My guest is an Aveda Global Master and NAHA Master with an impressive list of accolades, including Hairdresser of the Year, Avant-Garde Stylist of the Year, Salon Team of the Year, and twice Makeover Stylist of the Year. He’s been named one of the top 20 salon owners in the U.S. and one of the top 75 educators of the century.
He’s earned Lifetime Achievement Awards from Aveda and the Art and Fashion Group and is an Aveda World Master Award winner. With nine Atlanta-area salons, 250+ service providers, and a partnership with 40 salons in Japan, he’s truly a global industry legend.
So, let’s dive into this week’s Head Case with the one and only Van Council. Van, welcome—it’s an honor to finally sit down and have this long-overdue conversation!”
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 hairstylist and educator for 40 plus years, and I’m inviting all our heroes to chat and share the secrets of their success. I Well, welcome to head cases. And today’s guest was mowing lawns in 1975 when he saw the film shampoo. And he was inspired by Warren Beatty’s hairdresser character, fascinated by beauty and style trends. He signed up for cosmetology school now fast forward to today. He is an Aveda global master and an AHA master with wins such as hairdresser of the year, avant garde stylist of the year, salon Team of the Year, a two times makeover stylist of the year. He is also listed in the top 20 salon owners in the country and top 75 educators. Now catch this of the century. He’s received the Lifetime Achievement achievement awards from Aveda and art and fashion group, as well as being a Aveda world master award winner. He has nine Atlanta area salons with 250 plus service providers with a partnership in Japan with 40 salons. So let’s get into this week’s head case, the legendary van Council van. Welcome to head cases. It’s a pleasure and an honor to have you back. Have you back? Have you here? Because the reason why I say back is we’ve been floating around the industry for so long, and we’ve never had the chance to really sit down and have like, a beer and a cup of coffee or whatever and chat, and that’s why I’m really excited to have you on here. So welcome. Well,
Van Council 1:58
thank you. It’s an honor to be on your podcast. And you’re right. We shook hands a few times at many hair shows, but we haven’t had that beer yet. So I look forward to that. Well,
Chris Baran 2:09
yeah, and it can be whatever we need, if it’s coffee or wine or beer whatever, but I’m going to hold firm to that one. And if I’m ever out in the in the Atlanta area, etc, or if you’re ever out here, I know you said you’re big into mountain biking, so if you’re ever out here and you want a place to crash, I mean, we’ve got all sorts of room out here, it’d be a pleasure and honor not only to do that, but sit down, have that beer and actually cook and have some
Van Council 2:33
have some bread. I will take you up on that. That would be awesome. Well,
Chris Baran 2:37
it’s there, and it’s an open invite, my friend. Listen, I always like to know that you know, and I don’t know who in the industry wouldn’t know you, but I think even for the people that may not know what, tell us a little bit about just your hair story. Like, was there, was there anything pre cosmetology school? Like, were you, did you have a different job where you have a different aspiration? What? What? What What was the hair story? How did you get into
Van Council 3:02
it? Well, it’s, you know, I’ve told this story about a billion times. It feels like and it’s very cheesy, but this is a true story. I love cheese. My junior year in high school, I saw the movie shampoo, and I was thinking today they should come back with shampoo 2, because how many, how many hairdressers did this movie produced, yeah, I saw the movie shampoo. And, of course, I know, you know the movie, and it was basically true story, which I didn’t know at the time. I grew up in North Georgia, an hour or so north of Atlanta, you know, very small town. So I saw this movie, and it’s my junior year in high school. And, you know, I knew that my parents didn’t really have money to send me to college. I also didn’t feel like I was really college material, because I was more interested in football and baseball and basketball and girls, and you know, it was hard for them to get me to do my homework. And yeah, so I just, I saw this movie, and I thought, You know what? Like shit, I could do that, like ride them all year round and do some house calls and, and I looked into beauty school, and, you know, this is 1975 so it wasn’t a lot of good schools. You didn’t have the Vedas and the Paul Mitchells back then, you know? So I found the worst Beauty School I could find in Atlanta. I signed up for it. Moved from Cartersville, Georgia to Atlanta, and I was 18 years old. So you know, my summer jobs was shoveling asphalt on the highway and doing construction and working outside in the heat. So I thought, well, this is a indoor job. And you know, beauty school at that time seemed expensive. It was $2,000.09 months. And way I looked at it was, if it didn’t work out, you know, I’ll take a Plan B, you know, maybe I looked at college sometimes down the road, but, you know, it was pretty tough getting to beauty school. But by the end of it, i. I had fallen in love with doing hair, you know. But hey, the first six weeks, I was really questioning what I had done, you know, they gave me the kit, and they said, Hey, do you have standing chairs and double prong clippies and all this stuff I’d never heard of. I’m just looking in there like it’s Japanese because, you know, I’ve never, I didn’t know any hairdressers. I mean, I went cold turkey into this. I knew I had no mentors, no one to guide me, you know. So it was just leap of faith. Yeah, you
Chris Baran 5:32
know, it’s funny you say that. I think even though, at that I’m could be totally off, and this is just an opinion, and thing came to my brain right now, because I’m, I’m looking at the parallels that you have. And I had going to it, and because I started, you know, I went to Beauty School in was a 1969 or 70 and, and I was three, by the way, if anybody’s doing math, so the but the point was, I remember if it was $25 a month, and, and, and I just went, because my mom was a hairdresser, and I’ve told that story 100 times as well. And I know your your story is about shampoo is there because, you know, it’s the truth, it’s what, it’s what, what’s what got you there. But for those people that don’t know, you know, just give us a broad scope on the the outline plot of what it was about a hairdresser. Well,
Van Council 6:21
you know, you had Warren Beatty. You know, he had his long hair and all his leather clothes and his Harley, and he was sleeping with all his clients and the moms and the daughters, terrible, but at 17 years old, it looked kind of appealing to have and have a hot girlfriend. So I’m like, hey, you know what I can I think I could do this. That was really, yeah, like, I said, I had no idea what I was really getting into. You know, it’s funny, I got out of cosmetology school, like, I didn’t have any directions. I wasn’t really any, and I don’t want to offend anybody, but that wasn’t really any like salons or serious training programs. I mean, I would love to know now what I know then, what I do now. I mean, I should have moved to London and worked for Trevor, you know, an assistant Trevor went through some program like that, you know. But I didn’t even know what I should be doing. So I got a job, you know, and a suburbs of Atlanta charging $3 a haircut. So and sometimes the guy would run 50% off coupons. I did that for a couple of years, and I just, I just had to figure it all out myself. Seriously, I never worked anymore that I went to a training program, which, you know, I believe people should have mentors. You know, I didn’t start figuring out mentors about eight years in that this is what I needed when I met Horace, when I met Scott Cole, you know, I went to work for Scott, you know, because I saw him on stage with Horace. And then that’s when my career and what hairdressing it took. I wasted eight years. You know, I was hungry. I went to Vidal Sassoon school every year in London. You know, I figured out to go there. I went there every year. And then I went to color Claire, all color classes in New York. I went to Diego messinas braiding classes. So I did all my training by me paying for classes everywhere. I mean, there was a hair show I went to it. I wanted to learn, but I didn’t have anybody in my city that would really train me. I didn’t really have money to move from Atlanta. Also, I did look at moving to New York. I did look at trying to go to London, but I just financially, you know, I had no support, you know? I mean, I grew up with I grew up, I tell people I grew up with no money, but I had great parents, I had great families. So I was rich in many ways, but we didn’t have money. You know, I just stayed in Atlanta, you know, because one, I’m kind of a homeboy. Anyhow, it’s all my family’s here. Most of my brothers are hairdressers. Now, you know, I started first, and they followed me. But you know, all my friends and family were here, so I never left. But you know, I just had to figure out how to train myself and take as many classes as I could. And finally, I did work for Scott Cole for about two and a half years, which was a life changer for me, you know, to learn how to cut hair. I still was probably destroying hair after five or six years of doing hair, you know, so you know, or maybe longer I don’t know. Maybe it took me 40 years to figure out, but I still don’t know if I’ve ever cut the perfect Bob.
