. We can trust this information. And there’s others looking at it the same way that I do. So it’s a great kind of community exercise that is providing information, first and foremost to big brands to help them strategize. They’re paying money into it, but now it’s rolling out to the larger industry, slowly but surely. And what it tells us right now, I’ll use 2025 data as a jumping off point, is that collectively, we’re not in a great spot. We’re not in a tragic spot as an industry. But year over year, 25 over 24 we are about even on the amount of money coming into the industry, the amount of money coming into individual salons and to individual practitioners. But we also had significant price increases last year. So when you adjust for price increases, which is a whole math thing that has to do with money, we’re actually down a little bit. And most hairdressers I talk to and most salon owners say, Yeah, that’s true. I’m I’m frustrated.

Gordon Miller 39:49
You know, I agree maybe 100% on that. It’s nice to know that we’re all feeling the same pain, but that doesn’t help me be better, right? But it so context, right? This data is context, and it i. Think there’s a little bit of peace in knowing that you fit the average, and now you just have to figure out whether you want to work in a different way, a harder way, whatever it looks like to be better than the average, right? That’s whether we’re individual people behind the chair. Hopefully you want to be better than average and the same in the bigger industry, when it comes to money and how we measure our success or not, we know that visits, individual visits, are stretching. People are stretching time between appointments across the entire industry. That’s a problem, because if you have all the same clients, this year is last and I hope that’s not the case, but if you did and everybody stretches their appointment, then do the math, that means you have less money coming in. So we can’t have everybody stretching their appointments unless we bring a whole lot more clients in, we know that average tickets are down a little bit, and so average tickets down a little bit and we’ve had price increases, means that year over year, actually, we’re doing a little bit worse than we think we’re doing, because, again, price increases, it’s not artificial, but it kind of makes the numbers hard To compare to each other. Retail is is in a really bad place. I mean, and interestingly, in the Kim data, what they do is they segment everything so they look at and then pull all together so they can average it, but they look at what’s happening in the one chair, one person to two person suite, like, what does that whole category look like? I mean, that category had probably the biggest challenge in retail. Their retail was down quite a bit. That probably not a big surprise. People going independent, maybe aren’t feeling the need to retail all those although those of us who understand the value of retail would say, Oh, you’re missing out if you’re not retailing. And then they look at the two to five service provider. They don’t chairs. They look at service providers, how many people are generating income. They don’t look at receptionists or other people working in the business, just service providers, six to 1011, to 20, and 20 or more, those are the categories. And that’s interesting too, because you look at retail and you can see, oh, you know, the smaller salons are falling off more in retail. Middle is challenged, and the very top is up a little tiny bit. You know, they look at color services, color services across the industry are also down. I was I was surprised. We’ve not had this data before, but the average across the industry of all dollars in salons color services, I think, is 42 or 43% if someone said, just take a wild guess before you saw the data, I would have said, I’ll bet anything that color service revenue is more than 50% Yeah, yeah. But I know, yeah, a lot of great, I know a lot of great songs were very successful, and part of their success because they’ve tripled down on caller services, right and and they know how to add services to that ticket and add more color services on top of color services, and get people in more often, but, but they’re the unicorns. So the data is not horrible, but it says we’re at best flat, and a lot are down. We, our client counts, generally as an industry, are down something that is not being measured. And when we get together and I have our Kim meetings, I said this in the last meeting, said, You know, I question when I read the data, you know, is the demand for services amongst the general public? Is it off a little bit? Do fewer people want to come to salons, if we have, if our guest counts, are falling? Is it falling because they don’t want to be here? Is it falling because they can’t afford to be here, like what’s happening there, and we don’t have that information, so I’ll stop there and let you throw something at me.

Chris Baran 43:30
I bet we have something in common. I have this love hate relationship. I hate paying for something that I’m not using. I hate working in a small, cramped box, yet I love working in a cool salon that impresses my clients, and I love the culture and synergy of a team while enjoying the freedom of being my own boss. You too. What if all that was available to you at the salon you rent from? Meet artist on go, a game changing way to rent salon space. With artist on go, you only pay for the time you’re behind the chair. You can choose a salon that fits your vibe, location and amenities. With artist on go, you’re a part of a stylist community, not hustling alone. Plus, you get to enjoy perks like clean towels and back bar supplies. Check out artist on go built for stylists serious about their clients and growing their brand without the hassles of managing a space. Here’s the kicker, you can save more than 50% on your rent to find out more, go to B, I T, dot L y slash, artist on go, C, B, that’s B, I T, dot L y slash, artist on go, C, B, no. First of all, I great, great stuff. And. Think that what you’re saying is that if the more data that we have, the better that we can shift.

