ep114 Antony Whitaker

My guest today will tell you that too many people in our industry can’t wait to open a salon, but what they should be excited about is opening a business, and that’s a major difference in mindset.

He’s a straight shooting truth teller in the salon world, bringing real, practical advice that helps salon owners worldwide succeed in navigating the challenges of modern businesses.

Once Creative Director for Vidal Sassoon, he is a two-time winner of Australian Hairdresser of the Year, winner of the AIPP Grand Trophy of the Professional Press, and best-selling author of the Grow Your Salon Business series. His online business courses and Grow My Salon Business podcast have fans all over the world.

I am thrilled to have him with us. Here is this week’s Headcase, the one and only Anthony Whitaker.

3:19 Antony’s Hair Story

20:50 Evolution to a Business Guru

39:25 Importance of Business Acumen

49:22 Industry Trends

58:37 Rapid Fire Questions

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 hairstylist and educator for 40 plus years, and I’m inviting all our heroes to chat and share the secrets of their success.

Unknown Speaker 0:22
You welcome

Chris Baran 0:26
to another episode of head cases. And to paraphrase a quote from our guest, so many people in our industry can’t wait to open a salon, and therein lies the rub they should be looking forward to as his advice to opening their own business. That’s why I’m so thrilled to chat with today’s guest. He is a truth teller to the salon world. Short story, he doesn’t give and feed any BS, he’s an entrepreneur, an educator, a motivator to salon owners worldwide, as a thought leader with more than 40 years experience at the top of the industry. He is renowned for giving down to earth practical and inspiring advice on running the salon of today. He’s a former Creative Director for videl sassoons. He is a best selling author of the Grow your own salon business series. He has been the winner of the aipp Grand trophy of the professional press and twice named Australian hairdresser of the year. People from 30 countries participate in his online business courses. And quite proudly, I am happy to say, He is a fellow podcaster of the grow my salon business, which attracts subscribers from over 70 countries. So let’s get into this week’s head case. Mr. Anthony Whitaker, Anthony, it is so great to have you on here. I like I say I think it’s been like 100 years since we talked last I because I know even the last time, I think I was in Oz was probably, I’m guessing, almost 1516, years ago, and but it’s always, I’ve been following your career. I, you know, I’ve, I’ve always been amazed at not only the things you do, but how you have just evolved yourself in our industry. So firstly, is welcome to head cases.

Antony Whitaker 2:24
It’s really good to be here. It’s a real honor to be here. And I’m I’m really looking forward to it, because, as you know, I’ve got a podcast, and it’s so nice to be on the other side of the microphone, and just to sit here, and I’m not had to prepare anything except to turn up,

Chris Baran 2:43
and that’s all we’re asking. Because, you know, like I say, I’ve always been impressed with you, and I’m sure as we get into this and see the human that is behind that, that great success you had, that’s exactly what they want. So awesome stuff. Now let’s just jump right into it. And I always ask everybody what their hair story is first, so that they can get a vibe of what you’re about. So what’s your hair story? How’d you get into it? How did it evolve? And so on.

Antony Whitaker 3:10
Okay, interesting. I’ve told this before, but it is interesting. People intrigued by how people get into this industry. And I stumbled into it. There was no no great master plan. I had had lots of jobs. I left school when I was very young. So I was 15, I left school, and I had something like 16 jobs between then and before I started hairdressing, which was when I was 21 so I bounced around a lot, and I hated every job I’d done, they were all just work, and all I was concerned about is, when’s the coffee break, and, you know, when’s the lunch break, and what time can I leave? And you know, it never occurred to me that I was going to find something that I really liked. My parents were a bit concerned about this sort of Wayward Son of this, because all my brothers and sisters had trades, and they’d left school and done the sensible things, and they’d, you know, become whatever they chose as their career. And for me, is me bouncing around one thing to the other, and they suggest that I saw a careers counselor. And I went and saw this careers counselor who was a government careers counselor. This was in New Zealand, because I was born and brought up in New Zealand, and this was a rather elderly lady, you know, frumpy elderly lady. Elderly, probably my age. Now, you know, so 35 maybe 40 and a bush. And, you know, she started asking me questions. And one of the questions she said to me was, she said, What do you want from a job? And I didn’t want to be there, and I was a smart aleck, 21 year old, and and she was like this little old lady who was rather bossy, and when she asked that question, what do you want from a job? I said, Well, I want to work in. Side. I don’t want to get my hands dirty. I want to listen to music while I work. I want to do something with my hands. I don’t be sat at a desk. I’d quite like to be something creative. I want to have fun, maybe opportunity to have my own business one day. I don’t want it to be too serious. I want to be able to talk to people. You know, I really like talking to women, and I was actually just being a bloody idiot, like a lot of 21 year olds would be, you know. There was no really serious thought given to this answer. It was more uh, so sort that out, you know. And she just looked up, straight away from her pad. She’d scribbling down my, my little list of things, and she said, Have you ever thought of becoming a lady’s hairdresser? Now, just to put you in a picture, I’ve got five brothers, and you know, my dad was a furniture restorer. My brothers are painters and decorators, and, you know, panel beaters, and you know, they work with their hands, and that was sort of the trajectory that I was meant to go on. And ladies, hairdresser didn’t fit into this is 1978 it just really didn’t fit that profile, and so I just looked at her with absolute contempt. And five minutes later, I left, and a couple of weeks later, and I never thought about it again. Just walked out stupid idea. I knew that was a waste of time. A couple of weeks later, I was getting my hair cut. Now, you know, we’re a similar vintage and this was 1978 and this was very much that transition period of the barber shop and the ladies hairdressing salon to the unisex salon. Now, thank God, it’s actually diverged again. But what a lot of younger people don’t realize is that, you know, 60s and 70s, it was sort of that era of, you know, the Beatles, The Rolling Stones, that whole thing where men wanted to grow their hair longer, and the barber, the traditional Barber, just did a short back in size. What do you mean? You want to grow your hair longer? It’s longer? So men started going to these ladies salons and or getting ladies hairdressers to cut their hair. And that was really the birth of the unisex salon. And anyway, the reason I’m telling you that story was I used to go to a unisex salon that was basically a glorified barber who I’d known for years. He went to school with me, but he was four or five years older than me. He was a friend of my brothers, and I went in to get my hair cut two weeks after this careers counselor, and he said to me, so what are you doing with yourself now? He knew I’d been bouncing around job to job. And I said, I don’t know. And I said, I’m actually between jobs. He said, Well, what are you going to do? And I just looked around. I said, Well, if I have a crack at this, and I didn’t, it just came out. Do you know what I mean, it literally, there just came out. And he finished cutting my hair, and it was like, it was like, you know, a la berry gib, you know, sort of cover half the years. Give it a blow dry, turn it all under Do you know what I mean? It was, it was a classic, very good, Bg, 70s sort of haircut. And at the end of it, he said, Look, we’re going to open another salon, and it’s going to be very much more aimed at the female market, and it opens in a month. And I haven’t gotten the apprentices yet, but I’m looking for an apprentice. He said, You’re a bit older than what I was looking for being. Looking for. He wanted someone straight out of school, but he said, if you’re serious, I’ll give you a chance. And so that was it like. I started working for this guy in a in really what was a barber shop who probably did 25% of female clientele to to then transition into his new salon, which was very much a more female orientated salon. And I just loved it. I absolutely loved it. I mean, there was a day about a month into it where he used to give me a ride home, you know, because he lived a bit further on from my parents. And he I said to him, I was a bit embarrassed. I said, when’s payday? And he said, Oh, every Thursday. And you know, I’m not as sharp as tall on the shed, but I said to him, Well, hang on, I’ve been here four Thursdays. I’ve ever been paid. And he said to me, I was just waiting to see how long it took before you asked, and it was a bit of a defining moment for me, because every other job I’d had, it was countdown to payday, right this I didn’t think of this as a job. I just loved it. I had absolutely had a ball. And so that was the beginning of my love affair with hairdressing. I sort of never looked back from that point, oh,

