 Hey guys, welcome to Splitting Hares, the hairdresser's podcast, episode four. We're running around right now, unplugging the phone so they don't ring during the podcast. So you're welcome. So yeah, you're welcome. We don't want to mess up your experience. So we're coming at you live, but we're also filming a little bit differently today because we want to make sure the quality of this podcast is the best that it can possibly be. So we have a couple cameras set up. Today we're only going to have this straight on camera with you so you can see all of us all at the same time. Now we're going to go over a few different things. We want to talk about blow-up bars and braid bars. We're going to talk about holiday promotions in the salon. What can you do to kind of boost your holiday revenue? And then we have some celebrity hair changes. Natalie Portman by Nam Bray, I guess, is what they're saying. And Jennifer Hudson did a dramatic change as well. And then we're going to talk about what's coming up tonight, what we're filming tonight for you guys on our once a week. We make sure that we put together a really quality, long instructional video for you guys. So we have one of those that we're going to be filming tonight. But the first thing that we're going to do is what we always start off with is questions from social media. So we had some love again this week. I think I had one guy, which we like to call the delete of the week because somebody just out of nowhere is very rude on YouTube. It's inevitable. Yeah. It's bound to happen. So we, but other than that, we had a lot of people with great questions. This is the best place underneath this video to leave your comments and questions because we can get right to them and answer them for you. So the first one, the first question we have is, you want to read these? Okay. Let's see. The first one, I love these videos because I'm attending cosmetology school next year and it puts in perspective how important education is because from the outside, it's like, oh, yay, I can do hair all day. But once you're stepping in the door or on the inside, it's so different and so much more exciting. What's your advice for people starting cosmetology school? That's how I would guess to say that. So advice on people starting cosmetology school. I agree. I mean, I started school because I thought it would be fun to do hair and the more I got into it, the more excited I got. I think the, I guess the first advice I would give for you just starting off is don't limit yourself. Realize that there's so many different avenues that doing hair can take you, you know, whether you're completely content working behind the chair for the next 30 years or you want to do photo shoots or education or anything. Definitely just keep yourself as open as possible right from the jump off so that you really can go anywhere at this career as you advance. Yeah. I agree a lot with Brian with what he's saying is to keep yourself open. I believe a lot in any opportunity you get in hair school, whether it's to help out with a fashion show or a hair show or something along those things is you always want to say yes. And even if it's just a community that with going to volunteer at a women's shelter or something like that, getting involved in those activities is really going to help build your public relations and make you known in the community or in the industry itself. And I think that's important as well. Cool. Going off of what Dre and Brian said, I really do agree with them as far as Are you looking into the audience as well? Exactly, I want to look deep into their stories. You're very into that. You can go right for them. I would definitely like look into like the schools like I chose my school based off the fact that they were very active in the industry, not only in making sure that you passed state board, like they wanted you to do that obviously as well. But they gave you so many different options as far as like going and like backstage at hair shows they had like working at the women's shelter or working like in every different avenue like fashion shows like just to say a few. So it really gave me an idea as to like what I wanted to do. Like I know I would never want to do stage makeup. I know that I would never want to work on like one of those sets. I think that that would be like way too overwhelming but that's me. Well I think too you guys both went to the temple in Maryland and the great thing about that school is Charles and Sharon have like they're always involved in everything. They're always getting it seems like they're always getting the students involved. So you know I think it's it's very important where you go to school and you know making sure that when you make that choice and what school you want to go to and then while you're there personally for me I think the best thing that happened was that I just tried to make sure that I wasn't scared to try anything and and just like you have the opportunity when you're in beauty school to to mess up. So they're actually you're doing five-dollar haircuts they're expecting you to mess up right. So trying techniques and trying things that you see and not being scared about you know and just taking any guests that walks in and you know making the best of the situation. So I think it's been a long time on that question but I think you know it's important. We fleshed it out. We fleshed it yeah. Cannot say we didn't answer your question. Actually I'd like to add on just like real fast just make sure that not only the school owners but the like the education team is excited for like what they're doing like if they're not excited when you're going on the tour chances are you're not going to be excited throughout school so yeah. Well I think also a lot of schools I know Palm Central schools do it but you can after your tour you can even shadow for a day at the school so that really gives you a true experience of what it's going to look like going to school there every day. That's great actually I didn't know I didn't really did that. Very cool. We didn't have Palm Central schools when I was back in the day. Back in the day yes we didn't have that. Yeah. All right the next. All right moving on to Angela. Angela is my favorite. She loves Brian. She's always commenting. She she gives Brian lots lots and love. Well I love her. She says glad you guys are back this week. I have a few questions. Graduation is looming and I'm trying to decide on a color line. I've used Bureau K-Pack at school and bought a starter kit but I'm not completely sold yet. When you mind sharing your favorite color line or perhaps steer me in a good direction. I had my interview at my number one choice line and was offered a chair. I enjoyed the session last week. Thanks again for all your efforts. Well go ahead. No