Gordon Miller 45:04
Yeah, so it’s hopping on the scale, right? I think we all understand the hopping on the scale thing. That’s data, right? You feeling a little uncomfortable, you know, maybe like, I’m not a person who’s ever jumped on the scale very much, but occasionally, gotten older, I was a skinny kid, you know, in high school, I was, I was six feet tall, and I was 138 pounds, you know. So now I’m six feet tall, I think, I hope still, I’m gonna start shrinking soon, and I’m 168 pounds, so I’m still not big, but it’s all relative. When my pants are starting to feel tight, I hop on the scale, you know, and I get my data point, and that data point in firms informs me, and I can figure out what to do. Is the same with the Kim data. It’s the same with your, oh my gosh, the POS systems. You’ve probably been more attached to this than me. When I go into the salon of a friend and I say, Can I look at your POS system and see your reports and everything, the amount of information that salons have, that individual independents or chair renters have on their phones from their booking platforms and industry wide, we don’t even use 10% of the reports that are in these platforms. I hear this from data companies. There’s so much information, and that information will guide you to more success, if you or

Chris Baran 46:23
you know when I love it guide you to success, but it also shows you, where was I talking? I was talking to somebody the other day, and they said they they as a consultant. They went in and they were looking at their retail space, and they said that the because they had a partner that was also had a side hustle in a in they were, they were also a sales consultant as well. Even though that person was an owner, they were over. They were just, they were like, had 75% too much stock involved. And so if you don’t have, you can’t look at the numbers and say, Oh my God, look, here’s my the amount of money that I’ve got in retail, and here’s how much stock I’ve got on hand. You know, because I can, I remember, even for us, when we were first starting off in the seven did I say the 70s? I meant 90s. I remember they said, bring in all these lipsticks. And we brought in lipsticks, and we got and we sold all of these. And quite frankly, at that time, we had, on the average, our retail disservice was 35% Wow. And I said, you know, where is my profit that I’m getting, that I’m that I from this makeup that I brought in because we weren’t makeup artists. We didn’t know how to sell makeup, but we just said, Hey, look at here’s the bright, shiny color. And I found all my profit was sitting in those colors that nobody sold because we didn’t bring in the right colors to sell. So if you can not only look at it and again, we I don’t want this to sound like for people that are in Independence or stylist and whatnot, to think that this is not information, that’s good for me. It is good for you, because the more you keep stats on your numbers, and how to grow your numbers, and if you want to shift from 40 hours a week down to 28 or whatever, how do you pack more time in there. So that’s where your balance comes in. I’ve never seen anybody first of all, yes, I’m a baby boomer. No, I never had balance in my life because I was I’m like you, I’m a workaholic, and I love what I do, and I I can’t stand sitting around. However, if I want to take life and have more time to go on my holidays, and I want to work just 40 hours a week, or 28 hours a week. What’s the number that I want? Because that’s where, that’s what pays for my family. Yep, that’s where I get things from my family and me. And if I want to work less, great, just pack more stuff inside there. Yeah. And I think that’s what the numbers that you’re talking about comes to so you talked to me the other day about about the chaos that happens, and I want to talk about that, because that’s what we’ve been talking about here now. And so how do we spin that? How do we take the chaos that we have right now, and how do we take that and spin it around and use it to our advantage, so that we can work less hours and have more balance, but still have that financial, spiritual and physical growth that that I need in order to have be a personal, developed person, human being,

