ep135 – Kelly Cardenas

Show Notes

Today’s guest is a top-ranked podcaster, a sought-after keynote speaker, and the creator of The Vibe Method. He came from humble beginnings and rose to become a nationally celebrated entrepreneur with one enduring message: people matter most.

His guests on The Vibe Podcast have included Grammy winners, Super Bowl champions, innovators, CEOs, and everyday legends, and their conversations always leave you changed in the best possible way. He has a rare gift for blending strategy and conviction with soul and humour. He will teach you to use your go-giver brain with your go-giver heart. He challenges your assumptions while making you laugh, and he reminds us all that success is built on relationships.

I am so happy to share with you this week’s Headcase, the one and only Kelly Cardenas.

4:53 Kelly Cardenas’ Early Career and Inspirations

41:00 The Importance of Relationships and Mentorship

59:22 Practical Advice for Aspiring Professionals

1:07:13 Volunteering and Building Relationships

1:11:00 The Power of Relationships and Faith

Chris Baran 0:00
How great would it be to get up close and personal with the beauty industry heroes we love and admire, and to ask them, How did you learn to do what you do? I’m Chris Baran, a hair stylist and educator for 40 plus years, and I’m inviting all our heroes to chat and share the secrets of their success.

Speaker 1 0:22
I have

Chris Baran 0:26
you ever met someone who, no matter what they talk about, changes you, makes you better than you were before? Welcome to head cases and the previous describes this episode’s guest perfectly. He is a top ranked podcaster, well renowned keynote speaker and the creator of the vibe method. He came from humble beginnings as a $250 a week service provider, and he became a national celebrated entrepreneur. He’s built a career around one core belief, people matter most. His hit show, the vibe podcast, has hosted Grammy winners, Super Bowl champions, innovators, CEOs and everyday legends, and the conversation always leaves you different in the best possible way. He has the ability to blend soul, strategy, comedy and conviction like nobody else. I describe him this way, he shares how to use a Go Giver brain with a Go Giver heart. He can challenge your assumptions while making you laugh. He is humble yet convicted in his beliefs, which is all about relationships. So let’s jump into this week’s head case. Kelly Cardenas. Kelly Cardenas, I just want to say it’s been 100 years we have. I’ve been following you for years and admiring you. And I just want to say, Welcome to head cases, and it is absolutely a pleasure to have you on board.

Kelly Cardenas 2:03
Well, right when you started talking, man, I took a drink of my water, and we were just laughing, so I almost spit the water out onto my desk. I just want to let you know that Chris, so it’s man,

Chris Baran 2:17
well, you know, as as as people that are on stage, and both of us who love humor so much, there would have been nothing I valued more than getting a spit take from anybody. And I just timed that one, just so you do it right there too. So I just want to say, welcome. It’s a it’s a pleasure. But no,

Kelly Cardenas 2:34
it’s a pleasure, man, you’re an absolute icon. And the fact that I get a chance, I mean, I grew up in the industry, reading about you, you know, watching you in magazines, watching you at shows, things like that, and aspiring and the fact that I get to now call you my friend. It is. It’s surreal to me.

Chris Baran 2:53
Man, yeah. Well, you know, I don’t know if you know James Alba, but he called me up the one day, and he said he wanted to be on the podcast. And he said, you’re going to be my best friend, whether you like it or not. And so I say to you, be careful what you wish for. All of a sudden, I’ll be camping out your front door going, Hey, can you spare a meal I haven’t eaten in a couple days? Could you? Could you put me up for the night? I’ll take the couch.

Kelly Cardenas 3:19
I appreciate you, man, you’re, you’re incredible, not only what you who you are as a person, but also what you’ve done for the industry, the example that you have. And it’s just, it’s, it’s incredible, man, because being a 19 year old kid, when I came into the business, and, you know, seeing the likes of yourself in modern salon and American salon and things like that, it was like it was so far off. And then when I got a chance to meet you, you helped me to realize that you were just the person that worked really, really hard and did all the things that most people weren’t willing to do. And you know that it made things possible to me. So I appreciate you, man.

Chris Baran 3:55
Well, thank you. I mean, I think there’s probably one thing I did get from my grandmother, because she always said, you know that she always said, you know, each and every one of us are alike. You know, we put our bras on one leg at a time, so, and I think you kind of hit the nail on the head right there, because, and we’re, you know, because, just so people listening and watching, right know that we’ve, we had a conversation before, because, as, you know, as podcasters, we always want to know, how can we best move the conversation along, etc. And some of them, like this one are going to be very organic, and all we did was decide on our topic. And I love, I mean, let’s face it, your whole thing that you do, and I can’t think of a better word than thing right now, is about vibe, you know, and which is about relationships, what I want to get into, and what we really want to talk about today. However, you kind of alluded to it a little bit, but I always think that it’s so important that everybody knows, like, what, what got you in? What’s your hair story? What got you into? It? Was it the draw? Did you want? Want to do? Did somebody pull you into it? There was it by accident.

Kelly Cardenas 5:04
Oh, man. It was dog clippers and a double wide mobile home bathroom. That’s what it was.

Chris Baran 5:09
Oh, but serious, serious, man. Oh, so tell me

Kelly Cardenas 5:12
about that. Well, my dad was too we called it too cheap. He just said he didn’t have any money. But he bought dog clippers because he thought that he shouldn’t pay the dog groomer. He then turned it on, gave him to us, and said, You need to shave the dog, because I’m not paying for it. We tried to shave the dog. Didn’t realize that you have to chain the dog up before you shave it. So the dog ran away. We put the Clippers up underneath the cabinet, and then, years later, we were living in a double wide mobile home 40 miles outside of the town that we lived in, and my best friend will who happens to be, you know, half black and half white, and had hair that was different than mine. Said, I need a haircut. And we happen to have those dog clippers underneath the cabinet and but one of the guards had broken, so we were using duct tape. One of the while my brother cut one side, passed it to me. I didn’t see that the guard fell off. I ran the Clippers up the side of his head, and it was bald, and bald fades weren’t in at the time, and so we just shaved his head a ring around it, and then it came off his head, you know, about his temples, about an inch and a half, and then went up. So he had this big brick of cheese on top of his head. And that’s how, that’s how we got into it, man, my brother, I said that I needed a haircut. My my brother cut it. The other brother laughed at me while I was getting it cut. The one that laughed became a doctor, and the one that was cutting became an attorney. And then the kid who got the bad haircut became a hairdresser. Hairdresser.

Chris Baran 6:42
Oh, that right. Well, you know, so, so tell me a bit more now. So you went from that now, but what give me a little bit about, you know? So, what prompted hair school? Did we go to an apprenticeship? How did you get started? And then I want to know how that led from there into you getting on stage?

