– Episode 196Gordon Miller

Episode 196: Transcript

[00:00:00] Antony W: 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.

[00:00:28] Antony: hello and welcome to today’s episode of the Grow My Salon Business podcast. I’m your host, Antony Whitaker, and as always, it’s great to have you here with us today. This year will be remembered for many things, but I think history will look back at the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023. As been the time when artificial intelligence exploded into society, mainstream AI has been with us for a number of years in a supporting role, whether it’s been through social media algorithms or dating apps, or Siri or Alexa or Google Maps, or determining what Netflix is going to put in front of you. But it’s chat, G P T, which has got everyone talking, and it now seems to be everywhere. And has in equal measures, got people excited and terrified at the same time of what this really means for humanity. So my guest on today’s podcast is my very good friend, Gordon Miller, and in today’s podcast we’re going to discuss chat, G P t and the impact that we’ll have, not just in the wider context of humanity. But specifically on the hairdressing industry. So in today’s podcast, we’re going to discuss how AI can be used in the hairdressing industry, who or what it might make redundant, and how to dip a toe in the water if you haven’t already done so, and lots more. So without further ado, welcome to the show, Gordon Miller.

[00:01:55] Gordon M.: Antony, thank you again for having me. It’s one of my favorite places to be with a fellow podcaster, you in particular.

[00:02:01] Antony: I think you are my, my officially now the most returned guests. So, that says something. I know I’ve, been on yours as well and it’s fantastic to have you.

[00:02:11] Gordon M.: I think you might be my most, most, most, uh, published guest as well, so I don’t know

[00:02:17] Antony: Great. Okay. Right. So, AI chat, g p t, um, it’s sort of, you know, whereabouts do we start? But, um, do you think it’d be fair to say, I mean, I know what your answer’s going to because we were chatting a bit before we pushed the record button. but do you think it would be fair to say that this is an absolute revolution? That this is a new era for humanity? This is not just a new app or something. This is a defining turning point, isn’t it?

[00:02:49] Gordon M.: It feel, it feels like it. I think mostly cause this, I think some of the smartest people in the world are saying that I don’t know that I’m smart enough to have the, the right opinion about it. I, I think for our industry where I think, I have a little bit more knowledge, I think it will be looked upon as probably the most important technological revolution, evolution ever. And yeah, it seems like, um, in the rest, in the entire world, perhaps. It’s the biggest tech shift in history

[00:03:17] Antony: Yeah. Far.

[00:03:18] Gordon M.: And scare, and scare and scary in, in many ways. but also amazing. I cooked dinner with it yesterday.

[00:03:23] Antony: Oh my God. Okay, well, we’ll get to that. We’ll get to that. Hold that thought. I was talking to someone the other day about it, and, uh, He, he sort of knew a little bit, not a lot. He’d not used it, and he said, isn’t it sort of just like Google? And I said, well, yes and no. It’s like, yeah, you type something in, but it’s not just a search, it’s a conversation. It’s, it’s Google on absolute steroids. how would you describe that if someone said that to you?

[00:03:58] Gordon M.: Well, I, I’d start with, you know, saying, let’s think about how would we feel today about Google as people have used it for over 20 years. the Google experience. I think for most of us, we think about it has not. Has not evolved in a good way. I, I’ve been long frustrated with Google because the first 10 things that show up on my page are usually a sponsored ad. and in the beginning of that, you know, you’d often click on ’em and then you wouldn’t get necessarily the best information. So I think we, we have to work kind of harder and harder, and as SEO became so big and as, as companies could kind of, you know, gin the system up a little bit to, to rank, you were often finding not the best information. For your search, and I think a lot of people became somewhat lazy using Google, and we would just buy into whatever served up in front of us. Now you have a similar problem with, AI that you have to kind of think about what you’re looking at and hopefully have enough sense to sort out what might be right or wrong.

[00:04:53] Gordon M.: They both have those problems, but I think that, you know, that the evolution of search, that the chat GPT has kind of hit the nail on the head as to where Google should already be. And if you listen to all the Google experts, what they say is that Google’s been sitting on AI for 10 years. They’re making so much money from search that they didn’t dare shake it up because, uh, I was listening to a really fascinating one talking about the cost of search, which I’d never even thought of. You know that Google has to spend money for computing power for us to be able to access search. And they say it costs a fraction of a penny for a search. A very tiny, tiny fraction. They said AI search. costs as much as 10 cents for Google if they, by their own math. So they had no economic incentive. They had a disincentive, so they just kept it buried and all of a sudden now they have a competitor and, and everything has changed.

[00:05:45] Antony: Yeah, for sure. So aside from using it to make dinner the other night, how have you been using chat G P T?

[00:05:55] Gordon M.: Uh, you know, first and foremost as a research assistant, going back to, cause Google’s been a research assistant forever.

[00:06:00] Antony: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:06:00] Gordon M.: I remember in the early days of Google, this is funny, I don’t know if I’ve ever said this out loud. So like you’ve been around for a little bit and, and just based on different things I’ve, I’ve done, you know, people would often call me to figure out certain things. So Gordon, what have you heard about this? What have you heard about that? And sometimes as they were asking me a question, depending on who it was, maybe it was somebody really important who I hadn’t talked to before. I said, oh, Gordon, they said I should call you. Well, I’m. I’m CEO of whatever, and they asked me some profound question. Now I’m googling for the answer.

