ep116 Wayne Grund

Today’s guest on HeadCases is a third-generation hairdresser, a salon owner, and internationally recognized artist with over 40 years behind the chair. In that time, he’s traveled more than 3 million miles, sharing his knowledge and passion.

He is a visionary philanthropist committed to protecting the health of clients and hairdressers both. He made it his mission in creating his own brand, Surface, promoting personal health, respect for the Earth, and helping others to grow.

Let’s get into this week’s HeadCase with the one and only Wayne Grund.

2:39 Wayne’s early career and family influence

12:09 Four Principles of Success and System Building

25:00 Challenges and Adaptations in Business

30:48 Building a strong Culture and Support System

42:51 The Role of Education and Training

44:55 Personal Reflections and Industry Insights

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.

welcome everybody to this week’s episode of head cases. And today’s head case is a third generation hairdresser. He’s been a salon owner and as an international artist for over 40 plus years. Catch that 40 plus years. He’s traveled over 3 million miles doing that while he’s been educating in the hair industry. He’s a philanthropist and visionary, and uses the proper ingredients to protect clients and hairdressers health. He started his own brand surface. You know, hint, hint, wink, wink, which? Nudge, nudge. For those of you who know a surface, you know who this is, but for the rest of you gotta wait till the end of this intro, his mission, as was to start a brand that encouraged personal health, respected the earth and helped others to grow and most importantly, what I love about him is he’s a family man and he’s a friend. So let’s get into this week’s head case. Mr. Wayne Grund. Mr. Wayne Grund, i i should be shot because, you know, we have not talked in a number of time. I’ll just leave it at time right now, but you’ve always been at the top of my brain because we’ve had so much time together. So, Wayne, I just wanted to say, Welcome to head cases. And it’s an absolute pleasure to have you on here.

Wayne Grund 1:46
Thanks, Chris. Absolutely a pleasure too. And it’s always great to be able to chat with our hairdressing world, with you, my friend,

Chris Baran 1:52
yeah. And, you know, and the, I think the big part of it is, is what I was, I was saying in the in the introduction, I was so excited about is because we’ve got so much history in the background, you know, because we work together and we’ve been, you know, I can’t remember how many, what, 910, years we traveled the road together, and I want to talk a little bit more about that. And we can talk about, you know, some of the stuff we went through, and some, you know, some of the stories funny and otherwise that we can talk about. But I, what I always want people to know at the very beginning is because I don’t know. I mean, you’ve got your own product brand. I don’t know how people wouldn’t know you. But let’s just say, for the three people in the world that don’t know who you are, tell us just a little bit about your hair story, like, how you got into it, what’s, what’s the story behind that got you here?

Wayne Grund 2:39
Well, my hair story, Chris was, I’m not even sure if you’re really aware of it, but it was a family story. Well, I was raised in Watson, Saskatchewan. It was that time of town of about 400 people. My dad was a barber. And if you’ve got two barbers in town and one’s got really good looking hair and one’s got a bad haircut, which one you want to

Chris Baran 2:59
go to? Well, that’s a damn good question. Well, you

Wayne Grund 3:03
want to go to the one with the bad haircut, because the other guy here, right? Yeah. So anyway, that that story led into something dad would tell all the time when I was 13, when he says, Okay, you’re going to cut my hair. And that’s when the, you know, the barber scissors were about, oh, the seven inch long ones in the capital, and I really enjoyed it. And I would start working, even part time after that, in the barber shop. And my grandfather Barber, obviously my Dad, I’ve got an uncle as a barber, but three aunts who were hairdressers. And so I was there at Kelsey, pretty much the same school that you went to there when I was 17. Yeah, and met the love of my life when I was in Watson high school, and she was at the her dad’s driving in Humboldt, pop and pop out. And we ended up moving back from the city to Humboldt, and started my first salon in the back corner of an auto body shop. It was exactly 100 square feet. Which? Which auto body was it the Humboldt auto body right downtown there. There’s a was that the one, the Ford one that was there, no, no, not the Ford one that was across the street from it, but it was humble. It’s called Humboldt auto body. There’s a sporting goods store. Oh, I remember that. I remember that right across from your mom’s, yeah, yeah, right across the street from your mom’s, so on so. And it was 100 square feet. You opened up the door in the wintertime and the fog would just blast in at you. My wife and I, the only thing we had to our name was in 1975 Camaro, and the bank loaned us 3200 bucks against it, yeah. And we had a mutual friend of ours. I was very fortunate. He was my sales consultant, art Erickson. Art Erickson, he was mine too, yeah. And he’s him and his son in law. They’re distributors for us in BC now, Vantage

Chris Baran 4:45
Rhett and yes, and I love the both of them. And Mark, they, Mark, they great people. We always called them Martin arg instead of art Marg. But they, they, they were just, I think anybody that they touched really had a successful. And this, and primarily because of them, yeah. And it’s

Wayne Grund 5:03
tying a long story as short as I can with it. The the very first education I went to was my dad. My dad was really connected, yeah. And in fact, the Beatles in the end of the 60s and 70s almost put my family out of business, because if you were a barber, oh, and you had long hair. I mean, Dad had such a thriving business, and all of a sudden people aren’t getting their hair cut for months and months and months. But you know, he went into the city Saskatoon, took an evening class with Bernie udesky, Dick Hagel, any names that are even familiar? Yeah, and learned how to cut long hair well before you know it, the my first haircut I ever did in dad’s barber shop was $1.75 that’s it. And then I even was in dad’s barber shop at three and a quarter when I was 17. Was all but again, tightening that, that story up, dad became very financially successful again, because, you know, haircuts jumped in price. You know, half the ladies in town were coming into the shop to have their their haircut. But between that and art. Erickson, yeah, I just became enthralled with education, yeah. And, you know, that is just became the real key to success for it, yeah, yeah. I city salon I bought from you.

