– Episode 007Taelor Pleas

Episode 007: Transcript

[00:00:00] Antony Whitaker: Welcome to the Grow My Salon Business podcast, where we focus on the business side of hairdressing. I’m your host, Antony Whitaker, and I’ll be talking to thought leaders in the hairdressing industry, discussing insightful, provocative, and inspiring ideas that matter. So get ready to learn, get ready to be challenged, get ready to be inspired, and most importantly, get ready to grow your salon business.

[00:00:31] Antony Whitaker: My guests today is Taelor Pleas hairdresser presenter, salon industry coach, and director of recruitment, hiring, and training at the Cutting Loose Salon group in Florida. Taelor talks to us today about finding balance in a family run business. She is a passionate advocate for education, regularly speaking to hairdressing audiences to share her insights into the industry and what it takes to run a salon where amongst other things, some stylists are able to make six figure incomes

[00:00:59] Antony Whitaker: working a four-day week. So welcome to the show, Taelor.

[00:01:03] Taelor Pleas: Oh, thank you, Antony.

[00:01:05] Antony Whitaker: It’s really good to have you here. I’m honored and privileged to, uh, have the opportunity to talk to you for the next 40 minutes or so. So, Taelor, I like to start off by getting you to tell us a little bit about who you are, what your background is, exactly what you do and what Cutting Loose Salon in Florida is all about.

[00:01:22] Taelor Pleas: Fantastic. Thank you, Antony, for even having this opportunity, you know, a little bit about myself. I am really a baby of the industry. My mom has always said I was born in a dispensary, which if anyone’s been in the industry longer than 20 years, they can remember what used to be in the dispensaries, which was, you know, the developer of the perm solution.

[00:01:39] Taelor Pleas: So explains a little bit about what happened to me growing up. Um, you know, growing up, I was raised by a single mother, raising two kids and running a successful salon. I was an athlete growing up. I was always in multiple leagues. Um, so having, watching my mother juggle of how to be that amazing parent, amazing stylist owner, and then also helping us get opportunities that we want in life really helps structure who I am today.

[00:02:01] Taelor Pleas: Growing up on the court. I learned at a young age that, you know, it’s really take someone strong to make someone strong. So I was always very fortunate to have my mother and really hairdressers in my life from a very young age. I barely made it through high school. Uh, you know, apparently they wanted you to be there all day.

[00:02:16] Taelor Pleas: I obviously had other important things to do. Um, so I was put in a dropout prevention program. I did OJT, which give me the ability to actually graduate on time school really wasn’t my strong suit. So when I graduated from cosmetology in 2010, I was really proud of myself, but it didn’t really take me long to realize that my passion wasn’t behind the chair, but it was for the people behind the chair.

[00:02:39] Taelor Pleas: So that really started my journey into finding out what platform I wanted to be on in this industry. And that has led me to being on a podcast with Antony freakin’ Whitaker. So I am super honored to be here and get to do this again with you a little bit about Cutting Loose Salon. Cutting Loose Salon. We opened in 2008 and a lot of people remember what happened in 2008.

[00:03:02] Taelor Pleas: It’s a perfect time to open a beauty salon. You know, there’s a little bit of an economic confusion. Um, so it’s not that people really lost money. It’s that people were really what I saw is people really were thinking about where they wanted to place their money, where they felt valued and cared about and heard and listened to not just by delivering great services.

[00:03:21] Taelor Pleas: So, we opened in 2008. My mother went to a couple hair schools with a cardboard. Dream board. If anyone knows what a dream board is, and she went to schools and said, this is my dream. This is what I want to have. And eight people followed her fast forward 11 years later, she has four multi location multimillion dollar locations that are profitable with over 70 team members.

[00:03:42] Taelor Pleas: So, Cutting Loose Salon, it’s been one of the best salons that I’ve had the opportunity to be with. I do get to work with other salons as well, but I get excited to talk about what we’re going to talk about a little bit too about, you know, the culture of the salon and the coaching that we get to do because I am who I am because of the people I choose to surround myself with and these hairdressers.

[00:04:00] Taelor Pleas: I just love it. They’re allergic to average and you. You’re like normal, but growing up, you always wanted to be normal. And then you realize as you get older, normal’s like the setting on the washer, which isn’t, you know, it’s never working in a hair salon by that. But it’s, it’s about standing out and being unique.

[00:04:17] Taelor Pleas: And I love that.

[00:04:18] Antony Whitaker: Okay. Well, I’m scribbled a couple of notes down as we were talking there. What just tell me, what is a dream board? Is it a vision board? Is it the same thing?

[00:04:25] Taelor Pleas: It’s a vision board. Yeah. Dream board, vision board. It’s putting out what you want and what you dream about in your head. Cause a lot of us, we get so upset that what’s in front of our eyes isn’t what we dream about yet.