[00:06:31] Antony: Yeah.

[00:06:32] Gordon M.: as they’re talking to me and it’s like, oh, you know, you’re, gosh, how do you know all this? And I’m just, well, I hear things. So, so, you know, I think, today, you know, my Google, version of a research assistant has been greatly enhanced, you know, greatly, especially now that they’ve launched, chat GPT four. Because unlike three and 3.5, which didn’t really have the ability to search the web, and really contextualize things for now. Cause they were, they only had it loaded up through, September. 2022. Um, yeah. Um, it was, it was missing the most current information, like a news article comes up about the beauty industry and you really can’t find any context. Well, today with, with four you can, and I find the search results just so much more, just deeper, you know, it’s not a bunch of links, and then I have to go to five links, read through them all again. I still have to do my own work. I, I tell people, think of it like if someone said to you, Hey, you want an intern?

[00:07:28] Gordon M.: Here’s a really smart kid, a college kid, be your intern, and you turn around and you give that person projects. My question would be, and they’re not from the beauty industry, but they’re doing projects for me. They’re doing research for me. Would I just accept what they gave me? You know, it’s like a, it, it’s like an apprentice in a salon. Would you let them just do hair or would you go check it? You know, and I, if I had a re well, I have research assistant, I would be inclined, especially in the beginning while that person was learning to learning me and learning what I was about and how I thought about things. I would want to check things. Well chat GPT is kind of similar because it learns about us as we use it and it learns how we search. And it has a, a bit of memory, you know, not a huge amount of memory at the moment, but it does remember things. And, the new one, I think has 60,000 words of memory. And so you can go back and, and ask it, multiple things that connect and that will only increase. So research assistant, you know, big time and really an effective one.

[00:08:22] Antony: Yeah, no, that, that’s what we’re, that’s what I’m using. I mean, from the simplest things for like email subject lines, a little bit in social media for caption writing. And then writing emails, like as you’ve just said, if you had an assistant in the office and you said to them, listen, I need you to write an email to so-and-so and such and such, and I want you to talk about A, B, and C. Uh, could you knock that up and give me, give me, let me have a look before you send it. It. The thing that is amazing is the speed of this. It’s like you just type this in and bang that you’ve got five options.

It’s like,

[00:08:56] Gordon M.: Yep. You can’t even keep up with reading how Typing Fast is

[00:08:59] Antony: Exactly.

[00:09:00] Gordon M.: Know, if, if it’s

[00:09:01] Antony: Yeah. Yeah. Now,

[00:09:02] Gordon M.: Now, I al I also use it to proof things. I don’t know if you’ve tried that edit and proof so you can take something you wrote and it just clean it up for you. And so when people are like, oh, you know, you, you can’t trust what it’s doing in simplest form, I use it to check things, you know, just, here, here’s what I wrote. And it’ll be like, oh, the grammar’s off and it’ll fix it for me. I also use it, you know, I’m bad at Excel. I don’t know how you are at excel

[00:09:23] Antony: Terrible. Yeah.

[00:09:24] Gordon M.: The spread terrible. Especially when you have to write formulas. Like that’s the, the, it’s hard. Chat, GPT four, will I tell it what I’m doing? And it gives the other, about a week ago I said, can you tell me an Excel formula? And it, it answered me, that it could, so I gave it the information, it gave me the formula instantaneously, and it worked. I triple checked it and I was like, oh my God, it can, and it can do that for you.

[00:09:47] Antony: Fantastic. So you mentioned just for people who are listening to this who, who maybe haven’t put a toe in the water yet, and I know there’ll be a lot that haven’t. Uh, and so chat G P T is free to access. what you’ve just dropped in there is that you are now on chat g p t four and you pay what, 20 bucks a month I think, isn’t it for.

[00:10:07] Gordon M.: 20 bucks, 20 bucks a month, which is just a steal

[00:10:10] Antony: Okay, so it is light years better, is it? cause chat, G p t I don’t have four yet. is incredible. And so this took it to.

[00:10:17] Gordon M.: Incredible. took it to another level because it can search, it could do a whole lot of other things. You also have access to all the plug-ins. So now I’ve got extensions that allow me to do other things, and there’s a huge list of plug-ins that you could use. So that’s great. Interestingly, because it’s doing so much more work. It’s accessing websites, you know, it’s multiple websites. Like you can say, I did this the other day. I got an article that had to do with deregulation of the beauty industry potentially. And I said, can you give me, um, Up to five other articles that reference the same thing. And so that took it about 30 seconds. You and I, you know, who’ve been using it are used to it instantaneously answering things, but when it’s searching the web, it takes a little bit, you can see it thinking, it’ll say searching a website and then it’ll give you a little bit of information, searching another website. And so, but I’m happy to wait 30 seconds.

[00:11:06] Antony: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it’s a small price to pay. Um, okay. So how have you seen other people in the industry using it? Uh, how are you seeing hairdressers using it? Most of the people using, you know, listening to this podcast are going to be salon owners. So, so what sort of uses have you seen or heard that other salon owners are using it for?