Chris Baran 6:22
That’s right, you know, and that’s why, like, I’m sure people listening that are out there, they’ll they’re going, well, they’re talking a lot about back and forth. But we all both had history, and in Humboldt, Saskatchewan, that’s kind of when we moved, moved from BC with my mom after it, after a divorce, not mine, but hers and and we moved there, and that’s where all, kind of, all of this link up, started to happen. Then you bought the salon when we moved to BC and I, but you know that Saskatoon era, that was, I mean, Saskatoon, for as little as many people would know, but wouldn’t you agree? Saskatoon was a smoking area in Canada, a hot spot for artists, for happening things that were going on right then and there. Wouldn’t you agree? Absolutely.

Wayne Grund 7:12
Chris and I got a little bit of a thought process behind it, yeah. Saskatoon was just big enough, a large university town that people tried harder, right? And when you were from a major metapolitan area, you thought, Oh, gee whiz, I got a mate from a smaller town, which I enjoyed living in, a city of a couple 100,000 with that is that people just tried harder, yeah, and you tried harder on the edge of photography you tried on the edge of your business? Yeah, that’s my thought on that one, but the air. I mean, Don grill, so what a fabulous hairdresser. Matt, wow, yeah, yeah. And,

Chris Baran 7:53
and he was an amazing educator, you know, had a thriving salon there. But it was also about that, like dawn. And if you remember Elmer Olson, he was out of Regina, and he was, he was always, you know, when an internet Well, I’m not so sure if it was international, not because he didn’t, only that, I don’t know, but he was always up in there when we were big in competition work, and his eye was amazing. And he ended up, I followed him for a while, and he went, ended up becoming one of the head model recruiters for Ford agency in New York. Wow, yeah. And if you remember Eric Fisher, beautiful reasons, yeah. And then obviously that, he started up the whole chatters and Tommy Gun chain, yeah, and so I had, you know, that was an amazing time of our life, because everybody and you got you hit it nailed right in the head. Everybody was hungry, and you’d work all day long. And after hours, you get everybody together, and you’d, you do creative sessions and come up with stuff that, you know, some of you would never do, but it was just always about, how did you push the envelope? And I think you just hit the nail on the head. Here was we were, we were small enough not to be the biggest and and big enough not to be the smallest. So you really thought you could push envelopes. So I thought that was just fun.

Wayne Grund 9:18
The other thing Chris that I think was so valuable in that era of ours, and I know that we try and bring it back with surfaces that localized education that builds a family culture. Remember the statue and hairdressers Association? I do very well. Year they’d have this show at the the bezboro Hotel, yeah, you know. And you’d get there and there’d be 50 people in the audience. Sometimes there may be 200 there or that. And that type of connection, you don’t see it anymore, yeah, yeah. And, you know, you go to a lot of the largest shows, and pardon me for this, but a dog and pony act, yeah, with it, and it’s missing, and it’s an empathy that I’ve got. But for the new people entering our industry is, how do they get grounded in something that’s authentic? Yeah,

Chris Baran 10:05
yeah. And, you know, the other side of that way, and you know what I I can remember, I remember being there at those shows. I mean that, and you’re probably talking about the same time as we were, because neither one of us were were teaching, or had we just had salons were there just as as students watching, but what I remembered at the time was that was such a great time because it didn’t matter who you were, and yes, people could be competition, but they still shared, and they still hung around together, and you still shared ideas. And I think that I’m not sure if that, if that’s exactly the same, and I don’t want to, I don’t want us to sound like the old gray haired dudes that are sitting around going, you know, hey, back in the old days, you know, but I think that there was a time when it was a little bit more open, from hairdresser to hairdresser, salon to salon, and just share that you could if I survived, you survived, and there was a still feeling of abundance.

Wayne Grund 11:08
Yeah, I’m seeing pockets of that in North America really. We were that you’ll have certain pockets that they’ve got that real camari and and I find that falls a lot around distribution, actually, which is based on education. Got a distributor that’s really education based, and that sales consultant is, you know, they can reach out, and all of a sudden they’ve got that network that they pull together, you know, and what new origins are great gathering programs in some of our pockets there. And, you know, we get everybody is coming in and learning and that, again, I don’t find as much of that in larger metro areas.

Chris Baran 11:44
Yeah, you know, do that, but that’s really culture based, though, isn’t it? Don’t you? Don’t you think that’s kind of culture based. And I know that, like I told you earlier, I was stalking you a bit, and I know that you had some things that you talked about, about what you do for, for not not only how you how you made sure in the salon that everybody you had a creed, a credo, or a success steps to success that you had, and then also life principles that you had. And from what I’ve gathered is you take that, not only from the salon, but you also take that with you on the road in your culture and your business to making sure that there is enough for everybody, and you do educate everybody.

Wayne Grund 12:27
When it comes up to principles and culture, I’ll share three that I’ve shared every chance I get. And it was in the early 90s when I really took the risk to break away, move out on my own in different directions. The three words are awareness, responsibility and process, yeah, and you can control only that what you’re aware of, that what you’re unaware of, controls you. And it’s non judgmental awareness. And then the next but awareness is knowledge. People say knowledge is power. It’s not. It’s a fuel,

Chris Baran 12:55
yeah, and, you know? And I want to just jump on that for a second, because I love what you just said, you know, and I know that that with all due respect, I know there’s people that are out there that that haven’t talked about that and and if you have the knowledge, it can be power, but you’ve got to do something with it. And I think is that what you’re alluding to when you say that’s that you’ve got to be aware of it. The