[00:04:35] Taelor Pleas: We’re the artists of our life. Like, so I said, we’re the Bob Ross. We have as many happy trees as we’ve painted. So that’s kind of the goal with those dream boards is to put down on the board. What it is you. Want to see in your life and not just want it because wanting, it’s not enough. It’s sharing and enrolling people in that possibility of a future to help you achieve those goals.

[00:04:54] Taelor Pleas: I’ve had dream boards from as early as 2010 and I love looking back at them and sharing with the team. All the things that I’ve actually achieved by not just putting it on a board, but actually sharing and enrolling it with other people.

[00:05:06] Antony Whitaker: Okay. I’m curious about that. Is it words or pictures or both?

[00:05:10] Taelor Pleas: Hairdressers. I have gotten, I’ve gotten dream boxes, dream pictures, uh, dream hair clips. I usually do it on a board. I guess I’m a little original in that case, but I’ve also done like a dream book so I could kind of flip through some pages. There’s no wrong way to do a dream board. It’s just taking what you think about and what you dream about in the eight inches in between your ears and actually puts it out there on paper.

[00:05:32] Taelor Pleas: And then you have to share it with other people.

[00:05:34] Antony Whitaker: Okay. Fantastic. Well, something’s obviously working because if you’ve gone from, uh, you know, zero to four salons and 70 odd staff in what, uh, 2008, uh, here we are, 2019, the dream boards, very powerful when certainly been doing this job. So, you mentioned your mom a couple of times there.

[00:05:52] Antony Whitaker: And I, I had some very clear things that I did want to talk about to you today. And one of them was about family businesses because I know you’ve got a very successful business, and I also know that there’s a lot of family members in the business, and I’m often asked about family businesses, usually when there’s problems in them.

[00:06:11] Antony Whitaker: And so, tell us about your business as a family business. Like, who are the family members in there to start with? And what are their different roles? What are their different titles? You know, how do you make it work? Why? Why are you able to make a family business succeed where perhaps, um, other people, you know, don’t always make it succeed?

[00:06:30] Taelor Pleas: Well, great question, Antony. It’s because my family’s perfect because I get that question a lot. I get the question of, Ooh, how I could never work with my mother or I would love to work with my mother. I would never work with my partner. I would love to work with my partner. So I do get that question a lot.

[00:06:48] Taelor Pleas: Um, I have, we have a huge family of hair. So my mother does run all the locations. My, um, well, she, She’s the owner of the CEO of all the locations. My brother does run one of those locations. I do the, I’m the director of team development and I also do the recruitment hiring and training part time at Cutting Loose.

[00:07:06] Taelor Pleas: My wife, Nikki Pleas is a master stylist at Cutting Loose Salon and part of our six-figure club. My cousin is the, my cousin Sierra is the reservationist leader at our flagship location and then my wife’s niece who is 24 just graduated from cosmetology when she is one of our newest Proteges and my 15-year-old niece Uh, who’s obviously still in high school.

[00:07:33] Taelor Pleas: What I got to do when I was 12, 13, 14 was come to the salon on Saturdays and, you know, make like maybe five bucks an hour, but I cleaned the retail suite, you know, clean the dishes. And, and I love that I get to see my 15-year-old niece, Sonia, uh, doing that. So, she comes in on Saturdays and the girls, the team just loves having her.

[00:07:49] Taelor Pleas: And no one could believe she’s 15. It’s just, it’s awesome to see the journey that I got to be on that. I get to kind of see Sonia grow through that too. So, we definitely have a big family of hair.

[00:07:59] Antony Whitaker: Okay, that’s, that’s fantastic. So, there’s like, you know, seven or so different family members involved in the business, which is amazing.

[00:08:06] Antony Whitaker: One of the things that I often find challenging with family businesses as a, as an observer and having been involved in one myself at different times. Well, I suppose I am today with my wife and I, you know, it’s a family business is defining different roles and formalizing things often when I’m talking to people that are.

[00:08:26] Antony Whitaker: Yeah. Uh, at the beginning of setting up a business, or sometimes when they’ve got problems in the middle of it between different partners, sometimes what the problem goes back to is, well, how did you set it up in the beginning? And often what happened was in the beginning, you know, in the interest of saving money in the terms of, you know, legal fees or whatever, there is just lots of, you know, verbal agreements, lots of handshake agreements, lots of, you know, we’re best friends.

[00:08:51] Antony Whitaker: We get on really well. We, you know, we finish each other’s sentences and it’s all going to be cool. But sometimes it just simply isn’t cool. Sometimes further down the line, there are problems. And then when those problems happen, it’s like, okay, we’re What is the, uh, what is the way through here? What is the mechanism by how we’re going to solve these problems?