Gordon Miller 49:33
yeah, well, you know, I mean to me, to me, the chaos is a lot about confusion. There’s they’re connected, right? And that’s not really understanding, and sometimes maybe be a little too overconfident in our understanding. You know, as I said, you know, Sam Ricardo said, years ago, we’re not a complicated industry, and we’re not retail was a pillar understanding, you know, you kind of referenced it to me. It’s understanding capacity versus product. Activity? Yeah, you choose to work 20 hours a week. What’s your book look like? What are the holes? How do you more efficiently manage your time so you can fit one more appointment at you know, if you’re a lot of people go part time because they, they’re, they’re on the book for 40 hours. They can’t get past 20 hours worth of client work. They’re like, I got another 20 hours, all these empty holes in between things a half hour here 40 minutes. So it feels like 40 hours still, and I can’t quite figure out, so I’m going to go part time. More chaos. You know, to me, is a shift towards less time in the salon. You mentioned side hustle. To me, part of the chaos today are the post covid conversations about, go find a side hustle. I was one of the people screaming on my podcast. I’m like, and you mentioned your your owner friend who has a partner with a side hustle in the industry. Okay, that’s good. You want to have a side hustle at least stay in the industry. But if you’re if the career that you wanted to have and was to love what you’re doing behind the chair, and you find a need to go into a side hustle outside the industry. Something’s misaligned, in my view. Sometimes the misalignment is you have yet to truly learn the fundamentals of business. Yes, going back to this, those seven early, late 70s for me, probably early 70s for you, Chris, no, I’m kidding, yeah,

Chris Baran 51:17
that’s what I was for, yeah.

Gordon Miller 51:19
But for me, when I got to pivot point in the late 80s, you know, something that just got I heard it. I watched it. I experienced it all the time. Was that that success in this industry is directly connected to education. That’s more you if you when you stop learning this industry, and industry is driven by trends. When you and I first started, nobody’s talking balayage, you know, maybe over in Paris, you know, but they weren’t in this country, you know. It didn’t show up till years and years later, and I saw some pretty amazing energy get really excited in the salon space around this thing called balayage. I mean, today it’s like normal, you know, so many years ago it wasn’t. But if you don’t keep learning, you know, not just watch on social and think you can pick it up, but go to an academy, go find the best balayage educator you can. And usually they’re not at trade shows. By the way, I love trade shows. There’s lots of great education at trade shows, and there’s a lot of average education, just like everywhere else, but you have to avail yourself to the good stuff. And I just think, you know, like the secret decoder ring for edu, for chaos, is education, yeah, but it’s education that aligns with your actual needs, like you have another part of the secret decoding of chaos, you know, that dotted line to what I just said, you know, is understanding what you really want and Need, and they’re connected. Yeah, I want X number of dollars. Okay, so what do I need to get me there, you know? And then that’s another dotted line, usually over to education of some form today, another dotted line, and you’re part of this community, Chris, and renowned for it is coaching. And coaching is different than teaching, you know, there, it’s a nuanced difference, but it is different. And I know people who’ve gone to, you know, all the best educators in the industry, but they still feel like something’s missing. Yeah, and then, and then they’ll say to me, it’s like, oh my God, my life has changed. What happened? I got this coach and this coach in a one on one situation, not in a small group class or a big group class where you’re learning with other people, and that brings its own limitations. Still can get great education, but some of us need that one on one to get that education and take us to a whole new level. So back to chaos, you know, and confusion in the larger industry, much of it being, in my view, driven by social media and a lack of understanding of where true knowledge could be coming from, and what is true knowledge, and what does it take to really achieve skills.