Wayne Grund 13:18
second principle after awareness is responsibility, yeah. And when you take responsibility for your thoughts and your action, your commitment to them rises, and so does your performance. And just, let’s take it back to the 10 most powerful two letter words in the world. If it is to be it’s up to me, yeah. And now to fine tune that, the third word that I share, that we built everything with it is process, and the process is an action that either you take or you do not take on a daily basis. Yeah, so with awareness, and then responsibility, and then it’s my process, and it’s that process of action, of taking air, not taking it. And so many people get stopped at the responsibility part of it and their process. They won’t change it, so they sit there and spin their wheels and become frustrated. And I’ll take that back to one of the other words you just shared with systems, and that was a key in in the mid 1980s like when we first started in Saskatoon, with sheer talent. Here we had a team of three within one year who had a 10, and within three years, we had 37 hairdressers. Yeah, yeah. And at first people say, what would you do? And I went, I don’t know. And I didn’t that’s, that’s, yeah. The thing is, I really don’t know, but it was every Tuesday night was, and I remember my name Jack day at Jack’s hair shack here, and say, yeah, yeah, sure. Every Tuesday night, when I got work, here’s my first job before we moved back to Humboldt. I mean, didn’t you? There was family dinners that didn’t matter. Tuesday Night was workshop night. Every Tuesday, you just loved it, and you learned with and so I sat back down and we were both working for the same manufacturer. At that time, I got contracted to go to England. On the meeting with Arthur long in in LA at that time, and I’m sharing, he’s asking me so well, Wayne, what do you do? I said, Well, I said, there’s, there’s five things. There’s really five keys of success. I believe this is like 1987 and I said, there, get your chair full, communicate effectively, do great work. Make sure your guests can take care of their hair at home and rebook them. Yeah. And as corny as this sounds, he looked at me and he goes, Wayne, grab that napkin and write them down. He says, Do you have them written down anymore? I said, No, I don’t. Was it? He says, those are principles that should be in every one of the programs that you teach or you coach. Those are principles that not only do you live them in your salon, but you write them. And that’s one of the most valuable pieces of information I’ve ever gotten. Yeah? Was to ink it, not think it, yeah. And so building a system for success,

Chris Baran 15:54
yeah? And that’s what got you where you are today. Absolutely,

Wayne Grund 15:56
that became the foundation. And the other thing that I found is back in the 80s and working people going, oh, did I ever that show I saw you last year. It was great. I love it. It was amazing. And I learned that my first question after that would be, how did it make your business better? Yeah, how to make your life better? Because the ultimate goal was, I wanted to leave a positive impact, rather than just, man, was that ever fun? That was the craziest thing I ever saw good. You need that definitely. And so then we, I took that whole thought to systems, same as you’re going to have a system of eating, a system of exercising, working out, and we took it into this was really cool. Came off the stage in one show ended the 80s. Can’t remember where the 80s. Can’t remember where the heck it was. Think it was a regional somewhere, and someone goes, well, I really like that, but how you gonna do that again? Yeah, because I said I was a free form cutter, and my little voice lied, because it many, many times it lied. And people really don’t want the same thing twice. You can take it and you can kind of modify it. And then I just said, Hey Wayne, you gotta be honest with yourself and identify there’s only five haircuts in the world that’s it long, one length, long layers with that horizontal line, inverted line, and short layers. And then a little voice in my head said, you know, Wayne, that’s those are very exciting names with that, you know, how about some layers? We could do some layers for you. How about a bob? We can make a bob bar. You

Chris Baran 17:33
can have it with your soup.

Wayne Grund 17:37
So I put on my marketing brain and said, Okay, we’ll take long one length. We’ll call it the edge, long layers. We call freedom, because it gives long hair freedom. That Bob line, we call it wind swept, that introverted line we call front and center. And then this one many people have used, but we call it the crop, yeah. And then we took everywhere, from three to five steps to be able to create it. And that all started in in the salon and through the 80s there, and then we adapted it into the company. We adapted into teaching so hairdressers knew what they sold. Yeah, and I changed the definition from a free form cutter. And there’s many amazing ones out there, but a free form cutter is someone who really can’t do the same thing twice, love me or hate me for that one of them. Yeah.

Chris Baran 18:25
Well, you know that it’s interesting because we always used to say to people, okay, when you’re doing the two sides of your haircut, which side is easier? And you just say, is it the left side or is it the right side? And some people would say left, and some people would say right. And I’d say, Well, is it the first side or the second side? You know? Because the second side is always the hardest side to cut, because the first one you already did, you know, so. But what I like it you’re saying is, if you have a system, at least you’re going to get close, you know. And we all know that there’s no such thing as perfect. But if you can have somebody, and you can have a system, whether it’s cutting or front desk, or whatever that is. It is a part of having a system of what you do that and the discipline to do it the same continuously, which is what that’s, what’s going to keep your customers coming back. And

Wayne Grund 19:11
when you do have a system, that’s what allows you to be able to be better, yeah, because when I say there’s only five haircuts in the world, there’s an unlimited amount of adaptation of them, of how they’ll blend together and they’ll move at their foundation. And the same thing in business, you know, we have our day maker program that we’ve taught, and it’s is that five steps. It’s the greeting of a guest, the discovery process, engaging with them. How do you engage with them and teach with them, but become personal with them when you’re working, how do you review and confirm what you did, and how do you rebook them? So it’s taking that five and you know, that’s one of the things our in our industry, you’ll have a lot of manufacturers have brand managers. I don’t want a brand manager. I don’t want you to manage my brand I want you to grow the salon. So we have what’s called SGM salon growth managers, and that’s. Principle that, you know we use within the salon, like you’re saying, is having a system for it is, you know how to make that coachable. And it’s, it’s sad but true. You know, so many salons are training program would even look like, oh, go watch him. He’s really good, yeah, yeah, exactly as good as him. And that might be really, really good, or her with it, but I want people to be better than I am, yeah, and if I have principles to train on, then they can become better than me in those areas. Yeah,

Chris Baran 20:29
I agree. I agree with you 100% there. Wayne, I and I’ve some I might have said this before on one of the podcasts before, and I say it because it’s true, but just to reinforce that point that you said, I you know, I’m not sure if you know Blair singer, but Blair singer, probably one of the finest teachers that are out there, really knows what is going on in the world and and also has been brought over to other countries just to help them review what their what their systems are about, so that they can teach better. And I can remember, he was doing an interview with John Maxwell, you know, obviously for the one of the finest leaders, leadership coaches in the world, and and he said to them, looks, he said to John, John, I, I’m a bit concerned, because he said, I, I have all the material that I give to everybody, like and like you Wayne, you systematize everything, and you give it out to other people so that they can do that and become great at what they do. And and he said, John, I’m concerned that they might not need me anymore, because if I’ve got all these systems and everything that I do, and if and if Blair is listening, which I doubt that he ever will. But nonetheless, he said to Blair, Blair, your job is to create leaders that are better than you are. So they will go away, they will come they you know, and it’s just like in our salons. I everything that I think they started a salon, and you started your salon up the one of the biggest fears for salon owners, if you don’t have your systems in place, is somebody’s going to leave, you know? But the reality is, everybody’s going to leave at some point or another, because they’re either a gonna leave because their their spouse partners moving. They’re retiring, they’re they die, you know, God forbid, but everybody’s going to leave. And I think that, as in our industry, that’s, could you kind of speak to that on what? What’s your thoughts on that when people hold so dear to their people that they’ve got to stay with them, and they can’t grow the

