Ian Harrold
“I'm dyslexic, but I didn’t let that stop me from opening my first business when I was 21, and at the time I was adamant that I would do it on my own.
I've now been in business 26 years, so I’ve obviously made some good decisions and achieved some success, but to be honest, until I did the management course, I had no understanding of what it really takes to manage and run a successful business.
In the past, I've had three barber shops, and now, post-Covid, I'm back to two. But I've always wanted ten, and I still want ten.
But it was when I started working through the course that I realized the magnitude of what it actually is that I'm supposed to be doing every day as a manager.
So the big thing that the management course has taught me is that until I've built the correct systems and structure, I’m never going to get bigger than two shops because it's just too much work for me or any one person on their own.
I’m not saying that I can't open a third and a fourth one until I've got everything perfect because I know it’ll never be 100%. But if I am to expand, I know it needs to be built on a solid foundation. And up until now, I don't think my foundations have ever been firm.
Instead, I've always done stuff on a whim, and then I've worked tiresomely to make it work. Instead of saying, “Let's think about this properly, can we do this? Have I put the structure in place?”
Instead, I’ve always gone, “Right, we’re going to do this, it'll work, I don't know how, but I'll make it work”. And as a result I end up doing 150 hours a week.
The management course has given me the tools to make it happen, It's given me the tools to make sure the foundations are right.
It has given me guidance and clarity of what’s needed to build the proper systems and run a successful hairdressing business, whether that's barbering or a hairdressing business.
The management course has given me confidence in areas that I was and am doing quite well. It's given me confidence in what I now look for in team members. And I think it helped me lose people that weren't invested in our company.
I think that the online community, whether it’s the Facebook group or the coaching calls, have been good resources to dip back into, I find myself dipping back into it all the time, especially when things are hard. The community gives you a bit of faith that sticking to a roadmap will allow you to achieve what it is that you want to achieve while recognizing that it's not as easy as everyone thinks.
I am definitely a better learner when I have something tangible in front of me that I can work through so the workbook and templates are a brilliant resource and the fact that when you log in online, you can see immediately where you are in whatever course it is you're doing. I think it's such an easy website to use. It's brilliant. The platform's fantastic.