Kelly Cardenas 6:58
Well, it was all, it was all principles from my parents, right? So they always told me that they would always support me no matter what I did, as long as I did it to the best of my ability. Never compared myself to anybody. That was the biggest thing. And so when I, you know, I was cutting hair in high school, because after those debacles that we that I told you about, I was the only guy on the basketball, football and baseball team that had clippers, so I would just cut in the locker room. We wouldn’t sweep we’d run away. There’d be a pile of hair and new, fresh haircuts, and we would think that our coaches wouldn’t figure out who did it right, which is so stupid now that I think about it, but you know, by the time I graduated from high school, I was cutting everybody’s hair, and my mom just said, why don’t you go to school for that? I had no thought in my head to do this. I was going to go to community college do all this stuff, but I remember going and the person said, you know, did the interview, they said it would be eight hours a day for five days a week. I know for the people nowadays, they’re like eight hours a day five days a week, that’s slave labor. No, that was a regular work week for us. I know nowadays it’s like 15 hours and you’re tired and you need balance. But you know, they said eight hours a day, five days a week for 10 months. And I was like, You’re crazy. That’s another year of high school. You know what I’m saying? I’m not trying to do that. And I remember, on the way home, Chris, I was spending a little bit of time with God and I and God asked me, like, you know what? What are you going to have to have to show for community college after 10 months? And I was like, I wouldn’t even have one year done. And he said, What are you going to have when you if you went to 1010, months of hair school or beauty school? And I said, Well, I’ll have a license. And he just said, That’s it. And so that principal from my parents stepped in at that time and said, if you’re going to do something, you have to do it to the best of your ability. Don’t compare ability. Don’t compare yourself to anybody. But so I went in headlong. So when I went in, you know, I signed up. I was working in a garage, changing oil on cars, and I started reading like Vogue and l magazine, all these things, but I would put them inside of Popular Mechanics So all the mechanics wouldn’t make fun of me while I was reading these magazines. And so, you know, I ended up going to school there, and my parents always taught me, too, to seek after number one. So I just, I’ve listened, you know, to my instructors, things like that. I wasn’t the best student. I just screwed off a lot. I made deals with my teachers, which I could tell you later, but I made deals with them, and I just literally focused in on, you know, I just wanted to be the best that I possibly could and have the most fun. And what I realized that this business, literally, it just had to do with people, and I love people, yeah? So that got me to, you know, starting in the business.

Chris Baran 9:43
And, you know, just before I want to find about how you got into the stage. Because that’s always, I think one of the people, I always laugh when people say, I want to do what you do. Be careful what you ask for. But that aside, I loved what your parents said to you. You don’t compare yourself against anyone. And I think when we live actually, you know, and I’m maybe speaking out of turn, I might, I might upset some people by saying this, but I think particularly in our industry, whether it’s in a salon, you’re comparing yourself what you do against a top earner, or whether you’re in a school comparing yourself somebody who might be excelling more than you do, or whether you’re on stage and you’re you’re looking at other people around you and say, Why can’t I have and why don’t I do what they do? I think that’s so rampant in our industry, or maybe just in everybody’s life. What a great motto to have from your parents, where they can say, Don’t compare yourself against anybody else.

Kelly Cardenas 10:50
Yeah, well, they included some too, Chris, which was not even yourself, because you’ll mar the memory or the blessing that came yesterday. Because a lot of people are like, I only compare myself to compare myself to myself yesterday, and I just got to, you know, and my parents have always told me, like, everything’s perfect. Everything’s perfect every single time. So when I would come off a stage, or I would do a bad haircut when I first started off, because I was horrible, when I would do a bad color, bad haircut, everything was perfect. And then do you still learn from it? Yes, can you get better? Yes, but just let that memory be perfect and but I do want to say, you know, it’s a fine line, right? The comparison part, because we can use things to be able to keep score and see what’s possible. Like with you, you know, looking at you in American salon and modern salon and seeing you on stage, you know, from literally like you didn’t know that I was watching you, Chris, but watching you, you helped me to see what was possible. So it wasn’t a comparison, but it was seeing that, Hey, Chris can do that. Chris breathes the same air that I do. He probably doesn’t eat the same chocolate because he’s from Canada and he has better chocolate. But outside of that man, like, we’re people, this is possible. So I would invite you and your listeners to make sure that don’t compare yourself. But also, I mean, use it as, like, wow, you know, this person went out and did it, you know? And so it broke the mold, and now it gives you permission. And I think that was the greatest thing that my parents ever did, was they gave me permission to simply try,

Unknown Speaker 12:26
yeah, yeah.

Chris Baran 12:28
You know, I love what you were saying because, and it’s kind of, you know, a little veer to the right in here, but to your point of you watching somebody else and then saying it’s possible. I can remember doing the same thing with my hair heroes, which was like Trevor, Trevor Sorby and Anthony and Robert La betta. And when I hear, I hear so many people talking about being creative and that they would say, you just can’t. You’ve got to just do something that’s your work and your work only, and it’s not that I beg to differ with them, but I what I tell young kids that are coming out that want to that want to go somewhere, and if you want to learn something, I compare it, and I don’t play guitar, I can do like a really bad, bad rendition of camp down races, but when I found out really quickly that I couldn’t do it, I just gave it up. But one thing I do know about hair, the one thing that I learned about being creative is before you can be creative, you have to learn foundations and to learn that you might have to copy somebody. So when I got into avant garde work, before I started creating, what I felt was coming out, maybe not solely from my head, but from my the background in my brain, that picture you would create that you wanted to do, I first of all, copied of what other people did. I remember some of the genius work that my hair heroes did, and what I did is I, I copied what they did. I didn’t, I didn’t shoot it, but that’s where I learned a lot of the fundamentals from. So I always tell people, if you want to get into something, whether it’s a haircut, whether it’s a color, whether you want to do avant garde, if you copy something, you’re going to start to learn the fundamentals of what it is. Then you can spin it, then you can turn it around and add your twist to it. Or you can use that image, that feeling, that vibe that you got. And I remember Michael Cole just saying one day that that if you think of when you the American Indians, they just call it quiet mind. If you want to think of something different, you just quiet your mind down. Otherwise, you’re just coming up with old thoughts and and I remembered that that, and that’s to that point you first have to do get those images. You have to know how to cut the bang. You know have to make, how to make a coil or whatever in avant garde work. You have to know how to do. That blow dry. But once you know that, that’s if you quiet your mind down, that’s where the true creativity comes from.

Kelly Cardenas 15:09
That’s why you’re the genius, man. I mean, I tell you, if they just sound bite that like a kid, you know, whether it be a kid in school, a salon owner, a stylist, a manager, wherever you’re at in your business, if you just clip out the genius that you talk about, Chris, it would, I mean it literally is a blueprint, you know. And I we didn’t have this growing up. We didn’t have podcasts growing up. We had cassettes, you know, is that? Like, yeah, we had a cassette tape you had to rewind. But if they, if they, and what I would suggest is you guys clip that part out for social and just have that, you know, I just think that that’s genius. You’re a genius man.

Chris Baran 15:46
Well, you know, like I got this big fat German head anyway, so you got to be careful, or it’s going to get bigger. But I want to talk to more about you. And I had a conversation just the other day about relationships, yeah, and I think that that is one of the genius parts of what you do. You have this amazing idea to and just as we talked about in our intro, you not only speak to hairdressers and our beauty industry, but you do fortune 500 companies and people that that that have nothing to do with the hair industry, but what you bring to them is everything is about relationships. And that’s, I love the conversation with that yesterday. So you can, you give us, just to start the flow, a little bit of the when you talk about the vibe, when I first saw that, that was kind of your you know, I’m gonna say overarching theme, your umbrella that you had everything under. I just want, what a great moniker, simply because of a, who you are, B, what you look like, because you got this great vibe. I mean, I feel, I feel like a so much of a baby boomer that I am right now, especially since I’ve been growing my hair that I look like I am just trying to relive the 80s that I was in, but you’ve got this really amazing vibe that you have. So tell us a little bit about where this feeling of relationships and how that helps to change not only our industry, but others.