Chris Baran 9:42
that was, that’s amazing. And I, you know, it’s funny, the people that I talk to on here, and I’m sure you get that as well, is that people that have, you know, like you said, our vintage, the parameters, the things that we’ve done in our industry, there tends to be a lot of similar. 30s in our inner upbringing, because, like you i I never wanted to be a hair duster. I just fell into it. I won’t, I won’t belabor people that have listened to this before with my story, but it was very much like yours, is, I just kind of fell into it and then had that defining moment that really pushed you forward. And like with yours, you went, OMG, I love this, you know, and, and I think that that’s that’s just amazing when I what I want people to hear and listen to this is, or if you’re hearing, then you’re obviously listening hopefully. But if you’re watching this, that you’re you’re getting the gist of this is that in this industry, you have to have, there are going to be some hard times in there, but if you can get through them, this is the most amazing industry that there is to really work in, because you could set your own hours. You, you know, if you want an increase, you just, you, you can do that too. And I want to, I’m not going to get into that right now, but I, you know, that’s why I think I love hearing and knowing what you’ve done in the industry, that the impact that you’ve made, that other people can do it as well. Now, how did your shift you went from obviously there, and then you ended up as creative director with sassoons, and I’m sure there was tons of education in there, but how did that happen? How did the shift that you get out? You went over to being creative director with sassoons. And then if you could tell us something about just like, What the What was education like for you, and what was it? How was it transitioning from a hairdresser into the education part?

Antony Whitaker 11:32
Okay, Rob, where do I start? You know, so I started hairdressing in the salon in Wellington in New Zealand that I tell you about, and I used to get a magazine. It’s called hairdressers journal. And hairdressers journal and English publications, a weekly publication, and that used to come into the salon. And I, you know, probably like you, we, we weren’t, you know, when you look at a lot of young girls or young women, you ask them about, you know, why’d you become a hairdresser? Their answer is, often, I always wanted to become a hairdresser, to play with my dolls and all this sort of stuff, you know, or I was at school, and, you know, I used to play all my girlfriend’s hair. And you know that they have this affinity, they have this this thing, and also about themselves, where they were interested in beauty and playing with their hair. And they’d often, you know, put rollers in their mom’s hair, all that sort of stuff. I never did any of that. And I’m assuming you never did either. And so, you know, I start working in the salon. This magazine comes in every week, and I start flicking through it. This is the late 70s and and the Sassoon era was, you know, revolutionizing the world of hairdressing in a big way. There was nothing like it before. And I mean, now, you know, with due respect to Sassoon, there’s a lot of people all over the world ex Sassoon, people, in a lot of cases, who have gone and, you know, spread the word, so to speak. And so the the work that sasu do is still exemplary. You know, they never publish anything that you don’t look at with a slight degree of envy, you know what I mean. But then it was breathtakingly new. It was boundary pushing. And so I’d look at these pictures in this hairdresser’s Journal Magazine, and I very quickly started to realize that, you know, Sassoon is where it’s all at, but London is where it’s all at. I mean, growing up in Wellington and New Zealand, that’s about as far away from London as you can get. It’s, it’s a small city, you know, it’s like, and we were in a place they called nappy Valley, you know, because it was just all young families and, you know, very sort of working class. We didn’t have a lot of money or anything. And, you know, like I said, you know, five brothers and sisters said, a lot of us all together, um, and so I hadn’t been exposed to that at any level, you know, beauty, fashion, women, you know, except obviously my mum and doing hair. But all of a sudden, and I probably wouldn’t have even gotten to ladies hairdressing, the Segway was a bit safer, because it was like unisex salon, and there was two or three guys that worked in this glorified barber shop that that just made me feel totally 100% comfortable. But I started looking at the work in these magazines that would come in, and I just knew that this is where it comes from, you know, if you if you’re really serious about this, this is where you need to go. And so, you know, I started when I was 21 so I was 2223 I got married, and I knew I needed to go to London. So I left New Zealand, and, you know, flew to London to get a job at Sassoon. And I was actually a friend of mine who I worked with at the same time in the same cell, and he also wanted to do it, and we both applied for a job at the same time. He got accepted, you know, via snail mail, and I got a rejection letter. I couldn’t, couldn’t believe it, you know. So I got, I flew there anyway, and I went into the head office and asked for an application form, you know, applied again. And. And again, I got a rejection letter, and I rang up, and, you know, I spoke to the HR woman, and I said, Listen, if you’re going to reject me, I’ll come all this way, you know, 14,000 miles. Can you at least see me before you reject me? At least, can you at least meet me and have a look at my, you know, body of work, etc. I thought I was pretty bloody good. I wasn’t okay. I wasn’t, but I were where I was from, you know, there was a small town, not a lot of competition. I obviously worked really hard and were determined to be good at this. And so I was good there. But of course, when I moved to London, you know, there were 20 of me at Sassoon and some, you know what I mean, it’s like a It’s a hot bed of a breeding ground of, you know, aspirational young creative hairdressers. So, you know, that was a big leap to move to London and and so, of course, when I get there and I get knocked back and but then I say to them, can you at least knock me back on my resume, etc, they obviously thought, okay, you know, Lee, and come in for an interview, and then we’ll tell them to bug her off, you know what I mean. So I went in, I had an interview, and eventually they said, Look, we’ll give you a trial. So vivid mackinder, who I know, you know, kinda was in staff training. And so when you do a trial, you do a couple of models, and Vivian looks at my models, and she basically convinces that the owners of the company to to give me, give me an opportunity. And so I then have to go into staff training for six months and retrain and unlearn all your bad habits and learn to cut hair the sum way. And that’s a hell of a shift. I wish I hadn’t started hairdressing in New Zealand, because unlearning bad habits is such a difficult thing to do when you start something with a blank slate and you’re just getting told this is how you do it, that this is how you stand this is how you hold it. This is what looks good. This is what doesn’t look good. It really is. It’s a humbling thing, but I think it builds you with some really solid habits right from the beginning, a really great platform to grow from. So, you know, I was there for almost 10 years, and I very quickly knew, you know, so after I did my staff training for six months, and I passed my test, etc, you know, I then got put into the salons, but I knew very quickly I wanted to be a teacher, and so I had to wait, you know, nine months or something. And eventually an opportunity came out in the school, and I went into the school as a teacher. And, you know, there’s that expression that people who teach teach what they most need to learn. I like right up for saying that. You know, I’d passed all my tests and stuff, but I still didn’t really know what the hell I was doing. You know what I mean, like I and when you have to teach someone else, you know how to hold it. Why you hold it this way? Why you over direct it, you know, and you have to articulate to them the reason why you are teaching yourself at the same time in a funny sort of way. And so that that was a great experience. So, you know, most of my time there, like I say, so the next, sorry, eight years, I suppose, was eight or nine years was working in the schools. And, you know, the schools are a tough environment. You know, you’re not doing 30 minute haircuts behind the chair, which you were, incidentally, in the salons at that time. You know, I can remember you’d have an eight o’clock and nine o’clock and a 930 just to piss you off. You’d be, you know, so you’d be running behind from the get go, and then for the rest of the day, you’d have 45 minute appointments, and then you’d finish the day a 430 a five and a 530 just but here’s the interesting thing, you probably use this expression work expands to fill the available amount of time, exactly. Yeah, and that is such a good example of that, and and myself and you, all day long, we will talk to young hairdressers, and they will go, Oh, my God, I need an hour to do a haircut. Well, that’s the soon also. Now it’s probably 45 Well, it’s no longer half hour appointments. It’s at least 45 minute appointments. And maybe for new stylists, say, give them an hour, or whatever it is. But I think the generation of hairdressers now that cut hair, they’re convinced that you can’t do a consultation, a haircut and a blow dry and get them out the door in 30 minutes, but you can, you know, and without compromising your quality of work, I think you have to learn how to talk and cut hair at the same time.