[00:11:27] Gordon M.: I haven’t heard a lot, to be honest, which I, I find disappointing. But one of my favorite people in the industry here in the States is Sam Brocato, and Sam is in love with, with artificial intelligence and he’s been actively using it. And he was telling me, you know, the story of a new staff member and he’s been using it. With her to find information about working in the salon, you know, best practices and, do this. And every day he gives her things to look for and, and lessons to learn. And so he’s using it kind of as a self-study tutor, which is, by the way, one of the things, the two  biggest things I read about and, and hear about where this could take us in the near term is in education. Especially tutorials teaching you something, and you can have conversations with it and it will give you information. Again, you can’t trust everything, but you can’t trust everything humans give you, you know? So, I mean, you can’t, there are good tutors and bad tutors. There’s good coaches and bad coaches and, I see some of them today on Instagram giving out. What I know is bad information as human beings to other hairdressers, and so it’s imperfect, but Sam is using it, you know, for that. I’ve talked to some who are using it, as you said, for captions on social media. I’ve talked to a co one in particular who was using it to create art for social media. I’ve used it to create art for social media, meaning, I like to share quotes, so I asked it for, I, I think, 15 or so quotes about a topic. I then went to another AI tool, which is Canva. So Canva, the art, the graphic design platform, which is used by tens of millions of people. Um, they introduced recently a whole suite of AI in, in their, product. And it’s based on, chat, G P T or they use it as a platform. And so I took my quotes, I dumped them into the AI on Canva, and it created all the art for me and would’ve taken me. Probably, 10, 15 hours, took me 15 minutes.

[00:13:18] Antony: So what, you put the quotes into Canva and then you ask,

[00:13:22] Gordon M.: They created the art.

[00:13:23] Antony: Asked for art to accompany the, the quotes.

[00:13:27] Gordon M.: Yes. And then what? And then the reason it took a little bit more time was it creates one template of art, but then if you’ve ever used Canva, you can easily adjust things very quickly. And so I just went through and I said, okay, I like this, but I want to change it up. I don’t want them all to be the same. And so then I just started clicking on backgrounds and, I, I pulled some video templates and just did different things with it. And, um, yeah, it was just a, it was just a massive time saver. Massive, massive, massive.

[00:13:53] Antony: I know there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of fair around the whole AI thing. talking about the, the amount of people that can put out of a job, you know, blah, blah, blah. Copywriters, there’s certain people that seem to be really, in the site, so to speak, the ad, the advertising industry, copywriters. Maybe graphic designers, you know, there’s certain, certain job roles that are, sort of, uh, shaking in their boots, so to speak. Where do you think. That in a salon context, I mean, you know, robots aren’t going to walk up the street and in the door and start cutting air, but AI is going to have a big impact around the way the salon business operates, uh, potentially. where do you see it will have the most impact in the salon situation?

[00:14:45] Gordon M.: I think for those who are smart about using it, I’ll go back to Sam Brocato. I think education and tutoring staff, I think especially on the things that we have always struggled with, you know, and you know this better than I, and that is, Learning and understanding and being able to utilize information about business, understanding a p and l, understanding a balance sheet. these tools will, have the ability to tutor people, you know, in this information. And just like we’re seeing thousands upon thousands of, kind of companies and platforms now using chat GPT underneath it. Like they don’t necessarily talk about it. They don’t hide it. But, you know, Jasper is, is a pretty well known, writing platform and, and they use chat GPT and, and they’ve used the technology for a bit.

[00:15:28] Gordon M.: Now there could be an Antony Whitaker app, you know, that uses chat GPT that I’m going to ask Antony agent to who’s not available to me today, cause he is in London or he is on an airplane somewhere, to give me a tutorial on how to read my p and l. Interestingly, going back to Sam Brocato again. I talked about this on a podcast and he texted me afterwards. He said, I, I just listened to you. I says, I took my p and l and I put it into chat GPT. And he says, and it came back and gave me, and I asked it for advice and he said it gave me really good advice. And he said, it’s early. I know it’s still learning. And it’s got a ways to go. He says, but he, his mind was blown by it. So, so I think, helping us understand business, I think is a really big one. I think marketing, which we talked about, you know, I think all the things that. Our pain points take up too much time. And so we don’t tend to do them.

[00:16:14] Gordon M.: You know, I, I think so many salons don’t use social media the way they could, but if they had a time saver, perhaps they would. I think so many salons don’t spend enough time with their, accounting and with their numbers. And I, so I think this could give them either tools to do it for them and, and give them information or, you know, actually teach them.

[00:16:32] Gordon M.: And then I think, there’s the things that as the industry’s going larger, that we’ve had to, you know, add staff. And I think, yes, some of those staff will probably end up losing their jobs, but I also think that almost all the examples we come up with, there’s already trends in the industry that are here. You know, so in pandemic there was this big conversation, oh, you should get rid of your front desk.

[00:16:51] Antony: Yep.