Kelly Cardenas 17:18
Well, I think it wraps everything into it, right? So even the vibe itself. My first book that I wrote was called the six indicators for business and life, way too long of a title, and if you’re learning something, don’t do a book that has that long of a title. But what it was was culture, vibe, process and procedure, which was systems, productivity, innovation and the ability to adapt immediately. And I was talking with one of my friends. So this goes to the relationship part. His name is Paul long, so he’s a keynote speaker, one of the top in the world. And when I was talking with him, he said, you know, he just he said to me, he’s like, You are a vibe. And I was like, Wait a second, what do you mean? And he said, and he went into it, and he talked about it, and I said, Did you realize that was the second chapter of my book? And he said, No, I haven’t read the book, but you are a vibe. And I was like, Oh, thank you so much. He’s like, I think that that should be something that you lean into. And so I just listened to him, and I named my next book The vibe, and that’s the one. So what I realized was that culture, the process and procedure, which was your systems, which was just a list of your screw ups, the productivity, innovation and your ability to adapt immediately, all had to be powered by the vibe and the vibe. When I realized Chris that the vibe was not the energy, yeah, that I brought into the room, that it was simply the way that people felt when I left, that switched and changed the paradigm for me, yeah, and that is the vibe. Like people don’t care about your leadership style. They your systems will never work, and your culture is irrelevant. If the vibe is off, you see, there’s 100,000 different types of leadership. There’s different all different types of systems, all different types of cultures. You could choose any of them. Any of them will work if your people feel good about it. And how can they feel good about it? By aligning their heart, their mind and their skills. And when we can do that, you create an irresistible vibe. All of that, I tell you, is based around relationships. So everything like you complimented me on the neon sign in the back. That’s a gift from my brother in law, my ring that I’m wearing on my pinky, I always wanted to wear a pinky ring that’s my 10 year anniversary from my wife. My chain is from a relationship a kid that worked with me. His name is Matt Scanlon. He worked in Chicago with me, and he was we hired him as an assistant as minimum wage while he was cleaning the toilets, he would always tell me I’m going to have a fashion line someday. And I said, yeah, yeah, just clean the toilets. He said, But I’m going to have a fashion line, and I’m going to have my own boutique on Melrose Avenue someday, and I’m gonna be a fashion designer. I said, Yeah, whatever. Clean the back room. Years later, he created that fashion brand called exoterics. I’m wearing the chain. Now, so I’m not wearing a chain. I’m wearing his dream and what’s possible in life, the chain that I’m wearing, the second chain that I’m wearing, right? This one came from a person, and you and I had this conversation. How did I start speaking outside the industry? There was a woman named Andrea. She had a husband named Travis. He happened to be one of the top jeweler jewelry, jewelry designers that worked with Rob dear deck and beer a big black and he was in the audience. And when he got done, he said, I liked what you talked about. Can I send you a gift? And this was the gift, wow. And so every single thing that I have, from my cup to even this microphone, all given by friends and relationships. And those relationships create stories, and those relationships, what I found is that membership will give you privileges, but relationships grant you access to things that you could never even imagine.

Chris Baran 20:53
Yeah, yeah. Well, like when you said yesterday, we were talking and you talked about relationships, can you talk to the story about how that got you into speaking at the prison system? And that is going to seem like a really odd segue for people. Hey, here’s a guy who public speaking doesn’t and Hey, he’s been to prison. So you weren’t, you weren’t a you weren’t a resident. You were there to speak. So tell us how, tell the story about how that happened, just by relationships, and how difficult that was for other people to get

Kelly Cardenas 21:28
well, the first thing is, the precursor to it is the hardest place for a keynote speaker to go into is to get into the prison system. The the, well,

Chris Baran 21:37
let’s actually get into it. It’s just really hard to speak at it exactly.

Kelly Cardenas 21:41
You got that right, you know? And that’s a place that I never want to go to, but it’s a place that I want to, I think, bring a ministry to, but it’s one of the hardest. Like all my friends who are in the keynote speaking space, they all are like, how did you get into the I’ve been trying for years. There’s this process and all these things. But for me, Chris, what was amazing there was a girl named Kristen. Her name is Kristin Griffey. I moved in to to a house from the double wide mobile home that I talked about, 40 miles away from our high school. We got to move into town, and I was so excited to move into town, but I got even more excited because there was a cute girl who lived across the street, and I ended up meeting her. Name is Kristen. We became friends. She’s like, two years younger than me. She went to the rival high school called Lompoc High School, which I don’t talk about, but I went to Cabrillo, which is the number one school.

Chris Baran 22:30
So let’s re emphasize that Cabrillo number one,

Kelly Cardenas 22:34
one school in Lompoc. I don’t know about that. They were blue and white. They were the Braves, but Kristen and I stayed friends. We stayed friends throughout and it was a principle that my pops taught me. He said, You never know where someone’s going or where they’re from. You never know where they’re going. You never know where you meet up with them again. So make a friend out of everyone. So I had heard that my whole entire life, so we just collected friends all over the place. Well, Kristen stayed my friend about 20 years later, after I graduated, she reached out to me on Facebook and said, Hey, I would love for you to come and speak to my leaders at my work. And I said, Yes, because she’s my friend. And then I responded, by the way, where do you work? And she said, Oh, I’m the assistant. What is it warden at the only super Max prison in the country. And I was like, what? And so this is where they keep El Chapo, right? So not only the federal penitentiary system is hard to get into, but to get into the only super Max prison in the country is even tougher. But she said, yeah, she asked me to come and speak to her leaders, I said. And I was just being, you know, kind of silly. I am a kid who I think that anything is possible that my parents taught me. So I just said, The only way that I’ll speak to your leaders. And I said this, Chris, is if you allow me to speak to the inmates. And she was like, Okay, I’ll make it happen. So it literally was just that I didn’t go through any process, no vetting, no nothing. Bang, it happens. And so I go in and I am literally, like 10 feet from mass murderers, and there’s no there’s no guards. The guard, well, there was two people, my friend, who’s, you know, maybe five six, possibly, maybe five six, no weapons, no no. But no weapons. They can’t have weapons, because if the inmates were able to get them, they could take the weapons. So I’m delivering this message to the people, and I like to joke around. And I don’t know if the jokes are going to hit, but they did. I was very, you know, I was, I was very fortunate in that. And I, what I spoke to them about is one day I was in church, and I was, you know, that we were doing worship. So I had my hands up, praising God. And then God said, Put your hands on top of your head. And then he said, Put your hands behind your back. And by the time I was done with the song, my hands were behind my back. Well, my dad was sitting next. To be my pop. And he was like, What? What? What did you get? And I said, What do you mean? He said, What did God tell you? Because I watched you, you went from hands up to Hands on your head to hands behind your back. And what I realized at that time, what God showed me, was that when you put your hands up, you surrender right. When you put your hands on your head, you give permission to search, and when you put your hands behind your back, you allow them to take you into custody. And that’s what God told me. He said, first, you have to surrender to my will. Second, you need to allow me to search your your character, for anything that’s contrary to my will in your life. And then when you put your hands behind your back, you allow me to take you into custody. And so when I spoke to the inmates, I said, you guys already have the blueprint for success in any area, and you’ve experienced it firsthand. You had to surrender. You had to put your hands on top of your head. You had to put your hands behind your back. But imagine if you just took out the law enforcement and you put in your purpose in life, surrender to your purpose, allow your purpose to search you allow your purpose to take you into custody, and you don’t do anything outside that’s not aligned with that purpose. And I tell you, I was so happy because that message hit, and they actually liked me. And now my my book that I just released in March, just got accepted into the federal penitentiary program from Texas all the way to California, and we’re going to be doing a program that’s going to be helping to rehabilitate prisoners. And this only happened, not because I’m a genius, not because I write great books, because I had a friend named Kristen when I was in high school that became a champion for me. So honestly, make a friend out of everyone. Yeah.