Chris Baran 9:27
Well, yeah, I’d question anybody who said that Eddie Bob they did was perfect. Yeah, I did
Van Council 9:33
learn how to section it, to try it. But I’ve seen your
Chris Baran 9:38
work, and I think you’re just being very humble. However, what is, I mean, where is Scott now? What is Scott up to? I mean,
Van Council 9:45
Scott lives in Arizona. He lives in Scottsdale, and down the road from me. Yes, man, he’s watched that 30 minutes or so from you. So that’s where he lives. He’s been, he’s been there for a long time, and he. Does have a Paul Mitchell school there, and that’s pretty much, he’s semi, semi retired. That’s assuming I’m
Chris Baran 10:08
going to go in and spring on him and say, Hi. Yeah, I haven’t seen him in nod nose. I used to travel on the road with him all the time when he was and he was, I believe he was working with Paul Mitchell at that time, and and, you know, he’s good dude, really good dude. Well,
Van Council 10:20
I still say with Scott. I mean, if all the people I’ve seen cut hair, I put him in the top five hair cutters that I’ve ever watched. I mean, I learned a lot in those two years. I was hungry to learn. You know, when I went to work for him, I was ready to soak in everything. I would come in the morning, at nine o’clock in the morning, even if I didn’t have clients, I’d stand there and watch him till nine o’clock at night, you know, because I was, he was amazing haircutter, for sure.
Chris Baran 10:44
Yeah, that’s and, you know, it’s interesting. I love the word that you use there was, you said hungry and, and I think that’s, you know, I there is so much that’s going on right now. And everybody’s talking about millennials, or not in the millennials the new the new type of person that coming out and they’re lazy and so on. I don’t really believe that. I just think, you know, everybody’s human being, a good friend of mine. I mean, I’m sure he’s he, I’m in business with him in so far as our training stuff that we do with Chris moody, Stevens brother, yeah, and, and he always, he talks about and he says, You know that, you know it’s just that it’s not that they’re lazy or that they’re not willing. They just are, not from our era where we’ll just put up with something, you know, they’ll just, they’re in that swipe left or right, I don’t even know which way it goes, but you’re in that swipe, swipe to the side movement, and they’ll just, they don’t like it. They’ll move on. And if they go to a class or they’re seeing something, and they’ll just say, you know, I don’t like this, and I’ll call you on they’ll just call it on bullshit, you know? And I, I think there’s that something magical about that, so that, if people just understand that, and the people that are from, like, my era change and just realize that you’ve got to get to the point give them value, and that they understand, because I understand, like, I think that you’ve got a magic formula that you worked out because I listened to some of the things that you were on prior and you were doing a podcast with a mutual friend of ours, you know, from Paul Mitchell and from the schools you know, and you know, and win said, was talking about that, and you talked about how the young kids your new talent is in your school, so I realized I’m kind of jumping ahead of where I wanted to go, because I wanted to find about the schools, etc, but because this came up, tell tell us just a little bit about the new talent program that you have and how how they can progress, but also what you put them through? Because I think that’s critical.
Van Council 12:42
Yeah, we still do too. We haven’t been, you know, and it’s not an easy sell, you know. I We, we do. We put a lot of effort in recruiting. We take recruiting seriously. Because I tell people, you know, if I’m consulting or talking salon owners, I said, if I’m a football coach for the SEC you got Alabama, Georgia, Clemson. I mean, all these great schools here, right? If I’m the head football coach, what’s my number one job? Is recruiting, because I don’t have good players. I’m not gonna have a good team. So like last year myself, I probably went to 10 different states and spoke at school. You know, I’m paying for my airfare, my room, and taking staff with me. And we, we probably spent a good 100,000 a year, you know, just on recruiting alone, because I know if I don’t have the best students, so it’s not, it’s an easy, it’s not an easy sell in the stay in time, but we still do it, and we still stay full, you know, when we do, I do feel like we kind of get the cream of the crop. So it’s still a two year program, you know, that they go through. So they come in the salon, and we, we call them interns, because they are licensed, and they, you know, they work with a senior stylist, so they have a mentor that they’re assigned to one on one. So they’re with that mentor four days a week, and then on Monday, they have class eight hours a day. So that’s the first year. Right at the end of the first year, they go into new talent so every location has a new talent section, you know, in it. So the prices are half price and their books are full the first day, you know, because a big demand for the consumers in Atlanta to get the van Michael experience for half price, right? So they go in, they get a full book right away, and we’re coaching them. I mean, I have coaches in there, but it’s not run like a school. When the client comes in, there’s no one working with them in consulting or teaching, right? It’s a lot. I mean, they’re licensed hairdressers. They’re already been out of school for a year. I mean, they’re actually pretty good, right, right? And anyhow, we, you know, we, we monitored them on, uh, client retail per customer, client retention, new client retention. Are you on time every day? Do you look good because you can’t go to the van Michael floor to hit all the points that we want you to be. Right? The reason I came up with new talents is, well, one I still. The name from horse. Well, I didn’t steal it. I wouldn’t. He had closed his and I wouldn’t ask him, Hey, if you’re not going to use that name, can I have it and trademark it? And he said, Yes, his was gone. But I like the name. Trademark the name new talent. And the reason I wanted to do it was I would train people for a year, and I’d put them on the floor, and their first year, their client retention is terrible, right? They’re just not experienced enough, you know? They’re 2122 years old, and they got a 50 year old lawyer or doctor in their chair who’s going to the best hairdressers in the city, right? They don’t, they’re not ready. So no matter what I did, they were terrible the first years. I wanted to create a name that clients know that they’re still in training, and if they did get a bad haircut of color, they can’t say they really got it at by Michael, they got it at new talent, right? So that really was the whole idea. That way, when I do put them on the floor at Van Michael, because they always get all the new people that we caught that don’t know who they want, right? Yeah, but now they’re not really new people anymore. They’ve already been in the company for two, two and a half years. Yeah, we have confidence that they’re going to have good client retention, you know. So that’s really how we came up with new talents, you know? Like, I was like, I’ve got to do something. Because, you know what? I found, they would come out of school and then they would assist. But on Mondays, they get to do one client, right? But then the year they’ve done 40 or 45 haircuts or colors, they were worse, well, really, because they didn’t do hair, they were doing five or six people every day in school. Now, they went to one one client a week. They had less confidence, wow, you know. And so I was like, How can I get them more experience, you know. So, you know, they go into new talents, and they’re doing eight to 10 people a day, so over a year, that’s that experience that hands on, that salon, adequate, how to do consultations, how to talk to people, you know, like they don’t have that until they do it for a year or two. You know, that whole thing, you gotta do something for 10,000 hours to be a master, right? So that’s five years. So one year just ain’t enough to put them on the floor, to call them van Michael, yeah, even, even two years pushing them. I did a show in New York a couple years ago. You know, I get the pressure like, Oh, get them on the floor earlier, because then they don’t, you know, don’t that mean he won’t quit if you could get them on the floor earlier. And I went to dinner, and I had took a lot of them. We had like 30 people in New York staff, and a lot of them was new interns. And I’m sitting around the table. They’re 2021, years old. I’m listening to the conversation, and I thought, oh my god, they need to be an assistant for five years. But you know, because they’re so young and immature, they’re not even ready to talk to our clientele, you know? I mean, we have high end clients, you know, they’re paying $200 a haircut. So it’s like, yeah, two years is pushing it. But I don’t, you know, I still talk to people, and they put people right on the floor. They put them on the floor after six weeks. My hat’s off to it. I don’t know how you do it. Yeah, we take them out of school, and the first three months of training on Mondays is nothing but blow dry, nothing but blow drying. And it takes them three months to get decent that they can blow dry for their mentors, right? I mean, like, I don’t know how you put them on the floor in less than a year, really, but we’re we do have a generation here that wants it now. They want to make 100,000 years the first year. But you know, the statistics are and maybe I’m wrong, but the system, what I’ve been told is 50% of all students are out of school in one year, right? In five years, 80% are out because the inability to make a living, because they can’t go on the floor with no training and no clients and survive. So at the end of the year, they’re starving and they get out, yeah? I mean, it should be mandatory that they have to be a mentor, you know, an intern. Yeah? I wish I had, I would have saved myself eight years. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I would have loved for somebody like SAS or Trevor to make me work 100 hours a week. Yeah. I mean, that would have been awesome.