Gordon Miller 53:51
The biggest shortage in the industry today is mentors taking a side step, but it connects to everything I was talking about. You know, because coaching is closer to mentors, and teaching is close, close, close to mentors. Growing up in the industry, and watching hairdressers grow up and success happen all around me, and being lucky enough to observe it, it was so often when you said, How’d you get here? Like, how’d you get to this million dollar salon? Mentorship, mentorship, mentorship, role models, you know, they point at someone and said, I got to spend time with that person. I worked for this person who is, who is known to be, you know, a rock star. And I was fortunate to have these relationships, not just people I bumped into, not somebody. I just sat in the classroom relationships, and in those relationships, often with coaching. We just didn’t call it coaching back then, and we didn’t always call it mentorship. But fast forward today, and we kind of know what these things are. And as we saw, kind of, as we were coming up to covid, kind of the disintegration, in many ways, of the mass of employment based salons that were the foundation of this industry for many, many years, as we saw that. Start to disintegrate. And we went from an industry that was perhaps 25 30% independence, mostly chair rental and some suites that was the old way, and everybody else in an employment based salon is completely shifted. Now. 60% of the industry are independent and kind of by definition for most when you move out of a salon with a lot of people in it, whatever business model that is, most of being employment based. And they’re not all perfect, but I’m not here to say, you know the good and bad of you know what’s the perfect business model. But one of the things that you lose as independence grows for the entire industry, but also individually, is the opportunity to find a mentor. Because so often, again, those stories I heard, the mentors were inside the business, and if they weren’t inside the business, they were because that business, good or bad. As far as the whatever in the business, you know, great leadership, poor leadership, whatever. But often those businesses because of their relationship with product companies. One day Chris Baran walked into your salon. One day Sam via walked into your salon. Robert Cromie has walked into your salon literally at certain eras, right? And the opportunity to connect with them, to learn from them, and to perhaps even have a mentorship relationship, I believe, is game changing. So I think the number one shortage in the industry today is lack of mentors, because just mathematically, everything’s changed. So you got 600,000 people today who work independent and the opportunity, I would argue, to find a mentor is exponentially smaller than ever in my 40 years in the industry. Doesn’t make it a bad thing. It’s one of those. What is is Yeah. And the question over time, for the whole industry, especially for big companies, you know, who benefit from the success of everybody? The more successful people, the more the big companies benefit. That gives them reasons to invest millions of dollars in education every year. That’s why they do it. I’m hoping they’ll figure it out.

Chris Baran 57:00
Yeah. Yeah. First of all, that was amazing stuff. And you really made my brain go in there. And I took down a few notes here and and I started to think about how, and I’m, I don’t know if I’m stuck on it, but this thing of balance, 24 hours versus 28 versus 40 hours a week or whatever. And, and interesting thing that happened just just recently is my son had had a problem with his elbow, and he went in for some x rays, and he had appointments made, and, and the doctor phoned him up and said, Hey, I’ve got an appointment today, I had a cancelation. Can you come in? And that stuck in my brain. And then that, combined with what you just talked about, I’ve heard from if people have stylists that are in their salon and they don’t have a booking, or they’re they’re supposed to be working till six o’clock. Not saying, supposed that was the wrong word. Let me say that again. Your booking time is till six or five or four, or whatever your shift is. But I don’t have a booking on the last two appointments. Can I just go home? Or I’ve heard it from people that are that have because there’s a big shift in into hybrids, hybrid salons right now, where you have your commission based, and you also have either suites or independents that are booked within there as well. And the people that I’ve talked to that said oftentimes those independents, they’re not, they’re they’re, they rented the space, but they’re not there, right? Because they don’t have to be, yeah, they don’t have to be. I can just go home. I can have my balance. Okay, if you’re going to be there for that amount of time and you get a cancelation, or if you don’t have an appointment, why don’t you look at your book and say, Hey, I know I’ve got you booked in, but why don’t you be like that doctor and say, Hey, why don’t you come in? I’ve just had a cancelation, and I can fit you in in here, and I’ve actually got extra time where I can spend more time with you. And rather than just leaving, take your spot that you have blocked out for earning your money for you and your family, and maximize on that by using some of those techniques. And rather than just saying not busy, I’m just going to go home say I’m not busy there, but I’m gonna come in five minutes earlier on a phone, a couple of my people and fill in that spot. I mean old techniques, old old, old techniques, right? Yeah, I’m not giving anything new. But did you know that with a new kid coming out