Wayne Grund 22:39
I’m going to use two things. I’ll use an example of a little skip in my heart, which would have been about 1985 I think it was. We opened up our second location in the city, which was a bad choice anyway, because we didn’t need to in the city. And the week before we opened it up, we had six of our top employees move across the street. Oh, that was $500,000 in sales across the street. Yeah, that would have made your butt pucker, yeah, just a little bit, just a little bit, not as tight as my banker who gave me the loan. But the the thing was, did it hurt yet? Was it, did it crush? No, because we had built such a crush, a culture within the salon, yeah, that we maintained a large amount of those guests, but we did have a system to train with. So the associates had a system that they could step into. And quite frankly, I never left no hard feelings with them. Yeah? Is, you know, every one of those people, I said, you know, I truly, you know, I wish you all the best with that. You know, if the day comes where you decide you want to come back, let me know. Within nine months, three people came back to us, yeah, yeah. And the other three, they went in their different directions, but because they just found that the grass wasn’t greener on the other side. But doesn’t mean it shouldn’t have been. You know, it would have been great for you. Great for him, but then it’s and, you know, one of the things I want to share on the the story that you just shared, leaning into it with Blair singer, is there’s a difference between systems and programs. Yeah, yeah. And that’s is so important, because a program has a beginning and it is an end. It’s a say, it’s a cutting or a business program, a system has principles, but continually evolves with the times. So how do you, how do you, you know, for an example, with the five keys of success that we built our engagement of Salon on, or the dynamics of our day maker program, you know, in the early 2000s as we moved into a green world, is how to adapt that and reinforce and speak to the consumer and adapt your values to, quite simply, being able to leave the earth a better place than we found it. Yeah. So, you know, a system never is clean, cut and dried. It always evolves. Yeah.

Chris Baran 24:59
As human beings do, yeah, mostly, and hopefully Yeah. So tell No, I think that’s a good point in there. So because I know that’s one of your key points that you have, which I think is, I mean, so necessary for right now is, is about health and and, how do we keep the planet? Great, yeah, so tell us a little bit about that, because I know that’s your that did that. Something that evolved inside your company, is that the way your company started, how did because, let’s face it, Wayne, there’s tons of people out there that do what I do and what you did that, and I mean that, not that you’re not doing it now, but move from in the salon, teaching worldwide, internationally, and then saying, hey, why don’t I take all of that and let’s start up a brand. Let’s stay let’s start a hair care brand. And that’s, that’s a hell of a big step. So can you just tell us a little bit about that, and how did that come about?

Wayne Grund 26:03
Well, the I became involved in a brand with my own name in the 90s, and as the world turned into a very high level of awareness of personal health and such, I moved away from that very successful in the salon. Loved the teaching I was doing, and Deb and I were looking at semi retirement. I was 50 years old when I started surface. And I said, you know, I started looking at personal health. I started training better than I had, eating better than I had. And when I started looking at personal health, I became aware of the potential toxins that were in products that we work with, day in and day out. I had had my first granddaughter, my daughter, Jackie, became the fourth generation in my family. She became a stylist with it. And I said to Debbie, I just want to, I want to study this a little bit more. Last thing I had in my mind was doing a company, yeah? And I met with a couple of chemists, and one of the chemists, they said to me, this is kind of scary. I’ll never forget this. Sitting across the table from Toronto. He says, Wait, how many blow drives? Do you think you’ve ever done couple 100,000 I don’t know, because a lot of chemists, they’re not real humorous. No, some might be. Most are. He goes, there’s no humor in that. I said, Well, why? He says, Do you realize you’ve inhaled everything that’s evaporated in front of you? I was like, wow, yeah. So what should I be concerned of? And it took me years to be able to say this. He says, Well, one thing is potentially polyvinyl propylene vinyl, acrylic, like, yeah, PB, PBA. The other thing, do you realize that hairdressers have a very high level of chronic fatigue, no second, almost to truck drivers, no. And it was a lot of the gluten bases. Like a gluten is something you eat. He goes, Well, that’s something that also can have cross contamination into your body in other ways. And I was like, Holy crap, yeah. And, you know, I met with another one that raised cancer concerns. And this is really hokey, because this will tell you that back my generation, I’m driving back in the airport after meeting with one in the Midwest, in the United States, and the song came because I was here. My brain is doing this. Somebody’s gotta do something about this. Somebody’s gotta do something about this. And Michael Jackson is Song Man in the Mirror came on, right, you know? And as hokey as it sounds, I was like, You know what? Let’s take a look at this. So when I was 50, my wife was 49 three years ago, three years ago, buddy, yeah, yeah, yeah. We mortgaged our house. We mortgaged our lake home with it. Our kids quit what they were doing, jumped on board with us, and we did the most foolish business thing you’d ever dream of in your life with it still ran the salon. And so there’s salons running right now, as we run so that we had that financial end of it there, which is great, but I told the company that we were working with, and we hired a group of chemists. We own all our own formulas. But I said, I don’t want to know any costing of goods, because they had this criteria. How much do you want this to cost? How much you want this to cost, and we’ll build towards it. And I came to them, and I said, these are the ingredients that cannot be within our product. These are some of the ingredients that I see great benefit in within hair and that that I’d like to see us work with, but I don’t want to know until we’ve hit the perfect one. Yep. And that went on back and forth from the development to Saskatoon development to Saskatoon people say, do you test on animals? No, only my family, because