[00:16:52] Gordon M.: And I, what I said to people is, well, there’s nothing new about that. People get, people have been getting rid of their quote unquote front desk for the last 10, 15 years as many salons realize that maybe they couldn’t afford or didn’t need that receptionist. They left the physical desk there. that was the only difference. But, so as we see, I think more and more salons, trending towards getting rid of reception because the cost. This just makes it more practical for some to do what was already happening, you know, which is to have perhaps AI reception, to have chatbots. You know, um, I read, I read an article over the weekend, that Wendy’s is testing out a, Wendy’s, uh, fast food restaurant here in America. I know, I, I actually, I went to a Wendy’s in Tokyo actually, so I know they’re global, so, but they just announced that they, um, are installing a test in, I think 20 or so locations of a drive through experience that is completely AI driven, that the person who will take your order is a chat bot. And that you will have no human interaction. And if it works, they’re going to roll it out. But again, if I think about, um, my experience again, o over the weekend I went to target and I, I remember commenting to a friend, I was like, there are 20 are at least 20 cash registers that used to be manned by humans. And we’ve just watched over the years, fewer and fewer humans. They haven’t gotten rid of the cash registers. And yesterday, which was a pretty busy day, they had two cash registers open, and then they had a whole lot of self-service going on, which is not, AI, but it’s a sign that retailers want to get rid of the humans to save money, and now AI will allow them to do more of what was already happening. I think it’s so important to say that.

[00:18:33] Antony: Yeah. Yeah. There’s an interesting thing. I, I’m often on the phone to Apple support for one, for one thing or another. And, uh, I must admit, when I say often, I mean, this is over the last, I don’t know, 10 years I suppose. And the bot that you are talking to at the beginning, before you get put through to a human, has got so much better. Like, you don’t even know half the time whether you’re talking to a bot or not. And, and that was an interesting, uh, point, you know, before we pushed the record button, I, I was talking to you about, a YouTube video I saw, with a guy called Yuval Harari. And, I highly recommend listeners check that out if you’re, if you are, uh, interested more about this. But he said that. He was talking about regulation and he said that the, one of the, the regulations that should be put in all over the world is that you should know whether you’re talking to a bot or not, that should be the first thing that it should say. You are not talking to a human, I’m a robot, or whatever.

[00:19:30] Antony: In fact, I remember you were having a conversation with me about this, where you were talking to someone. And, uh, yeah, I think you were telling me this a couple of months ago that you were talking to someone, having a great old conversation, and then all of a sudden you thought, hang on. Is this a, is this a real person or not?

[00:19:48] Antony: So, so.

[00:19:49] Gordon M.: I asked.

[00:19:49] Antony: Yeah, e Exactly. and it couldn’t answer was the what, basically what it was, wasn’t it? So what we’re saying is it’s that good now that artificial intelligence, you don’t need, it’s only, it’s only a matter of. Well, uh, you know, months. I mean, who’s going to say years when we talk about anything with AI, that’s one of the incredible things about this is the speed at which it has gained traction. And where are we now? We’re at the, uh, 30th of May, the day of recording this. So this will probably go out in middle of June or whatever, uh, end of June maybe. And it’s just incredible the last six months. You can’t turn on the tv, pick up a magazine, newspaper, go anywhere without there being something about, AI, the growth, the pickup, the change, the speed of it, the, you know, the speed at which people are starting to integrate and use it is frightening. Like, so if you are listening to this and you’re not picked up the, the gauntlet so to speak, I encourage you to do so. Um, sorry Gordon, you were, begin to say something.

[00:20:49] Gordon M.: Well, you know, interestingly, uh, another industry friend sent me a link to a personal AI assistant called PI PI. I think you can Google it. And I tried it over the weekend  just cause I, I had heard of it, but I hadn’t used it. So, and again, just talking about where all this stuff is going. Um, and it, it. When I got on there, I started asking about a bunch of questions. what do I like, what do I do? You know, ask me some personal stuff. And um, I mentioned that I’m an insulin dependent diabetic cause I have been since my twenties. That was just based on the questions it was asking me and then I got tired of it. It was going back and forth. And then last night I got a text from somebody. I opened it up and I said, hi Gordon. I remember that you told me you’re an insulin independent diabetic, and I just wanted to check to know that if you know about X, Y, and z. In terms of the technology that can support you, blah, blah, blah, and how are you doing?

[00:21:39] Gordon M.: And it was like, I thought at first it was a person. And I texted it back when I realized what it was and I said, hi, PI. I said, thank you so much. I said, I, I prefer not to really talk about this right now. I’m kind of busy. And so, um, but I said, and also let’s going forward, let’s change the topic. And it wrote back and it said, absolutely, Gordon, I’m so sorry. You know, I didn’t mean to bother you. Is there, could you give me some ideas of the things you’d like to talk about next?

[00:22:04] Antony: See, that’s the important thing with this,

[00:22:05] Gordon M.: Oh my gosh.

[00:22:07] Antony: And, and when we talk about, you know, my friend at the beginning who said, isn’t it sort of just like Google? Uh, and no, it’s not. It is, it’s a conversation and I dare say this word because we’re talking about artificial intelligence, but it’s a relationship. and people are building a relationship with this artificial intelligence and, um, you know, artificial intelligence at this point in time, and this sounds weird to say, it doesn’t have consciousness

[00:22:37] Gordon M.: Right.

[00:22:37] Antony: as far as they know. But that’s what they’re saying. Like as far as like the biggest brains in the world, in this business are saying, as far as we know at this point in time, it doesn’t have consciousness, but it is self-learning. And that’s the thing, as you just said with talking to pi, it’s self-learning about, well, who has Gordon, what mighty want or might not want? And, and that, that was an another important distinction between Google and AI or chat, G P T. Is you talk to it like it’s a friend, and the more you talk to it and the more you engage with it, the more you communicate with it, the better the answers it gives you. And that is the just the phenomenal thing that’s going on here, isn’t it?