[00:09:11] Antony Whitaker: Now, if we’re talking, you know, a normal business arrangement, you know, you have partnership agreements, um, sometimes you even have things like I, I, I suggest to people that it’s a little bit like a marriage that when you go into marriage, you think that you’re going to be together forever. And it’s fantastic if you are, and that would be lovely.

[00:09:29] Antony Whitaker: And I think what everyone aims for, you don’t go into it thinking, well, I’m going to give this a go for five years and then bail, you know? Um, so, but, but sometimes what happens is that, you know, you’ve been in a marriage five years or whatever, and it’s not working. And then it’s very messy, very ugly getting out of it because there is no.

[00:09:49] Antony Whitaker: Agreement about who owns what and in the eventuality that this doesn’t work, then this is, you know, how we’re going to dissolve it. And so then it goes to court and it gets really ugly and everyone loses out ultimately in the end. So in a business, it can be a little bit like that as well. You know, I always advise people in business.

[00:10:07] Antony Whitaker: I say, look, you know, when you go into partnership with someone, do not take these shortcuts of, of not having, you know, contracts and not getting legal advice, et cetera, and setting it up properly, because it’s not a matter of, if there’s a problem, it’s a matter of when there’s a problem, because eventually there will be a problem.

[00:10:25] Antony Whitaker: You know, one part is going to want to sell and the other one isn’t, or, you know, maybe one partner gets ill and the other one doesn’t, or maybe one partner gets divorced and, you know, there’s a, there’s a, a problem with their partner, wanting some, you know, equity from the business, all sorts of things. So what I’m leading to is this in a family business like yours, you’re not going to have, I’m assuming, you know, that level of, of, you know, contracts and documentation, et cetera, is just having it all built on trust and love and understanding.

[00:10:58] Antony Whitaker: Is it enough? Does it create problems? How do you, how do you deal with those sorts of things? How do you deal with who’s responsible for what areas? Who’s accountable for what areas? Who, who calls people on this stuff? If things aren’t being done the way they’re meant to be being done. Did you get, do you get where I’m coming from with this?

[00:11:20] Taelor Pleas: Yeah, no, you have like three amazing questions. Sure. It’s like, it is love and family is that enough? Absolutely not. Putting the definition of love into being a great partnership in a in a in a company that’s just setting us up to fail um the thing that we do especially with our Directly with the family because we work with each other and then we spend holidays with each other and when we spend holidays with each other, we’re usually talking about work so that we have to find that balance.

[00:11:48] Taelor Pleas: And we’ve been doing this for a long time. Like I said, my mother, my mother and my father growing up were both hairdressers. So it’s finding that balance in life. And we’re always trying to find that balance of a 50 50 and I say the only person that has a balanced life as a corpse, like hairdressers do not live a balanced life being that 50 50.

[00:12:07] Taelor Pleas: So you have to find that here. Um, and we definitely don’t do contracts or anything legal, but we go above and beyond just communicating to each other and we have job descriptions. Okay. So again, and I’ll describe what that is. I guess someone can look at it as a contract, but it doesn’t go through anything legal.

[00:12:23] Taelor Pleas: It’s just making sure that you can’t hit a target. You can’t see. And especially if it’s not clearly spelled out, we each have our strengths and we each have our weaknesses. What’s more important than knowing our strengths. Is honestly knowing our weaknesses and finding who can fill that spot for us. So, there are things that I do that Travis doesn’t want to do or can’t do.

[00:12:43] Taelor Pleas: And there’s things that Travis does that I don’t even want to touch with a 10-foot stick.

[00:12:46] Antony Whitaker: So, so Travis is your brother. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Okay. So

[00:12:50] Taelor Pleas: he, he runs one of the locations. So he’s. He’s like the, he’s the manager at the Lakewood ranch location. And I even tried that hat on in 2012. And I realized that was not the seat for me on the bus.

[00:13:02] Taelor Pleas: So, you know, we always say with Cutting Loose, you’re on the bus, but you might need to find the right seat where I started off in this company was, I, like I said, I graduated from hair school. I thought I wanted to be a hairdresser. But I wasn’t passionate about that and it wasn’t authentic for me to still be behind the chair to just to make a lot of money.

[00:13:18] Taelor Pleas: Um, cause obviously that, that could have happened. So finding the different seat on the same bus gave me the opportunities that I have now. And having that clear job description of what our roles are. So for example, Coral loves doing her one on ones, uh, with the team. She has over 17, know them all and touch them all.

[00:13:35] Taelor Pleas: So she’s passionate about one on ones. So she’s responsible to do the one on ones.

[00:13:40] Antony Whitaker: Does she do them with all the salons? So there’s four salons, 70 stars. She’s doing one on ones with everybody.

[00:13:45] Taelor Pleas: So I’ll clarify that she does the one on ones with the Cutting Loose team. So the Cutting Loose stylist. Okay, not the Protege Academy, the Protege Academy, the one on ones, um, go to my educators and then I get to do the recruitment, hiring and training.