Chris Baran 29:40
I don’t want to harm animals. Yeah,

Wayne Grund 29:42
and our cons and our consulting guests within this salon and with it, and when we reach the the perfect formulas of our base products that we launched with back in 2008 our I call them, the kids with grown adults and my wife were sitting in the office, and the company called us, and they told us. The numbers that we have to work with, and they came in at five times as much as we thought it was going to be, yeah. And, you know, we looked at each other and said, Hey, we’re a family. We can work lean and mean. And, you know, in 2008 we brought surface to the table, and the average retail product back then was $28 yeah. And it was a battle we fought up Chris, I’ll tell you, because people thought, Okay, if you are clean and green, are you going to perform? Right? And that was the biggest thing. And then when people went, wow, it all took off. Yeah. So in in showing that dynamics again, it goes to the awareness, responsibility and process. We changed our process a lot in there, and then the next thought was, okay, well, I do not want our surface community to have to pay for business building. If you’re going to partner with us and put on us on your shelf and share our culture, we’re going to provide you with the complete business building. And we launched our advocate program back then, and we also launched our insider program back then. So on a quarterly basis, we present complete marketing programs, complete trainings on the five keys of success, complete elements within the game maker program with it so that as long as you can jump on your screen and become virtual, we can help guide your business.

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, yeah. Well, that, first of all, that’s, that’s awesome. And I think that’s always, I think that if you can find ways that you can make other people grow that, excuse me, then you’ll grow, you’ll grow along with them, absolutely, yeah, what So along this way? Because I right now, I bet you, anybody’s listening go well, and all I’ve got to do is just mortgage my house and put that up there, and I’m just going to go out and start my own product line. So there must, and I’m going to be, I haven’t talked about this to many people, but I think it was, I can’t remember, in the 80s, but have been sometime right around the same time, I had a gentleman that that both you and I know, that was out of Alberta, and he had won this huge jackpot in Vegas, and then he wanted to start a company, and and they, and from Long story short, They asked me if I’d come on as our artistic director, and I was going to I we had it all planned, and, and I went to red Ken, and I said, Here’s my here’s my resignation. And, and the the person who was in charge of education at that time went to the general manager, and then old mutual friend, I think you would remember John and and he said, What? And they said, Well, what’s going to happen? I said, Well, just go back, tell Chris, ask him what he wants. And that wasn’t my intent. But just to give the point that at that time, I was going to go into a into a product line again. And just for those of you that are listening, I’m doing the sign of the cross here that I didn’t do it. I stayed because that that company went down within, I think within a year or two, it went down the down the tubes. But so it’s not easy to start a a business, particularly what you’ve you’ve done, so was there hardships? What were some of the you know, it’s not all that easy, so it’s what can you tell us about in that process of doing it that might have made you stay awake a couple of nights,

Wayne Grund 34:58
a couple things? Chris, I think that. Any any business and apply to this one, or any business you go into is, you know, being able to roll up your sleeves. And as an example, when you get off the stage and everybody leaves the room, you get down, take your own brush and clean the hair off the stage. Yeah, exactly, yeah. I mean, you do whatever it takes to make it happen and to help people grow and the the travel was intense. And you know, when we would open up a new door for the first two years, I personally would make a phone call to that salon or welcome it, would give them my personal number to it, and I use that as an example of however you do it now. But for personal connection. Just care more than other people think is wise, yeah, yeah, it’s that the that needs to be able to happen. And also you live within your means. And you know, that’s something that Deborah, my wife, and I’ve done all of our life, and is, is you live within those means and operate your business within those means. And I was because she was, she was our CFO. When we started, she went to university for psychology, you know, but the family did, did it all the which is a good thing to put up with me for all these years. I

Chris Baran 36:08
was going to say that the wives that do that, and they might need that, hey, Rita, you gotta take a psychology degree.

Wayne Grund 36:16
But, you know, in having said that is, I mean, I was in Edmonton who’s going to do a program for the Estelle Academy. I went into the the elevator in the Delta hotel, and I looked on the wall, I read it and smiled from ear to ear. It said, work hard your eight hours today, because someday you can be a manager, own your own business and work 12. Yeah.

Here. Here, yeah, here, here,

you know, what are you really willing to put into it? And then the other thing that, you know, I take a look at what we did, I’ll do a couple rights, and I’ll do what we could have done better with that. And I don’t know about the better part, but we were really careful in hiring the right people, yeah, and right on early and our top leaders today, when we would meet with them, and if we really wanted to bring them on, we would say we needed to have dinner with their family. Oh yeah. And the reason we would do that is just to be able to to test the waters for the support structure. Because yes, they were going to have to go to the airport at four o’clock in the morning, and yes, they were going to have to do this, and that we wanted to bring people on, and we’ve done a very good job of it. Our leaders have such a good family support at home with it. That was it. When it comes to hardships, I tell you what going through COVID was unbelievable.

Chris Baran 37:36
Yeah, what was happening for your business? What happened there? Because, it’s unbelievable.

Wayne Grund 37:40
Well, the first thing that I be thought of was that our world is based on personal, face to face contact, Wayne. Can

Chris Baran 37:48
I just stop either for just to give? I want to give this some, some context. So I mean, you had your your first company, that you went with Wayne Grund, and then you started surface. So surface started in what, what year did, would you say? Surfaces now started going 2008 2008 so now you had a you had that 2008 and then you got a spread in there, till when we hit COVID. Right, right. So now, okay, good. So you’ve got, you’ve been open for a bit everything. You’ve went through some lumps and and and wrinkles and chinks in the armor, etc. And now everything seems to be going really smooth. Bang, COVID hits