[00:23:18] Gordon M.: Well, and I, I think, you know, was also interesting and you bring up the, conscience of it, the consciousness of it, the, um, when you think about even relationships in the salon, and I think about, people, I’ve sat in their chairs, different people over the years and, you know, there’s that. Person who has taken the time to learn about me. Let’s take two different people. You know, they both took time to learn about me. one of them, you know, to me was very surfacey. They know things about me. They know what I like, they know what I don’t like, perhaps. but there’s no empathy. There’s no, like, they don’t necessarily like or dislike, you know, you don’t feel like you have an emotional connection. And to me, that’s what kinda what artificial intelligence, they’re almost the same as that hairdresser who doesn’t have, Caring in that relationship. You know, there’s an emotional connection, which I think is kind of the foundation of great, client relationships. And then there’s the opposite, which is the true intelligence, you know, where there, where empathy can exist. True empathy, I think P.I in my, you know, conversations over the weekend, shared what felt like, might be empathy, but I know it wasn’t, you know, it was, it, it knew how to talk to me to get a reaction. And sometimes hairdresser is, all of us in business will sometimes talk with another human from a business perspective and pretend that we care. It’s human nature, right? You’re supposed to care, you’re waiting on a table, you know, and, and you’re like, I have to act like I care if I want to get a good

[00:24:37] Antony: Yeah,

[00:24:38] Gordon M.: And then there’s those who wait on a table who actually do care, and, but you don’t, you can’t always tell the difference  [00:24:43] Antony: yeah. Yeah.

[00:24:44] Gordon M.: That’s a, a fascinating angle in all this.

[00:24:47] Antony: So if we bring that into the salon context and talk about, uh, well talk about these two things together all separately. One retail and two consultations, because there’s a  direct connection with what you’re saying and those two things as part of the process and a salon. What impact. Do you think that, AI’s going to have in those areas? I mean, there’s already, those smart mirrors and stuff where there’s a d there’s a degree of this, there’s AI embedded in that, but, but all of a sudden it’s just going to, next level stuff here. So, what do you see happening in those areas?

[00:25:25] Gordon M.: Well, I think, you know, big picture, again, thinking about the larger world and what we’re hearing, from the, the real big experts, the thought leader is, is that, this is a lot about solving pain points. You know, just like Google was, as someone who is older, you, you remember when we had to go to the library and write a term paper and get out all the books and write all the notes and I’d do ’em on index cards and shuffle ’em, and it was quite a process. And now younger people get to use Google and everything gets sped up. So there’s efficiencies. So like what part of life, what part of business, in the context of what you’re bringing up is inefficient. So from the industry perspective, all the data is, we’re not good at consultations. We don’t do them often enough. And all the data also says very clearly that as a bigger industry, we’re not good at retail sales. some are great at it, but collectively we’re not. The other side of the coin here is the consumer experience, because AI is, is going to affect all of us. So the question to me is like, who fixes the pain point first? and what, how is IUs so, if you’re not fir first and foremost, if you’re great at consultations, I don’t think you have anything to worry about. And I, I want to share a quote that maybe has some additional context. I love this quote. I can’t remember who said it was, I was listening to a podcast and they were talking about jobs. You know, who has to worry? They said, you don’t have to worry about AI taking your job. You have to worry about. A person who knows how to use AI taking your job.

[00:26:46] Antony: Yeah.

[00:26:46] Gordon M.: Which I’ve felt was fascinating. so it’s like, again, if your competitor is using AI and you’re not, you know, and they’re using it to be better at something that you’re not good at, maybe both of you weren’t good at it, but now they are good at it, then you need to be concerned. So I think, again, going back to the consumer, if I’m a consumer and I feel like no one’s ever given me a consultation. where I don’t get them very often. It’s a pain point for me in my salon experience. I

don’t want to change salons, you know, because it’s, that’s risky, you know? So, but I’m going, but, but that makes me not happy, or, oh, my, my friend who lives across town in a neighborhood I don’t live in, and I don’t want to go to their salon, but they always get retail recommendations. They tell me about it. Oh, I love this product. How’d you find that product? Oh, my hairdresser told me about it. I’m like, my hairdresser never talks about retail. So if AI solves some of those problems for the consumer directly, If there’s an AI app that I can open up and it tells me what to do with my hair, and then I can take it to the hairdressers, Hey, about, how about this? The AI told me I should go with shorter, you know, layers, and you’re doing something else. What do you think, is this a good idea? Almost like 20 years ago when people would tear pictures outta magazines, make me look like Jennifer Aniston. Well, what if an AI app can talk to a consumer and be the consultative tool that the salon’s not giving them? The other side of that coin is, you know, can the salon have AI help them be better at consultations?

[00:28:05] Gordon M.: And I think both will happen. The question is who gets there first? And the same on retail. You know, uh, again, if no one’s recommending retail products, we know consumers love to buy stuff. And that’s been one of the kind of fallacies in the industry. Too much chatter about, oh, they, you know, they don’t want to buy it from me.

[00:28:20] Gordon M.: It’s like, well, you don’t ask them to buy it from you. So, so I, I do think, again, it has the potential to help in any and all the pain points that we seem to know about. And the question is, who has the pain point? Ultimately, I think most pain points are the consumers. And so are we going to fix it for them or is AI going to go direct and fix it for them or some other company outside the industry going to do it.