Chris Baran 19:11
I tell that story about one that I was talking to Anne mincey, and we were at a show. I was doing her hair backstage before she was ready to go on and and I said, you know, just, I’m, I feel it like I’m stale. I just want to, I just love to just hang it up and go and work for Trevor, just for, you know, just say, look at I’ll work for nothing. I just, all I want to do is I just want to learn, and I want you to beat me up. And then, unfortunately, I must have, mustn’t have wanted to beat up as much as I wanted, because I didn’t go. But the point is that I wanted, you know, is that is to have an aspiration of where you want to be. And I, and when you were talking about that, I I immediately thought about, you have a standard that everybody’s got to live up to. And I think that that’s the big key for salons. I mean, you know, if somebody’s out there and they’ve got sick stylists, you know, and they’re trying to bring all. On somebody, whether they’re got them on for three years or whatever they they choose to, they’ve got to have standards that you’ve got to live up to in a certain discipline before you’re allowed or given permission. We always call it permission to be to have the right to a chair. You know it’s not your chair, but you can work at one of them if you if you do it. And I my son Lee, talked him out. He was back in New York, and he was, he said, I can’t remember where it was. They went to, I believe it was one of the, I think, oh, it might have been at Hudson Yards or someplace like that. That no boo had a in their concession area. They had a place where you could get no boo food, but it was at a reduced price, like, if you have in a concession area and, and I think that’s what, that’s exactly what you’re talking about with your new talent, yeah. Is that?
Van Council 20:54
Well, no, first, when they first opened in New York, they had a place next door called next door, yeah. And it was half price, yeah, yeah, because it wasn’t quite the same service, right? So yeah, it’s the same concept,
Chris Baran 21:06
yeah. And Lee would, Lee just texted me here. He said it was Moynihan station. If I’m even, if I’m saying that, right? Yeah, I remember that, actually, yeah. And I think that that’s what I love about what you’re talking about here is you this, you have a new name. So it’s, it’s not van Michael, yeah, it is. It is the new talent. And there’s no getting about it. You’re side by side. And I’m sure they’ve figured it out, but they know it’s at a reduced price. You know, the the quality and your standards are there, but there still might get it, might the standard might be at 85% Yeah, and, but that gives them all of the all of the experience, so that they, they bring them up, and you’ve constantly got movement in. If somebody, you know, we know that, you know, I know your your turnover is minimal, but we know that people still move to a different state, or, god, did die? Yeah, you have natural attrition, no doubt, exactly. And then you’ve got, you’ve got a place to fill them in. And I think that’s what’s brilliant about that.
Van Council 22:08
Yeah, to me, it’s like having the minor leagues. Yeah, I’m based, I’m the Atlanta Braves. I got triple A, double A, single, A, if somebody leaves. I mean, right now we have nine salons, and every single chair is full. I mean, in fact, I’m looking at another location because we have 40 people in training. I have no chairs, see. I hope growth has been organic. I’ve never said I want this many. I want another like I run out of places to put people. We have, we have over 100 we got about 110 stylish with 10 years right now, about 30 people with 20 years, and we got probably 10 with 30 and two with 43, with 40 people don’t leave, you know? So our growth comes from people not leaving. Now we run out of chairs. So yeah, we have we have the standard, and we have the leverage to say this is how we want it done. We have what we call performance wheel. It has 11 steps on it, and these are the 11 steps that every client is required to get starting with stress relief and shampoo. You know, a good consultation that you use pictures with iPad, phone book. I don’t care at all. Don’t do a cut of color without after the consultation, showing my picture. Is this what you want? Because, you know, verbally, they don’t hear a word you say, Yeah, you know, I mean, you could explain a haircut that you’re going to do to me, and I probably wouldn’t really know what you’re going to do to your dad. Yeah, exactly, yeah. So, you know, like, so blow dry lesson, you know, like, put the brush in their hand, let them do a few sections, you know? Because people even know how to hold the dryer, right? So we have all these steps like this is what you got to do. That’s why I like new talent, because I can find out if you’re willing to do that or not, if you’re not going to do those steps, and you’re not going to move over, you know, and it becomes a habit, you got to do these things. We are monitoring you and seeing if you’re doing these 11 steps, right? Rebooking, I tell people don’t sell retail. You know what you’re doing is you’re giving them information. You know how to take care of their hair and how to style it. When you give them that information, they’re going to purchase product, right? So we’re not selling, we’re giving, we’re teaching and educating the clients. So you’ve got to do all these things to be successful, you know? Yeah,
Chris Baran 24:21
yeah, you know what? There’s, I just want a quick question, but, and I’ve got to follow up on it, do you, I mean, you said that you’ve got to follow those steps, and if you don’t follow those steps, this might not be the right place for you, right? So if they’re not, if they don’t, and you see it, are you quick to let them go if, if they don’t, or
Van Council 24:44
I’m gonna work that, I’m not gonna say quick to let them go if they’re not busy and they’re not following the steps, they’re quick to let go. People you go out to a while when you’re booked out for six, eight weeks. Yeah, yeah. People get complacent. Now, we remind them not to be complacent. We do lineups every morning. You know, everybody home? Models. We go over to customer service standards. And we had a big company meeting two weeks ago on Monday where I did an hour on the performance wheel. The importance of so we go around and round. Does every single person do every self after they’re busy? I’d be lying if I said yes, yeah, I think so. I do have a they do the key things, and some of them do all of it, right? I got some rock stars. My business people been there for me almost 40 years. They do every step because they know it works. So charging 200 like I tell them reason I call it performance, says every time you go up on your price, you’re giving the same haircut. Yeah, performance has got to get better, right? Your consultations got to be better. Your blow dry lesson, you can’t give the same service at $80 and think they’re gonna give you $200 for the same thing. Yeah, yeah, they like you, but not that fucking much. Yeah. And
Chris Baran 25:50
you know, that’s what I love, what you just said, because that’s that right after COVID got to be a really big problem in our industry, where they said, well, everybody during COVID, tell them, put your prices up. Put your prices up. You’re not charging enough. And then they would go in and they would get exactly the same value, exactly the same service, but the price went up astronomically, or whatever. They said. That was where my words probably said wrong. However, there was this big backlash of clients on our industry, complaining that they the prices went up dramatically, and yet the service, the service and the value did not and I think that’s that’s something I think that if everybody thinks about, I’ve always said, look at, if you want to, if you want to charge $25 for a haircut, your hair cut, better be a $35 haircut. And if you and if you want to get to if you want to go to $40 then you better make sure your hair cuts $50 haircut, so there’s always value for your money, and that way people don’t complain.