[00:13:59] Taelor Pleas: Like I said, so I get to go to the hair schools, do classes with them, go through the interview process, which we do have a lengthy interview process, um, and then go through their training period. And then, like I said, Travis runs one of the locations. He’s, you know, the head of the ship over there. He’s the

[00:14:13] Taelor Pleas: first one in last one to leave. And my, my, like my wife is one of our most successful hairdressers here and finding her passion and her niche in this industry, you know, so we all just have a very clear description of what it is that we are expected to do. And like I said, the most important, the thing is.

[00:14:30] Taelor Pleas: We don’t know what we don’t know. So every time something does arise, we have to communicate about it. Not put our feelings into it. Like I know hairdressers, we drive a lot with our feelings, but sometimes we have to put our feelings inside and go to the facts. Oh, my, my mentor, Lance Courtney always says when, when, uh, your emotions are high, your intelligence is low.

[00:14:50] Taelor Pleas: So, I always know when my emotions get a little too high, I probably need to take a five, 10-minute break and kind of come back and communicate a little differently. Then without reacting to the situation and I can come back and respond to it because being with the family, you can say things that you would probably never, ever say to another coworker or boss.

[00:15:08] Taelor Pleas: Like we’ve all had bosses we don’t like, obviously, and I’m not even saying everyone likes me here or, you know, who their leaders are here, but it’s being able to know that at the end of the day, we have everyone’s best interest in mind and more importantly, my family is in charge and responsible for over 70 team members livelihood for their paying their bills and putting food on their plates and traveling and living the life that they truly want and powerfully, that is a big responsibility we do not take lightly.

[00:15:40] Taelor Pleas: So, and I’m not saying we’ve never made mistakes. We’ve had family drama. We’ve seen how that worked or didn’t work. So, we’re always assessing things. It’s not that it was good or bad or he was wrong or I was right. It was that didn’t work or you know what that did work. Let’s move forward in that direction.

[00:15:56] Antony Whitaker: Okay. So, if you were to give someone listening to this, you know, 3 steps. You know, these are the three things you’ve got to do if you want a family business to work. I know I’m really putting you on the spot, but what would you say the top three things are?

[00:16:09] Taelor Pleas: Oh, I know. Okay. So, the first thing that came to my mind is clarity.

[00:16:12] Taelor Pleas: When we, kind of like what I said earlier, when we leave our dreams in our head and don’t actually put it out there. We’re leaving it up to the universe to kind of come up with whatever it is that we think we want. So having clarity on what it is you want and how it is you’re going to get it is going to be very beneficial when it comes to having a business with people, whether it’s team members or ownership or management.

[00:16:33] Taelor Pleas: So having massive clarity with each other. The second one, and I always go back to that communication. I truly believe the most valuable currency we have is the effect we have on others. And that goes with how we talk to people. I just read, there was a study in California that they just did. It was like, these numbers are going to be rough, but it was like 93 percent of language is nonverbal with like 55 percent being body language in like

[00:17:00] Taelor Pleas: 32 or 33 percent being the tone of your voice. So we all speak English. I barely speak English at that, but we can use the same words and all of a sudden make people feel a little differently about that. Like I could go up to Travis and go, what were you thinking? Or I could go up to him and go, what were you thinking?

[00:17:20] Taelor Pleas: So being in communication and knowing how powerful it is that how we use our words, um, it leaves people feeling a certain way. So, um, communication is going to be a big key. The third thing I was just going to say, honestly, I think it is being honest. It’s being authentic, you know, being in the seat that you want to be in and, and loving what you do.

[00:17:41] Taelor Pleas: Like you can’t, sometimes people are so focused on getting money and it’s like getting money to do what to be who, when you’re, when you’re passionate about what it is you’re doing every day. You put your feet on the ground like everybody else and you’re excited for what’s going to happen. You’re excited for the entire day until you lay your head back down.

[00:17:58] Taelor Pleas: I think that gives us all a bigger purpose in life. I think it’s just really being authentic with who you, who you are and who you want to be in your role

[00:18:05] Antony Whitaker: and good, open, honest communication. Yes. And always got to be on all the systems that go with it. Do you have a lot of communication systems within your business?

[00:18:15] Taelor Pleas: We do have a lot of great systems. And you know, we actually, uh, two years ago switched that we don’t even have managers in our company anymore. We have no managers. There’s the book, uh, Leadership Without A Title. Managers need a title to show up where leaders show up because they’re leaders when clayball talks about it all the time.

[00:18:31] Taelor Pleas: Everybody is a leader. Everybody has influence on others. So, you know, we always, we just, we have leaders in our, um, within our company. So we say we don’t manage our people. We manage our systems. If someone’s not succeeding within our company, we’re always going to look back at the systems we’ve created to best support them, because obviously we’re not building systems to help, to make people struggle or to make people feel like they’re not good enough.