Gordon Miller 59:37
and modernizing a version of that would be using your apps, using your reports, using social media, I see lots of hairdressers who I don’t even know. Some of them, they show up in my feed and they’re announcing an opening today. Social media. They say, Hey, I’ve got no it’s eight o’clock in the morning. I can open in three. Yeah, anybody want to come in? I’m not saying offer specials or anything, and some do, some don’t, but it’s a more modern. Different way of doing it. You made me think of another word. You know, I clearly love words, and this is an important one. And I think everybody can relate to this, but we don’t always relate it to our careers and our businesses. And it’s so important when I look at who’s successful versus, you know, who may be not quite there, and that’s self discipline. Yes, it’s a big, big idea, and I know a lot of people in this industry who are very self disciplined when it comes to the time they spend in the gym for their personal health, which affects their business life too. We kind of get that, you know, or to, you know, to keep the weight off or to get the weight on or to whatever. There’s a lot of, you know, the meals we eat. I think we understand self discipline in certain parts of our life, and we often compartmentalize those things, self discipline. Again, you look at those people who’ve been successful, that’s a big, big part of it. They don’t always know it, but you can look at them and go, that person has the discipline. They’re on the book till five. The last they’re less. They finished at two for whatever reason, there’s nobody there. They find ways to get things done in that next three hours, because it’s kind of for a self disciplined person, typically, unless they’ve been, you know, kind of busting their butt recently, when whatever their schedule is and however they choose to live their careers, they have that self discipline that’s almost non negotiable. Yeah, I have three extra hours. I don’t want to have three extra hours next week. And how am I going to get there? Well, I’m going to be disciplined, and I’m going to learn something. I’m going to market myself more. I’m going to play on social media. I’m going to go look at some something I highly recommend to people. Go find role models you want to be on social media and be successful. Go find role models in the industry who are good at it. Go find a hairdresser in another town. Go, go follow some of the influencers who are really good at building an audience. Understand what’s different about them. They’re not trying to get where you’re trying to get. So sometimes you have to kind of fine tune it and put it in context if you’re if you’re following a hairdresser. This is a mistake people make. Who is really good at social media talking to other hairdressers don’t apply necessarily what they do and how they do it to get more clients. Yeah, because that’s a different formula anyway.

Chris Baran 1:02:13
Yeah, you know, you just brought up something that I am so glad that you mentioned, and it kind of swings back to mentorship and, and that it’s harder to get it now because you don’t have that relationship. We did a podcast a little bit back with and I’m sure you know him, Kelly Cardenas, and, my gosh, yeah, brilliant guy. And, you know, I’ve never met such a wonderful soul. Yeah, and, and, and he said,

Speaker 1 1:02:41
on stage, oh my gosh, he’s so good on stage. Oh, and

Chris Baran 1:02:45
the he used this, I’m gonna, I’m gonna butcher the number. But he said, The hardest part is, if you go to somebody and say, Can you mentor me? They thinking all of the time they gotta end in and generally, they got a busy life. But what Kelly does is he advises you go to find somebody. He says, if you have somebody that’s successful, they always want to help somebody. But here’s this, here’s his rationale. He said, If you know it’s about time just say, Listen, I need to have a chat with you, and it’s about XYZ, and I want to beg now catch this. I’m not going to use the right number. But Kelly says, I want to talk to you for three minutes and 37 seconds, and I just need you to answer this one question for me. And then they go, he goes in, the guy will say, yeah, 337 seconds. I can do that. And you go in organized, and you just say, here’s what I need. This is it? I know the question I have to ask and then let them decide when the end of that three minute 37 seconds is, I love that, and I think that that’s a way, when there’s so much, there’s so much of a less link that you have to know the person, that you can still start to add. You can ask the person, and the worst thing they’re going to do is just say, No, I’m busy, and I’ll probably they’re never going to say that. You say I can’t do it right now, but if you can do it at this time, then I’ll gladly help you.

Gordon Miller 1:04:07
I so love that. And again, Kelly has been a mentor to so many people. I know so many people. He’s mentored, for those who might know Elizabeth Fay, which has become really a well known person in the industry, well, Kelly Cardenas was the first mentor that she had in her professional height, and she she was a client in his chair, and he became a personal mentor, who then inspired her to want to join the industry. So, special guy,

Chris Baran 1:04:32
and right now, one of the most amazing people out there for wellness, all

Gordon Miller 1:04:36
because of a connection to a hairdresser was, yeah, yeah, when she couldn’t even afford to be a client. You know, he did her he did her hair as someone paying it forward in life, because Kelly is that person, also a great husband, and that he did her hair as a young teenager in high school in exchange for her getting good grades. Yeah. How good a story is that?

Chris Baran 1:04:56
Yeah, yeah. He’s just, I. That’s the effect that somebody that a mentor, can be somebody that just had one influence on you, or been over a longer period of time Exactly, exactly, you know, I want to, I just, I’m just before I ask you this final question for the for the time that we have here, and I want to on, I just want to get your advice that you could have to for the people. What for whatever it is, what advice would you give them? But I just want to say, you know that you always bring so much value with your knowledge and who you are and the fact that you you never hold back and you always, I mean, I’ve seen people that hold close to their chest, what’s

Unknown Speaker 1:05:42
that gets me in trouble sometimes?

