ep96 – Dr Leon Alexander

Welcome to another episode of Headcases. My guest got his start at Vidal Sassoon, where he quickly rose through the ranks of the organization to General Manager. To top that he went on to run no fewer than 320 salons in the UK. He launched AVD Cosmetics and grew it to $40 million in sales. He founded Eurisko Design, focused on crafting spaces to meet consumers’ emotional as well as functional needs. With a doctorate in behavioural psychology, he has given TED Talks and been featured as a speaker at major industry events. You may know his books “A Window Into The Consumer’s Mind”, and “From Comfort to Growth”. His mission is to elevate the thinking from owning a salon to owning a business, and I wholeheartedly agree. Let’s get into this week’s Headcase, Dr Leon Alexander.

• 4:01 – Early career and business ventures
• 24:52 – Challenges and opportunities in the beauty industry
• 36:33 – Adapting to change and embracing technology
• 1:01:06 – Personal insights and industry reflections
• For a free copy of his book “From Comfort to Growth”, message Dr Leo Alexander through Facebook or Instagram and tell him you heard about it here on Headcases

Complete Transcript

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

Well, my friends, welcome to another episode of head cases, and I particularly loved having this conversation today with my guest. He was originally from London, England, and he began his career at videl sassoons, and he quickly became the salon organizations general manager. He went on to acquire and run and catch this a collection of 320 salons in the UK. He launched AVD cosmetics, and grew it to over and again. Another check this out, $40 million in sales and 2006 he launched Eurisko design with a vision of designing spaces around the emotional needs of the consumer and accommodating the functionality of service. His educational background is, and I don’t know if we have to call him doctor or not, yet, is includes a doctorate degree in behavioral psychology. He has been the keynote speaker, including ISPA, Intercoiffure, ISBN, Aveda, Congress, serious business and euphora. His business presentations included, now, I don’t know many people that have TED talks, but he has, and he was on TED talk with “Why people Buy”, The ultimate consumer location, creative and lateral thinking, “A window into consumer’s mind”, “The future of the beauty industry”, and “It’s time for a new business model”. He’s also the author of a window into the consumer’s mind, and from Comfort to Growth. His primary objective is to elevate the level of thinking from owning a salon to owning a business, and I agree wholeheartedly. So let’s get into this week’s head case. Mr. Or shall I say? Dr, Leon Alexander, well, Leon, it is an absolute pleasure to have you and welcome to head cases. I am super excited about having this conversation.

Dr Leon Alexander 2:20
Thank you. Thank you. And so you were saying,

Chris Baran 2:23
you said you were just got back from tell me about in beforehand, we were saying you just got back from an island somewhere. What is

Dr Leon Alexander 2:31
that? I was in Malta, and then went to an article called gozo, which was absolutely picturesque, really, moved to London and got a little bit of culture, and I got back yesterday. So I’m a little dry of mouth. Let’s put it that way.

Chris Baran 2:48
And I’m sure that I’m not sure how long you were gone for, but I know anytime that I’m gone for any period of time, the right about now is the time where sometimes the eyes will go and start to close on you, etc. So i i Thank you so much for committing to this, even at the the jet lag that may or may not be hitting you right now, and if it needs some alcohol to keep it going, that’s okay with that, too. So listen, the last time I think when I saw you was we met at ronit’s conference in Florida, and I saw you speak there, and so I got a little bit of your background, etc. But, like, I always like to start with the hair story. So like, how you know, how did you get into hair? I know a bit of your history from when you talked about it, but just so our listeners and viewers can understand your side and how you got into hair?

Dr Leon Alexander 3:42
Well, I I started off studying behavioral psychology, and I joined Vidal Sassoon in 1969 as a Vader. And a vader is someone that doesn’t get paid, but watches, and I was there for about 11 years, and I worked my way up to General Manager across the suits,

Chris Baran 4:07
of which I will hope you were getting paid and not a varder anymore. Yes, I

Dr Leon Alexander 4:10
did. Yes, it was in the first six months I wasn’t getting paid. And what that taught me, and what Vidal taught me, was the pursuit of excellence, passion, hard work, dedication, to be different, not follow the trends. Think of what the competition are doing. Do completely the opposite. And it’s at that time in 1980 when sassoons went heavy on product. So I decided I needed a fresh challenge, and I, with a partner, decided to acquire salons in United Kingdom. The problem was I had no money. I. That’s, that’s a problem.