Chris Baran 19:36
Wow, that’s a mouthful, right there, talk and work at the same time, not only from the stylist working at the chair perspective, but as we all know, educators that are standing on stage, you know, talking and working at the same time, which kind of leads me into that when you were there educating, you know. So now I want to take the people down that path. So. So you started off, had this chance, went to London, got your chance, there, went through the rejection, and then got your chance. And then you worked your way up through the education, and then from there, obviously, if you’re doing that for a number of years, you were doing that for a number of years, you you wouldn’t have been excellent at it if, if you’d been doing it that long, because then did them, sure they would have taken you out there. Because I’m, you know, soon trained as well, and I know what it’s like when if you’re not doing a good job. Now here’s the point that I want to get to, because where I said it at the very beginning, about how you’ve evolved yourself and your career. How? How did this shift? Because I think this is the hardest part for most people, is, how did you make that shift when you’re doing education and everything is on hair and now all of a sudden, bingo, and I shouldn’t say I’m using that word in a very glimpse manner, but now your business guru, how did that like, what was the transition? How did that happen? Okay,

Antony Whitaker 21:06
so at at Sassoon, every Friday morning in the academy, where I used to teach, in the academy, every Friday morning, they’d have the general manager from the schools or the general manager from the salons would come down and they do a one hour business lecture the rest of the week, Monday to Friday. Everyone who was there from all over the world, as they were all qualified hairdressers at the academy. They were all coming to do, you know, the most creative advanced course that there was in the world of hairdressing, and I worked in there. But what? So they were all business owners predominantly, and so that’s why they put in this little one hour segment every Friday morning to start the day off on their last day of their course. And I used to sit in and listen to it, and I was intrigued by it, and I knew in my heart of hearts that I would not stay in London forever. I knew that a point in my career would come where I would move back to probably Australia. Although I was born in New Zealand, my wife was Australian, and then I moved back to Sydney and that I would open up my own salon. So I knew that that was going to happen, and I became more and more confident and more and more excited about that idea. And then, you know, a point came in my life where, you know, I was, I was, you know, the other side of 30, and you know, I was married, and, you know, thinking about kids, and well, where do you really want to be the rest of your life? Because all my family were obviously in New Zealand, and so I moved there, and I opened up a salon, and then another salon, and then another salon. Very quickly, I opened up three salons, one of them, which doubled up as a school. Now, that wasn’t some great business acumen that enabled me to do that. That was a mixture of luck, good fortune and naivety, you know, and opportunities that presented to me, and I went, Yeah, why not? So all of a sudden, two years in, I’ve, you know, literally two years in, I’ve got three salons, one of which doubles up as a school. And everyone thinks, you know, that things are going amazingly well. And on the surface they were, there was lots of money being generated, and lots of staff wanted to work for me. And, you know, lots of good things happening, but there was lots of money being spent, and I wasn’t focused on the money side of it. I was focused on, you know, I was, I was everything. I was the busiest one on the salons. I was, you know, in charge of marketing. I was in charge of the images we produced. I was in charge of doing educational I was doing everything, like so many salon owners are, and what I weren’t paying enough attention to is the financial side of it. And I got in a court a call from my accountant one day who said to me, Listen, this is getting out of order. You owe a certain amount of money to the tax department. And you know, I’m advised to tell you that, you know it’s my legal responsibility that you should declare bankruptcy. And I said, Well, you know, that’s just not that’s never going to happen. And he said, Well, I’ve, you know, fulfilled my duties, and told you that you know you need to. And I was like, well, I’ll just work my way out of this. And then all of a sudden, I sort of had a bit of a mental shift about what I needed to do. So I, you know, started working a lot harder and produced more money, got my businesses under control. Obviously, this didn’t take five minutes. I closed two of the salons. I expanded one of them so that I can get everyone under one roof, and I didn’t lose any staff, and I pretty much didn’t lose any revenue. I just had it all happening under one roof, because I was able to, you know, expand that premises and obviously, therefore reduce a lot of my overhead and my sort of management costs. So all of a sudden I had a very profitable business again. Now you know that story took a minute to tell you. It took three years to happen. It and and then I started to, because I’ve always been a passionate educator, I started to get back out on the road, you know, doing shows and seminars and working for different product companies and stuff. And, you know, like, when you’re on stage, you know, you do the same thing, I’m sure you do a haircut, and you’ll talk about how you’re doing the haircut, and then you’ll often sort of turn the chair around and you’ll say, well, now