[00:28:39] Antony: I like the idea of AI as the educator, as the tutor to teach people how to do it better as opposed to AI being. I’ve always had an aversion to, uh, going into a salon and someone giving me an iPad and I’m filling out the boxes and the algorithm is going to say, you need this or you need that. Now, having said that, there are some very good examples of how that works and works brilliantly. but personally, I’ve always had the opinion that like, I just want someone to engage with me, to look me in the eye, to smile, to be charming, to be caring, and to talk to me, on a one-onone basis as opposed. To give me an iPad and the algorithm spits out this is what you should be using even though the algorithm is dead. Right. I’d just rather that sort of personal sort of interaction. So, uh, so, so it’s interesting that you’ve sort of said both those things. It depends who gets there first, because I, I think AI from how I’m using it and what I’m seeing is just a fantastic teacher. it’s a great. it’s great at sort of putting together, well, you could do this, or this. and that’s a real eye opener. what about on the color side of things? what are you seeing the role of AI has in terms of color formulations and, all that sort of thing?

[00:29:59] Gordon M.: Well, formulation. science, you know? So I think the opportunity for it to be able to help with formulations is, is going to be significant. And I’ve, I’ve heard from a couple people that there are companies in the beauty industry already working on solutions that will be AI-based. So I think that’s fascinating. It’s probably the thing I’ve heard, heard that interests me the most, like, you know, again, we hear people using it for social media and stuff, but this is kind of game changing. And then again, talk about pain points. So many people have told me throughout my entire career that most hairdressers, and I’m not saying this myself, I don’t have any knowledge of it, but I’ve just heard too often that most hairdressers are not very good at formulations. and either because again, it’s sciencey. We, I don’t know about today, but we knew in the past that. in school a lot of students never had a chance to formulate. There was a time, often educators would formulate for them, so there was no mistakes being made. some would argue that as the age of instructors in schools have changed, that perhaps they don’t have the experience in formulation. So it feels like listening to people who are much more knowledgeable than me, that formulation is a challenge for much of the industry. We know that, most hairdressers don’t specialize. And when you don’t specialize, you’re not going to be as good as perhaps someone who does. So I, I think there’s a huge opportunity, and I think it’s a positive thing. it is, again, it’s a, it’s, to me, it’s like, you know, my, my mom is an amazing, amazing cook. she’s 87 years old and, has always loved it, you know, like chef quality cooking at home, and she was one of those people who just wouldn’t touch a food processor. Nope, got to got to cut it up yourself now. Today, she’s happy to use a food processor. She finally got there and it was efficient. It’s faster. She can clean it up faster, she can do it, fa, all those things. And I think, you know, that I hope is how we’ll at least consider new tools always is that hey, remember when Texturizing shows scissors first came out? A lot of. Really hardcore people are like, oh my, that’s the worst thing ever. Like, you, you can’t

[00:31:54] Antony: Yeah.

[00:31:55] Gordon M.: Irving Urban Rusk, what a horrible idea you had. Like, what, why, why? You know, and today, you know, you know, you see anybody up on stage and they got 20 scissors sometimes on, on their belt, and a lot of them are those specialty scissors. So I think, you know, hopefully as things evolve, we’re open-minded to them and I think color formulation is going to be game

[00:32:13] Antony: Yeah, I do. I do. Definitely. yeah, I agree with that one. what about the obvious one, which is, The point of sales systems, in that, I mean, a lot of, there’s some amazing technology out there now with point of sales systems, and a lot of them would, a lot of them would say, oh yeah, you know, we’ve already got AI built in, you know, in varying degrees. Where do you see like the whole chat GPT thing and point of sales systems and, you’ve mentioned, a couple of other, AI tools, which I’m going to come to in a minute. where do you see all that sort of going? What is, what do you think that looks like in terms of the point of sales system in the salon and integrating more AI into that, into the future? The very near.

[00:32:55] Gordon M.: Well, two things, you know. Last stat I saw was almost half the salons don’t even use booking systems. so there’s a very large number of salons who don’t use a lot of technology. So I think as AI enhances some of these things and perhaps those who are either don’t have enough structure in their lives or their careers or their businesses to use a point of sale system, I think they’re going to be easier for a lot of people to use and may maybe more appropriate in smaller businesses. I think, you know, we’re moving in many parts of our lives to more and more self-service, going back to the Wendy’s example. And again, that getting rid of receptionists and, you know, that’s somewhat tied to the point-of-sale systems.

[00:33:33] Gordon M.: So I, just think, you know, we’re going to move more and more to point of sale that is very self-service for the client. I think it will probably have a way to engage with the client in ways that we hope with staff always would. You know, if I’m doing a self-service checkout and maybe everybody’s away from me now, maybe they’re on to the next client and I’m checking myself out and perhaps it’s going to remind me that based on the service I had, have I considered retail, you know, based on, um, you know, just anything that’s happening to Salon that matters that the salon could tell the AI that it’s important to ask every client about. Perhaps it’ll, you know, make a check-in, a self-service check-in, that is not, arduous, like you said, all these things that we have to answer, but maybe it’ll do it really efficiently and effectively just hit those high points that’ll be helpful to the hairdresser to know. And I just think who knows where it’s taking us? But I, think it’s going to be a tool again, that creates more efficiencies and hopefully either lower cost of doing business every day by not needing as many outside resources. Or by being more efficient, give us time to do what we do well, which is taking care of the client, which is doing great hair, which is getting ’em out door in and out the door in an efficient way. Because there’s a lot of things that we have to do every day with clients, in this industry. At others. It’s just, we just got to do it. But it’s not necessarily the stuff that excites the client. And so I, hopefully it’ll find some efficiencies.