Wayne Grund 38:28
the we had got to a place where we had now established distribution across the United States. With it that was really tough getting people to believe into, you know, salon, or the wakes up in the morning goes, I just want a new brand this morning. I this morning, we got to a really comfortable place, and people really trusted us, and then we’re buying we’re projecting our product out a year in advance, so our warehouse is full, our orders are in with it, and the world shuts down. When I look back, I’m so thankful for that learning experience, because it proved to me that if you take care of people, people will take care take care of you. Yeah, and that week, we jumped on because we had already built a pretty strong social network. We had built a strong virtual education platform online, but we shouted out on Facebook, and I put a message out there on crisis control, what to do in your business, couple of key points and such. And then five days a week, nine o’clock central time, I would be on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and two of my top people would be on Tuesdays and Thursdays with that. And we would do anywhere from a 30 minute to an hour. And one would be cutting, somebody would do color, someone do business. And then on Friday morning, I would do coffee talk, yeah, what, what coffee talk was, is me sitting at my kitchen table. We pull the table apart, you know, Deborah would crawl underneath the table in between, you know, with the phone in the holder, with that. Yeah, you know, and click it on. Within two weeks, on Friday mornings, we were having 10,000 people join in Facebook. Wow, wow. And it was just sitting having a coffee, and we would talk about some things in communication, some things about an attitude, and how do we work with that? You can’t just tell a person that you know got positive attitude. Oh, okay, I’m positive now, no, it doesn’t happen like that, right? It was so rewarding. And we went into our warehouse, and we took every single cape that we had in that warehouse with it, and we shipped them to our salons with it. We took every single two ounce travel size and all of our foils, and we shipped them to the salons with the request that they would give them to their the the first point of contact supports within there, the nurses, the doctors, you know, the firemen in that. So we help them give back. It took us two weeks to be on board with salons to be able to do your curbside pickup support process with that. Then myself and our team, we reached out to our key account, saying, hey, you know, if you’re not staying in contact with your teams, you need to, and how about if we join your team meeting? So at least two to three team meetings a week, we would be in our offices, quarantined, but we’d virtually join a salon staff meeting somewhere, yeah, in the world. And you know that you’d never want that ever again, obviously, but that grew our business like you wouldn’t believe. Yeah. And then, to my knowledge, we were the first manufacturer, because we went to our distributors and we said, okay, as soon as a pocket is opening up, we want to do a 20% discount on a $2,000 purchase just to get them re energized. You know, pretty soon you saw, you know, more distributors get on board, more manufacturers get on board. And, you know, people just want to know you care, right? But it’s more than that. You just gotta care authentically yourself,

Chris Baran 41:58
right? Yeah. And I think you know you hit a key word right there. That’s word authentic. Is that people can tell when you’re when you’re bullshitting them. You know, they know you. They’ve got really good bullshit meters. And if you, if you start doing that to them, then they don’t believe you and they don’t trust you anymore. But if you like you said, if you did it, I want to help, they’ll know the difference. And when you’re authentic in that, it just your message is congruent with them, and congruency just builds loyalty and trust. Yeah,

Wayne Grund 42:31
you know, it was in our whole the surface, our core family, our employees, which is our really, our core family. You know, they just pulled together so tight in being able to do whatever they could to help the people within their marketplaces. You know, just forever grateful about what they were able to the impact that they left at that time. Yeah, yeah.

Chris Baran 42:56
I mean, it’s, it’s a wild ride when you have to go through that. And I think everybody, I said it earlier, but I think everybody, everybody’s butt pucker, is just a little bit when they think back to 2008 and back to COVID, I should say. And

Wayne Grund 43:11
the trickle effect from that, Chris is is so evident. Still people don’t know what you mean. It’s been like four years ago now, but what happened was so many salons and stylists forgot their core principles of guest service and success, yeah, and, you know, we’ve, we’ve found people all of a sudden, they weren’t rebooking they were grateful to have somebody in the church, so they weren’t rebooking the guests like they should, yeah, they weren’t doing a written recommendation on their retail like they should. And, you know, the average individual is putting on excuses, on the economy, on the new habits of the consumer. Well, who created them? Yeah, the stylist created that. And who’s going to create that new habit again? And you know, that’s where we really had our noses in the trenches to help people realize it’s almost like going back to the late 19, you know, 70s, early 80s, and helping people go, Okay, this is you tell people what you’re using, why you’re using it. How are you using it? And you’re making this difference. This is how you’re going to recommend their next look. You know, when you come in next time, what we’re going to do for you is, yeah. Re coaching that whole structure,

Chris Baran 44:21
yeah, and, you know, I think you’ve just made my brain kind of spin on a couple of things that, you know, we always talk about it. I think that if you whenever I talk to people about and they say, Well, I don’t sell, or have a hard time selling, or whatever, and I say, Well, look at at the end game. Do you what’s most important? And they eventually get down to family or the people that are around them immediately, you know? And I what the words that you were talking there, and I wrote down the words harmful act, because I think that sometimes that’s what people think they’re doing when they’re selling. And they say, Well, I can’t say sell directly. And you know, that’s El Toro Kaka. There’s the same thing. Life is sales, right? You know, if you’ve been in any relationship, somebody had to do some selling. And the reality is, life is sales. So if you if you want to have an end game where you can take care of your family and look after them, you’ve got to think about that, because you’re not doing harmful acts to people. When you’re selling a service or upselling on a service or a or a product, what you’re doing is you’re just finding that need they have filling it, and you’re just the one that does it. So when I when people complain to me about, and we could go on ad nauseam about products that are in grocery stores and etc, but I want to go down that avenue, but I will say, then, you know, it’s funny. And I didn’t, I didn’t come up with this. I mean, you might have said this, and it got passed down the things, and I picked it up finally. But somebody said to me one time that when we’re talking about having a discussion about diversion and products and grocery stores and drug stores, I just said, they said, Do your damn job when you’re in the salon, and you don’t have to worry about that, yeah, you know. And so

Wayne Grund 46:04
I’ll add one thing onto that too, Chris, because I just really like the way you took the conversation there, and it’s looking for opportunities to serve, yeah, yeah, that’s exactly what it is. Really, really look for an opportunity to serve you. And how many ways can you serve them? You know, one of the biggest disservices I ever did to the industry, and I wish I could redo it again, was, you know, after I represented within red candid hair World in 84 modern salon, did an interview, and they said, What does it take to be successful? And they were using our salon as an example. And I said, the most successful people, they’re Naturals. And they titled this big thing wing run The Naturals. And natural you know, the guest comes in the salon. Your book is already full, but your your brain just goes, Oh, my goodness, she didn’t book for it. But it’s, I’ll date myself now that perm would be perfect for her. You know, the on top of that is perfect for her. Oh, these new products are perfect for her. And your brain just explodes with opportunity, and you’ve got that natural charisma that you connect with it. And then, you know, I read that about a year later, and it’s when our salon was thriving. We had put in the both steps of training the systems is you don’t have to be that natural, because you’ve had so many people say this in the audience. I, I’m just a quiet person. I just, I just do that with a well, you can just train. You know, there’s a time when you know somebody that’s training can only lift a 10 pound dumbbell. But if they train, they train the right weight. Pretty soon it’s 12 or 15 pounds. So when I take a look at that, yes, there is something of hiring the natural. But whether you’re a salon of one or you’re a salon of 51 identify the key points of training on how to look for opportunities. That’s the key. Yeah,