Van Council 26:52
Yeah, no, right? So we preach that, like you can’t have increases without increasing value. Yeah, right. You don’t just, just because you booked up, because you I tell them I’ve seen busy hairdressers get unbusy, right? Because they get complacent. You know, it’s my biggest fear of being around 40 years is as I keep my foot on the gas not to be complacent. Yeah, and I talk to the staff about it all the time. Don’t take this for granted. Don’t take clients for granted, like they can get this service somewhere else. I mean, we are not the best in the world, you know? I mean, like, we do good hair, but there’s a lot of people in town that does good hair, so we gotta give great service. We can’t get complacent. We have to be better. And we’re bringing in, I’ve done this about three times. It’s been about 15 years since I did the last time I bring in this company. They’re coming in March. It’s one day that you’re going to charge me 120 grand for one day of training. They’re called Master connections out of San Diego. They do training for the Ritz Carlton and the saint Regis and it’s all day customer service training. So I’m bringing them in March again for a whole day, just to make sure my people know how important services, right? Just because you’re booked out for six weeks, you know, it’s like you’re booked out for six weeks with your $120 but your goal is to be 501 day. Yeah, so you got to give a $500 haircut. Your mirrors got to be clean. Your brushes have got to be clean. It’s funny, I’ve been on a lot of things after COVID, Aveda did a survey why people wanted to go rent suites, and it was four things. Number one, this is what come from Aveda to us owners says number one was dress code. Number one, reason people want to work at Nome suites. They won’t wear what they want to wear. Number two, they want to be able to work. 234, every few day of week as they want. Number three was they wanted to, they wanted to have as many days off a year that they want, unlimited days off. And number four was they wanted to charge whatever they wanted. So I had a company meeting. I said, Okay, guys, this is what people say. Why you want to go run this week? And we’ve, honestly, we had three people to do it just been almost four years ago. Last time we had anybody leave, we might have had 10 in our history to leave, to do that, right? And I say eight of them wanted to come back after a year or two, but so what I did was, I said, Okay, once you own the floor, you can work three, four or five days up to you, right? I will let you as soon as you finish your training. If you want three days a week, you can have it. Oh, man, they love that. Right. Now, we used to give you two weeks paid vacation. Now we’re going to give you 30 days off a year, but only two weeks paid but you can take another two weeks on you, right? You can have 30 days a year off. And I’m gonna pass out a piece of paper today, and you write down how much you want to charge. You charge whatever you want, but I’m not going to bend on dress code. I will never bend on dress code. You gotta look awesome every day. You know they’re happy. Funny, though, a year passed by, nobody went down to three days. I think one person did. Nobody took 30 days off. You know that? It’s funny. I told interesting. They’re like, I can’t afford to work three days a week. I can’t afford 30 days off. But they just want to know that they can, yeah, like they, you know what I mean? And, and a couple people had big increases, and they were fine. I mean, one Girl’s Gone from one in one year, from $100 to 200 and she’s still busy, yeah, you know. But most of them say, because I talked to him about don’t gouge you. Better make sure you lose your book. You’re gone. If you’re going too much, you know, like you gotta be very aware of what you’re doing. I’m gonna let you make your decision, you know. But probably nobody made any jumps. It was funny. They just want to know that they can.
Chris Baran 30:47
And it’s not a it’s, you know, I think, and they, they’re hearing the scuttlebutt around there. It’s just like everybody talks, everybody knows what everybody else is talking about. And then you get that, well, I want that too, but if you give them the opportunity, and then they see that they’re going to make less money, etc, yeah, and I’m sure, because I know that you can’t have whatever. You have nine plus salons and and and other salons in Japan. And you can’t tell me that you’re not thinking, Okay, well, if you’re working only three days, well, I’ve got extra spaces that I can put people into. I just have to. I just have to be like my lego set now, and I can just put people in slots that are open. So it’s not if you want to do that, great, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not gonna. It’s your chair and I’m not using it. Here’s
Van Council 31:31
what we do. We say we find two people you want, three days. You want three days. Okay, guys, here’s your one chair. Y’all get to figure out which three days you both work. Yeah, somebody’s gotta be in this chair every day. Yeah, that’s the thing. I mean, they’re four days. We do have days you walk through. It’s like a ghost house now, like Saturdays. I mean, I don’t even know why I’m open anymore, right? But I don’t even really care, because our numbers are, I mean, you know, this year, like, we just opened up the night salon two months ago, so out of date salons. We’ll do about 33 million this year, right? Wow. The numbers are still there. They do huge numbers, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. You know, because their prices are high, they’re all busy so, and we live in a day and time like, Well, me and you did hair people, they couldn’t come during the week. They could only come on Saturday. Saturday, yeah, world is so flexible now. They come on Monday. It’s a whole different world. Saturday is important in our mind, that it used to be, right? Yeah. But you know, the young kids, we encourage them to work Saturdays because we, if they’re there, they’re busy, but we just have many people, and then when you have 100 people that’s been there that long, of course, they don’t want to work Saturdays their whole life. I didn’t either, right? I mean, so I, you know, I’m okay with I try to be realistic and fair, and, you know, to keep people right, because the biggest expenses is the money you don’t make, and when they leave. Here’s what people don’t realize. I’ve got a guy charging $200 a haircut. He’s been there 20 years. If he leaves, I gotta replace him with somebody charging 60, Yeah, that guy to 200 for another 10 or 15 years. Yeah? I mean, it’s the setback. So my goal is to keep my staff to do whatever it takes. They’re, they’re really, my staff is really my customer, you know, and then I’ll let them take care of the customer, honestly. Yeah,
Chris Baran 33:20
and you know, it’s, it’s interesting. I what my takeaway from what you just said is about your, your as the owner, you have two customers, but it’s a trickle down effect. Your first one is, is your, your team, and then it’s how they affect the team. And, you know, but it’s what I hear on and I’d love to hear your take on in our industry right now every you know, because I I’m hoping that people are listening to this or watching this, get this that you’re saying, Our chairs are always full. We’ve got a lineup of people that are ready to come in. We’ve got a waiting list for people that want to be here. And there’s so many salons that are out there that I hear that are saying, look at it, please just give me somebody, anybody, if they, if they, if they’re breathing, they can have a job, because they just can’t seem to get people. But what I I’m hearing from you is the word loyalty is that, is that those people don’t want to leave any more than you want them to leave so and I think that if we could, there’s something we could do for our industry to help them get that message that of how we treat people, and what’s your take on that? What do you do? What do you do within your business? Or what are your take that you think you do that? Excuse me, that makes them want to stay well,
Van Council 34:45
you know, the cliche answer is, I treat them the way I’d want to be treated. But the add on to that really is like, so we have benefits, we have, you know, insurance. We have 401, K, we match a quarter. Every dollar they put in up to 6% we have three people in there. Right at 40 years they have a million dollars each in their 401, K Wow. You know, we have any class you want to take anywhere. We pay half of it. I bring, like I got Gianni Tamaki coming in for a whole week in May. I bring people in all the time for training. So you got benefits, you got education, and 50% of my staff, this is including her tips. They make over 150,000 a year. My top producer brought in 520,000 last year. So her w2 is 218,000 and she told me she made 98 in tip. So if they make good money, they have benefits. I mean, we don’t, you know, we’re not walking around beating people. I mean, we’re flexible. You know, what hours? You know? I mean, you want to work 10 to 611, to 712, to eight, I don’t care. You know, you gotta work 30 hours a week to get your benefits. So why would you leave? I mean, we renovate the shops. We have Janet. We have cleaning service every single night. We have house cleaners during the day picking up towels. You come in and do hair and go home, that’s what you do. Forget about it, right? I mean, and then I try to make sure I got the creative side. That’s why I wanted to get involved with a company like Aveda, somewhere that I have shows and shoots and workshops for my team. You know, they don’t want to just do hair behind the chair. That’s what the money is. That’s the real money, right? Yeah, but they want to be creative. They want to be on stage. So I work hard trying to, if we don’t have enough of shows on the road, we’ll do local club shows in town, just to give them an avenue. Yeah. And we