Chris Baran 5:02
We just we Yeah,

Dr Leon Alexander 5:05
so I knew that salons I wanted to acquire, and they were company called Raymond. And Raymond invented tzweezy back home. Yep, it was past its sell by date. There were 50s company, but still prestigious name. They were all L’Oreal. And I had a good relationship with sains from with Wella. And I went to Wella and said, If you lend me the money, interest free, I’ll move them all over to Wella. And they did. And that then gave me another opportunity of another group called Andre Bernard, and they were in department stores. They were not high end, but they were middle of the road department stores. A lot of women went to department stores in those days. I did the same thing. They were Schwarzkopf. Then I went back to Wella had another opportunity for you, and they lent me the money to acquire it interest free. And I kept on doing that for five different companies until we ended up only 320 salons at one time. But we kept the culture of the names of each one, and I kept the person running it because they knew the culture. So you could go into a town, to use an example, like Dallas, and we would have five salons there, all aimed at socio economic groupings and different types of individuals. The economy changed in Britain. Interest rates went right up, and I saw this as a time to make a change. And I had add an offer from L’Oreal because they were losing market share to Weller, but integrity comes in. And they gave me an offer, and I took it to Wella and said, Look, I don’t want you to beat this offer, but if you just match it, you’ve got first refusal, because I wouldn’t have been where I am today without you helping me. And they did, and they acquired the silence. It was at that time I met an individual who was had a wonderful essence about him, and I asked him what it was. Now, no idea. It’s 93 and he said it was, it was AVEDA, and he had this aftershave, which I thought was very natural. So I did a bit of research, and two people had been to Horst in Minneapolis to say, if you give me the distribution, I’ll make a lot of money for you. Well, they didn’t get the distribution, which led to me, that’s not what he was into. So I did a lot of research, and I went with my partner and said, If you give me the distribution, I’ll make sure your message is in every bathroom in the United Kingdom, so that his environmental message was that way. Cut a long story short, we did the Walt Disney thing. Think of what the competition is doing. Do it completely opposite. We didn’t go into sounds. We went into department stores. We went into a 30 house of Fraser stores, Harrods, Harvey, Nichols, liberties, and learned how to retail, yeah, and then went into salons to say, Well, I’m not going to show you from a manual how to retail. Let me take you and show you how to retail. Always better to show someone than tell someone. So we then launched into salons in United Kingdom and went into Ireland and Hungary and different places in Europe as well. The year was 1997 now, four years later, Esther Lauder acquired evader, AVEDA and they they wanted London as prestige, and they they bought out our company. I then went to Minneapolis at a distributor meeting and met a gentleman there called Edwin Neil, who invited me to be a consultant to Neil Corporation in 97 I joined in 97 and I basically said, I don’t want to do what you’ve got. I want to see what you’ve not done. And had all these Aveda products on shelves that salons had designed, desks and glass shelves on wooden shelf. Dollars. There was no corporate identity to the brand. The products were good, but you you have to have an environmental psychology to market these. And so I went and designed a collection of furniture for AVEDA, and then realize nobody wants furniture. They want to sell the products through and put together foundations for them, shelf talkers, graphics, lighting, etc, and to subliminally be in a buying environment. I broke away because it became cookie cutter for me, I needed more creativity in 2006 to launch Eurisko design with a view of designing space around the emotions of the consumer, accommodating the functionality of certain that brings you to where I am today.

Chris Baran 11:00
Wow. I mean, that’s a hell of a ride, and I want to just go back for a second, because what I hear, I sort of hear this common element of what’s the meaning of a company and what’s the culture within the salon. And what I was so impressed with was when you were talking about when you acquired all the salons is that each one stayed true to its own culture. So I hear that from I have a really good friend. I’m not sure if you were familiar with with all the chatters chain out throughout Canada and the US. And Ken was a, is a very good friend of mine. And he said that that as soon as this acquisition company bought the chatters group, that it immediately changed, and they lost a lot of their people, because that’s what can often happen, is people come in and all probably with all great intention, want to help to grow profit, but they lose the culture? How did you see that that was something to be there? What was the insight that you saw that that had to stay well,

Dr Leon Alexander 12:10
they had been established operations for many, many years, and the CEO was influenced in doing that. So I retained the CEO on on an interest of the business, to keep him involved in it, and that way, I relied upon him to continue that culture. The advantage was, was this, we didn’t dramatically grow the business. We dramatically grew the bottom line. And the reason being, we’ve got five or six corporations. You don’t need six corporate offices. You don’t need six secretaries to greet them at the corporate office. You don’t need six capital equipment. So we amalgamated all of the corporate offices into one building that cut overheads dramatically and increased profit tremendously because we you can’t. If you’ve got 320 sounds with different cultures, you can’t. The only way you can really grow is price increase or expand organically. But you can grow profit by cutting back on overheads that are unnecessary, and we and we made a dramatic change in having one corporate office so I could meet with all of the we call them managing directors at the same building.

Chris Baran 13:57
That’s amazing, you know. And here’s one thing that I I find this so intriguing in our business is the the bells and whistles and the shiny object, the shiny button always tends to be the skill, the balayage, the haircut, the style, the whatever and and so often, the lesser shiny button is the business side. You know about getting getting people on a business plan, being able to function your business so it’s profitable and the culture stays there, etc. And just to give you a stand this track of that sometimes, you know, people can hear, Oh, they’re going to talk about business, and they’ll go, I want to find the next shiny button in our industry, because we have so many visual people, there’s always that the bells and the whistles are attracted better, which means, you know, if somebody is they have a. A balayage that they see in anything, and they want to learn how to do that, or there’s a haircut, or whatever, a styling thing, and that’s, that’s the shiny object that we always tend to go for. And yet, yet, when, if people want to be truly successful at what they want to do, and they want to be able to have money when they’re at the end of their career, and and I know, because I was the same way at the beginning, and I had to fight like hell to make sure that I had a living at the end of it. And I think that business is the one thing that always tends to get the back seat and when yet that if you want to truly be successful at what you have and to be able to have things for your family at the end of the day, it’s really about how you do it. It’s not just this shingle that you have outside. And just as a point of that is that sometimes business gets that lame wrap that, oh, well, that’s not so interesting. Therefore I’m not going to study it or be a part of it. But I was watching on TV this morning, as I always like to do my mindless time as I make myself a weak cup of tea and I watch the news or whatever is going on, and it was, and I was looking at the local channel, and they had on a guy that was that they brought on to talk about, I believe it was car insurance. And if you talk about how to save money on car insurance, was probably, in my mind, probably one of the least things that I would have wanted to see in the morning. But when they introduced them, they said, look, it is. It is about saving money. But, and this is probably a very boring subject, but you have 300,000 people that subscribe to you on how to save money and car insurance, and that got me to thinking about, when we were doing this podcast today, is that everything that you’ve done is made successful businesses, or taking somebody that was successful and making them even greater than they thought They could be. And sometimes when you talk about, excuse me, business plans and being able to have foresight and planning and all of that in our industry, it can sometimes take a back seat, you know, because it’s seen as it’s not the big shiny button. And what I’d like to do is just tell me what’s your take on that, and how would you what would you say to the salon owner that just looking for the big, shiny button, not about their business, or the booth rent person, or even the stylist that’s listening to this program that say, what? Why should like? Why is it business so important to me, or even at whatever stage I’m at? Why is that so important? Well,