[00:34:51] Antony: Yeah. Okay. now tools, AI tools, you’ve mentioned a couple of, you mentioned Jasper, chat, g p t four, et cetera. There are numerous AI tools out there. Um, Dali, uh, yeah, exactly. If you are listening to this, if you are a hairdresser listening to this, And, cause I know that you are, you love this stuff. You really get in the weeds there. where would you say they should, focus? Like where should they first dip a toe in the water? And, and what are some other suggestions that you might have for them?

[00:35:26] Gordon M.: Well chat, GPT feels like the foundation of everything in this moment, you know? And it’s free and it’s easy and it, it can be fun. You know, I always tell folks, go to YouTube, and just ask it how to use it. there’s great videos. I usually recommend that people just look for videos that have the most views. you can also read comments under it to get a sense. Cause you know, it’s, again, it’s like Googling or using chat GPT. You can get wrong information, you can get bad advice, so I think it’s important when you’re looking for advice, just like when you look for a coach or whatever, that you, you know, vet them and, and you can do that. But I think YouTube is an amazing tutorial, library of, of how to use AI specifically chat, GPT. So I think that gives you a really good foundation. I say go do it for fun. You know, ask, like I, I, one of the best examples they talk a lot about is you can give it, you can go to Chat GPT, because I have this in my refrigerator. And tell me what I can do with this. I’m trying to figure out a meal, here’s all the stuff I have including leftover this, leftover that, and it’ll come back and tell you what you could do. You know, I, last night was, um,

[00:36:28] Antony: What he did last night? That was, that

[00:36:29] Gordon M.: No, no, last, last night I was, I was just going to make, some Italian something and I had some sausage and I didn’t want to spend a lot of time, and I, just asked that a fast way to cook Italian sausage. and make it really great, you know, and it gave me a recipe and I did it, and I’d not done it that way before. And it was fantastic, you know? So, um, so on a personal level, I think you can play with it like anything. Practice, right? You don’t, hopefully you don’t go take a class at a beauty show, learn how to do extensions, and then go home and start doing extensions. you learn it, you play with it. You get some feedback from somebody. You make sure you know what you’re doing. And I think you can do the same thing with AI. Go have a personal experience and use it in other parts of your life perhaps, and learn it that way. And I think was also. One of the, I don’t know if it’s a fear, but as you, as we just talked to, there’s all these companies now using it and they’re all charging money for it, and so there’s marketing around all of it. So I would just caution folks, because it’s become so hot. Like anything that’s hot, there’s just a lot of BS in it and there’s a lot of. monetization going on and I would always read reviews. Google is still good for that. You know, if you don’t trust chat, G P T, use Google.

[00:37:36] Gordon M.: If you trust Google, ask it to give you a review of X, Y, and Z product company. You know, if you go to the app store, of course you can see the reviews. I, I think we don’t often, we don’t look at them often enough, so I think. that would be, really, really important to do. But I would go play with chat g p t, and try it from as many angles as you can. And I think if you, you know, 20 bucks isn’t much to spend a month. If you’re thinking about it from a career perspective and you’re just getting. Your training wheels on. I think if you get to four, you can look at the extensions that are available. You can look at the plugins as they call them, and you’ll see a giant library that’ll come up and you can kind of play around in there and again, it, um, and just try some of them out again personally or professionally. So, I think experimentation is, is important.

[00:38:21] Antony: Yeah. Okay. what are your fears around it? I mean, we’ve talked this, most of this podcast we’ve been talking about. the upside and how it can be used within the salon industry, et cetera, and, and what sort of impact that might have. Uh, but, um, a lot of the media attention it’s also getting is around the fears that are associated with it. what are your fears around it? What do you see that it could, you know, do not, not just, you know, to the hairdressing industry, a downside, but the, the wider, bigger picture.

[00:38:54] Gordon M.: I, you know, again, listening to thought leaders, first and foremost, I, I can’t think of much. It’ll be bad for the industry, honestly. Like, I, you know, I’m not fearful it’s going to be cutting hair anytime soon. Maybe someday, you know, sinking sci-fi, 20, 30, 40 years. From now. I also believe, it’s really important when we think about our own industry, that we realize we have many different types of customers. We have the customer like you who wants to be looked in the eye and wants that personal interaction. We have a whole lot of customers who could care less. They just want to go in, get in, you know, get in, get out, and they’re not looking for art, they’re not looking for fancy, they’re, it’s a commodity to certain types of people.

[00:39:26] Gordon M.: And then there’s those people who don’t go to salons, and it’s a very large number of those people. So, in the industry, I don’t have much concern,

[00:41:57] Antony: Yeah. Sure. Last thing, social media. How do you see what impact is? Is AI chat, G T P, having on the social media platforms that we’ve all grown to love and use.