I was going to say I think right off the bat. Good direction is the fact that you're trying different lines. You know everything is going to work a little bit differently. Everything will really much get you to a similar end result. It's going to be a matter of what you're most comfortable with. And the other thing Angela was talking about she actually left another comment saying that she took a professional class from some line. I don't know what it was but she said that she had a really bad experience in that class. And I think you know when you when you are choosing your line and what you're saying you want to make sure that not only is the product performing but the people that are representing the company you respect and you look up to and you feel like you can learn from. Right I mean that's definitely been one of the good things. You know like them I went to a Palm Mitchell school so I've had that color sort of from the jump off and I've always loved the education that comes behind it. You know I was never just handed a color and said okay good luck. You know it was a great company as far as making sure that you will always get it. And I know there are other companies that are really big into education now especially. So you know if that's something that is important to you then try to steer yourself in that direction but try everything. Try everyone. Forget what you like best. Let me know. All right so we don't overwhelm these questions. Let's what do you want to let them hit this one. Here you guys go. Okay Anissa I Anissa I think that's right. I've never met her. I'm really sorry if I butchered your name. I absolutely love these videos. I'm always open to learning new things. I have a question for you. What is the difference between the results of teas cutting and using razor? I can't I get the same results thanks. What do you guys think? I have an answer for this one. I do have an answer for this one. What do you think? I personally prefer the teas technique versus the razor technique on certain types of hair because I know with like my hair personally after two weeks of having a razor done on it I have frizzy ends. I also like the control of the blade and that I don't always have to make sure that I have a sharp razor in my eye. Which is a good point there because I do feel that razors have a bad name but as long as you're spending the money and getting the blades because if you think about it we spend probably $30 every couple of months sharpening our scissors right. So the thing that you buy and then you use it 14 times on a haircut. Exactly. It's razor blades are $12 a pack or maybe $20 a pack depending on the razor I guess. But that's meant to be used one time. So a pack of razors is going to last you a couple of months just like sharpening your scissors. You're spending the same amount of money and you're keeping the quality of the hair. A razor blade is very very sharp. It's not going to shred your hair up but if you use it over and over again on the same hair type you're going to. So it's kind of frustrating like I think some people that don't use a razor correctly like you're saying it's going to make the hair quality damaged. So it's giving razor cutting a bad name but razor cutting is not a bad thing right. Right. But the tease cut the difference for me is in the it's a very similar delivery but I could never tease cut wet hair like so if I'm going to if I'm looking for texture and movement within a haircut I'm going to use a razor on wet hair and then if I'm looking for dry hair it's like using a razor on dry hair. I don't want to use a razor blade on dry hair. It's not you know so it's a it's a same concept you're just doing one on dry one on wet for me and what I'm cutting here. Yeah I don't think that you can go wrong with either but definitely know the reason why you're using the the razor for a razor haircut and why you're using the teasing technique for another haircut. As long as you have the you know the knowledge which hopefully that kind of clarified that then I think you're good. Yeah because both both techniques are going to cut the hair very differently like the teasing technique is going to be putting more of like in like internal layers or giving you like more of like a jagged effect whereas I'm looking at like a razor haircut it's taking like finer sections and having more of like a flow if you. Yeah well I think that's the challenge too like we look at razor cutting as a precise kind of thing and a lot of people look at razor cutting as shredding layers in chair. So you know it's just all about how you go about it. I mean if your razor is nice and rusty then you're definitely going to be shredding some hair up but. Your Mickey Mouse cup is staring at you. But it's smiling. I know I'm like that thing is just like okay what's the next question. From Aaron how do you decide where the part line will be? I know it will vary person to person but is there a rule of thumb. Okay and the part line they're talking about the pompadour haircut. Okay so it differs what you're doing. Yeah yeah they were talking about the pompadour cut. We had a couple questions on that haircut but I'm just finding the part line. Head shape and the natural fall of it. I mean it's one of those things especially with guys. You're talking about the guy pompadour cut? Yeah. You're going to be very hard pressed finding a guy that you can teach to retrain his part where that's going to fall is where he's probably going to let it fall forever. So don't ignore that on a guy like I know with some women you kind of be like oh let's move your part and this is how to style it. Guys they're not going to fight it you know like if that's where the part is that's where it's going to be. Right. Go off that. Yeah and you got to also look at the pompadour doesn't technically really have. No not when it's styled but that. We really are working off the parietal wherever that bend happens on their head and based on the weight the amount or the density I guess of their hair. If they have a high density of hair you're probably going to want to take that line up a little bit higher on the parietal. And like my hair is really fine so we go a little bit deeper with it so it has more it allows more weight to be you know on top of my hair. So I think you're right it's based on the person but just really working on the parietal and where you want that weight distribution in there. Yeah just there's your rule of thumb figure it out on the parietal as far as how it needs to sit. Yeah all right what else we got. What's that brush called and it has pompadour video. Yeah it's also on the pompadour video. What brush did you use for the style. The round brush that we used for the front. Yeah. That was I believe that was the Paul Mitchell express eye on round is