I’m going to do the same on the other side. Now, assuming it’s a symmetrical haircut, it’s like, you know, you sort of told them everything. So I would sort of say, so listen, it’s pretty much the same as the other side. So if you’ve got any other questions you want to ask me about anything, I’m here for you. So ask away as to what started happening was people started asking me questions about business. You know, they could see that I was a bit of a big noise. And I opened up, you know, these salons quickly, and then closed two of them just as quickly. And then, you know, rose from the ashes, so to speak. And was obvious, I had a very successful business. And, you know, we’re making plenty of money and winning plenty awards, of awards when I could, instead of my nemesis Benny Togni winning the new I know you’re good mates, so yeah, it would be Benny and I would sort of alternate between best sell on team, best marketing, you know, hairdresser of the year, Educator of the Year, you know, if it wasn’t Benny for a while, it was me, you know, and you know. So that was a good time, and I absolutely loved that. Have an enormous amount of respect for Benny. And yeah, it was just this natural sort of segue where I started talking more about business. And yeah, it was just little things to start with, like they’d say, you know, how do you pay your people? Or, you know, what do you look for when you recruit staff? Or, you know, what do you do if your team won’t retail, you know, just stuff that you and I, as a salon owner would have dealt with all the time, and people wanted to know my thoughts. So I’d start talking about that. And then one day, one day, one of the manufacturers came to me and they said, we hear that you talk about management. And I was like, Yeah, I suppose I do, you know when I’m doing a haircut. And they said, Well, will you do a talk for us? At was actually at hair Expo. I know you’ll be familiar with hair Expo in Australia, it’s like salon International, but in Sydney. And I said, Yeah, hello, you want me to talk for they said, an hour. And I said, Great. So, so what? I get a model and I do that, and then I talk. No, no, no, no, no, we don’t want to model. We just want you to talk. Now, you know, as a hairdresser, I could talk all day with my comb and a pair of scissors and something else to do, but when they wanted me to stand at a lectern or stand on a stage and stroll up and down with a PowerPoint, maybe it’s like, well, what do you mean? Where’s, where’s my prop? And so that was a real leap to do that. So anyway, I did it. I talked for an hour about about, basically, I talked about my business and how I ran my business, and and they were very happy what I did. And they said, Listen, we love that. We would like you to do that talk all around the country. So, you know, they took me to seven different cities and but they said to me, but can you do it for longer than an hour? And I thought, yeah, of course, I can do it for longer than that, only a one. So can you talk about it for three hours? You know, sort of make it worth your while. And I was like, Yeah, okay, I can do that. And I had no idea how I was going to do it, by the way, but I just, again, sat down, and I sort of broke it down into what I’ll talk about my business, I’ll talk about management, I’ll talk about marketing, I’ll talk about team building, and I’ll talk about money. And so that’s what the three hours were made up of. So I put a presentation together, and every time I did it, it got better, it got fine tuned at home, and it sort of grew out of that. So I never had this great master plan to be a business educator and and then I was sort of doing that all over the southern hemisphere, and a friend of mine who was in charge of all the sort of education side of events for Schwarzkopf in Hamburg. He asked me if I would work for Schwarzkopf doing that globally. And so yeah, I was like, fantastic. I’d love to do that. And it’s still, at that point in time it was and still do some here. And so I sort of had that as my safety net, but I very quickly realized I wanted to let go of the hair thing. And that’s part of that evolving thing, having the courage to let go and push the boundaries and try something else. So, you know, I was living in Australia, but I was commuting from Australia to Europe. And I one year, I did it. I did it six times in one year. Now, if you’ve flown, you know, that’s a you know, what that flights like? 25 hours and, you know, throw in some airport standing around time. It’s easy 30 hours, and you’ve got some major jet lag, either end. It’s not good for your body, etc. So, you know, I did that one year, six times. And it was obvious that I either needed to give up that gig or I needed to relocate to Europe. So at that point in time, which was 2024 I decided to relocate with my new wife, because I had remarried. I got divorced, remarried, had another two kids, so I got four kids in total, and and moved back to the UK. So I moved back to the UK with my wife and two daughters. And, you know, at that point in time, sort of positioned myself as this business guru through Scholz, so Schwarzkopf would drag me all around the world doing business events and, and that was great. Was a fantastic time. I did that for a few years, and and then we’re doing it independently for a couple of years. And then started doing it with John Paul Mitchell systems in the US, and that was fantastic. And then COVID came along

and kicked me right in the ass, because that whole thing just dropped like a ton of bricks. But fortunately, I was already evolving into the next thing, which was online education, yeah, and so even when COVID happened, I had already developed my first online course. So it sort of was just perfect timing in lots of ways.