Chris Baran 26:38
Wow. Great, great story. You know, I told you yesterday that was an introvert. I don’t know if somebody would sell me, hey, you could speak at a super Max. Where El Chapo is? You want to do it?

Kelly Cardenas 26:53
You would do great man. I mean, you had the principles that you have. We talked about it yesterday, the principles that you have as a hairdresser. It transcends, and that’s been the cool thing for me when I got outside the industry. And to tell you the honest God truth, here’s a secret like, Chris, I don’t speak in the professional beauty industry that much. I don’t most of my work is outside, yeah, but you

Chris Baran 27:13
will be speaking at one very soon, yeah, because you’re going to be speaking for us at at Baran.

Kelly Cardenas 27:19
But I think the cool thing is, though, is I secretly use all the things that I learned as a hairdresser, and it blows people’s mind, but they act like they think that I made it up. And I tell you, I learned from you. I learned by watching you on stage, like in New York, in Chicago, all these places that in Long Beach, when I’d see Chris Baran on stage, doing his thing. I’m taking notes. And then I didn’t know that years later, number one, you would be my friend, but then I’d be able to use this in so many different industries.

Chris Baran 27:50
Yeah, and, you know, and you like, I want you to talk to that, because I think there’s so many people listening, and just in general, that don’t think that they can make it. And I’ve always said, Look at Mary Baran boy, Chris, can do whatever the hell that I’ve done. Anybody can do it. I was like I was saying in school, I was in grade school. I was in the half of the class that made the top half possible in beauty school, you share, and I share that in the comment I didn’t even necessarily want I used to have fights with my previous girlfriend and make make little boats out of the end papers, and float them in the barbicide and watch them sink down to the bottom, which was what my film, my life was like. But, but I think that if you could just talk to that for a second, just in when people can have whatever they want, just give us your take on that, that you know, Kelly did it. You had great upbringing, and not all of us have had great upbringing, but still, you spoke to an enlightened supermax prisoners to hopefully move forward. What would you say? What would you say to the kids out there that are saying right now that Yeah, but you’re Kelly Kadena, Chris. Is Chris? How heck can I ever do what it is?

Kelly Cardenas 29:13
Well, I think if you, if you go back and you know, you scrub back, you wouldn’t be able to rewind the podcast. But if you scrub back, you’ll realize that it was a message that God gave me, that I was able to give to the people. And so when you spend time like when you spend time with God, I was telling you that yesterday, like, you know I’m gonna spend, I spent time with God this morning, and he’s going to lead you, right? He’s going to lead you in this he’s going to get, he gave you the skills. But I don’t believe that you could be anything that you want to be. You could be anything that you’re purposed to do and you’re willing to work for Yeah, and so how do we find that purpose? Simply just identify your gifts, like identify your gifts, then go give them away to every single person that you possibly can. And when that happens, what you’ll find is that your doors will open that you can imagine my parents. Gave me four principles, very simple, super, super simple. But I heard this every single day of my life, but I didn’t understand it until my mom was gone, and then I didn’t understand it until my dad was gone. Muscle my mom passed away seven years ago, my dad about four years ago. Oh, no, don’t be sorry you didn’t do it. And they’re in a lot better place

Chris Baran 30:20
than me for the emotion that we all have to go through in that

Kelly Cardenas 30:23
No, I understand. I’m just saying like, they’re dancing on streets of gold with Sweet baby Jesus with wings. You know? I’m saying like, so my my mom, she would scratch my back every day, and she would say, you’re awesome. That’s how I’d wake up every day, you’re awesome. And then she’d say, you’re beautiful. And then she would say, you could do anything that you put your mind to. But I didn’t realize what she was actually saying. I would actually get annoyed because I’d be like, Yeah, Mom, you told me that yesterday. Yeah, Mom, you told me that this morning. When she would tell me when I was going to bed, when she passed away, I realized what she meant when she said, you’re awesome. She what she was saying is separate yourself from your accomplishment. So an A didn’t make me awesome, in my mom’s eyes, because I got a lot of D’s, right? So when I would get a C or a D, she would she would separate that, and she would say, like, it wasn’t because you scored the touchdown, or, you know, scored hit the three pointer, or, you know, I played a lot of sports growing up, any of those, it was simply because you’re Kelly. And the second one was, you’re beautiful. And she said, Don’t compare yourself to anyone. We talked about that earlier, including yourself. Just be like, there’s one word, and I’ll tell you it later that she gave me that was a literally, like a key that unlocked every single door in life. And it was just one word we’ll talk about later, but then she her last one that said you’re the you can do anything that you put your mind to. But here was the caveat, and I learned this after she passed away, but just because you can do it doesn’t make it your purpose and doesn’t make it right for you. And this is where I think a lot of times we get challenged, right? Because there’s so much information, it’s like, oh, could I become an influencer, and, you know, make, you know, Tiktok videos for the rest of my life? Yes. Is it your purpose, though? Is it what God designed you to do? Could you do it? Could you get good at it? You could get good at anything seriously, like, if you try at it hard enough. I mean, you’re gonna suck for a long time, but just try it. You’ll get better at it. Then my pops. My pops was a little simpler. He didn’t give me three, he just gave me one. He always told me every morning and every night and throughout the day, he would say, boy. He would talk like the boy, you’re the greatest. And then when my mom died, it changed a little bit, because I was on the phone with him, and I would talk to him every single morning, and I would call him trying to call him earlier than he would call me. It was a little game that we had, so if I called him at 615 in the morning, I would be like, Oh yeah, you know, what do you you slack in today, pop, I’ve been up for six hours. What have you been doing? And then he would call me at six o’clock the next morning, and he’d be like, Man, you know, I’ve been up for like, seven hours, just slipping, and then it was just this constant, you know, back and forth, right? This was amazing, so, you know, but he would always say, Boy, you’re the greatest. And I remember when my mom passed away, they were married for 50 years, and I could hear his heartbeat almost on the phone, and he said, You’re the greatest. And then He paused, and I could hear that heartbeat, and I could hear this kind of sadness in his voice, because his lady, his woman, you know, 50 years she was now, she had gone to heaven. And when he paused, he said something that literally like it shifted everything for me. And he said, Boy, you’re the greatest. Paused and said, so act accordingly. Wow. And it was like a punch in the face, because for my whole life, I was like, I’m the greatest, I’m the greatest, I’m the greatest. But then what he did is he gave me, he said, boom, here’s the responsibility. So act according to that greatness. And imagine if, Chris, every single one of your listeners understood that they were the greatest, and then they paused and they said, acted. They acted according to that greatness. Every single day, the salon would change. The industry would change. Your reality would change, your income would change. But sometimes, first, we don’t know that we’re the greatest, and then when we do a lot of times, we don’t act according to it. And I hear that voice in my head every single day, thanks, pops like a lot of times I didn’t want to hear that second part, man, but that was the big part for them in growing up. And they literally that gave me the wings. And I’m a the youngest, I’m the baby in the family. So I think the world is about me. And I think honestly, like my I live in my worst possible scenario already. So me trying and failing, I already have the worst possible scenario, like yesterday, I have my favorite group of all time is called De La Salle. Old, and since 89 I’ve been a fan. Yesterday, I sent out a video. Actually, I did two posts, and then I sent videos to Macy o DJ, Macy O and and pasta news, because those are the two living members of De La Soul still, and I sent out messages to them. Hey, just want to let you know I’ve been rocking with you since 89 you’re the soundtrack of my life. I appreciate you. There’s a video that I’m selfing. I appreciate you. I’d love to have you on the podcast. You’re the number one people that I want on my podcast, and it’s going to be great to hear from you, peace, love and soul. And some people are like, what if they don’t answer? I already live in that reality. They’re already not my friends. So, you know, that’s the worst possible thing. So get my parents giving me the permission that way, I think was the best.