party a lot. What I mean by that, like we just did a big lunch, and that was 50 grand just for lunch, for everybody right then we got the Christmas party coming up. You know, that’s another big chunk. That’s 700 people. We rent a whole nightclub out, and then we have a top 20 dinner. And then this is what I do. This is true. You can every new employee that comes in every three months. I take all the new people to dinner, and they go around the table and tell me their name or their from why they chose us. You know, that way I get to meet every single person when they get through the program. So that might be 20 people at that dinner, 10, right? And it’s somewhere like maggianos, you know, nothing fancy, you know. But when they graduate from new talents, I will take only three at a time. I take them to the very most expensive, nice restaurant in town to congratulate them. And that way I get to know them again, right? And that way I walk through the salon, I can say hi to everybody, because I have dine and wine and break bread with every single employee, yeah. So, you know, I try to have a connection with everyone, even though it’s a lot of people. People say, what’s your hardest job? I go making people so important, because they all are, right? But if I don’t see them or talk to them, you know? So, so we have a lot of parties, a lot of dinners. I mean, we bought it out, you know, because they love it, right? They’d rather go out and get drunk to probably go to a hairdresser. Hey, they are hairdressers, right? But, I mean, we do have summer parties. I’ve had drafting party, Lake parties, boat parties. I mean, we try to connect with the staff, you know, make them because that’s they’re really all that we have. They’re the only asset that we have in the building, you know, yeah, and
Chris Baran 38:20
you know what I what I’m hoping that people take away here is, you know that I’m sure that there was people, we got 700 people that you’re taking to a dinner, and they’re going what the you know, and but if you whether you’ve got six people or 600 people working for you, you can still apply that same principle. You’ve got one person there, take them out to dinner, find out who they are, find out what their needs are. People will always tell you things when you’re having dinner or lunch that they won’t tell you in your interview. 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. 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,
Van Council 40:19
I tell you, too, man, I’ve gone out to eat with these people, like when they graduate for new talents, and I they tell me stuff, and I’m like, wow, you know? Like, oh, well, I’ve been sleeping on an air mattress in a closet for two years. You know? I drove, I moved here from Minneapolis. Yeah, I drove here with just a duffel bag. You know, they’ve worked their ass off to go through the system, you know? I mean, I, I don’t know that, if I don’t have that dinner, the sacrifice that they they’re doing the work for us, right? I mean, I don’t not know that, and I wouldn’t know that otherwise. I mean, really, I talk to these kids, I’m like, wow, you know? I mean, they’re really, like, committed, and that’s why they don’t quit too. They go, they go through so much to go, you know, get on the floor. They don’t want to give that chair up. Because I do have a rule, when you’re gone, you’re gone, I don’t hire back. So don’t, don’t test the waters and it don’t work out. You come back and, yeah, different if you move out of state, because your husband and wife got a job, and you don’t turn but you went to another shop in town the task, I went to rent a chair. And, yeah, you’re like, good luck to you, right? I mean, she bad, anything bad, but the chair is now full, you know, somebody who wants it so, you know. But people go through a lot, you know, so talking to them and finding out, it keeps me grounded to know that they don’t make I know they don’t make much money. I know their life is tough for a couple years. I know they’re sacrificing, but I love hearing it from them to make sure how to get it.
Chris Baran 41:46
And I think what’s what’s important about our business? I mean, this is the one, the standard line that I get all the time van when people say, Why would I want to go through a program of education when I can’t get like, why would I go through another six months a year, two years of training, when I can get a job at McDonald’s for 17 to $20 an hour? And I say, Well, you’re right, right, right. You’re absolutely right. Why would you except for the fact, if you look two down, two years down the road, you’re still going to be making 17 to $22 $20 because that’s their system. But the more you know what I always call it, and I know you have, I’ve heard you talk about this before, was the more you learn, the more you earn. And I always call it like a learning to earning curve, yeah, because at the beginning you you’ll you’ll start off like you’ll be watching everybody pass you by in other professions for whatever it is, six months, two years, whatever it is, but after that is where in our industry, you’ll your earnings will go through the roof, and I’m gonna and I put this in because I’ve always had people tell me when they’re if my son or daughter wants to get into hair, how much will they earn? And I tell them this exactly what they deserve, right? Because if you don’t put anything in you, you get nothing out. You garbage in, garbage out. But if you put into your time, your training, like you said, your 10,000 hours, and you put the persistence in, that, I think that, and I I’m going to quote you on something here, because you talked about not only discipline, but endurance. Could you talk to that just for a second, just about when, when people get into work?
Van Council 43:28
Yeah, it was funny when we had that first dinner with everybody too. You know the new time, the first time we all go to dinner, I tell them, I go if you don’t want to work hard, long hours. You pick the wrong industry, and you also picked the wrong company. I mean, yeah, because I did about 30 haircuts every single day, five days a week, and then I would leave Saturday. I’d catch a plane. I’d fly to wherever, Dallas, Detroit, wherever Florida, do a model call do a show, Sunday, teach on Monday, come back home and back on Tuesday, right? I’d go 10 weeks in a row, I’d be so tired, you know, I’d eat laying down, you know? I mean, like I was exhausted at times. And that’s why I realized, like, people say, success is this, this, this is that it’s endurance. Because not only are you doing shows and doing clients, you’re also managing 100 South people. Because I had one location when I was still doing hair with 110 people in one location. We still have that location, right? But I was in the middle of it. I get off of work, there’s a lot of 20 people waiting to talk to me, to complain or something. So yeah, it takes a lot of endurance to be successful. If you are an owner and you go in and work four or five days a week and you want the weekends off. You’re never going to grow. It’s a seven day a week job, yeah, seven day a week job to kick off. I tell people, stay really, really small, or go to be really, really big, because that in between of 10 employees, up to 100 will kick your ass, right? So you gotta get a certain size where I am now. That I have really great people around me, you know, great CEO, great managers, right? Great artistic director, cutting director, color director, you know, so. But there was a time, literally, in the beginning, I took the towels home every night. I would come at six o’clock in the morning with an orange vest and an orange hat and stand in the parking lot and Bucha, where my shop is still and tell people they couldn’t park there because they would like to leave their car there. It was a little restaurant. They’d eat breakfast with people, and they carpooled downtown, and I wouldn’t have parking all day, so I was a parking attendant every morning. You know, literally, I got in a couple fights. I got 12 hell a couple of times, wow, yeah, yeah. People don’t know, you know, but I was be there from six to eight. I live walking districts, on the shop, go home, get dressed up, be back at work at 830 and do clients all day, take the towels home at night, yeah, and then me back in the morning.
Chris Baran 45:57
Well, see. And there it is. Like, you know, from great success, there’s always humble beginnings. You know, I can remember when we just started off and we had our first salon, and I remember we lived in a we lived in an old wartime home. I don’t know if they called them here, but Canada, they called them wartime homes. Meet that right after the Second World War, and all the troops were coming home, and they had to build houses for they wanted to get home, to get married and have a family, and so they had all these little story and a half houses. And we called them. They were called wartime homes in Canada, and that’s about all we could afford to have. And I remember bringing home towels in the evening. We had this old, old beat up dryer that we had down in our basement, you know, which would, uh, I think it was all but a cement floor, meaning that part of it was dirt and but we had a washer dryer down there. And I remember one time night in the middle of the week, we middle of night, we woke up smelling smoke, and I went downstairs and the dryer was on fire. I had to get a the hose out, unplug the dryer, and then, and then hose it down. And that’s just the stuff you had to go through at the beginning. And so what was, what was it like at the beginning for you, like, you know, I think if everybody can see you now that you’ve got amazing salons and plenty of staff and can afford to most do anything you want with your team. But what was it like at the beginning? And was there something that happened in there where you say, Damn, is this all worth it? What do I have to do to keep going? What was it like at the beginning?