Chris Baran 31:24
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, well, that that’s amazing. And there’s a couple of things that I really gleaned from what you said, Anthony was number one is the is the evolving and and not. And sometimes you just got to recognize when it happens. And then the other part, what I love that you said, was that everything that you did had sort of bit of that love, that luck and naivety that goes along with opening the salon the first time. And you know, I think we’d both agree that that somebody’s saying that we paid particularly attention to the education, and I heard you say that not only were you behind the chair, you were in charge of education, you’re in charge of marketing. You were charged getting the staff organized, etc, etc, etc. And there’s so much on our plate that we have no time to build systems, you know, and I think that’s the reason why, as they say, is that most salons never make it past five to six years and be successful because they’re always in chaos. There’s been no systems build. There’s been no measurements of how to go from that that systems that you’ve created into quality control and then having abundance. So tell me like and I noticed you talking, and I heard you say them as you went through them, of what you did and started to talk about, it sounded like those were a little bit about the pillars that you talk about all the time. Oh, totally Yeah. So could you tell us a little bit what are those pillars and and why do you think that they’re so essential for each and that might take a three day program here, but if they can even know what those pillars are, yet,

Antony Whitaker 34:31
I’m going to go back a little bit to go forward, okay, because I think this is a an important element to the to the story, to my story. And it is that I glossed over it before I said so I got this call, and you know, you need to bankrupt yourself, and I’m not going to bankrupt myself. I’m going to roll up my sleeves and dig my way out of this. I was 3334 something like that, and and not afraid of hard work. And I was. We bought all day every day, and I had 45 minute appointments, and we were open three late nights. And between the three salons, we were open seven days a week. And so I thought, well, I can produce we will. But the accountant said to me, you are going backwards to the tune of about $3,000 a week. And you know, $3,000 a lot of money. Now, it was a ton of money then, but I knew that I could generate that behind the chair, so I rolled up my sleeves, and I got back behind the chair. And instead of working a five day week behind the chair and doing one late night, I was going to do three late nights, and I was going to do a six or seven day week behind the chair, because I had a waiting list at any one time, 4050, clients. So I was just flying, and I was a money machine. I was producing a lot of money. And so I managed to get the business on an even kill. But you know, you think when you’re in your 30s, you think you’re bulletproof, and then one day, I started hiccuping. You know, got the hiccups now before get the hiccups, but my hiccups wouldn’t go away. And, you know, I’m in the salon cutting hair, and people are giving me all these old wives tale suggestions about how to get rid of it in and out of a paper bag. Stand on one leg. Let me give you a fright. You know, do all these different things? Have a spoonful of sugar. I tried them all, and the hiccups wouldn’t go away. And I’d go to bed that night and I was still hiccuping, and I was exhausted. You know, can you imagine it actually felt like you were just being punched in the chest. It felt like you were being beaten up. I was in agony. And, you know, I went to the doctors, and, you know, they were a bit, you know, you go to the doctors or the hospital in this case, and they were a bit, you know, what, man, I got. I’ve got more things on the plate here. You know, there’s a car accidents coming over here, and someone else has been knifed over here, and this person’s overdosed. You got the hiccups. For Christ’s sake, put him behind that curtain. I’ll deal with it later. And so I’m in, I’m in a and e behind the curtain. You know, eventually this doctor comes in. I hadn’t seen and I’d been there seven or eight hours, and he said, someone looking after you? I said, I don’t know. I just been told to weigh here. And he said, what’s, what’s your problem? And I said, I’ve got the hiccups. And, you know, he took my blood pressure and, you know, all this stuff. And he started having a chat to me, and he said, Look. He said, How old are you? And I said, I think the time was 34 I said, I’m 34 he says, well. He said, I don’t know what you’re doing to yourself, but if this what happens to you when you’re 34 when you’re 44 you’re going to drop dead of a heart attack. And he said, This is just stress induced. And I knew it was overwork. I was just like pushing it way too hard. And so they they put me into hospital, and they were mainlining valium into me to try and break the seal, and they would I would stop hipping, and I was just exhausted, I’d collapse, and then I’d wake up again, Two or three hours later, start again, you know. And so if you want to, I refer to it as the tap on the shoulder. It’s a warning from someone up there the higher power that says, Listen, time to change. It’s not meant to be like this, yeah? And, you know, so I’m lying in the hospital. I got two kids at this point, and, you know, an ex wife, and you know, a lot of outgoings to go with it, you know. And I just realized that something had to change this. This was, you know, all wrong and and I knew it was my business, and the way I was running my business, the way I was running my life, was just not right, you know. And you know. So I was in hospital for three or four days, or whatever. I eventually stopped, pick up being and, you know, I sleep for 1415, hours. And you know, everyone was very concerned about me, but I went back to work and knew something had to change, and that the first thing that had to change is that I couldn’t work seven days a week. I had to work five days a week, and you know, I would go back to 45 minute appointments because I’d reduce my appointment times down to 30 minutes for men, you know, just to make money. And and I’d only do one late night, and I’d start looking after myself. And literally, within a week, there was a an advertisement for a a seminar, a business seminar, nothing to do with hairdressing. And for whatever reason, I thought, I’ll go to that. It was a book that had just been launched. You will know the book, and you will know the author. His name is Michael Gerber. Oh, yeah. And Michael had just put out the E Myth, yeah. Yeah, and this is, you know, like, you know, whatever year this was. Now, I think he’d put out the E Myth at the in the 80s. I think it was,

Chris Baran 40:13
I think it was, it was 8687

Antony Whitaker 40:16
something like that. So I go along to this event, and I’m the only hairdresser there, the rest of them, actually, that’s a lie. There was another hairdresser there, and it’s this little old man. He’s still alive and kicking. Now he’s 90 ish, but he’s still doing business events online. And I was spellbound, like I just sat there listening to this guy, and it was incredible. And everything he was saying was talking to me. And I remember in the coffee break, this young lady came up to me and she introduced herself, and because she was a hairdresser, and you know, everyone else was a suit and tie, and that there’s me in there, you know, t shirt and jeans, and I don’t know what she’s wearing, but, you know, she’s a hairdresser, and introduces herself to me, and I’ll never forget what she said. I said to her, so how are you enjoying it? You know, I bought the tapes and the book and all the junk that goes with it. And she says, wow, it’s not really anything to do with hairdressing, is it? And I just remember looking at her thinking, can’t you see? Can’t you like, it’s business, and I’ve always used this expression. I don’t know where I got it from. Actually, I do know where I got it from. I just remembered as soon as I said that, because my a coach of mine said it to me, he said, I told him, I he said, Tell me about your business. I said I opened up my salon in such and such. And he said, let me stop you right there. He said, You didn’t open up a salon. You opened up a business that happens to do hair. And I again, I just looked at him like, Oh, you’re smart ass. You know what? I mean. It’s just a play on words, but I tell you, what, if you’re looking for something to engrave on my headstone, it like that was pure gold right there, but the Michael Gerber experience reading that book, the E Myth, which is now 40 years old, plus it’s still as relevant today as it was then, was the underpinning of me changing my business, and it was the underpinning of me understanding what A business is. And so I talk about money, finance, I talk about marketing, I talk about HR team building, and I talk about management, and they are essentially the four pillars of every business, whether you’re a legal firm, a hairdressing sell on, a bakery or a mechanics. You know, they all have a management function. They all have a marketing function, a financial function and a HR function. Now, some businesses might also have a sales function and a legal function, but in a hairdressing salon, those two things are sort of absorbed in amongst the the management pillar, so to speak. So, you know, he was very much my mentor in the early days. I mean, he is San Diego based. I was Australia based. But, you know, even then, he would come out there every year and do seminars. I’d always go to his seminars and, you know, buy all his videos and tapes and do all his courses and his his teachings were the foundation of me thinking about business in the way that I now think about business. Because, you know, see, that’s the thing. We don’t have that background. I told you, I left school when I was 15. I mean, the only certificate I’ve got is swimming 15 meters in the local pool. You know that that was it. That was, that’s my qualification. You know, I didn’t go to university and do a management degree, an MBA or something, so I had no understanding of business. And I look around the world of hairdressers, and I see that that isn’t just me. That is the world of hairdressers that they they’re a good hairdresser working for someone else. They think they’re taking all my money. So I’m going to open up my own I’m going to become rich and famous and, you know, live happily ever after. The world is full of hairdressers that reflect the person that I were, and I was lucky to meet a mentor that, you know, helped me, that guided me in whatever way, not personally. Okay, I don’t have a personal relationship with him, but, you know, I’d met him a few times, attended lots of his programs, etc, and would hang off his every word. And that very much formed the foundation of what I do, you know, and so, and at the time, maybe I wasn’t even as aware of that as I should be. So, yeah, that was, that was an interesting sort of segue to, I had to go back to tell you that story, to go forward to tell you to where we are now. So, yeah,