Dr Leon Alexander 17:42
I’ve always believed that you don’t own a salon, you own a business that happens to be in the beauty industry. Bingo, right? So the level of financial success for a salon is determined by the foresight of the business model, the effectiveness of the business model is determined by the quality of the business plan, and the success of the business plan is determined by sheer courage and a total application to implement that plan. I have never relied on a business plan what I have, and I’ve used it on every business I’ve started. I’ve got a strategic blueprint. And a strategic blueprint is one sheet of paper on the left hand side I put my core purpose, my vision, my mission, my sustainable competitive advantage. What do I have? And what do I do that nobody else does, and it’s the same as my business. The next column I put in my resources, human resources, financial resources, technological resources, because if I don’t have that right, I can’t achieve my vision and mission. The next one I have are, what are my initiatives? I might have three or four initiatives I want to do this over what period of time. And then the next column, what are my strategies to ensure my initiatives are going to be successful? And the final column is, what are my key measurements? How do I measure that my initiatives and strategies have been successful. You see, we are in unusual times. This isn’t a time staying in a comfort zone. This is a time for a clear, concise application of a vision that is consumer centric. Profit and profit centric. That, to me, is a fundamental key, your expectancy. What do you expect? Determines outcome. If you change by changing your internal dialog, you can influence your chemistry and change the outcome. So that’s how, that’s how I kind of see it. I basically, I see them as businesses, and I make sure that I give myself every success for that to flourish and be profitable. I’m consumer driven and profit driven, so it’s designed around the emotions of the consumer, like Apple stores do accommodating the functionality of service

Chris Baran 20:53
in your excuse me, I love what you said about comfort, and that’s when I, you know, I’d mentioned earlier that some of the things that we do have similarities and differences, like your teach on business and how to grow businesses. You know, what I do is on training and on skill set, but invariably, and I’m just trying to listen to the people that are listening and watching and saying, Well, that sounds like a lot of business talk, but if you really look at it, all you’re doing is looking at, what do I have? What does a consumer have? Where do I meet in the middle? And how do I make sure that I grow? And there’s always that that fear and the comfort level that’s in their eye when I go into talk and teach, whether it’s a training skill or a teaching skill, there’s always that thing in the back of our brain, as we all know, that amygdala that sits in the back of our brain is always telling don’t do it. You’re going to get laughed at. It’s not going to work. You’re not worthy, etc. And there’s a quote in front and again, for the readers and what people are listening out there. You’ve got to get this, the book that he has called from comfort to growth. And inside there you wrote, you said, done properly, salon retail can serve the same important human needs as successful businesses outside our industry. And you went on to talk about how discomfort you about what you do and and how you do to or what you advise people to do, to get out and and risk, as opposed to just sit back and say you can’t do that. Let me just talk to that for a bit. I can,

Dr Leon Alexander 22:33
and I’ll relate it to the current situation in the industry. Currently, the beauty industry is in two distinct camps, those that believe they own or work in a salon, and another more enlightened camp, which accepts that societies move forward into the digital area. When you marry the two aspects of excellent service and great digital marketing, you’ve got a business model that has no place for legacy thinking in the annals of Salon history, we’re experiencing a mile marker that points to this unprecedented time, the period where our industry shifted off its traditional access. Change will not come if we wait for some other time, we are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change we seek. And and it’s all within our comfort zone. So we have to, we have to realize, to take that risk of the comfort zone at the core of every salon, every great salon that’s been successful, sits an ideology. You’re always one decision away from a totally different life and business, one decision away and people on the comfort zone. You say, Well, it’s impossible. I’ll be laughed at. Impossible is where logic thinking ends. Logical thinking and creative thinking begins. The World achievers have always been focused on the possible, and that’s what they’ve done. So you know, I just don’t call them salons. I call them businesses. Perhaps being unitary, words matter, they reinforce paradigms and perceptions. So stop calling them salons and see what happens. But also, soon never had the word Salon at the end of it, and Apple don’t have Apple computers and Starbucks don’t have Starbucks coffee anymore. They just have Starbucks. They’re just spaces where audience run, run with it, blow up the model. Have fun. Risk, reinvent you know, just don’t go down the traditional line and expect. Get extraordinary results, yeah, in order to get extraordinary results, you need extraordinary thinking and extraordinary application.