Chris Baran 1:05:44
Well, yeah, and, you know? And that’s okay, because that’s their problem, not yours, you know. So I just wanted to say thank you. But is there any final advice that you would give to people listening right now when it comes to our industry and moving forward?

Gordon Miller 1:05:59
That’s a big one, you know? I’m gonna go back to context, you know, I just think it’s, I think it’s more important than ever, and I think fewer of us have it than ever, and I think it’s easy not to have it across every part of our life, something I think I’ve learned in again, very kind of divisive time. So I’m thinking that the industry, yes, but in our larger lives, I’ve learned myself to question how I feel about anything, you know, and to almost always say I need to go back and study a little bit. I need to go listen to things from somebody else’s point of view, and get out of my own head and get a more well rounded understanding of whatever the topic is at hand, see if I can find a little bit of wiggle room in my own thinking to, number one, understand where that person is coming from, and that could be professional, you know, as well as personal and, and, and then hopefully use that information to get me a little closer to where I’m trying to get to. Because, again, it is a chaotic world. It is a confusing world. And so I think, you know, kind of letting go of preconceived notions, I think, which is sometimes easier to do if you admit that you don’t know everything you know that you know again, you’re going to go back and because what I’m describing to me is another way of educating myself, which goes back to the earliest things I’ve talked about. You know, learning in this industry, which is education pretty much to answer to everything, including getting ahead, you know, including finding your next career path or next career opportunity. So, yeah, I think you know, just, you know, understanding the importance of connecting to this idea that we live in a larger world, and there’s a lot to understand, and at the end of the day, we’ll never understand at all. So we just have to keep trying to expand mind and and our experiences, and most importantly, just how we look at everything, including our careers.

Chris Baran 1:07:50
Yeah, yeah. And thank you, because that might you know my even what you just said, gave me context, and that context was that, and when we living in divisive times, and it’s so easy just to write it off, whatever that it is. And I think if, if it made me think I was watching on TV just the other day. And you know how they have the they always trying to find a good, you know, a feel good segment to fit in with all the other stuff that they put in around it. And they had that, I don’t know if you saw that thing, where the where these monks, these group of monks, were, oh yeah, from one place to the other. I don’t remember from wherever it was to wherever it was, but it was a long trek. And how people were, were attracted to them. And there was a story about the dog that, yes, they didn’t invite Him in, and the dog just came along because of the vibe, and stayed with them. And when I just thought, and they asked the monk, you know, and I always say, you know, this old joke about some monk chanted evening, so I’m just gonna leave that all alone. But they asked the monk, and they said, How is it in this device of time that everything is going on, that you can have this resonance about you. And he said, Just every morning, we advise people just to get up and to say that today I will live in peace. And I think if we’d all take that and just say, today, I just choose peace to live in and we’d have more kindness that we would put out to everybody and to ourselves. Yes, you know. And I was, I’m just reading, going back and rereading one of Brene Brown’s book and, and it was, she was talking about, when it comes to empathy, is just to cut yourself some slack, and just to say, look at I I’m not perfect, and it’s okay for me just to to to practice self, some self kindness in there as well. So it was a lot in there.

Gordon Miller 1:09:50
That’s another that’s another word. We don’t have time to dig into empathy, but I attach it to something that can come out of context. And, you know, I think empathy is so powerful, and. So important, you know that we that we’re empathetic, most importantly, to the challenges that others are facing. You know it brings a lot to ourselves. So thank you for having me. I always have something.

Chris Baran 1:10:13
I mean, I you know what? One of these times we’re not, we’re not going to do this publicly, but I always have such great conversations with you and and I look forward to the next one as well, and this won’t be the last time that’s on here as well, because we always want to find out where you’re, where you’re at. So whether you’re whether you’re 139, or 225, in our episodes that I promise you that for my own goodness and that and the stake of our industry, I’ll have you back. So I just want to say thank you. Thank you, Chris, it’s a pleasure. Thanks again for watching this episode, and if you liked what you heard, remember to smash that like or follow button, depending on your preferred platform, and make sure to share it with anyone you know that might be a fellow head case. Head cases is produced by cut action media, with Marjorie Phillips doing the planning parts, Lee Baran on the video bits, and Adrian Taverner mixing the audio jazz you.