Chris Baran 35:45
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, CB, that’s B, i, t, dot, l, y, slash. Artist on go, CB, that was a mouthful, and and that’s why, that’s why you get to Grace fortune 500 companies and speak to them, because, you know, and you know, I never realized how many parallels that you and I have, and I’m gonna, I’m gonna talk to like your pops and your mom gave you that stuff, and I’ve had some great teachers for me, and I remember when my eyes were open to personal development, which I know you talk on too, and, and was Blair singer that really made opened up my eyes. But the it’s, how big are you when you’re walking into a room, not not your ego, not not it’s just about, how big are you? And he used to do this exercise with people, and they’d say, how big are you? And you had to stand on a chair, and you, you’d have to stand up and you’d say, I’m as big as the room. And he said, is that all? And then you’d have to go, Well, I’m bigger than the state. And then, and he would do this exercise with you, and he did it every morning with his son. He said, How big are you and his son? Whatever he was at that time, he was, I guess, 11 years old. And he walked in the room. I remember telling the story about how he’d walk in, and I says, I’m bigger than the universe. And I think that look at when you can put that into people’s mind, that’s not about me. Look at how big I am. Look at how important I am. But just when I can, can you fill a room? When you you know if you’re having a one on one on one conversation, or if you’re walking into a room, do do you fill the room with your with your vibe, your energy, and I loved what you were talking about when, when God was speaking to you. And I, one of my other coaches now, Jason Everett, always talks about, and he’s, he’s obviously very church much, church goer himself. And he says whether, whether it’s, it’s God that you listen to, or the universe, it’s, it’s always, I’ve always believed in purpose. And we were having talk, and I’m getting at that age where we’re talking, where we have to start thinking about the word, the R word, I still can’t say it. But you know the one that happens that some people do after work. And it starts with R and ends with retirement. I can’t say the whole word together. And somebody asked me about it. Well, it says, why couldn’t you do it? And I says, Well, I always have to have a purpose. I’ve got to be able to find something that I need. And maybe it’s selfish. Maybe it’s just selfish on my part, that I need to feel needed or validated or whatever you and I talked about that yesterday. But I think that if people could just understand how big they are, and if they could understand that they have a purpose, and if they understand whether it’s your God or whether it’s your universe or whatever it is, that. The Universe abhors a vacuum. So if you don’t give stuff away, you said, give it all away earlier. And I’d say to other people, if you go to a class, if you learn something for somebody, and you had to pay for it, give it away for free. Because if you don’t give it away, your mind will get stuck on that, and it will never give you another idea, another thought, another new influence. So if you give stuff away, it leaves an you know, in other words, I have an idea on how to do a haircut, and I can either say, is my haircut? I’m going to hold on to it. I’m never going to tell anybody how I do it. You’re going to get so engrossed with only having that that that’s all you’ll become consumed with, and you don’t have room for another thought. But if you give it away, it frees that space up in your brain, in your universe, universe abhors a vacuum and will pour other ideas into your brain. So that’s the biggest thing that I’ve learned along the way, is just, if you learn something, give it away, even if it’s giving it away for free.

Kelly Cardenas 41:00
Yeah, that’s, that’s massive. Then see, again, you should just clip that out. That’s, that’s perfect, right there. Every kid you know, every kid that’s coming into the business, every person who’s been in the business for 10 years, 20 years, and Solana, Owner, anybody that listens to your podcast, which is the whole industry, they should clip those things out and literally listen to Chris every day, like it just make life so much easier.

Chris Baran 41:25
Yeah, listen. If I ever have a down day, I’m just gonna come back and listen to this podcast myself. If you could call my wife up every once in a while and just say a couple of things that listen to Chris. You know, that’s

Kelly Cardenas 41:37
what I’m saying. I mean that those kind of things. But this is, this was the message yesterday, right? And I think I told you, this was, you know, the message the when I spent time with God yesterday, was listen and pay attention. But the part that’s in listen is that you have to seek to be able to listen to whatever you’re seeking. You will hear but just because you hear it and you listen to it doesn’t mean that you apply it, you have to pay attention, meaning that you have to exchange something of value that you have, whether it be your time or your money or your energy, to actually apply that thing. And when you start paying attention to things that Chris says, when you start paying attention to those things, meaning that you sacrifice and you put in and you have skin in the game, not only just listening to his words, but applying them. And then what I would do with Chris is I would bring him back after I listened to his podcast, Chris, I would bring back what you said, and then I would apply it, and then I bring you back the results. And you know what you would do, Chris, every single day, you would actually start reaching out to me, asking me if you could mentor me. Because, I sought you, I listened to you, I paid attention, I applied it, brought it back. That is the key. If you want any mentor, if you want a mentor like Chris, because Chris is a wealth of wisdom, but also he gets honored like you get honored when someone brings back and says, Hey, Chris, that haircut that you showed me on Instagram, I did it, and I made $1,000 more this this last month, and I was more efficient. Now you’re going to actually seek out that person, because that’s the person who paid attention, listened and paid attention. So that’s was the message yesterday. Yeah.

Chris Baran 43:17
And you know what I what I’m loving, that you’re doing is, you know? I mean, first of all, I’m blushing. But the second part that I really want to hear, because I want to, I’m going to go back to what your dad said to you when you put your hands in the air, when you put them on the top of your head, when you put them behind your back, he said to you one critical thing. He says, what did that mean to you? What did you take away out of that? You know? And I think that’s the key part is that when people do that and they get something from it, they’ve got to ask themselves, what, what did it mean to them? What’s their true takeaway? Yeah, you know. And I think that’s the, that’s the brilliant part in this. And I want to also say there what, whatever Kelly said in there, that you can exchange the word Chris with Kelly, you know, because that’s, that’s that has that same vibe, that same feeling.

Kelly Cardenas 44:05
So I do, I do it, Chris and I just did it. I’ll tell you this. There’s a guy that lives in my neighborhood. His name is George, and George, if you’re listening, I’m going to send you this clip, so you’ll listen. George is an incredible human being, one of the very first in in data processing, like, literally, in the 80s, he started in data processing, and so he was on the forefront of it. Created an amazing consulting company that was wrapped around that very successful guy, you know, has since, you know, moved on to doing whatever he wants to do because he was so successful. I have been doing consulting in my life. Well, I want to get better, because he has more wisdom than me, more experience all those things. So I said, Hey, George, do you have three minutes and 28 seconds? I’ve got two questions for you. He responded with a laughing emoji, and he was like, three minutes and 28 seconds? What do you mean? And I said, No, I’ll be done in three minutes and 28 Seconds. I got two questions for you. Would you be willing to answer the question? He said, absolutely. I go over to his house, I ask him the two questions, I time it, and then we get done with our discussion, and I bring him back the results. When I brought him back the results, George the other day asked me, Hey, Kelly, when’s the next time we’re going to do a time where we sit down? That’s the way you get any mentor in life, yeah. But you got to ask very specific questions. You got to put a timeframe on it, generally, make it a weird timeframe, and then bring them listen to it, apply it no matter what they said, and then bring them back the results. And I tell you, you will open doors that will be unreal.