Van Council 47:30
Oh, man, you know, I had no clue like this is, I was working for Scott and there was reasons I needed to move on. I didn’t even really want my own shop. I went and interviewed all over town, and it wasn’t anybody, anybody doing anything that I felt like was going to be different where I was at. And I kind of, also, I was 25 years old, and I was thinking about benefits. I didn’t have insurance, I didn’t have retirement, and I just, I didn’t even but I pulled up this little space, the shopping center, and had a little place. I ate breakfast every morning. I pull up one morning there’s a place. It’s for a rent. It was 700 square feet. I called the number and said, How much is it that the next dad dropped by? This is how different was. I signed a two page lease with no attorney, and I had no money, no they didn’t the guy didn’t ask me for a bank account or, you know, now, even after 40 years, that’s 100 page lease, and I gotta give everything, you know, yeah, it’s crazy, but yeah, I just signed a lease. I had no idea what I was doing. And me and my brother Michael, we we built the salon at night ourself. We did a construction pretty much ourselves. We hired a plumber to do some stuff, but every night we’re in there painting. But I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. I mean, honestly, I didn’t look at a P and L for 10 years. It took me a year well, I did the second salon. I started learning that I needed have benchmarks and P and L and all that numbers. But the first 10 years never I looked at anything. I was just focused on being doing great hair, focused on taking care of my clients. And, you know, we had enough of money to pay the bills and make payroll, and I had enough to live on, and that was fine with me, right? I need 5% or 10% or 20% never thought about it that way. I had a salary. I was comfortable, and we just worked, man, we just worked, you know, and I didn’t want a second salon. We went from seven chairs when we opened, to 75 chairs, and we were out of chairs. And I didn’t know what to do. So I did not want to do a second salon. I didn’t know if I could do that right, not let go and not be there, because, you know, I want I was in the salon from early morning to early night, I saw every head, and I could talk to every hairdresser and be connected, and I felt, but it just got to the point where we, we did, right? So in the beginning, it was just, I mean, it was kind of, it was hard, it was scary, but it was exciting, right? Yeah, super fun. I it’s fun. 82 like, just a couple stories in the beginning, I was, we were open in 84 probably one year later. I’m doing hair on Saturday. Probably already is in the afternoon. I already did 2025, haircuts. And my wife was working in salon at the time. She and everybody knew, like, you cannot talk to me while I’m doing clients. I mean, it better be very important. She comes up, there’s a guy here, and I think you should talk to him. He’s got a nice portfolio, and you’ll know the name. And you know, she goes, You, I think you should talk to this guy. So I stopped walk over. He goes, Look, I’m in town to shoot with Scott Co and Don Shaw. Went to the modeling agency. They said, I should come see you. He didn’t know me. I didn’t know him. Sorry, that was Gary lines. You remember Gary? Oh, wait, yeah, yeah. So, so Gary’s got this every, you know, hairdresser journal covers with Trevor and Irving and everybody, modern salon. I mean, just a book, you know, of all these covers. And he says, I want to shoot with you. And I said, Well, you know, I’ve been open for one year, right? I said, Well, how much you going to charge me? He says, nothing, you know? I said, no charge. He goes, Yeah. He says, I said, I said, well, that’s kind of right, my price point. And I said, when you want to shoot? He said, nine o’clock in the morning. This is like four o’clock Saturday. You want to shoot morning. And that’s one of those occasions where I just said, Well, that’s not possible. But I said, Okay, so I gotta get I gotta find a studio. I gotta get a makeup artist, I gotta get a closing stylist, I gotta get a caterer, I gotta get models, you know, called a modeling agency. I had a model call that night. I did hair about two or three o’clock in the morning, and then we were there at nine o’clock, all set up to go, and Gary just loved us and was impressed, you know, I mean, and we had this relationship for the next 10 years with him, and he got me so much press, right? That’s not getting covers of magazines and in magazines and stories, because he was so connected, you know. So it’s just I didn’t say no to anything, you know, way I met Horace, like, you know, just volunteer to work backstage, be there at three in the morning, right? And I’m there, you know. I mean, like anybody asked me, my rule would say yes to everything. I still pretty much, you know. I mean, like, because you never know who’s going to meet, who’s going to change your life, you know, I always tell people, the client that sent me the most clients was a 10 year old boy, honestly, just really, He’s 10 years old. He don’t talk. He’s got thick glasses. I don’t even know how he got on my book. I didn’t even do men, but I’d fine, you know, cut the kid. His mom would come in. She had never had a blow dryer. Hair was teased up, you know, and it was about a year I did his hair one day. I just thought she had one. I said, You should let me do your hair. Sometimes. Talked her into it. I do her hair, blow dry, falls in love with me with her hair. Next week, her daughter comes in, gorgeous daughter, you know, next week, another gorgeous daughter comes in. The next week, the third one comes in, and then they turn out to be good friends with Ted Turner. So that’s doing the Turner kids and Tad and James Bond. And I cannot tell you how many clients I got from this kid, right? So this was exciting that you never knew, and you still don’t who’s gonna make a difference in your life and who you know, do some supermodel you never hear from them again. You know, right haircut, you you didn’t charge them. You think they’re gonna send you a bunch of people, some 1000 cheerleaders. Don’t hear a word, but this kid sends me everybody without even trying. You know Gary. If I hadn’t met Gary lines, I wouldn’t be where I’m at today. No doubt, he got me the job with joy CO that I’d never even heard of them. They hadn’t heard of me. He got me a job as Artistic Director. They kept sending me to Japan. Oh, they had this big distribution in Japan, so I’m going there six weeks at a time. And over the course of two or three years, a group of guys there approached me about doing a partnership and opening up salons. So I did. So now we have 40 salons in Japan, but that’s all because I was willing to do a photo shoot with Gary
Chris Baran 54:12
at that short notice. Yeah, at short notice, after I worked all
Van Council 54:17
week, right? All day, all week. Yeah. Did I want to say, yes, no, but did something tell me that you better do this. This is an opportunity, you know. So I took advantage of the opportunity, and I did it first class, right? I had great food there great models. I mean, like everything. I mean, they’re like, Oh my god. How did y’all pull this together overnight? But we did, you know? So, yeah, that’s really what it takes. Is just, you know, what I tell people, I worked hard because I didn’t want to be average, right? Because nobody pays for average, right? You know, you ever been to a restaurant that was average? You go out and take friends, hey, I went to this restaurant down the street. You should go, it’s really average. Yeah. You know? So I just didn’t want to be average. That’s about it, you know? I mean, that’s as simple as that. Like before I opened up, I ran into a hairdresser in town. I said, Hey, I’ll put up. I’m opening up a salon. I went to beauty school with this person. Their response to me was, I’ll never forget. Oh, great. All Bucha needs is another salon. It was already 1000 salons and in a 10 mile radius, and my answer was, I’m not going to be just another salon. And, you know, because I really meant that, right? Like, I went with a mission, that we’re going to be the best salon, or I don’t want to do this. I have meetings now say, Look, we can’t get complacent. Because if we ever not the best salon in town or in or in the country, even, I’m quitting closing, right? I’m not gonna do this if we’re not the best. Our goal is still to grow and grow in every area. You know, answer the phones better. Have a better software. Greet people better, right? Blow dry, better, train better, recruit better. And it’s all about systems, and it’s all about improving those systems all the time.