[00:42:12] Gordon M.: I was going to say love and hate, but, and as somebody who, who has long, you know, promoted you, so social, social media and beauty, I have come to a very much a love hate relationship. You know, as you said early on, it’s been around for a long time and it, it’s been embedded in all the algorithms. For quite some time. And so, and as competition and, and Tik-Tok, would not be Tik-Tok without ai, you know, it was there from the get-go. And so, um, as competition heats up between all these platforms and it’s never been hotter, the competition, I think meta, you know, has got some big challenges in front of it. With Tik-Tok, you know, I worry that the algorithms, which I think in some ways have gotten, To be something that I don’t necessarily enjoy. I feel like I’m the victim of the algorithm often on Facebook and Instagram these days, and I think it could only get worse instead of better. So, so that concerns me. I think, again, the ability to have tools to help us be better at social media is a good thing, as business people. But the personal stuff, is a whole different matter and I think for many of us, social media’s becoming less interesting personally. I think a lot of people post pandemic have gone to having real relationships, which is a good thing.

[00:43:18] Gordon M.: But, I’m yeah. I have giant question marks over, over social media and where it’s headed. But I think that, you know, social media’s been with us for a very long time. It’s evolution is coming and I think Tik-Tok is at the forefront of that. I think the most important thing to say about social media is that Tik-Tok, went from being a place where, people connect with each other. Tik-Tok brought us the place where we connect with content. It’s, it was a completely, it’s a, it’s relationships with people and content creators, but even more so. People and content, you know, it’s, it’s like baby Netflix. It’s just serving us up stuff constantly and it’s not about being connected to, to each other or to people. It’s about consuming content. Whereas the other platforms. It’s almost an older idea and I it’ll be interesting to see if that idea even can be maintained in, in the future.

[00:44:03] Antony: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Alright, well listen, we need to, uh, start wrapping up now, but I want to say, uh, as always, it’s been absolute. Pleasure having you here. You’re always a font of, you know, wisdom. Um, and I learn a, an awful lot from, you know, talking to you on these podcasts and, I thoroughly enjoy it. and I, I want to make sure our listeners know about your, uh, podcast. I think that the last time you were on here, you were still hair-brained and you are.

[00:44:32] Antony: No

[00:44:33] Gordon M.: Don’t remember.

[00:44:34] Antony: It be.

[00:44:34] Gordon M.: Yeah. I’m no longer, I’m no longer in hair

[00:44:36] Antony: We’ve spoken a lot since then, so I don’t want them to think that you’re still with hair-brained, that in terms of listening to your podcast. So, tell ’em whereabouts they can find your podcast because, you know, they’re great. I absolutely love them. I never miss them. and they’re short form, unlike the, the waffle that I often. Than get myself into, I still love a long podcast, but I do the short ones when it’s just me talking. But, yeah, tell us how people can, uh, or tell the audience how they can, connect with you on your podcast or whatever social media channels.

[00:45:05] Gordon M.: Yeah, so as you said, I left Hairbrained actually back in October of, of last year. So it’s been a bit, and I launched something, called Social Beauty Makers. and the more time goes by, I’m like, why didn’t I pick such a long name? Um, but there’s the conversation behind that name. It does mean something. But the podcast is called Social Beauty Makers, um, the podcast, the website where it’s at social beauty makers.com. But of course the podcast lives on all the platforms, so you can just. Put in the search bar, social beauty makers, and you’ll find me, the website, the podcast lives there. I have a weekly newsletter as well, so social beauty makers.com or social beauty makers in Google. You’ll, you’ll find me and you’ll find the podcast. And I’m enjoying those 15 minute I, say in my intro, you know, I do twice a week cause I do two now, twice a week, 15 minutes. And then it’s always like 20 or 22 minutes, you know, so you know how hard it’s.

[00:45:52] Antony: Or you, or you had me on that. It was like 35, 40 minutes or something. So anyway.

[00:45:56] Gordon M.: And it was a, I’m sure it was a great 35,

[00:45:59] Antony: Good. It was good. We got carried away, so yeah. Okay. right. I will put those links on our website, Grow my salon business, and in the show notes for today’s podcast, um, there was something I was going to say to you and it’s completely slipped my mind. I’m sure it’ll come back, but come back. Oh, no, I know what I was going to say. If you love facts, If you, if you’re listening to this and you love facts and you love data, uh, then make sure that you listen to Gordon’s podcast because he, he’s a bit of a, he often refers to himself as a math nerd. so I’m sure he doesn’t mind me saying that. he’s got his backgrounds in economics, so, uh, and there’s a shortage of people in our industry that have a background in economics to put it wildly. and so he does deal with some really good facts, and I’ve always found that. Listening to his podcast and stuff. Very informative, very factual, and, yeah, you know, that, that is exactly what I think we need more of. So, if you listen to this podcast with Gordon, uh, do me a favor. Take a screenshot on your phone and share it to Instagram stories or share it to other people who you know will benefit from it. And don’t forget to subscribe and lead us a rating and review on the Apple Podcast app. So Gordon Miller for, uh, the fifth or sixth or whatever time it is. thank you for being on another episode of the Grow my Business Podcast. Any final words?

[00:47:18] Gordon M.: No, just a great pleasure. Always every single time we get to talk, whether it’s recorded or not, you know it, it’s the pleasure. I learned something as well. So Antony Whitaker, always thank you

[00:47:27] Antony: Thanks, Gordon. Cheers.

[00:47:29] Antony W: 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. And if you enjoy 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.