Chris Baran 45:39
Yeah. And I’m hesitating here because I’m writing notes, because this is, this is good stuff, and because I think that’s, you know, you hit the nail on the head there. Because if you don’t prove to your mentor that you’re doing something with it, then it becomes a waste of their time and yours, yeah, you know. And and mentors, people that have made it through success, and they’ve walked the dark side of the street. I just say that meaning they’ve screwed up more than they more than you have as the mentor or as the mentee. If that is, in fact, a word. But the if you don’t show them the results, then you’re it’s just a waste of time. So and I find that most people in the industry, if they walked up to you and said, Hey, can I have three minutes, 28 seconds of your life? They’d give you that and more. But the fact that you went, I’m going to be so specific, and I respect your time so much I’m setting a timer,

Kelly Cardenas 46:37
yeah, well, and also to make sure that you have a certain amount of questions, and they’re very specific questions. So if you want to mentor, this is not the way to get it. Can I pick your brain? No, it doesn’t sound like it feels good. I don’t like that. It feels weird. And that’s like, it’s so vague. But if you get once you get into the specific part, it’s like when you call style someone’s name, like, if I said George, George, George, George to you. You wouldn’t answer. The only time you answer is when I say your name, and that’s because it’s very specific and it’s catered to you, Chris. So when I say, Chris, can I have two minutes and 24 seconds? I just did this this morning. Arrested Development. The band, they have the one of the top 500 songs in the world ever in Tennessee. Tennessee was one of the top five songs in our top 500 songs in the world. Well, the guitarist, who has been the guitarist for 20 years. His name is JJ boogie. He was just on my podcast. Now he’s one of my friends. I forced him to be that for the rest of his life. And I did this this morning. Before we got on the podcast, I reached out to him. I had some challenges with my studio, with sound, and I said, Hey, JJ, can I call you for one minute and 27 seconds? I’ve got one question about sound. You know how he responded? Absolutely, yeah, you can have access to whoever you want. And what I would suggest is find mentors outside the industry, because they will teach you things like study the hospitality industry. I studied. You know who Isador sharp is? Do you know who that is? No, I don’t. Isador sharp was the founder of The Four Seasons. He’s the godfather of hospitality. Now, I’ve never got a chance to meet him, but I read his book, and then we patterned our salon, not after the salon down the street. When we had them, we patterned it after the four seasons, because I wanted the Four Seasons guest to be in my spot. Yeah, I think sometimes we study too much of our own stuff, and then we just regurgitate the same stuff over and over again. Go study the restaurant industry. Go study, you know, Michael Mina is a huge inspiration to me, and I utilize things from them with the four seasons. The Four Seasons, I don’t know if you probably know this, Chris, but at the Four Seasons, when you go to dinner there, if you’re wearing black, they give you a black napkin so you don’t get lint on your clothes. These little details are things that a four seasons client is looking for when they come into your salon, you know what else they do? When they serve you iced tea, they serve you iced tea with iced tea ice cubes, so as it melts, it doesn’t water down your iced tea. Wow. But I would only learn that by studying things that are outside of my industry, I learned about the music in the in the hospitality industry, or even in the in the in the restaurant industry. My friend Patrick umel, who is the partner with Michael Mina, one of the top celebrity chefs in the world, what he taught me about music was this, most salons choose music based off of the way that the team feels and what they like. What he taught me was music needs to be non lyrical, non recognizable. That way it doesn’t evoke a positive or negative emotion to anyone walking in the place. And let me. Tell you why I had a woman come in when we first opened, our very first salon. Woman sits down, our our radio goes or our six disc CD changes. That’s how long ago it was, it goes out. So the only thing that I have at the time is Apple radio. That’s, this is way back in the day I chose a Christian station because you can’t get offended by a Christian station. There’s not going to be cuss words. You can to be cuss words. You could just, you know you’re okay. So I walk back, the lady’s getting her hair done, and she hears this song. She’s like, Oh my gosh, this is me and my son song. And I said, Oh, wow, that’s so cool, right? I turn around, I turn back to her, she’s dead, crying, like, I mean, gushing, like, ugly crying. And I said, is every Is everything okay? And she said, yeah, it’s just the song. And I said, Oh, you just said that that was your son song. She said he died yesterday. So I want you to understand that the details inside the salon that a lot of times we’re arguing with the next stylist, I like country, I like hip hop, I like EDM. It doesn’t matter that music should be non recognizable, it should be non lyrical, or should be foreign, where a person only hears it in your place, and it becomes in the background and it evokes no emotion at all. But we can only learn that when we start to step outside of what we do and we start to glean from the friends that we have, does that make sense? That’s why you’re such a genius like you’re bringing educate. I watch your, watch your, your Instagram, your Instagram relates things to you. Relate here to other things. Sometimes we get so focused in and we just go inside of our own bubble. But honestly, like all of your clients that sit in your chair, they all go to restaurants, they go to four seasons, they go to Ritz Carlton, and if you don’t know how to service them at the same level, they’re going to find someone who does, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Baran 51:53
It’s, you know, it’s really and it’s even getting so much more than just, well, I guess it all entails it. There’s this big buzzword that’s going around our industry right now about a positive experience. And I think that’s the that’s all part of the game, isn’t it? Yeah, it’s, it’s, how can you make it more positive?

Kelly Cardenas 52:12
Or, well, Isadore, Isadore sharp said this. He said, I give my employees an unlimited budget to make people happy. Wow, wow. And here was, here was the thing that blew me away. He said, from the porter to the front desk person to the manager, they all have the authority to completely comp the stay and do whatever they see as fit to make sure that client is happy. Yeah, and a lot of people pushed back on him and said, Well, that’s going to mean that people are going to give the stuff away for free. No, they valued it. No one was doing it, but they knew they had the power to do it. Have you given your people the power to be able to innovate, the freedom to be able to innovate and say this system that we have that’s nothing more than a list of our screw ups. Have you give them, given them the freedom to switch it if it doesn’t work anymore, and if you don’t haven’t, then your culture is not alive. And if your culture is dead, it’s just a bunch of, you know, words on a placard, and that’s what where most people fail inside their cultures is because they say no, it’s a list of these rules, no, no, it’s got to be living, breathing, and it’s got to be constantly evolving. Amazing.

Chris Baran 53:28
You know? It’s so what I love about that, because I think in our industry, we’re all visual, we we’re all creatives. And it’s so what your message there was, and what his message was is so anti corporate because empty corporates budget, everything’s budget. It’s all, how does this match the numbers? Accountability to numbers. Everything’s got to meet and match the numbers. I’m sure they, you know it, if it wasn’t working, then they shift quickly. But the fact that people aren’t taking them up on the freebies, because the people are empowered and have that autonomy to do things. I think that’s the critical part in there, absolutely.