Chris Baran 44:47
so and I what I loved about, as you said, Excuse me, what I loved about, what you said is about how your story and it’s reflected almost internationally across. Mm. Because I was the same way. You know, I loved what I did full book. I can go on my own and and it was interesting that I went to a seminar and they said, bring your books along. And the month that we booked, brought our books in, and they got on stage, and they were talking about everybody’s books, and, you know, you get all puffy and think that you’re going to talk about how great you are, etc. And then they said, Now, this is this person that owns this particular salon. And I looked at their books, and the only reason that they’re they they made it past the break even point was the retail so, you know, it’s, and that’s that came gave me a hook on it is about numbers, you know, and the moment that you you start to understand your numbers and how you can predict where you’re going to go to a degree, yeah, and keep yourself from falling into that category of the business failing. So what do you say? Because it’s constant in our industry. I’m not a numbers person. What do you say to them? Well,

Antony Whitaker 46:10
I get quite brutal when I hear that. Do you know what I mean? I have two different I have the hard, the hard ass approach, and I have the I have the more softly seductive approach. The more softly seductive approach is, come here. Let’s just go to the back room for a minute, and we go in the dispensary. And I say, what can you see? Our tubes are tint, what’s written on them? Numbers, what’s this? Oh, it’s a bottle of peroxide. What’s written on it? Numbers like, you know, what’s this over here? It’s a 10 minute color, okay, so more numbers, you know? And then I say to them, Listen, it’s not that you’re not good with numbers. You choose to be, you choose to be good at the numbers that interest you. And just like you learn the numbers of hairdressing, you can learn the numbers of business. So when you were, when you were at secondary school, someone said to you, you know, should I use 10 vol on this or 20 vol, you know, should I use a 12 stroke nine? Or, I’m just making these numbers up, by the way, you know, or a 10 dash, eight, three, you know, you would have looked at them like they were a Martian, but you became a hairdresser, and somewhere along the line, you learned to understand the numbers that are in hairdressing now, and so you will talk about those numbers like with the greatest of ease. And if you go to your accountant and you say to your accountant, am I a depth of a level five or a level six, they’ve got no idea what those numbers mean. If you say to them, should I use a 10 stroke three or a 10 stroke five, you know, to take the ash out of this blonde. They haven’t got a clue. See, we’re good with numbers, but we’re good with the numbers that are appropriate for us to use within hairdressing. And just like we learnt the numbers of hairdressing, we can learn the numbers of business. And the numbers of business are not that complicated. I think there’s a lot of fear and a lot of ego attached to it. And I promise you, if I can learn to understand the numbers in business and and, you know, navigate my way around a profit and loss and all that sort of stuff, then anybody can, if they’ve got the right person teaching them, yeah.

Chris Baran 48:15
And I think the the key word there is if you got the right person teaching you so that you understand, yeah, because I think we’ve all had people that have, I know I’ve been to accountants. I remember when we first started off, and I’ve got to visit with the accountant and bring in your shoe box full of your seats, give them to him. He did his report, you would go in, and and then all I heard was gobbledy Gook. It was like when, when peanuts teacher was talking, and I’d hear wa wa, wa wa, and he was trying to teach me, but I didn’t understand anything that he was saying at the time. So I think that’s the biggest key is, and why I love what you said, of having mentors that can teach you to a point where you truly understand and then, and only then can you help to direct the success of your business success, whether you’re whether you’re on one person, or whether you have like, 100 employees. Yeah, exactly. So while we talk about that one, I I’m sure, I’m not sure what it was like in and when you’re in Europe or New Zealand, but here in the US years ago, if you said the word independent booth rental, that, and please that, whatever I’m saying here, I’m not saying, if anybody’s listening this independent booth rental, I’m not nothing bad about you. All I want you to say is, is this, if you would have said the independent boot rental years ago, that everybody would have said, well, what’s that? What is that? And now fast forward today. I did a little numbers research the other day, and they said that 20 to 25 people, 20 to 25% of people hairdressing in the industry. This was 2223 numbers. So. Said that they’ve moved from an employee to a rental mode. What do you what do you say to that mo of thinking is, I’m going to go to a booth because I’ll make more money.