Chris Baran 25:12
You know, you’ve just sparked something in my brain, because I agree that we are in a huge shift and and I think even in your book, you talked about when covid hit, that it was, I think you went from it changed. It was a catalyst that changed the industry and and and traveling, I know, as you do, and I do and you see salons everywhere, businesses, I’m going to change my my terminology. When we go into their businesses, I find that while they might update or change their interiors, and sometimes the staff has changed or the client has changed, but yet I see the same 20 year old thinking, and I’m not all salons. I’m not lumping everybody into one area, but I see so many people that need help because their model that they have is still a 20 year old model of it’s my name on the shingle that’s outside the door, and this is the way I ran my business 20 years ago. And I want everybody, my staff and my customers, to conform to that

Dr Leon Alexander 26:20
right? Well, in following on from the comfort zone, and also, you said, Speak to stylists and and that, I just want to share something as an individual. As an individual, decide who you are and how you want to feel, then reject everything that doesn’t align with your choices. It’s as simple as that you’re you’re not likely to step outside of your comfort zone, into a discomfort, into your extremely uncomfortable with the comfort zone, the view you adopt about yourself profoundly affects the way you think. How you think affects the decisions you make and the way you lead your life. And the way you lead your life affects the vision and mindset of your salon business,

Chris Baran 27:18
yeah, yeah. I find the you said in your book, it’s an illusion that we are, I just wrote it down here. You were talking about positioning, and it’s an illusion that we’re alone, that we alone determine what we choose. And I think that really says to that, because, and you went on to say, All the details are part of something called choice architecture, and the way you talked about it, I went, Yeah, you know, I always think I was making a choice, but it wasn’t really just me. There was so many other things that affected me and the choice that I did make correct. Can you just talk to that and give us a little more on that?

Dr Leon Alexander 28:03
Well, the choices we make is a combination of things. It’s everything that’s happened in our life, in our schooling, in our parents. It’s it’s the group that we hang with and that then limits us to a certain direction in life. The choices we make on airlines, the choices we make on that is because of a combination of things, and we not really making those choices without the influence. When you walk in a room, you have 5% of cognizant and 95% of subconsciousness, and the reason being is that you have been exposed to commercials on TV. You’ve been exposed to things you’ve read in the paper or a book, or you’ve seen on the computer, and you bring with you into that room everything that you see. So your mind is 5% conscious and 95% subconscious. And that brings that into your business. It’s, it’s the risk factor, though, it’s it’s the quality of your son on business and your life is in direct proportion to the amount of risk and uncertainty you can comfortably live with. So that, that’s how I see it, that you we need to break the shackles and make sure that we are aware of, of the conscious decisions we’re making.

Chris Baran 29:46
So the people, I mean, because I think we’ve heard, people have started just look, just try something different. But I know that there’s people out there that are just saying, okay, yeah, and what I, you know, I think what, what I read. From what you wrote, would just had such a profound effect on me that if one of those people would say yeah, but yeah, because always that Yeah, but factor, yeah, but, you know, that’s okay. That works for you. And yeah, but, you know, I tried that before. But what would you do to what would you say to them, just to, you know, start to get something going so that you’re willing to do a little bit more risk or try something different, because, you know, and I see it everywhere. When I go in, I’ll say, look at there’s no judgment involved here. I don’t care if I prefer if you made mistakes, but I just want you to try something different and do this and do XYZ. And I find that they’ll go, yeah, yeah, that’s yes, that’s it. And yet, two minutes later, they’ll walk over and walk to their chair, and they’ll just go right back to their comfort zone, and they’ll just do the same thing that they’ve always done. How do you how do you help that person realize that they’re just getting in their own way, or whatever? What? What would you say to that person?

Dr Leon Alexander 31:01
I’ve always been a believer that you can open the door for people to see an alternative and better way of doing things. Ultimately, as you know, it’s their call and their decision. You know, I, I wrote this a couple of days ago, so it’s not in the book, but I think it’s, it’s profound in how somebody should live their life. Each of us must affirm our own individual creativity. We do not choose to be born. We do not choose our parents. We do not choose our historical epoch, the country of our birth, or the immediate circumstances of our upbringing. But we do choose how we live with purpose or adrift with joy or joylessness, with hope or despair, with humor or sadness, with a positive or negative outlook, with inspiration or defeat, and with honor or dishonor, no matter how indifferent the universe may be to our choices and decisions. Those choices and decisions are ours to make. In the end, our own creativity is decided by what we choose or refuse to do as we decide and choose. So our destiny is formed so you can give someone tremendous education. Ultimately, it’s what they do with it. And the industry falls in to put simplify. It falls into three categories. There’s people who will never change. There are people that get it but, but don’t do it straight away, and there are people who are pioneers. I want to move with AI, I want to move with technology. I want to move consumer centric, and that’s same in any other industry, but more restaurants go down than salons. They may cook well, but they don’t make a profit. So it’s not about the quality. You have to have impeccable standards as far as the service you give, and the services you you you work on, that’s a minimum bear. Today’s initiatives are tomorrow’s minimum standards with increasing rapidity, wow.

Chris Baran 33:54
And I’m just saying wow here, and I’m I apologize if I’m cutting you off. Because how I always find that, and my everything I’ve been about is hair and and I always find that when a trend happens, it happens everywhere at the same time. One person doesn’t do it right. It’s like we, you can be in London or Australia or Canada or us or Japan, and the similar things will happen at the same time. And we always used to say, Whoever put their name on it in a magazine, they got credit for it first. But I find it does. It happens universally. If you’re keen and aware enough to look for it, and you used a word there that just blew me away. And nobody else will get it right now, but we’re working we have a our salon associate program, and we’re talking about creating a minimum salon standard for every service that you have of what your quality will be, that you will let up to walk out the door so people can still grow into it. But the fact. You talked about minimum standards out there, just kind of blew me away about how it happens in business. It happens in hair, and it’s happening everywhere else at the same time. And I think that’s something that the businesses need to think about. What’s the quality standards that you have, and what’s the minimum that you would let somebody else represent your business with the while it walks out the door. It just kind of blew me away that you said that. So I don’t know if there was a whole lot in there, but that that was a profound statement to me right at that moment, and I just have to acknowledge you for that.

Dr Leon Alexander 35:33
Well, it just to lead on another sentence from that I said earlier, but it links to you can’t build a future with legacy thinking.