Kelly Cardenas 54:07
Well, I think, I mean, as it goes to, I mean, to understand your productivity, though, like that, that’s a big thing. I mean, I we go back to relationships, right? So I did, did this. I have a friend who I went to high school with and him and his wife created a company called Tiny Prince. It’s like Shutterfly, but they sold it to Shutterfly for, like, 350 million. Well, he’s a very successful guy, right? Yeah, he’s very successful. I mean, I think it was more than that or less than that, whatever it is. I’m not going to tell you his name, but because he doesn’t like his name to be out there, but he did and and then there was another guy, his name is Luke jacobellis, who happened to be the president of Paul Mitchell. And so I sent out the exact same text to both of them, and it said, you know, I’ve, I’ve got to the point in my business where my profit margin, I’ve capped it out. But I want to know more. I want to know more about financials. I want to know more about my panels. I want to understand a. Better profit margin and grow my business at a higher level than both of you have, and I so I wrote this text out. Would would you be open to mentoring me in that arena? I wasn’t as specific, but I sent the text out to both of them. Only one person responded, and it was Luke jacobellis, who happened to be the president of Paul Mitchell, and took Paul Mitchell from a couple of million dollars a year to over multi billions a year. Okay, so he has a little bit of background. Yeah, he responded within 15 minutes. He said, Absolutely, just send me your numbers, and we’ll send me your numbers every quarter, and we’ll go over your numbers. And I was like, Holy crap. Like this just happened, right? So you shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, but I did, Chris, and I don’t even know what that’s why they said that. I think it’s because the teeth, that’s the reason why. But I shouldn’t have done this, but I did. I reached back out, and I was like, Luke, you are like the man. Why would you respond to me? You got so many people reaching out to you, his response was like that. And you know what it was? I responded because no one’s ever asked me that. Wow. And then he sat with me for two years. Every quarter I sent him my PNLs, and he would ask me questions, and I got mentorship from the president of Paul Mitchell. And at the time, we had four locations or five locations, he took our profit margin. Now, the national average, as you know, is anywhere from four to 6% so let’s call it 5% in the salon. That’s the national average of profit margin. Ours was higher because we were very strict and militant in our culture. But he took us to 25 to 28% profit. That’s five times ing, the national average, because he spent time with me, and he only spent time with me because I asked. And so this was unbelievable, like when I sent back the numbers to him and I said, you know, we hit 28% there was a couple of times where we hit over 30 and 30% in the salon. When you and I are talking, I’m seeing your reaction right now. I’m watching your reaction. That’s not common, but it’s unheard of, and it was sustainable, and it was sustainable, and we sustained it, and it was unbelievable, like it was so incredible, but it was because of a friend. Luke jacobellis, still to this day, is my friend. I made it. I met him because, you know, I worked with Paul Mitchell for years, but I met him at a show, and I didn’t know who he was. And I, you know, he’s standing off to the side. He’s a really cool guy. And he’s like, you know, he walks over and someone said, Luke. And I was like, Hey, Luke, what up? And I high fived him. I was like, bro, hugging him and stuff. I didn’t even know who he was, and, and I said, Ah, you know, Luke, you’re the man. And he just got a laugh. He’s very, you know, chill guy. And then we got kind of comfortable, and probably too comfortable for I was, got too comfortable. I was like, oh, Luke, you’re the shit. He just kind of looked at me, and then he high five, and then, like, five minutes later,

Kelly Cardenas 58:20
he turns to me, and he’s like, remember, Kelly, I got the shit. And I was like, no, no, that’s not what I said, Luke. So it was that connection point, right? And this is when I was a little kid. I mean, it was probably 25 years old. I was in New York. It was at IBS, and that’s the interaction. But we stayed friends throughout, and then years later, when I left after I left a Robert Crom salon and I started my own company. Then I asked him this, and he takes my my company from to 28 or 25 to 28% profit across five locations consistently. And he does it simply by asking me questions, but I only had access. Only had access because of a relationship. Yeah, membership gets you privileges. Relationships grant you access, yeah,

Chris Baran 59:07
that I love that. Membership gives you privileges. Membership gives you access.

Kelly Cardenas 59:13
No privileges, privileges, yeah, and relationships grant you access.

Chris Baran 59:17
Relationships gives you access. Love that, yeah, well, you know. And I think we just did, like, almost a complete cycle right there, from talking to beginning to right now, yeah, and Kelly, I just this has been, I mean, it’s been just a joy. We have to have more of these. I want to have you back in again and that aside, even if that never happens. If something happens to me tomorrow and I never get to do this again, you and I are going to connect and and just spend an evening together having some shits and giggles. So I just want to very quickly go through with a rapid fire that we have at the end of this, just real quick, first thing that comes to your brain,

Kelly Cardenas 59:59
Chris, before you. Do it. Can I? Can I tell you something? Because I you asked me about the stage stuff. It was, again, that was relationship. So I was in, I was in beauty school. There was a woman who I used to just, basically just ask her questions all the time. And she was an administrator. She showed me a picture of a blonde headed woman. She said, if you do anything in your career, follow this woman. She showed me the picture. I didn’t know who the woman was. I went to the Long Beach hair show because I won a contest to be able to go. I searched out the woman because she told me to do it. I searched her out that blonde headed woman had a guy on stage that was talking about everybody else, and he never talked about himself. And he was super charismatic, and it was incredible. But I kept following the woman. But I really got, like, attracted to what the guy was doing. He was amazing. That woman turned out to be Gene braugh. That guy turned out to be Robert Crome, and that guy, later on, became my boss after me, chasing after him for two and a half years, going everywhere in the country, sitting in the front row, passing in my card and telling him my name is Kelly Cardenas, he relented and gave me a job. When I got that job, which was I took a $62,000 pay cut to take that job and move across the country to work with him for less than minimum wage. Was just $5 an hour at the time. I didn’t realize it, but when we were on the second floor, and when I took the job my first day of work, he said, Can you pop down below to the distributorship? Because we need some product. I popped down and the blonde headed woman. Jean bro was on the bottom floor in the with her distributorship called mainline. So I was then working for the guy that worked with the woman, and then the woman was right below, and we gained a relationship over time with Jean. Now, Jean is grandma, Jean to my kids. And for those of you don’t know, Gene Braw was the muse for Paul Mitchell. Paul Mitchell was the artistic director for Vidal Sassoon. So it went Vidal, it went John or Paul Mitchell. Then it went gene broad, then it went Robert CRO means and then I became Robert CRO means guy. So, and that was all just relationship, so, and it was listening to a mentor. My mentor was that administrator. Had she not showed me that picture, it wouldn’t have, like, my life wouldn’t have gone the way. So, you know, it’s, it’s those little things over and over again. You never know where someone’s from. You never know where you’re where they’re going, and you never know where you’re going to meet up with them again, make friends out of everyone. And I’m glad that you’re my friend.

Chris Baran 1:02:19
Chris, yeah, well, that’s that is mutual. And I’m gonna ask a huge, can I ask a huge favor if, can you ask Grandma Jean if she would come on our podcast?

Kelly Cardenas 1:02:31
100% I’ll call her right. I’ll call her right when we’re done.

Chris Baran 1:02:34
Yeah, that would be because she’s been one of my hair heroes for the years, and what she did for the industry, oh, my God.