Chris Baran 47:55
you know, I love what you were saying there Wayne about about the opportunities, because they’re there. I did a program the last just this last week, and there was a young kid that was there, and I was sitting with it was on, we’re doing a train, the trainer program. And this young kid gets up at Luis and Luis Rivera says, I never forget his name because of the way he pronounced it. And I was talking to the one of his leadership group, and she leaned over and says, Do you know that he does $250,000 a year? And I went, so you mean revenue? And he said, she said, Well, no, not exactly. That’s not exactly, exactly what his take home is because, but because of our pay structure, the way that it is. Once you get to this, this certain point, you get 70% of that. I mean, I had never heard of that. My business sense went that was that one I never heard of, and I but I leave that alone. But there’s the point is that if you’re just looking for opportunities. You could sit back and you could say, look at I’m settling. I’m okay with that, and that’s okay too. And like I, I want to be clear for anybody who’s listening or watching is that it’s not that’s not the benchmark, that’s just what he wanted, and he knows, he knows that he can do it and did it. So whether it’s you said it at, I want to generate 75 or 100 or 250 whatever it is, you just got to be looking for it. And all it takes is just a little word, hey, you know, I noticed that you had this XYZ problem, you know. And if you’d like to look like, you know, ABC, you know, here’s the solution. And, and bingo, because people won’t, if they think it’s a sale, they’ll run. But if you tell them what they’re going to be able to look like or be or have at the end of it, then they’ll go, Well, that’s what I want. Yeah, you know, and I just take my hat off to people that really go out there and show our industry what they can really earn in our business. Yeah,

Wayne Grund 49:57
I got a question for you on this. Chris. And be happy to use it with the next individual. Are you running with this question? There is, I

Chris Baran 50:04
got my pen handy, got your

Wayne Grund 50:06
panty buddy ink it. Don’t think it could rather be happy or comfortable for the listener, make sure they got it. Would you rather be happy or comfortable? Which one?

Chris Baran 50:24
Yeah. First of all, it’s a damn good question, right, I think. And I’m just going to take a wild stab, and I got a 50% chance of getting it right here, 5050 man, it’s 5050 but I think that if, if you’re happy then, and I make sure I do all the things that I’m happy at. I’m going to be getting the things that are going to make me comfortable, and if then I have both my clothes work,

Wayne Grund 50:48
there is no wrong answer, yeah, but I want to be around people who want to be happy. Yeah, people are happy when they make other people happy. Yeah, comfortable means it’s usually your brain is making an excuse for you, going, okay, things are good enough, but there’s always one over pops up over here go. You know what, golly, I can do more for people, right? Yeah. And, you know, when looking for opportunities, there was a, again, just a snippet story on this that Gary the waiter has become a famous story within the surface world, and he’s a waiter in Las Vegas at a restaurant, average restaurant. This gentleman, at that time, was 76 years old. We walked in, and I won’t go through the whole story, time is going short on it, but the wow factor was unbelievable. His silver hair, white shirt, pants, biggest smile in the world, going your name Wayne, Deborah. Wayne and Deborah, welcome to New York. New York. This will be the most fabulous dinner that you could ever imagine. I am so happy to serve you. The experience goes beyond that. We were going to go in. We had probably shared a nappy, like we did. We’d have probably had one bottle of wine. We’d had a shared a dessert and we left. I had a presentation for our trainers the next day. Well, we ended up with two appetizers, a bottle of 2012 cab, sab, duck horn. We ended up with most amazing meal. We both had the creme brulee dessert the way he described it. Canceled our dinner the next night at Bellagio, went to rebook back with him in there after his area, his area was booked until eight o’clock at night. Well, eight o’clock at night. I’m getting ready to go to bed. We changed our plans. We went back and I, I’m one of those guys that will look at an appointment book. You really he’s not going the rest of the there was empty, except for Gary, yeah, and the reason is, Gary looked for opportunities to make people happy, and if that’s something I can just really share and share with with service providers who feel they may be timid or such, just look to serve people and serve on all their needs.

Chris Baran 52:55
I love it, you know, I’m going to give you one back, and then we’re going to, I’m going to run to rapid fire here, because I love what you’re saying about being happy. And I went in, you know, and I’m I haven’t been working out like you have, but so I went into this when I was living in Manhattan, and I went down to this clothing store where it was getting ready for to go to a big class, and I wanted to make sure that I had something that was kind of cool. So there’s a store there that that all they cater to is, is the rock stars. So I went in, I figured I got what I want, sort of, I just want to get a t shirt. So I went into t shirt and, and I said, look at, you probably don’t have stuff that fits me, but I said, Do you by chance maybe have a T shirt or something cool that I could put under the jacket that I already have? And? And he said, Oh, look at, there’s the owner right over there. He’s the same size as you are. We’ve got tons of stuff in here. Now I want to hear what she did, what this girl did to me. She says, Okay, let me take it. I want to bring this over to you. And she pulled out some T shirts and and I went and tried them on, and she said, I said, Well, I don’t like those, but this one I really like. And I want to catch you what I hear, what I what she said to me, okay, let’s I’m going to take that over and I’m going to put that on the happy pile. And then, and then I tried on, and she said, Listen, this is something. I’ve got this thing downstairs, and I have to tell you that it’s, we’ve only got one of these. It’s one of a kind, and it’s 70% off. I can bring it up for you if you want. I said, Oh, yeah. So he brought it up hand studded, or like metal studded jacket all the way through. I put it on leather. Beautiful feeling. I said, Well, I love it, and it fits me. And she said, she said, so let’s put it on the happy pile. And she did this that my happy pile went from a t shirt to $4,000 just because the way that she was telling the story. You can add that into one of

Wayne Grund 54:41
yours, so I will. And you had a happy smile. I bet at the end I

Chris Baran 54:45
had a happy smell. And I must admit, I phoned home and I said, Rita, it’s $4,000 you okay if I spend this and like like you, she becomes I made sure that I got permission. Anyway, time for rapid fire. So wait. What turns you on in the creative process,

Wayne Grund 55:04
in the creative process, cutting, like shaping, molding. Love it

Chris Baran 55:09
and what stifles creativity for you?