Chris Baran 35:48
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Dr Leon Alexander 36:40
outside of our industry, technology is far more advanced. When you go into a salon and just talk about technology for legacy thinking for a minute. You go into any salon that has music, you have a consumer that is maybe in their 20s and their 60s. How possibly could one track of music be appropriate for all people now you’ve got the future. We’ve evolved from service to an experience, whatever that is, yeah. Yeah, right. The future is not experience. The future is personalized experience. Yes. So if I gave a customer a scout massage, makeup, touch up, complimentary a hand massage, that’s an experience, but if I did it for the next two customers next to them, it’s generic, but the future is personalized experiences and entertainment. We need entertainment in science. I’ll give you an example of entertainment. There’s now a system. It’s like a ceiling tile that’s two foot by two foot that goes over a styling station that is voice activated by the consumer or a service provider. And the consumer can say, classical music, and classical music will pay within this two foot by two foot square,

Chris Baran 38:15
and nobody else and nobody else will hear that music.

Dr Leon Alexander 38:19
Next person can say, I want jazz, and the next person can say, I’ve got a headache. I don’t want any music. Personalization. I got that from the Google line. If you actually stand on a particular space, a voice tells you about the art. So it’s not a new invention. It’s just not in our industry. Wow. Smart mirrors that are in front of the station where the you can scan the consumer’s avatar and superimpose it, and it shows all the products you’ve used on them. That video comes up. It tells you the features and benefits. So you know what you’re doing now is you’re moving into the future of technology, an intelligent brush now that when you brush the hair, it sends the protein content and the tensile strength to the consumer’s phone for treatments. So there’s a lot of technology now that really we need to evolve when the consumer goes, particularly to Europe. I just came back in salons. Well, let’s, let’s go to retail stores. In some retail stores, if you take a piece of clothing and you put it in front of a mirror, that they have a model wearing this piece of clothing comes down a catwalk. If you take a piece of clothing and take it into a changing room, it’s got RFID radio frequency in the clothing. Music comes on appropriate to that piece of clothing. So you got kind of Hawaiian shirt, you got a Hawaiian. It. If you do want to try and piece a clothing, you can scan the avatar inside the changing room. So the consumers are getting this experience and experiences outside of our industry. They’re coming into our industry and getting nothing new. They’re not getting entertained, yeah, getting a service and going retail, it’s another big Benoit for salons, because now a high proportion of people buying products online. I buy products online, so I understand that. So we have to make it easier for them and make three different ways of buying retail. If you have a someone in the chair, that’s the place to capture them with smart mirrors. When the consumer gets up and walks to the front the desk, the stylist continues with the next client, and it’s a lost retail opportunity. Our retail sales in our industry are very low to what they should be. Every single one of these people buy shampoo, yeah, they just don’t buy it in salons. So we need, we need to actually get into not legacy thinking, but the future and design salons as entertainment centers and with personal experiences. You know, we need to emulate the best practices of Michelin restaurants in service, the best practices of marketers like Walt Disney, the best service retailers like apple. They study the consumer and build their model around them. And there’s no reason why we can’t do that, or at least some of us can, yeah,

Chris Baran 41:51
oh, go ahead. No, sorry, I didn’t mean to jump on you there, you know. I it’s, it’s making so much sense now, and I remember, I was shopping for glasses and and I saw this thing on, I think, believe it was Warby Parker. Yep, that if you go on their site and you pick a pair of glasses, and you look in the computer and you’re wearing the glasses, and it’s not like the the thing on Snapchat where you’ve got a funny looking mask on you, it’s the exact You look like you’re wearing them, and you can turn side to side, and it looks like you’re wearing those glasses. And that kind of blew me away. And I’m sure that’s just such an infantile reflection of what you’re talking about, but that’s what came to my mind when you were talking about that

Dr Leon Alexander 42:41
modiface has makeup where it superimposes the makeup on the screen of that particular thing. It scans your avatar and superimposes it in Australia. They’ve got a system now that you can have 100 different colors of hair to see what it looks like. And the technology is really good. When it first came out, it was not very good, but it’s improved. So yes, there’s the technology’s out there. It’s just not in our industry at the level it should

Chris Baran 43:09
be, yeah, and you know, which means we’re gonna have to search for it, huh?

Dr Leon Alexander 43:12
Right? I mean, personalized experience are the key to any business you know. Maitre d greets you and brings you through, and he recognizes you, and it knows what you have regularly, you feel good. We mystify the idea of a personal experience, like it’s a dark art, but at the molecular level, or experience, is just an amalgam of content, emotional, physical, digital and intellectual content. The difference between a generic experience and a personalized one is the quality of the content. And doesn’t

Chris Baran 43:49
that make perfect sense for the problem that the industry is having right now? Because I’m only going to I’m going to speak going back quite a number of years, and you can pick a number on our decades that that was, but it used to be that if you were skilled, talented and a good communicator who could connect with the consumer that they sought you out, you were the commodity. But now everybody’s pretty good at what the skill that they do. They’ve all got the same color line, or a color line that is just as good. They all have similar all the salons have similar backgrounds. They all have similar skills. They have similar communication devices. But now the consumer through digital is taking a look at, okay, here’s Leon’s work. Here’s Chris’s work. I went to I went to Chris, but, you know, he didn’t give me a personalized experience. But yet, Leon’s prices are similar, maybe a little bit more, a little bit less. His work is is every bit as good. So I’m going to go and shop out Leon right now. And if Leon makes my personalized experience great, then I’m going to stay with Leon. But if my personalized experience is and they say, Here’s somebody else, I say, well, I’ll never get that personalized experience somewhere else. So you choose your loyalty to a brand based on that. Would you, would you confirm or deny not to get too political hearing?