[00:18:54] Taelor Pleas: So we’re always looking back and managing our systems. And on the opposite end is leading our people.

[00:18:59] Antony Whitaker: Okay. So in terms of your 4 salons, there’s obviously 4 people that are responsible for those individual units. Their title isn’t manager. Their title is salon leader.

[00:19:11] Taelor Pleas: Yeah. Yeah. So we have floor leaders.

[00:19:13] Taelor Pleas: We have reservation as leaders. Like I said, I’m the director of team development over here. And then, um, that because we do have a salon in Connecticut, that’s actually actually a licensing agreement. So they have their own owners and leaders up in Connecticut. I get to see them about 2 to 3 times a year, and then they’ll travel down here for some classes.

[00:19:30] Antony Whitaker: Okay, fantastic. All right. Um, so moving on along here, your personal role and something I know you’re very passionate about is, uh, You know, the coaching of people, like you said, you know, that doing hair being behind the chair is not where your strength is. You, you figured that out early on, but, um, I forget the words you use.

[00:19:50] Antony Whitaker: You said something about that. Yeah. Your passion for people was not being behind the chair. Your passion was for the people rather than, you know, meaning your team, uh, rather [00:20:00] than being behind the chair, doing a column of clients. So, yeah talk to me about that. Your role of being someone who has to develop, coach, nurture, grow the people on your team.

[00:20:12] Antony Whitaker: What, what does that look like?

[00:20:14] Taelor Pleas: My newest role this year, like I’ve been saying, as a director of team development, because we have over 70 team members, it’s unrealistic to think that I’m going to be able to have a personal connection with everybody like I had for the past 11 years, you know, when we had a team of eight people, I knew everything about their lives on a team of 70

[00:20:31] Taelor Pleas: it’s a little bit more challenging. So now I get to train our floor leaders on how to coach and do those one on ones with the stylus on the opposite weeks at quarrels, not doing them. We do give them a structure of what the coaching looks like. Uh, we’ve done classes like fierce conversations. It’s an amazing course.

[00:20:47] Taelor Pleas: If no one’s ever heard of it, kind of gives you the seven steps of how to, how to have an effective one on one. And not feel like you leave with someone feeling defeated or feeling disempowered. Um, cause sometimes that can happen in coaching. You always want to leave people feeling bigger, but so I get to work with those nine leaders in the local Cutting Loose Salon, then they get to touch their team members and they have a team between maybe five to six people.

[00:21:13] Taelor Pleas: They write down their goals. We always focus on personal and business. I know that’s a big struggle with owners. You said a little bit earlier where owners can kind of struggle with, with coaching and one on ones it’s it’s making them realize that What’s that saying people we just want to know that you care.

[00:21:28] Taelor Pleas: We don’t care how much you know And it’s getting even more true with the next generations, you know I’m a millennial and the next generation underneath me is the gen z’s it’s really finding out what their gas is. Like I said, they’re on our bus We’ll find them a seat, but they got to fill up their gas tank.

[00:21:43] Taelor Pleas: What’s their reason of getting out of bed in the morning? What’s their, that big, hairy, audacious goal that BHAG? Because, you know, getting a paycheck, that’s fine. There’s a lot of places you can get a paycheck. This is an amazing industry. There’s a lot of great chairs to even stand behind. Not everyone can stand behind our chair and that’s fine.

[00:22:00] Taelor Pleas: We always want to find someone who wants that more in life. That wants that. Above and beyond, um, what we told ourselves when we were children or what someone told us we could do or be when, you know, when we’re adults. Yeah. So we’re always looking for that hairdresser that wants more than being behind the chair.

[00:22:15] Taelor Pleas: They want behind the chair and, you know, traveling to do fashion week or international travel or fashion shows here, photo shoots, whatever that is. Okay.

[00:22:25] Antony Whitaker: So your role as a coach doing one to ones is very much about coaching your salon floor leaders. And there’s nine of them in total. So, so that’s, I’ve got that right.

[00:22:36] Antony Whitaker: Haven’t I? Yeah. And, and their role is very much to then execute the same process with the people that they’re responsible on the salon floor where they’re working. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So, so what are the sort of key performance indicators? Okay. That those floor leaders are coaching their hairdressing team on what are the things that they’re looking for?

[00:22:58] Antony Whitaker: How do they build individuals and develop them to, you know, become, you know, the success that they need to be?

[00:23:04] Taelor Pleas: That’s a great question because we’re always grabbing more clarity on that is what warrants promotions. Um, so the things that our leaders are working on in our one on ones, our KPIs, our key point indicators are going to be your average service ticket where we look a lot at averages.

[00:23:19] Taelor Pleas: Um, you know, I always say it’s not about how many butts in your chair. It’s about your favorite butts in your favorite chair doing your favorite services. So we’re going to look at your average ticket. We also look at a PPC. So that stands for pieces per client. So it’s product sales. We can also look at retail to service percentage, just depending on.