Kelly Cardenas 1:02:41
And, you know, unbelievable. She’s, she’s got a cause right now. And, you know, can I tell you a quick story about her? Yeah, okay, so when I was, when I came to work with Robert, I was already associate for Paul Mitchell. I had got certified and but when I came to work with him, everyone thought that I was just Robert’s boy, and that’s the reason why I was getting to work with Paul Mitchell at the time. So Robert said, You need to go back through the Associate Program, even though I had already certified for it, just to show all the people that you’re not just getting nepotism because you’re my guy. Yeah, so I went through it, and it happened to be at Jean’s mainline distributorship. Well, they asked to give like, I had to stand up and give a presentation, and you had to give a presentation based off of the things that you were reading, or whatever it was. Well, at the time, the only thing that I was reading was the Bible, like I was just reading proverbs every day, right? I started that practice about 30 years ago. So I made some references to Proverbs, and, you know, made some references like Moses and stuff like that, like metaphorically, Jean snatched my tail, pulled me in her office, and she said, You cannot talk about that, blah, blah. And she went at me, like, really, really hard. And I was like, freaked out. This is my, you know, this is the most iconic woman in the world, and she’s telling me this. I was freaked out. And she was like, you can’t talk about God, you can’t and I was like, okay, you know, whatever. Okay. She was involved in a lot of stuff, crystals, New Age stuff, all the things at the time, and that’s the reason why it offended her. And I was like, I didn’t mean to offend you. About five years later, we’re at the House of Blues at Downtown Disney, and we’re doing a hair show. She’s there, she pulls me outside, and I was like, Damn, I’m gonna get in trouble again. She pulled me outside and she said, I just want to let you know that I want to apologize to you. I have recently given my heart to the Lord, and that conversation that we had caused a lot of conviction in my heart for the things that I was doing. And now I’m a believer, and I understand why you were talking about what you’re talking about, and you exposed me to something that gave me a completely do look on life, and it created a relationship with her, and I and her, her and her husband do a lot of great work, and they work with their church. And what’s crazy is one of the ladies from her church came in, well, they don’t know who Jean is. Like, really, really who Jean is. And I asked her, I asked the woman who went to her church, I said, Do you know who Jean is? And she’s like, Hey. Jean so nice. She’s so nice. I said, No, do you know who she is? And she’s like, Oh, she’s she’s amazing. She she actually operates the video camera at our church. I was like, do you understand how much your your church would have to pay for one of the greatest artists of all time? And she’s like, Well, what do you mean? I was like, Are you? And so I sat down and I told her, and but the woman still didn’t get it. And Jean is existing in the community right now, and she is not. She doesn’t talk about all the things in the iconic part. So for you, having her on the podcast, honestly, like it’s gonna be, it’s gonna be fire, I’m gonna make, I’ll make sure that it happens. Yeah, you

Chris Baran 1:05:37
know what? You know, what might even be interesting is if we could gather some of the people whose life she was, life she affected, and have her on and then have other people like yourself come on and pay homage to her, that would, I think that would be, would you? Would you help me organize that 100% man?

Kelly Cardenas 1:06:00
I mean, like, literally, like, my whole career, my whole career, my whole existence, you know, in the professional beauty industry is because of her like, and the fact that my kids don’t even know, they don’t know the the the the iconic statics of gene, they just know Grandma Jean. So my my son, he was having a really big challenge with his hip. Well, her husband is one of the top orthopedic surgeons in the world. And I called Grandma Jean and I said, you know it can grandpa Dean just talk to him or whatever? We went and you can’t get to grandpa Dean, like you can’t get to this guy. But Grandma Jean and Grandpa Dean said, Come over the house. And my son sat on the couch, and he worked with his hip, and he helped him to understand, like, Where was coming from. And this has come from one of the top orthopedic surgeons in the world. But again, it goes back to relationship. You don’t have access to that stuff. Like, I mean, nobody does like, he doesn’t. He’s retired. He doesn’t do that anymore, and to have access to him while he was working. He’s one of the top in the world at that. You know what I’m saying? So I tell you, like relationship, relationship, relationship, like the connection points. I mean, the only reason why I’m coming to spec. Do you know that? Do you know why I’m coming? Why is that? I believe her name is Jessica? I could be wrong on this. I believe her name is Jessica. Jessica was went to school in Provo. In Provo in the early 2000s I volunteered to speak at Paul Mitchell schools. Everyone told me it was career suicide because I was just volunteering my time. I volunteered my time Chris for 11 years, doing 20 to 25 schools a year that I would just volunteer my time. After that, 11 years win, called me and said, there’s 20 people that got chosen to be able to get paid to go into Paul Mitchell schools, and you’re one of them. And then people started calling me after that and asking, like, how can you get into Paul Mitchell schools and teach? And I said, Well, you got to start, you know, 11 years ago, and go to 25 they were like, no, no, I’m not talking about volunteering. I’m talking about getting paid. Well, when I did that early on, volunteered, went up to Provo there was a little girl who was going to beauty school. That girl enjoyed the message. That girl, about two years ago, got hired with spec. When spec was looking for a keynote speaker, she said, I know the guy. We hadn’t talked in 25 years. Wow, on my 50th birthday. On no lie on my 50th birthday, I’m in Hawaii celebrating my 50th birthday. That’s when I got the email from you guys to say we would like you to come and speak, but see at that time, like that wouldn’t have happened had it not been for her, and she’s going to be in the audience at spec this whole thing. Imagine this. There was a seed of relationship planted 25 years ago, and it took 25 years to sprout. Wow, you never know. You never, never know. And you and I get to reunite because I’m coming to spec, but that’s because of a relationship that happened 2025, years ago. Amazing.

Chris Baran 1:09:16
You know what? This is? Way better than any rapid fire that I could have done.

Kelly Cardenas 1:09:25
Fire, man, let’s do it.

Chris Baran 1:09:26
I want to say that I’m gonna have you back again, and I’m gonna save that again. And because I want to talk more about this, because I think that your messages needs to be even there’s so much you have that we need to we need to chat more about if

Kelly Cardenas 1:09:39
it’s not Jessica, like, if it’s not Jessica, ask Anthony, because ask her or ask him.

Chris Baran 1:09:45
I believe it’s Jessica. I believe I’m gonna write that down on my notes here.

Kelly Cardenas 1:09:49
I’m almost positive. But if it’s not, I apologize to her, because I want to honor you. Because here’s the thing, though, what God was doing in those 25 years Number one, he. I like I was working with Robert Crome Salon at that time, and then I built through Robert Cromie salon. Then I built my own company, and then six years ago, when my wife asked me on a dog walk, what do you want to do when you grow up? I said, I just want to do the podcast, and I want to just, I just want to speak, Chris. I told you yesterday I didn’t take my audience, so I didn’t tell anyone in the professional beauty industry that what I was doing. I just went cold and I went like no one could find me, and I went into an industry where no one knew what I was doing, but it was the preparation. So when spec hired me, they didn’t hire me as Kelly, the hairdresser that owned salons. They hired me as Kelly, the keynote speaker that honestly speaks in all other industries, pretty much, except the professional beauty industry right now, that preparation had to sit, it had to sit, and it was perfect. I mean, 25 imagine if a person texted you today, or you texted someone and you did, they didn’t respond for three days, you’ll be like, I can’t believe it, but imagine if you texted them today and they didn’t respond for 25 years. That’s what happened with this situation, and that’s how God blesses things. But we don’t know all the things, but we what I want to encourage you is that he’s working on your behalf, like, even if when you can’t see it, even when you’re in the darkest times and you’re in the valley, he’s working on your behalf, and he is working on building relationships around you that will bless you unimaginably. So make friends as much as you can.

Chris Baran 1:11:35
Yeah, and be a good peeps. You know that’s really critical being a good person. And speaking of good persons, you, Kelly, you have acquired not only new friend, but a new best friend. And I want to spend more time with you. But what’s so important right now is just from everything that you shared. You know how important that was to everybody else. And I just, from the bottom my heart, just want to say, thank you. It was a blessing that to have you on here, and the people that are going to listen and watch this are going to be blessed just from your message. And I want to say thank you from the bottom of my

Kelly Cardenas 1:12:09
heart. You got it, man. Thank you so much.

Chris Baran 1:12:13
Absolute pleasure, and we will connect. And I want to, I want you’re going to help me organize that with Gene

Kelly Cardenas 1:12:20
absolutely All right, take care, brother. Thank you.

Chris Baran 1:12:26
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.