Antony Whitaker 50:15
In some cases they will. Yeah, and I was saying it’s important to acknowledge that is it right for every and so for some people, it’s right. It’s a, it’s a, it’s a another business model. And some people have the motivation, the self discipline, to get their sorry ass out of bed and get in there, whether there’s a client booked in or not, and they have the self discipline and the motivation to to get on top of the skills of running a business, even though it’s a business unit of one, you still got to pay tax, and you still got to, you know, buy inventory and, you know, pay bills and all that sort of stuff. So it’s a it’s an interesting sort of, you know, a training ground for a lot of people to potentially go on to something bigger, and some of them do. It’s interesting that it’s very much affecting the middle of the industry. You know, if you were to, if you were to go, this is the top end, and this is the bottom end, or the value end, you know, this is a premium, the high price end, this is the budget or the value end, and I want to make it really clear, there’s nothing wrong with being at the value end. So, so if I talk about businesses, and if I use some big brand names like super cuts, and I’ll just use that as a brand name, because everyone knows of super cuts, right? So, super cuts or, or, well, you know, everyone knows Supercuts worldwide. They know the brand name. So that’s at the value or budget end. There’s a huge market at that end. And I’ve worked with a lot of people who own Supercuts franchises and stuff, and they’re incredible people got incredible business minds on them, yada yada yada. Now, at that end of the market, it’s not a booth rental thing happening. It’s very much an employee business model happening. Okay? An employee, employee, employer business model at the value, the budget end. So, and I’m not just talking about the chains like, you know, a Supercuts or sport clips, or, you know, you know, all of those sort of it’s not just the chains. You can walk into any local shopping centers, shopping mall, strip center, whatever it is. And there will also be that little independent salon with maybe a couple of staff that also is at that budget or premium in so it’s not happening at that end of the market. Now, if we look at the top end of the market, and we call that the the luxury end of the market, the premium end of the market, well, by and large, it is not happening at that end of the market. Now that’s partially because, you know, if you if you talk about those salons that are really luxury salons at the top end of the market, the clients who go there, they want that luxury experience, you know that they are going into a salon that they expect it to look like their home or their Bentley or their apartment in The South of France, you know, or in some cases, their private plane. Do you know what I mean? They want luxury. They don’t want to be in your salon suite with a IKEA bookshelf that you put together yourself in a dodgy chair. They just, they’re never going to go there, right? So the SMART operators as hairdressers who work in those luxury brand salons. So to throw a couple of names in there, you know, Van Michael in the United States, or jute in the United States. I mean, I’m a big fan of both those guys. You know, they have incredible businesses, and they’re very much positioned more towards the premium or luxury end. Now I’m not saying that they maybe don’t have some people there that are on a different type of business model, but they’re there. Their businesses are predominantly built around an employee, employer business model, and they have built phenomenal, incredible businesses because of it. And they’ve got people that work in those businesses that earn a ton of money, but because they produce a ton of money, and if they had gone out on their own into a little Salon Suite, they wouldn’t have been able to produce that amount of money, because they don’t have the infrastructure and the resources around them. So top end of the market, it’s not affecting that much. Bottom end of the market, it’s not affecting that much middle of the market, oh, my God, it’s carnage, isn’t it? Yeah, like middle end of the market. The last 1015, years has just been awash with salons changing the business model from employee employer to a rental model. You know. Whether you call it, and there’s lots of names for this, you know that essentially all mean the same thing, whether we’re talking about self employed, independent contractor, freelancer, business unit of one, chair, renter, Booth renter, you know, suite owner. You know, you can throw all the fancy words around it to make it sound different or better, but it is what it is. It is a business unit of one and and there’s nothing wrong with that for some people, my God, I would never, as a client, be a client in that sort of business. I would never want to work in that sort of business. I can’t imagine doing that for 30 years by myself, but maybe that’s part of the gig that they just are in this industry for five years and wash through to be something else. So I don’t know. So, you know, it is one of the things about the industry that saddens me without a doubt, because it is changing it. So I’m going to, on one hand, you know, because I hate it when you know, I’m just trying to bring to it a perspective that comes with having been around a while, and it’s easy for a 25 year old listening to this to go, okay, Boomer, yeah. I mean unapologetically a boomer, right? Yeah. The industry in the 80s and in the 90s, there were lots of things wrong with it, but oh my god, it was a fantastic industry. Oh yeah, it was rife with opportunity and brands being built bigger brands, whether you’re talking, you know, sassoons and Tony guy, or you’re talking van Michael and jute and, you know, bigger brands that give people incredible careers and invest a lot into training their people ongoing, you know, and build this great culture, this incredible culture, and I miss that. You know that a lot of those salons have disappeared. And you know the two I reference, I know the majority of your audience will be American based, so the majority of them will will know who I’m talking about when I say, you know, Van Michael and jute. You know, I miss the fact that there are not more of those businesses now. There obviously are still plenty, but it is being eroded by people wanting to be self employed, and it might be good for some of the individuals, without a doubt. I’m not saying that some of them aren’t going to earn more money. Some of them do. Some of them don’t, without a doubt, as well, they don’t, and they want to come back and become working in employee, employer based model, but, but I do think it’s a it’s a shame that that’s happening to the industry, because I think in a lot of ways, it’s brought the industry as a whole backwards, you know, yeah,

Chris Baran 57:47
yeah, you know. And just to that point, I love what you had said earlier about that you’re a unit of one. And remember, just like when you were behind that chair trying to rescue your salon and working ungodly hours and wrecking your body over trying to make that happen. That’s the only if you’re in a unit of one, you can only make the amount of money that you can base base, it’s hourly, based what you can earn per hour. And I even find too that I talked to a lot of independent in people in Booth rent, and I want to make sure that I’m not insulting, I think, because now we call it just independent salons versus booth however, I’m noticing a lot of them are bringing on and they’re having they’re starting to bring on, I bring on somebody to help. I’m bringing on an apprentice, and you can start to see the shift that they’re seeing. If I want to get make more money than when I can earn it on my own, I need to have other people around me, in which case brings us right back to that systems again and and I want to, I want to head into our rapid fire stuff here in a minute, but I know that once we hit the end, I want everybody to keep listening or watching, because I want you to be able to tell when we’re finished with that, how they can get a hold of you to because you’ve got you’ve been the author of four successful books on and you have training courses on how to help people with their businesses, and I want them to listen into the end, just so that you can give that information cool. But right now I just want to jump into a rapid fire stuff. Just throw it stuff. You just what whatever comes to your mind. Okay, so, Anthony, what is the what turns you on in the creative process?

Antony Whitaker 59:41
Um, looking at at how you can do it better. And

Chris Baran 59:47
what is it? Oh, sorry, go ahead,

Antony Whitaker 59:49
yeah, no, that was just gonna repeat it. You’re looking at how you can do it better, whatever it is. It’s like asking that question when you finished it, how can I do this better? You know,

Chris Baran 59:59
I. And what stifles creativity for you?

Antony Whitaker 1:00:05
What stifles creativity? Arrogance, ego,

Chris Baran 1:00:11
bingo. In life in general, not necessarily our businesses, but in life in January general, what do you love the most? Oh, my family, awesome. What do you dislike the most?