Dr Leon Alexander 45:25
You know, somebody told me many, many years ago, you get the clientele you deserve. Yeah, right. So you know, if you treat people in my in my history of of seeing hairdressers the best, most qualified, technical and creative hairdressers didn’t always have the best clientele. Yeah, yeah, the people with the best personality that took care of the customer, they were, they were packed. They just loved them. Yeah? So it’s, it’s, it’s relationships,

Chris Baran 45:59
yeah, you know, it’s, it’s, I loved your expression there. And it’s kind of a twist on I had a similar experience when people I would always talk to people that that their kids were getting into hairdressing. And we know that. We know the response the parents always give. And parents would always come up to me and they would say, How much money can I can my kid expect to make in the hairdressing industry? And I was said the same thing, exactly what they deserve, right? Well, you know, is that you put your time and your energy and your money to it, you’re going to make a fortune. If you’re going to be a slouch and not look after the client and treat them like a lump and and be self serving, you’re not going to make anything. So it’s, it’s, it’s a, it’s a blend of all of that, isn’t it?

Dr Leon Alexander 46:46
Well, it is, and it’s even more as we know. It’s a different generation now that’s coming into our industry, and maybe not at the volumes it was 40 years ago. Yeah. So we’re in, we’re in the midst of a different mindset from a generation that values flexibility higher than benefits. Yeah. In order to attract a younger employee, we have to think from their perspective, from that generation’s perspective Exactly. It’s always important to ask yourself two questions, as a salon owner, would I work for my business? Yeah. What is my strategic competitive advantage? Why would they work for me? And that’s fundamentally key. The days where people are queuing at the door to want to work for zooms are gone. Yeah. You know, there’s so many options in and out of our industry. We have to make it special. We have to care for them. And

Chris Baran 47:47
so I’m just wondering is, is that do we need to evolve? I mean, I think, duh, there it is. We need to. We have to move from that legacy thinking of, here’s the way it always was to here’s what I need to do differently now, and in your book, which I thought kind of fits with this question so much, or this situation I loved, there was a metaphor that you used for evolution based on the Mexican Tetra fish. Can you just talk to that? Talk to that and how that metaphor applies to we, whether you’re a salon owner or a stylist working within or an associate or apprentice just starting out, how did, how does that apply to us?

Dr Leon Alexander 48:32
Well, just a short precis of that for people that have not read the book, the Mexican tetra, adapted in deep water that there was no light, and they adjusted by losing their sight, but they gained more senses of where food was, so they adapted and they didn’t die. And if we don’t adapt as individuals, as businesses, as an industry, we will die, yeah, I mean, you know, there’s no point in not being direct about it. You have to adapt. And I use the Mexican Tetra as an analogy of how they lost their site purposely to gain other senses to find food. They adapted. A lot of people have not. I mean, Swiss watch companies didn’t adapt to the digital time. So, you know, there has to be a paradigm shift in our thinking to perpetually evolve and, if possible, create the change. Yeah, you know, soon created the change. Elon Musk created the change. There are. Pioneers out there who created change. We all can’t do that, but we can make sure that we are on the coattails of that change. Yeah,

Chris Baran 50:09
yeah. The the because, I mean, while the change wasn’t the same, if you looked in that the 60s, when videl was he was the pioneer that took us from shampoo and set into architectural hair cutting, and then, in a lesser way, we had similar things that happened, like in in the 90s, where the certain trends happened and and salons did or didn’t survive based on the shift and the evolution that they did or didn’t make and so I don’t think that what happened to us in in covid, and I loved how, I can’t remember the exact terminology that you used about that it was, wasn’t it became a catalyst for change. And if you made the change you were, you know, you’re on the upside of it right now, but I think that that that’s something that I noticed, that people need to do, is we’ve we’ve got to change to the way that the consumer, the new talent that’s coming in, and the way the technology is with us right now. And I think that’s just so critical, or we’re going to go back to that, that person that was in the middle of the road in in the 80s, and they wouldn’t survive because they didn’t have a high price and they weren’t giving the service as well,

Dr Leon Alexander 51:32
correct? Yeah. I mean, we, we just had to evolve, if you’re still operating on pre covid business model you’re behind? Yeah, find it. You just needed. It was an opportunity. For some, it wasn’t cataclysmic. It was a catalyst. For some, they saw it as an opportunity. Some saw it as a disaster, and it was a disaster, but what it’s how you turn it around. You know that that’s that’s fundamentally key, and you’ve got to have self belief. Yeah, must. Almost every successful person begins with two beliefs, the future can be better than the present and I have the power to make it. So,

Chris Baran 52:25
wow. That is profound. Can you say that again, the

Dr Leon Alexander 52:30
future can be better than the present and I have the power to make it so,

Chris Baran 52:35
yeah, yeah. That is, you know, because I think it’s that self belief that we talk about, right? That you have to be able to believe you got to believe in yourself first, otherwise it’s never going to happen, and the results you want are never going to happen if you don’t have that self belief. Yeah, that’s powerful.

Dr Leon Alexander 52:50
The key to success is to risk unconventional thoughts. Convention is the enemy of progress.

Chris Baran 53:02
Yeah, and, you know, and I think is it, is it human nature that we sometimes reject that I’m saying that out loud, and I’m not even sure if it’s a correct thinking or not, because I think there’s always we can talk about that. But is there something in our DNA that keeps us while we know we should change. We know it’s there. Is there something in our DNA that keeps us from doing it? It’s our background.