Chris Baran 56:02
You know, it. Find it really interesting. And again, this is going to be kind of a two parter. I was talking to somebody in the film industry just last week, or the week before, I can’t remember what it was, and they were talking, I thought, because when you talk to people that are on, that are actors and are on stage to get an on there, on an interview together, etc, and they’re always buddy buddy, and everything’s cordial, etc. But they, when I was talking to somebody in it, they said that that behind the scenes is really a vindictive, even kind of cutthroat business, where they really, you know, are not for one another. And I know at one time in our industry, it was a bit like that. You know, it was like if you were with Aveda and you were with Redken, or you were with somebody else, they would say, look at that. There’s a different people. They’re different crimes. Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, commiserate with everybody in there. But yet, we’re just bloody hairdressers, you know. And I found that if you went down to the bar and you sat down with them, that, you know hairdressers, you’ll just tell everybody everything you know. Like you’ll say, What do I do about this? And the hairdresser will tell you, they don’t give they don’t care which which brand you’re from, or whatever it’s I think Sam V always talks about hairdressers, supporting hairdressers, and I just think we’ve got to have more of that in our industry, where we just say, look at I you know, if, if all of us grow, then all of us grow. But if we like, steal from, we take, we keep something from somebody else that you don’t get it, you know, what’s your take? Oh,
Van Council 57:33
no, I’ve been lucky man. I mean, I have a great relationship with a lot of very successful hairdressers. I mean, even in my city, we all share. I mean, honestly. Candy Shaw, Jeff south, I mean, we everybody. I mean we don’t, we don’t hire each other. Staff never have just a handshake, you know? I mean, like, I’ve never hired one person from Jameson. Shaw, after 40 years, right? They don’t even come apply my people, because they know they’re not going to get a job anyhow, right? They don’t even ask. But, you know, I got, I mean, David Wagner, Ray chavelo, Eric Fisher, John Donato. I mean, like own and own. Chuck Penn, I can just name a million people. I can pick up the phone and go, Hey, what are you spending on this? What are you spending on that? What do you do about social media? I mean, I’ve got Consulting at my fingertips. And the thing, people call me all the time, right? What do you do? There’s nothing. I won’t hand them over. There is no secrets. Because here’s the thing, I give it to people all the time, but they don’t know how to execute, yeah, they don’t have the endurance. I’ve had people stand on say, Go, why do you share everything? I go, because they’re not going to do it. Only one out of 1000 of these people go back here and do this because, you know what? It’s hard for me to keep people doing it, and I’m all about creating it, right? Exactly. Yeah, there’s no secrets. This is just about executing, you know, and staying focused and staying driven. You know, that’s really it. There’s no I have no secrets, you know. I just, like, I said in the beginning, I think most salon owners, they don’t understand the importance of recruiting, you know, that’s that’s where people are missing. Like, oh yeah, people, you know what? When I was in high school, I’d never heard of a Dallas Essen I was out of beauty school for two years. Or that name come across to me. He was already world famous, right? So people in high school in Chicago, Minneapolis, they do not know by Michael. And they go to school, they don’t know about Michael. I got to show up there and tell them who by Michael is and the potential, what we can do for them, right? So I think, you know, like people, so many Solana, are struggling because they just put no time in recruiting, like we have whole crew, I mean, a whole team of recruiting. That’s it, people that are flying to beauty schools, doing demonstrations weekly, right? I got a girl that she just interviews and hires and, you know, got social media that we’re driving all the time and, you know, putting out to the school. So I just think people gotta understand the importance of recruiting. New Style, you know, yeah, okay. The other thing about new talent, too is important. It brings in the younger clients, right? You know? I mean, because otherwise we’re going to get old and our clients are going to get old, so we need that younger hairdresser and that younger client to come in where they can do their 1020, years, right? Yeah, well, we don’t just die off.
Chris Baran 1:00:20
True, it’s true. You know, you know what I and I’m loving what you’re saying there, because the idea behind that, if you’ve got recruiting, most people recruit when they’ve got an empty space, right? Rather than waiting for recruiting before you’ve got the empty space. And then you can actually just say, look at I’ve got a place for you when we’re ready here.
Van Council 1:00:44
That’s what it always works out. I swear it works out. You know, it’s funny on my side, you know, we’re specialization, either cut or color, right? And we did have, we still do a lot of locations. We have a color room and a cutting room. So I’ve just renovated two or three shops in the last couple years. I’m putting everybody back together again. And the colors, you know, they tend to make a little bit more money in the for a while than the cutters. Once the cutters get up at $150 a haircut to it, it evens out again. Anyhow, most of the kids, when they choose they choose color. I say two out of three chooses color. My son works in the company, and he’s like, Dad, everybody’s picking color. He goes, Well, you know, I didn’t worry that we’re not gonna have cutters. I said, Lucas, he’s my son. I said, I don’t care if I have 250 colors and no cutters, you know? I mean, we could just be a big color company, right? I said, or if we got 40 colors at a location, only five cutters, the cutters can charge more because it’s harder to get in with them. Yeah, yeah. I’m not really worried about the ratio or what we end up there, right? We just want the chairs full doing great color or cut. I don’t care if it’s equal amount of number or if we’re lopsided one way or the other. I mean, there’s 7 million people in Atlanta. I mean, everybody needs a hair color, so I’m putting them back together now, that way I don’t have to worry about, well, this room’s full and this one’s empty, and we’re just, we’ll make this chair color or cut, no matter, you know, if somebody needs a chair, and whatever they do is what they do, right? You know, we’re putting them all back in one big room again. And actually funny clients like it, because they look around and go, What is she getting done? Yes, getting done because the cutters, I’ve learned they, after 10 years, they don’t know anything to talk about hair color, right? They don’t know even know how to talk about hair color. But So now, by them being the same room, the clients are asking questions, and it’s kind of even our color business is off the chart, right? It still promotes more color. Yeah,
Chris Baran 1:02:47
it’s interesting. I know that in a large Chicago salon chain that’s there, I was in doing a program for them a while ago, and they said that, excuse me, that they switched back from doing specialized cutting color into making everybody do everything. And I think it was right because of COVID, but I love the fact that you’re keeping it specialized. I
Van Council 1:03:14
tell you what man I would never, never go back to I was generous for seven years, and I switched over, even after I already had 50 people, I switched over, which wasn’t easy, but when I looked around the industry at that time, I got, well, who are the best salons in the world? To soon Tony and guy, Horace Frederick, all specialization, right? So that tells me something. But if you got somebody that does 10 colors a day for 10 years, they’re going to be better than the person that does one or two colors a day, same with cutting. But it’s funny, I grandfathered people in so I have three people that still don’t do both. They’ve been there 40 years, and they’re booked out all the time, but their numbers don’t get near the cutters and the colors who specialize, they never got good enough to charge $200 for a haircut. They’re still 80 $90 haircutters. Yeah, right. And they never got good enough. They can’t compete with the colors, you know, yeah. And here’s the other thing, I’m just gonna say it’s some people don’t like it, because this wasn’t the reason I did it. But now, with people, you know in the industry, leaving and doing sweets and all that, if they do everything, if they leave, their clients are going to follow. If they if they cut, and their clientele is getting colored by three or four other people in the salon. All we do when they leave, we send a gift card out for two free haircuts, and we keep 80% of the clients because they’re salon clients, you had to
Chris Baran 1:04:45
put out all the advertising and everything that went on to bring them in in the first place. So that’s there. Well, yeah, you know, excuse me, van, I talked at the beginning that we haven’t talked really before, other than shaking hands at shows. I need to get you back on here, because I have so much more that I want to talk about. But I wanted to do this, as I would be remiss if we didn’t run you through this rapid fire. Okay, so just real quick responses on on these, what turns you on in the creative process?
Van Council 1:05:19
What turns on the creative process? Uh, really, man, just working with my team, you know, it’s always a creative team process. We all bring the ideas to table, yeah, see what their commonality is when we’re doing a show, or what direction of the hair. So to me, it’s working with the team of creative people that kind of inspires me beautiful
Chris Baran 1:05:37
and what stifles creativity with you
Van Council 1:05:43
not being open minded, you know, thinking there’s always you got to know that there is always something new. You know, you can make it something new out of something old, right? Don’t think hey, it’s only Hey, I’ve done everything because you have. Yeah,
Chris Baran 1:05:59
what’s the thing then in life that you love the most. Oh, my family. And what do you dislike the most in life?