Antony Whitaker 1:00:27
Life in general? Yeah, the global political environment that we’re currently in, I think it is, it’s, it’s, a tragedy waiting to happen. Check

Chris Baran 1:00:44
a thing that you love the most about our industry,

Antony Whitaker 1:00:49
the fact that it gives a lot of people an opportunity to become someone, something, do something that they never would have had otherwise. And that’s certainly me.

Chris Baran 1:01:04
Yeah, me too. And what do you dislike most about our industry?

Antony Whitaker 1:01:13
Dislike most about the industry, again, probably, you know, ego and arrogance of it sort of ties into what you just said before about the Salon Suite thing. I just can’t it saddens me that people think they can go to beauty school and then come out of beauty school and open a business. It just, I’m not wanting to say the answer to the question is stupidity. Yeah, that’s the answer to the question, because that’s just stupid. That’s just stupidity, no matter how you look at it, yeah,

Chris Baran 1:01:45
yeah, good. And the person that you admire the most,

Antony Whitaker 1:01:52
probably my wife. She puts up she puts up

Chris Baran 1:01:57
with me, yeah. Can I think women find out too late that we’re too hard to train. What’s it in this interesting one, I always find, what’s your most prized possession, thing that you own?

Antony Whitaker 1:02:15
Who’s my most prized position? I’ve never thought. I’ve never thought of that. Okay, yes, yes. It would be a set of photographs that I’ve got, a set of four photographs that were from the movie the piano. Did you ever see the piano? I can’t remember the name of the guy who has the lead role in it, but it’s a fantastic, fantastic movie, and it was shot in New Zealand, where I was born, and a client of mine did the the photography for the movie, The still photography. And I happened to go into her dark room one day and see these images, and they were stunning. And she asked the the photographer, who if, if I could get a copy of them, and I had to pay for them, but I got a copy of these four beautiful artwork. Images just stunning. Everybody sees them, just stops like, you know, and it tracks anyway. Sorry, I know this

Chris Baran 1:03:12
meant to be rapid fire. No, that’s fine. It’s perfectly fine a person living or dead in our industry or not that you wish you could meet

Antony Whitaker 1:03:22
the Dalai Lama.

Chris Baran 1:03:25
You’re surprising the number of people that say that. I agree. Here’s interesting, something that people don’t know about you.

Antony Whitaker 1:03:37
I don’t Okay, so a lot of people don’t know about my background as a hairdresser. Yeah, I very much let something go and move into the next phase of my life. So I people often say to me, you have to tell them this. You have to tell them that you know. Why don’t you talk more about your time as you know, Creative Director at Sassoon, or whatever? It’s just, it’s the past, it’s history. So a lot of people don’t know that about me. You know that I was very much on to into the creative side of the industry, and I morphed into this other side of the industry.

Chris Baran 1:04:12
Love it. Month off. Where would you go? What would you do?

Antony Whitaker 1:04:17
New Zealand. Similar family, brothers and sisters hadn’t seen them for a long time, and could do with the trip back there. So yeah, I definitely, I definitely, do that

Chris Baran 1:04:27
nice thing that terrifies you,

Antony Whitaker 1:04:32
the global political scene. So it’s taken, has taken up to two of your questions.

Chris Baran 1:04:40
Favorite curse word,

Antony Whitaker 1:04:43
Oh, fuck. I don’t know. I’ve got no idea

Chris Baran 1:04:53
that’s the best one I’ve ever heard that is the best favorite comfort food i.

Antony Whitaker 1:05:00
A mac and cheese,

Chris Baran 1:05:02
something industry, in the industry you haven’t done, but you want to.

Antony Whitaker 1:05:12
I I’ve done everything. I want to love it.

Chris Baran 1:05:16
Okay, now I won’t take, I won’t take the answer of if I didn’t do that, I wouldn’t be here today. So I won’t take that answer, but if you had one do over, you could have done something different in your life. What would that be?

Antony Whitaker 1:05:31
Oh, that’s easy. I had an opportunity when I was at SU towards the end of my time there where Christopher Brooker, who was one of the owners of the company, he wanted me to go to San Francisco and be the creative director in the San Francisco salon. And I was like, No, why would I want to do that? You know, I’m in London. It’s the center of the world I had, you know, so there’s that, but that is equal with the other one, which is a similar thing, and that is, I wished as much as I loved my time at Sassoon, I wished I didn’t go from Sassoon back to Sydney and open up a salon without first going to Paris and living and working in Paris for at least a year to develop and understand a completely different beauty esthetic, because the soon beauty esthetic runs through, you know, it’s the blood that runs through my veins. But, you know, I love what the French, what the Italians do, and I would love to have had to do that. I would just love to have done that. Yeah,

Chris Baran 1:06:39
yeah, that’s awesome. Now, I’ve got one more question for you, but just before we get to that question and wrap it up, if people want to know about more and can want to get a hold of your books, because you’re an author of these amazing books, grow and what, where do they go to get a hold of you? Or if they want to have you come in and teach, where could, how can they get all of you?

Antony Whitaker 1:07:01
Okay, I’m everywhere at grow my salon business. So my website is, grow my salon business, com, Instagram, grow my salon business. Facebook, grow my salon business. You know any anywhere that there is stuff happening I like, grow my salon business. So I probably suggest people go to the website, grow my salon business.com, and from there you can see the range of stuff that I do, whether it’s, you know, books or seminars or keynotes or online courses or whatever.

Chris Baran 1:07:32
Beautiful Thank you. All right. Last question here, we got it coming home. Okay, if you had one wish for our industry, what would that be

Antony Whitaker 1:07:47
that hairdressers would embrace developing their business acumen with the same passion that they embrace the creative side of it? Because individually, both those things are powerful, collectively, collectively, that makes you an unstoppable force, right? So, yeah,

Chris Baran 1:08:10
beautiful. Well, I’ll tell you. I’m going to go back to a line that I wrote down that I love, that you said is that you’re the owner of that business. Said it was countdown to payday, and I think that really with our listeners and watchers that are on here right now, this is been your wake up call for countdown to payday. So Anthony, I just want to say thank you so much for giving up your valuable time just to be with our peeps. So I just want to say from bottom my heart, thank you, and it’s been amazing my

Antony Whitaker 1:08:44
absolute pleasure. It’s definitely something that I’ve wanted to do for a while. I listened to your podcast. I love it. You know, some, you know, great guests on there, some great conversations that I had. And yeah, thank you for giving me the opportunity today to speak with you and your audience. So thanks very much.

Chris Baran 1:09:01
Absolutely, always a pleasure, my friend. Cheers. Thank you all the best. Thanks. 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.