Wayne Grund 55:14
What stifles it a cloudy day, a

Chris Baran 55:18
thing in life in general, that you love the most fishing. And what in life do you dislike the most,

Wayne Grund 55:33
really cold weather.

Chris Baran 55:35
The reason why I left Saskatchewan, I thought you were going to say not fishing, the thing that you love the most about our industry, people, the thing you dislike the most about our industry.

Wayne Grund 55:57
This, I gotta do more than one word, sorry, okay, people who have arrived, ah, I gotcha by that is, I do. They can be positive people, but mentally, they’ve just arrived.

Yeah, yeah,

Chris Baran 56:12
a person that you admire the most. My wife, love it your most prized possession.

Wayne Grund 56:21
Oh, my goodness, that’s, I can’t be very rapid on that. Oh, that’s okay. What about possession, our home in Mexico? Oh, where busiers? Where is that little town just north of Puerto varico?

I love that area.

Chris Baran 56:41
A person you wish you could meet living or dead.

Wayne Grund 56:44
Person I wish I could meet living or dead. Oh, my goodness, actually, now I’m just going to have to make this happen somewhat. But Ryan Holiday, the author from stoicism, brilliant messages he shares.

Chris Baran 57:01
Isn’t it funny? How I’ve been, I find so many people. If I get hooked on something, all of a sudden it comes up in and I just been, I’ve been researching stoicism, and I love the whole side of it. So interesting, something that people don’t know about you don’t

Wayne Grund 57:17
know about me. Well, if you’re close to you would know it, but outside, don’t know about me. Let me think everybody pretty open book. What’s that? Oh, I love to snow, ski. They might know that my favorite time spent is with family, but industry people wouldn’t this family.

Chris Baran 57:42
Yeah. If you had a month off, where would you go? What would you

Wayne Grund 57:48
do? Oh, my goodness, a month off. Yeah, if I had to pick just one place, it’d be down to busurius, to the condo. There

Chris Baran 57:56
you go. And a thing that terrifies you,

Wayne Grund 58:01
terrifies me.

You quiet people in the world under challenge.

Oh,

Chris Baran 58:14
here it comes. Favorite curse word, shit, okay. Favorite comfort food.

Wayne Grund 58:21
Oh, comfort, comfort food. Let me Oh, beautiful steak on the barbecue. Oh

Speaker 1 58:26
yeah, charcoal, charcoal, or propane, charcoal. Yes,

Chris Baran 58:31
we can be friends. Something in the industry that you haven’t done, and I don’t know what the hell this would be, but something in the industry you haven’t done, but you want to,

Wayne Grund 58:44
oh, my goodness, that’s a big question. I’ve got no idea. Oh, that I want to. It’d be really neat, but I won’t invest the time. I wish I had magical hands with long hair like Martin Parsons.

Chris Baran 58:59
I like Marty Party. Love it. God bless you. Martin, yeah, if you had one do over in life,

Wayne Grund 59:07
would it be? Over in life?

What would have it been? Think I’d have taken the time? No, I don’t think I know it would have be. It would have been when I had left red can in the early 90s to take more time, like I did in the early 2000s to identify the company I wanted to build, right? Because at that time I just you wanted to have a company, but there was, I didn’t have the purpose in mind behind it, good enough people, but the purpose wasn’t there, yeah, and it was basically like, you’ll still see a lot of people that will go to a private label company, put their label on it, and put it on their shelf, and, you know, wish everybody success with it, but that real purpose and culture when that. Me to me emotionally, and my family in 2008 that was just such a turning point. So if I could have that 10 years sooner? Yeah,

Chris Baran 1:00:08
there you go. Love it. Okay, tomorrow. You couldn’t do hair. Couldn’t have anything to do with it in any way, shape or form. What would you do? Go fishing. There you go. Okay, and I’ve got one last question for you, but before I do Wayne, you’ve all you’ve got so many things that you can help people with. And if people had to get a hold of you, want to get a hold of you, how do they, how do they, how do they get a hold of of you? Your products? What do they do? Where do they

Wayne Grund 1:00:37
go? Two ways, actually, if they gave you, depending what they’re more comfortable with, is one, the handle on Instagram of Wayne Grund, Wayne dot Grund, or anything through surface air, our website’s phenomenal. As a pro, jump on register as a pro. Put a message in there, going, Hey, chatted with I listened to Wayne and Chris like that in our admin. I’ll put them straight to me. I’ll reach out to him. Love it. Love it.

Chris Baran 1:01:03
Okay. Here we go. Last one. If you had one wish for industry, what would it be?

Wayne Grund 1:01:11
I wish I would have magic dust to sprinkle on top to help everybody believe in themselves and what they have to offer. And many, many people do already, but the reason I say that is belief that becomes the foundation for people for looking opportunities to serve.

Yeah, and

Chris Baran 1:01:31
I think I’ll bet you, Wayne, that there’s a lot of people out there that we think have that magic dust, but yet they still doubt themselves and so on. So I tell you, if I could do anything, if that, if I could do anything to make that belief and help manufacture that’s that dust, I would be first in line. Would I help you with that one? But my friend, I you give up, you give up your time willingly to be on head cases, and I can’t thank you enough. I thank you for your friendship. I thank you for what you’ve done to our for our industry, and I thank you for all the education you provided everybody. Chris,

Wayne Grund 1:02:10
thank you so much. It’s great to catch up with you, and thank you for sharing all the words and the life stories of the amazing people in our industry. And I wish the best to everybody. Thank God. Thank you.

Thank you. Cheers.

Chris Baran 1:02:25
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.