[00:23:37] Taelor Pleas: The retail lines, we have different prices of retail. So in some way, we’re going to look at a retail average ticket to, of course, we look at pre booking. Pre booking just means that your guests trust you and love your work and want to come back in. So it’s loyalty. We also look at retention. So we’re looking at

[00:23:54] Taelor Pleas: uh, what kind of guests are you getting in? Are you, do you have a lot of repeat retention? Do you have a lot of new requests or are you someone that maybe comes in with an empty day and waits for the salon to fill things in those we call those non requests. So it’s great that the salon can provide those things, but we don’t want one stylist being dependent on that again, favorite butts in their favorite chair.

[00:24:15] Taelor Pleas: And then the newest thing we’ve had to kind of incorporate just through some Ahas. Is another thing that’s going to warrant a promotion that we’re going to talk about in our coaching and one on ones is your guidelines to greatness. And it’s how you are as a team member in our salon. Are you showing up early?

[00:24:31] Taelor Pleas: Are you being a great team player? You know, then the basics, are you dressing professionally along, you know, in our guidelines? Are you expecting the best of your day preparing for your health? Communicating effectively to the team, you know, not gossiping. These are what we call guidelines to greatness. So we’ve kind of added that onto what warrants a promotion, not just the numbers.

[00:24:52] Taelor Pleas: Cause numbers are great, but it’s also the feeling that we leave behind on our team. It’s are you leaving your team feeling bigger and better? Did you really disempower them and make them feel less than that day?

[00:25:03] Antony Whitaker: Yeah. And with that sort of one to one, you know, coaching, is it something you do, you know, every Friday or is that something you do once a month or is it something that, you know, is, is constantly happening?

[00:25:14] Antony Whitaker: What’s the sort of process around that?

[00:25:16] Taelor Pleas: So it’s once a month with coral and then once a month with the floor leader. So they’re going to get one on ones twice a month. Okay. And they’re going to get it with two different people. We are the company. It’s like, we want them to know that we’re present and we care about them.

[00:25:29] Taelor Pleas: I mean, my mother has helped people pay for cars, make down payments, pay off debt. Like my mother is that person. She was a mother first and a boss second. But like I said, we have 70 team members. I mean, I hire someone and within four weeks, she’s like, Oh my God, what’s her name? So it’s letting her know that she can, she can help lead with me these seven leaders that she’s entrusted to coach those 70 people.

[00:25:52] Taelor Pleas: So, so we’re always involved with each other. Okay, so

[00:25:56] Antony Whitaker: it’s fair to say that it’s a, it’s a fairly numbers driven culture, like the people who work there, they’re aware that productivity matters and they’re aware of what their own personal productivity is. They’re aware of what the benchmarks and what the goals are.

[00:26:10] Antony Whitaker: Yeah.

[00:26:11] Taelor Pleas: Yes. And I just want to say to like, I just had, I do to one on one with the Protege and we’ll sit down. I said, what’s the most important thing you want to talk about today? Cause I might want to talk about something, but that’s one on ones are not for me to tell them what they’re doing wrong. It’s very important to know that one on ones are the team members opportunity to talk to a leader.

[00:26:29] Taelor Pleas: So say, what’s the most important thing you want to talk about today? And someone was talking about, she realized that her service ticket was at her prebooking was there, but she’s been having a really hard time with her PPC. And I go, all right, okay, where are you right now? She’s like, I’m not like a point one.

[00:26:43] Taelor Pleas: It’s really low. And I go, where do you want to be? She goes, well, I want to be at a point five, which is like every other guest leaving with at least one bottle, you know, that’s a point five PPC and I go, well, what do you think it’s going to take to get you there? And this is what. My 20-year-old Protege said she was why no one always comes back to educating so I need to get more confident with my education.

[00:27:04] Taelor Pleas: I need to get more confident in knowing those product lines. I need to get more confident with being able to talk to the guests without feeling like I’m trying to sell something. So this 20 year old put together that her goal to get promoted isn’t selling retail. It’s educating her guests. Like I said, pre booking doesn’t need to be at 80 percent because I want to see how much money they’re going to generate the salon.

[00:27:24] Taelor Pleas: I want their pre booking to be at 80 percent because then they can look in their future and make a plan for it. They can look forward and go, I can take that trip to Europe because I can see my guests are already booked three months out and I know where my gaps are. And it’s always goes back to the loyalty and the trustworthiness.

[00:27:39] Taelor Pleas: Do the guests trust us? Do they believe us? Are they loyal to us? And if they’re not Again, we have to look back. I’m not going to blame any of my people. It’s going to be my systems. So my systems were set up to train this 20 year old that I don’t want her to sell retail. That’s not what we do. But we all know how many products we use on our hair a day and what it would look like if we had none of them.