Dr Leon Alexander 53:28
It’s our background. Yeah, if somebody is being brought up in a particular way that with strict beliefs, it’s hard to break that. Yeah, hard if you’re, if you are and it doesn’t work, it’s just, there’s no panacea. That’s the right answer for everybody. It’s in your thing. If you’re born from working class and you loved your parents, but you didn’t want their lifestyle, and you have the drive. Like Sassoon. Use him as an analogy again, he had that drive. He wasn’t born with a silver because he was in an orphanage, but he had that drive, and he had integrity. And that’s that’s something I want to share, really, the integrity of it. Our salon business achievements are shaped by the strength of the foundations we set. We must be true to our beliefs. Dare to be ethical and thrive to be honorable. Integrity is the highest ground to which we can aspire. If you keep that at the forefront of what your value system is. What is your value system? That’s why I put on the strategic blueprint. What are my values? One of my core beliefs, one of my mission whatever you know, because the values are. So critical, and you share that with your staff, and you share that with the media, and you share that with your clients. So that’s that, that, to me, is critically important, the value system you have. What would you say if,

Chris Baran 55:13
and again, I apologize you just my thought, My the synapses, my brain are going crazy here right now. But what would you? Would you say that if I know what my values are, and I know what my beliefs are, and I have that ingrained in my system, and I had and I and I do that on my my strategic I can’t my strategic board that you talked about at the very beginning, would I, would I say that to my potential new hires say, Here’s my values, here’s my code of honor, for lack of a better word. And say, are you willing to live by that?

Dr Leon Alexander 55:49
So I go into Salons all the time, and I hope to have five minutes sustained reception to get a feel of the thing before the owner comes, one of the questions I ask is, what is your mission statement to the salon owner? I get a mixed replies of, well, we did one once, or we don’t have one, or we’ve got one and it’s in the office, okay, do your staff know your mission statement? If I was to ask them, they become a little uncomfortable at a time, yeah, do your clients know your mission statement? Does the local media, the newspapers, know your mission statement. If you believe in a vision, a mission and a value system, then why not share it? Yeah, that is who you are, and you should be proud of it. Yeah. What’s your vision? These are my values. This is my mission. Share it, and you will gravitate to people who think that way about you and your business and want to work for you.

Chris Baran 57:12
You know, I remember doing a program at the Ritz Carlton, not for the Ritz Carlton. We were doing it there. And the people that organized it said, if you ask any one of the employees for the Ritz Carlton and you ask them what their mission statement is, every one of them can recite it without, without using a card. And then the second part is that they said they’ll give them, they’ll give you the card that gives them their mission statement. And I thought, Wow, that really lets you know that, that everybody knows here’s what their purpose is. Well,

Dr Leon Alexander 57:52
it’s all about your future, someone’s future, and then you’ve got to have people that want to work for you. There’s no such thing as being fashionably late for your salon’s future? Yeah, yeah,

Chris Baran 58:06
yeah. I think you’re fashionably early for your demise. Then probably, well, Leon, this has been we’ve come to that part where we’re at, we’re sort of rapid fire right now. And I just said this has been absolutely entertaining. And I love this part because I’m really interested to hear your answers, because I think you have got a brilliant mind, and I’m always interested in finding out what people come up with when I ask them these questions. So first of all, and this is the one that I’m really excited to hear, what you say, what turns you on in the creative process.

Dr Leon Alexander 58:41
Oh, that’s a great question. I I, I want to perpetually reinvent, think and reinvent. Never, ever settle for your laurels. You know, it’s something new, different materials, different look. Go outside. I get most of my ideas outside the industry

Chris Baran 59:09
interesting.

Dr Leon Alexander 59:10
I go to design companies that are cutting edge. I go to technology companies at cutting edge. I go to different ways of designing things, so that’s what turns me on, is to learn from incredible companies that are doing amazing things with technology and design. What

Chris Baran 59:34
I love that you said that it turns you on? What turns you off? What turns the creative process off for you,

Dr Leon Alexander 59:43
traditional, boring, you know, just just, I don’t get excited by that, yeah, additional laminate, boring stuff, that is, the shapes aren’t sexy, yeah? You know, it’s, it’s. Not, and I always ask for permission to speak openly and honestly. Oh, interesting vision. And I then asked permission to give an alternative opinion their view. But it would integrity doesn’t if I know that they’re not maximizing the potential of their business. See, the goal is, is not to increase the business The goal is not to take the business to the next level, because I’m not even sure what that means. Yeah, if I, if I increase the business by 2% have I achieved my goal? No, the goal is to maximize the potential of the business period. And if you’ve got 1500 square feet or 5000 square feet, that’s you have to maximize the potential. If you’re a hair stylist service provider, you are in business because your income is determined by how you take care of the customers and what you sell. So we’re all in business as hairdressers, as as salad owners, we’re all there to maximize potential of our businesses.

Chris Baran 1:01:09
About what do you love most about our industry?

Dr Leon Alexander 1:01:17
I I love the the ability to share best practices. I think certainly at the top level, there’s some very smart pioneers who don’t mind sharing with other what they did and how they did it. That’s a wonderful thing. I would add to that that it is critical to learn from the best pioneers outside the industry as well.