Van Council 1:06:09
Drama, bullshit, what
Chris Baran 1:06:12
do you love the most about our industry?
Van Council 1:06:15
I love the creative spirit of people in this industry. I really do, you know? I mean, like, we’re a special breed. If you’re a hairdresser for a long time, you i, if I’m on vacation, I can’t walk by salon without looking in the window. I was in Ecuador last week, and no, you know, in third world countries, I’m looking in the barber shops, you know? I mean, like, yeah, I just, I love the industry, you know, I’ve been for 48 years now, you know, and I just love hairdressers and the people in the industry, people ask me if I would do it again. I’d say, Absolutely, do this at 100% again.
Chris Baran 1:06:53
What do you dislike most about our industry?
Van Council 1:06:58
I don’t I mean, I guess the thing I dislike the most that when somebody does leave, it can’t be cordial, as you would like for it to be, you know. I mean, because you’re you’re forced to both fight for the clients, you know. I mean, it doesn’t feel good. I mean not you don’t always have to, but it’s just hard to part with this industry, with people, you know. And I hate that, because you know you still care about them, but you know, you try not to take it personal. You try not to feel betrayed. But then you kind of do, you know. So that’s the thing I don’t like about it, really,
Chris Baran 1:07:35
yeah. And then a person you admire the most
Van Council 1:07:37
in the hairdressing industry, anybody as an overall man, you know, probably my parents. Honestly, my dad worked 100 hours a week, you know, as a mechanic. I mean literally, I found his paycheck, hours work 100 you know. And my mom was, she worked her whole life too, but she was, like, the most nurturing and given person. So I feel like, you know, I got these worst ethics, and I also got from my mom, just, you know, like, it’s all about taking care of people or her life. She didn’t do anything for her. It was about everybody else.
Chris Baran 1:08:15
God bless her moms, something that people don’t know about you.
Van Council 1:08:22
I don’t know. What people don’t know about me is that I love I mean, they may know this, but I mean I love the outdoors, like I’m mountain bike. I mean, that’s really where my heart and soul is, is I’m not working, I’m outside. I mean, I’m going to Ecuador to kayak, or Canada or upstate New York, or I’m in a mountain bike race. So I love, I love, I guess what people don’t know is that I love. How was the word I’m looking for, like, pushing myself really hard, like, I love, I love the pain. That’s it. I love the pain. They don’t know how much I love pain.
Chris Baran 1:08:58
Yeah, we’re gonna start naming that van S and M starter kit. Let’s see Thing, Thing that terrifies you,
Van Council 1:09:13
thing that terrifies me as attorneys, lawsuits,
Chris Baran 1:09:20
Spoken like a true entrepreneur.
Van Council 1:09:24
HR scares me.
Chris Baran 1:09:29
Okay, your favorite curse word, thought, your favorite comfort food?
Van Council 1:09:38
Wow, probably a banana pudding. Oh,
Chris Baran 1:09:40
something in the industry that you haven’t done, but you wish you, but you want to
Van Council 1:09:47
something that I haven’t done in the industry, but I want to maybe open up a school. Oh, yeah, I’m always toying with open up a school. But. It’s something I still kind of feel like I want to
Chris Baran 1:10:02
do good, good on you. One do over. What would it be? One do over.
Van Council 1:10:09
One do over, maybe, yeah, I should have bought all my own buildings. Yes, instead of red, there
Chris Baran 1:10:17
it is, there it is. Tomorrow, you couldn’t do hair, or have anything to do with hair. What would you do?
Van Council 1:10:24
Probably be a RAF guide. Ah, yeah. I mean, I’m 67 now, right? So I don’t know, like, I probably would never retire, you know? I mean, I’ll work to the end, you know, yeah. I mean, really, I’ve had a lot up and downs. You know, when I was 40, I got caught in a Ponzi scheme and lost millions of dollars, so I almost had to start over financially. But, I mean, honestly, I mean, I feel like my journey has been a good journey, and I don’t have any, really, any regrets, you know, I mean, and because I know even if you start over, you’re still going to make mistakes, yeah, and you got to learn from it. And nobody’s, nobody’s going to get through life without getting knocked down a few times. You just got to get back up. So, yeah, I feel like, you know, really, my journey has been good to me. You know, I’ve had a good life, and I got a good family, and have a great staff now, the relationship with myself, I’m very happy with being a hairdresser, and where it’s taking me. You know what I mean? I tell people in the beginning, for many, many years, I was grossly underpaid, and now I’m grossly overpaid. You know what I do? But seriously, it’s, I don’t know. Man, it’s been, I don’t have a lot of things I would do over, you know, like, maybe when I was 40, I might have, should have done my own product line, you know, the opportunity was there, but I don’t look at that. No, that’s a home run. Or you would have made a killing, because I know a lot of people that didn’t make it. I watched horse. I was very close with him, how hard he worked. And I didn’t have kids till I was 40, anyhow, and I felt like I was, I was going to be gone all the time, you know. And you know, once I hit 40, I worked seven days a week from 20 to 40, but when I hit 40, I got even myself on a more work life balance, and I had kids, I don’t think a product line. I it would have probably taken too much of my time for it to been worth it to me, no matter how much money I made you, only you really do. Only need so much money, honestly, like, you know, so I just want to be very comfortable and have a nice balance and be healthy. I eat good, I work out, you know, I bike, I paddle, I lift weights. And, you know, just yeah, enjoy life. I love it.
Chris Baran 1:12:42
And one last question, but what before I ask you that question, if people listen to this and they’d say, I want, I want van to come in and do something, a seminar, a thing, or whatever that is, how would they get a hold of you?
Van Council 1:12:58
They can go through like our website and Nova Michael website. Uh, way, you know, our has on there, our email addresses, yeah, contact Yeah, contact us, you know,
Chris Baran 1:13:12
yeah, okay. Last question,
Van Council 1:13:14
they can all just call you, and then you could call me,
Chris Baran 1:13:18
yeah, and I, all I’m asking for is 10.1 last question for you, if you had one wish for our industry, what would it be
Van Council 1:13:30
if I had one wish for my industry, I would wish for everybody to make at least 100,000 a year, every hairdresser out there, no matter where they’re at and the second wish you only gave me one is that they all give me two, that they would realize the path that it takes to get there, yeah? Because they all could get there. Every single hairdresser could do it if they get on the right path.
Chris Baran 1:13:53
Yeah, that’s true. True words, yeah. Then I, you know, I’ve been looking for this opportunity to speak to you for years, and it’s come to fruition, and we’re going to be best friends, whether you like it or not, and, and I can’t wait to have you on here again and and pass on your wisdom.
Van Council 1:14:15
Well, I would love to be and I am very honored. You know, I’ve always wanted to meet you and talk to you, so I’m very honored. It feels like I’ve known you for a long time, actually. So I’m sure we will have a good time having that beer together eventually. Yeah, and dinner gotta be dinner too. So thank you for having me on. I really appreciate it. Wow, that’s, that’s, it’s
Chris Baran 1:14:33
mutual. And thank you. And I have to congratulate you on Mark Woolley had his Legends artwork that came out picking all the legends from North America, and you were on there. And I think very well deserved my friend.
Van Council 1:14:49
I was honored for Mark to pick me. And I love him. He’s a great guy. We’ve become buddies. I I’ve even taken him mountain biking before. He didn’t really enjoy it, but you can talk to him about it anyhow. No, I’m very. Very honored to be in that group of people I am. Thank you. Well, it was
Chris Baran 1:15:03
a pleasure, and I just want to thank you again for giving up your time and telling your stories. I love it.
Van Council 1:15:08
I’ll see you and I’ll see you in Phoenix soon. There you will all right, thank you. Have a great day. Cheers, cheers.
Chris Baran 1:15:18
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 music.
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