[00:27:59] Taelor Pleas: So it all comes back into the education portion of that. Um, so yes, they do know their numbers, they know their goals, but what gets them there is that passion and that clarity of what am I not giving my guests? Because really, Antony, all we all do is cut and color hair. Why did we grow this much? Why are we so big?

[00:28:17] Taelor Pleas: All we do is cut and color. It’s the people that are inside and the passion that they have.

[00:28:21] Antony Whitaker: Yeah. Okay. Just to put some numbers on that, just give me an indication. What would you expect a full-time productive stylist? What would they produce in dollars service dollars in a week? What would you expect someone to do?

[00:28:36] Taelor Pleas: I’ll talk just about Cutting Loose. Cause I do talk a lot about Protege. That’s an Academy haircuts are 25. So that price points much lower. So I’ll talk about Cutting Loose. We do have six different levels of hairdressers. We do a level commission system here and I’ll take my wife’s numbers because obviously I know her numbers are the best.

[00:28:52] Taelor Pleas: So she is at our master level. She’s been with us for 10 years. She’s gone through the whole program of Protege through all the levels at Cutting Loose. Her full-time schedule, which this is always our goal, full time is 30 hours a week, four days a week, moving into the next generations that are coming up instead of complaining and saying, well, I used to walk 10 miles in the snow with no shoes on because that’s what people said to you, Antony.

[00:29:17] Taelor Pleas: And now you and my mother say things, well, I used to work 60 hours a week. Well, exactly. Why don’t these young people?

[00:29:22] Antony Whitaker: Well, uh, you know, I’ve written that down as you’re talking, you’re saying. She works 30 hours a week and that’s full time and I’m thinking, you know, how long has 30 hours, four days a week been full time?

[00:29:33] Antony Whitaker: I mean, I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. I’m just saying it’s a thing, you know, so I, I get where you’re at. I’m

[00:29:37] Taelor Pleas: going to tell you what she’s generating because my mother generated the same numbers, same numbers my wife does today, but she did it off of six days a week being a single mother, raising two kids.

[00:29:49] Taelor Pleas: We want the struggle to be real, just not that real. Cause I say that, you know, our full time is, uh, either 28 to 32 hours per week, four days a week. And most of them alternate having every other Saturday off. If not every Saturday off, my mother used to generate the same numbers. My wife does today, but she did it off of six days a week, 10 hours a day, single raising two kids.

[00:30:09] Taelor Pleas: Yeah, so we’re just wanting to make, it’s not about working harder or smarter. We all work extremely hard here and we work smarter. So off the four day work week, my wife generates over $230, 000 and takes home over six figures. So obviously our commission rate set up, uh, we, I think we maxed out at 44%. So she takes home over a hundred thousand dollars.

[00:30:34] Taelor Pleas: So she has an average ticket of 130 and her haircut is 80, so she’s averaging more than one service per guest. So that’s where we look at those averages. So her haircut per base price is 80. Her average ticket’s 130. So she’s almost at two services per guest. Her PPC is, uh, she’s always at like a 0. 8, 0. 9.

[00:30:58] Taelor Pleas: Her prebooking is at 80%. So we could look forward when I heard the spice girls were having a world tour in London, prepare to be in London to watch them because we could see that and her retention, her repeat retention was almost at 100%. So, we had to raise her prices is that she could drop out 20 percent of her guest.

[00:31:18] Taelor Pleas: And what are those 20 percent of her guests went is to other stylists in our team that she recommended and that 20 percent opportunity opened her up to get new requests. Those new guests that we want to get in for her. Okay. And then obviously the leadership goal. She’s, she’s very much a coach within this company.

[00:31:34] Antony Whitaker: Right? Well, there’s some great figures there. I just want to, I just want to capture. She does 30, 30 hours a week. That’s full time, but she’s producing 230, 000 a year. In services and retail. Yeah. And she’s walking out the door with a 4 day week earning over 100 grand a year on an 80.

[00:31:54] Taelor Pleas: And I have, we do have more hairdressers that are doing that.

[00:31:56] Taelor Pleas: I just felt like they’re not my stories to tell. So I will tell my wife.

[00:32:01] Antony Whitaker: No, that’s fantastic. It’s good for people to hear these, these numbers, you know, on an 80 haircut as well, which is not like, you know, off the Richter scale. There’s plenty of people charging 80 bucks for a haircut out there. And the other figure you, you just dropped in there was that your commission level maxes out at 44%.

[00:32:17] Antony Whitaker: That was also good to hear. What does it start at? If you don’t mind me asking?

[00:32:21] Taelor Pleas: Oh yeah, no. We talk about commission all the time. This is why commission salons need to be a lot more open and honest about what’s going on. Because if we’re not talking to each other, we’re driving our hairdressers to go to lofts and suites.