Chris Baran 1:01:51
And you may have answered this already, but I’m going to continue with it anyway. What do you dislike the most about our industry? I

Dr Leon Alexander 1:02:04
what I what I dislike the most is when people don’t try to be the best they can be. I see it all the time, the you you have to respect someone’s work. If you’re working in a budget salon and you take care of your customers, that’s a wonderful thing. It’s not all about high end. Yeah. I mean, most successful companies in this in the United States are Walmart and McDonald’s, because they’ve got a business model that takes care of the customer and that the right price. So it’s not about just pioneers. It’s what I don’t like, is when someone’s got the ability to do something and they just don’t, yeah, well,

Chris Baran 1:03:03
a person you admire the most,

Dr Leon Alexander 1:03:08
the person I would admire the most is, I think there’s A few comes to mind the original Tesla Nikolai, Tesla creator Da Vinci as a creative innovator, I guess Churchill. Churchill is, you know, when all ends were up against him, he said, We’ll fight him on the beaches. We’ll fight him on the shores. And he rallied the whole country, yeah, and there’s, there’s lots of unsung heroes who I could name that you wouldn’t know, that I admire, because how they brought up three or four children on their own, yeah? So there’s a lot of people that I would admire. I, you know, I just, I get inspired by great stories, personalized stories that, yeah, against adversity, they’ve done wonderful things,

Chris Baran 1:04:18
something that people don’t know about. You,

Dr Leon Alexander 1:04:24
I’m a vegan. I’ve been a vegan for many years. I’m an I’m an avid reader, as you probably know, I’m a member of Mensa.

I speed walk every day, four miles, wow. And workout. I do boxing. I do all sorts of things. Yeah, I

Chris Baran 1:04:56
used to box. I led with my nose. And. Um, so I went to coaching. If you had a month off, where would you go and what would you do?

Dr Leon Alexander 1:05:11
If I had a month off, I would go back to the Far East to I split the time. I would probably in Nepal with Buddhism. I would spend time back in Milan with fashion. Yeah, I just wouldn’t spend a month in one place. Got it?

Chris Baran 1:05:46
Is there something that terrifies you?

Dr Leon Alexander 1:05:55
No, I really had to think hard on that. But no, I uh, fear is not something I even have in my vocabulary. Love it. Favorite curse word. If you knew people close to me, yeah, in the last 50 years, I think I’ve sworn once or twice.

Unknown Speaker 1:06:21
Wow.

Chris Baran 1:06:29
Favorite comfort food?

Dr Leon Alexander 1:06:31
Oh, that’ll be Indian vegan curry. Oh,

Chris Baran 1:06:35
I love curry, and I love Indian food. Is there something in the industry that you haven’t done, but you wish you would like to, but you want to.

Dr Leon Alexander 1:06:52
I I’ve spoken at every event that there is no I don’t think there’s anything I don’t have

Chris Baran 1:07:02
living it to the fullest tomorrow, tomorrow, you couldn’t have anything to do with the hair industry. What would you do?

Dr Leon Alexander 1:07:11
I would design. I design home furniture, contemporary home furniture.

Chris Baran 1:07:17
Oh, love it. I want, I want to, I want the catalog when it’s done. Okay, I’ve got, I’ve got one more for you. But just before we hit it to that is if somebody wanted to know more about about eurosco design, or wanted to hire you to come in and speak, or to have a consultation with them, or to have you take a look at their salon, how could they get a hold of you.

Dr Leon Alexander 1:07:41
Well, there’s three ways. Website is euriscodesign.com My email is Eurisko@me.com and I guess my number, phone number, if you want me to share that and just

Chris Baran 1:07:59
go is spelled e, u r, e, u r, i, s, k, O, correct Greek

Dr Leon Alexander 1:08:04
mythology for I believe, Oh,

Chris Baran 1:08:06
I love that. Didn’t know that until now. Also, thank you. So Okay. Last question, if you had one wish for industry, what would that be? Oh,

Dr Leon Alexander 1:08:21
I would say, if I had one wish for our industry, it’s a it’s a good question that I’ve been pondering for a while. I wish we had more recognition outside industry. I wish that our name was a profession, as which it is, rather than some people still thinking, Oh, you’re a hairdresser. You trained, you put your creativity in, you put you know. So I just wish our industry was higher value.

Chris Baran 1:09:03
I couldn’t. I couldn’t agree more. So Leon, you obviously are as a Mensa, the the intellect that you put into our industry and the insight that you’ve given to us on this, I just want to say thank you, and I want to say I know you’re probably beaten tired, and yet you gave up your time to be on here, and I just can’t thank you enough for that. So I want to say thank you for being on head cases and I and I certainly hope somewhere along the line, maybe at the next convention, that will get us a chance to sit down and chat more as well. So thank you. There

Dr Leon Alexander 1:09:38
is one thing I want to say that the book is complimentary to all your people.

Chris Baran 1:09:45
And so how would they do that? What were what they

Dr Leon Alexander 1:09:49
would just write to me, email, they can get me on Facebook, on Alexandra on Facebook, right? And then I just say, is Chris Barans thing? Know, I want to elevate the thinking in our industry, and I can walk away.

Chris Baran 1:10:05
I love it so. And just for everybody, that’s if you’re listening and remember, the book is called from Comfort to Growth. And if you just, just put on Head Cases, or Chris Baran on there, and he will send you the book complimentary. And I’m sorry, just get a hold of him. All he’s going to need is your email address, and he’ll send that out to you. So Leon, once again, thank you as not only an industry professional, but now as a true friend, I just want to say thank you again one more time.

Dr Leon Alexander 1:10:33
Thank you, Chris. Appreciate it absolutely

Chris Baran 1:10:35
pleasure. Thank you. And listen for those of you that are listening or watching right now, the way that you can help us is if you just go on to whatever your provider is, and you leave us a review and give us, you know, a rating five. Five was really good. If you want to do that, let us know how much you love it, then we’ll obviously get be able to help to affect more wonderful people our industry. So I just want to say thank you. And Leon again, thank you so much, and it’s been an absolute pleasure.

Dr Leon Alexander 1:11:01
Thank you very much.

Chris Baran 1:11:04
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.