[00:32:30] Taelor Pleas: And that’s just the reality behind it. So when I interview somebody and they say, I want 60 percent commission, I go, how much do you want to make this year? And they go, I want to make 60 percent commission. Well, I can’t write a 60 percent commission on a check and have you go to the bank. Banker is going to look at you like, you know, you’ve she’s flipped off the cracker there.

[00:32:47] Taelor Pleas: So I go, how much do you want to make? Cause they were making 60 percent of their other salon. And now they’re sitting in my salon interviewing with me. So 60 percent means nothing. 60 percent of nothing is nothing. So we start our commission at Cutting Loose Salon at 37 percent commission. And we max our commission out at 44%.

[00:33:05] Taelor Pleas: We have six people in our company that take home over six figures and over half of Cutting Loose Salon takes home well over between 50 to 70, 000 and these girls are between, I had a 23-year-old just purchased her first home at 23 years old. She started 5 years ago, you know, we have a 28-year-old that just entered the 100, 000 club and then she got to go to Europe.

[00:33:28] Taelor Pleas: So it’s, you know, it’s not about the commission. It’s about how much you want to make and what do you want to do with that time again? It’s about finding out what their gas tank is. Do they want to have a little life from how they grew up? Do they want to travel with their husband? You know, just be able to make their bills, you know, whatever that looks like,

[00:33:44] Antony Whitaker: that’s fantastic.

[00:33:45] Antony Whitaker: It’s, it’s almost like I want to repeat that bit on a rolling clip because it is so important that bit that you said, it’s not about 60%. It’s about how much do you want to make? And once people are getting paid 60%. It would be great if they were getting 60 percent of the 230, 000, but the problem is, is that you’re not doing 230, 000 where she was currently working, but she was getting 60 percent of a hell of a lot less.

[00:34:11] Antony Whitaker: So now they expect to be doing a 4-day week, 230, 000 and getting 60 percent of that. They just don’t understand the reason why someone is being able to produce those sorts of numbers is because of all the support and the marketing and the infrastructure of the business around them and that that doesn’t run on fresh air and that’s why you can’t give people 60%.

[00:34:33] Antony Whitaker: But you can give them well over 100 grand a year. And let’s bear in mind that the average wage in the United States is less than 30, 000. So, you know, hairdressers can own well over 100, 000 a year. Yeah. Even doing a four day week, as is the case with Nikki in your, your case, it’s not easy, but it is possible.

[00:34:52] Antony Whitaker: So that’s, uh, that’s great to hear. Fantastic. Well done. Congratulations. Yeah. So just to wrap up with where can people find you, you know, on social media, like what’s the easiest way for people to connect with you and find out, you know, more about what you’re doing.

[00:35:07] Taelor Pleas: Definitely. I am on Instagram. I gave up giving up business cards a long time ago when I was doing my laundry and finding everyone’s business cards that they handed me.

[00:35:15] Taelor Pleas: So I don’t give out business cards anymore. I am on Instagram. My handle is taelored4this. It’s T A E L O R E D the number four this. My name is spelt differently.

[00:35:27] Antony Whitaker: It is. Yeah. Just Instagram, Facebook, pretty much.

[00:35:31] Taelor Pleas: I’m on Facebook as well, but Instagram, I’m on a little bit more frequently. I do the Instagram stories.

[00:35:36] Taelor Pleas: So those are every 24 hours. So I’m just more frequent on that. I know there’s going to be people that are going to be laughing right now and it’s going to be 20, 30 years of age and younger. They’re going to be going, Antony, no one’s on Facebook anymore. That’s because I don’t want to say you ask me, I’m like Antony Facebook

[00:35:52] Taelor Pleas: that’s for my mother.

[00:35:53] Antony Whitaker: Okay. I’m on, I’m on both. I’m on both. So, you know, I’m on Facebook and Instagram. I am on both.

[00:35:59] Taelor Pleas: Yeah. But I’ll let you know when I go on my Facebook, I have like 60 notifications on my

[00:36:05] Antony Whitaker: Right. Exactly. I’m with you on that. Okay. All right, Taelor. Well, listen, thank you so much for spending your time with us, uh, this morning or this afternoon.

[00:36:13] Antony Whitaker: My time. It’s really very much appreciated. You’ve added some great wisdom to it and certainly got some people thinking. So Taelor Pleas, thank you very much for being on the Grow My Salon Business podcast.

[00:36:25] Taelor Pleas: Thank you Antony.

[00:36:29] Antony Whitaker: Thank you for listening to today’s podcast. If you’d like to connect with us, you’ll find us at Grow My Salon Business.com or on Facebook and Instagram at Grow My Salon Business.

[00:36:40] Antony Whitaker: And if you enjoyed tuning into our podcast, make sure that you subscribe, like, and share it with your friends. Until next time, this is Antony Whitaker wishing you continued success.