it the large. No it wasn't. Well I thought it was. Or did you pick up the medium. I think I picked up the medium it was a small it just it depends on the hair length. Real small small round brush. Yeah you want it to be small enough to put a little bit of curl into the hair because the reason for using that smaller one we wanted it to curl forward like ridiculous 80s bangs so that when it's pushed back that curl is still in there and kind of comes out a little bit before the pompadour actually sweeps back. Yeah I think that was definitely I think we lost our camera there. That was definitely the the main goal of of the pompadour was just get that kick so we round brush it forward get the kick back and then watch it flip so sweet. All right we have another pompadour haircut question. Love this haircut how do you like the the Paul Mitchell clippers can you change the blades? We also had a question about the heating up of the Paul Mitchell clipper so we obviously all love Paul Mitchell we've been working for Paul Mitchell for a long time the clipper gets really hot so I know we kind of have a breakdown of why that happens but depending on what you're working with I love the Paul Mitchell clipper because of the power that it has so that's why I like using it and that's the one that I use it is interchangeable with the austere clipper blades the metal blades so I like that as well I think it makes it look more professional and obviously those blades work the best but as for heating up that's the only challenge I have with the clipper is that you got to keep using the cool down or the cool loop the monster just to keep them cool so you don't burn your guest's head yeah I mean it's it's the trade-off with these clippers versus some of the others the reason it heats up did you want to go into them yeah yeah okay the reason it heats up so much is because it doesn't have the fan that some of the more traditional like the Titans or the 76s have so it's lighter it's not blowing the little hair clippings everywhere because there is no fan but the trade-off for that is that the blade gets hotter faster which I mean it's it's half a dozen of one six minutes whatever you like it works fine for me because I use clipper work usually just a small amount in the men's haircut just to get myself started so I don't use it for a long enough time that it heats a problem for me but I know a lot of people will go and do a lot more work with clippers so that it you know the heat might be an issue for them yeah I think if you spend if you're spending over 15 minutes clippering and you're not interchanging your blades out it's going to get really hot so you know you just got it the problem is you can't test these things out so if I was recommending a clipper you know I would I would base your decision on that you are you just kind of are using a lot of scissor over comb and a little bit of clippering and you want a really powerful clipper that works really really well then go with the pulmonary clipper and also how comfortable you are with using the plastic guards because you slap one of those on a blade and you're fine because that's not up against the head which is what it comes with because it does come with a whole collection of plastic black clips clip on it extensions for it but um you know I guess so once you go to the metal blades then I would probably go with the more classic 76 or something yeah and you can also be honest with yourself as far as like when you're doing the hair you don't need the turbo you don't need the turbo for like every every uh every every is the turbo but so if you're using the regular it's going to be a lot less yeah we have to change cards over camera tactical it is a diva so um all right is that it for the questions we have one more question okay let's boss this one out great blow up matt quick question what's better for longer last being curl to curl set and let the hair or to hit it with a cool blast from a blow dryer while you have it set with the round brush then roll it out so this is a awesome question actually so basically the difference between putting in a pin curl set or hitting with a cool shot with the round brush and then kind of twisting your hand out what I I did write them back two two two reasons for me the pin curl clip that's helping you keep organized and keeping out of the way if you twist it out it's great too I mean the cool shot is going to set it but then now you've got that hair just hanging there for the rest of the blow dry so it's not going to set completely as much so you know with the blow dry and I want to kind of clarify this blow dry a little bit because that's the one guy that I had um my favorite comment of the week was that he can blow dry hair better which is great the point of this blow dry was a quick nine section blow dry I don't know if it was nine sections but it was very a very quick creation of a volume voluminous blowout kind of thing for either a guest at home or you in the song as a quick technique this is definitely not you know the best blow dry ever what it is is just a really simple set so I like the pin curl clips in this specific set because we were using bigger sections so it allowed it to cool down in time and I wasn't messing I wasn't getting tangled up in the rest of the hair as I was working through so with this particular blow dry I like the pin curl set if I'm working in the salon then you know sometimes I will twist the brush out hit it with the cool shot as well so you guys have anything I know you guys like the round brush so I don't like cool shotting personally just because I don't like cooling down my brush I like my brush to get as hot as possible because it acts like a smoothing iron and I just have this way of thinking about cool shot I'm doing that well what also I like about the pin curl clips versus the cool shot is even if you are being careful of not going in and working in your space and whatnot if you use the cool shot you twist out the hair there's still a chance that the hair is going to heat up again by just working just around it around it yeah so what I like about the pin curl clips is even if that hair does get heated up again it's still cooling back in that same shape whereas if you use the cool shot it's now cooling again in a shape that you didn't originally want right cool all right all right that's a different question all right that's it for the questions so we have a couple industry topics I want to talk about two things one thing that told me about was like a steam blowing flat iron which oh yeah which I think it's battle list is that may say a baby list whatever I don't but I did try to contact the company see if we can try this thing out because obviously steaming your clothes when you iron them works really well but I don't understand hair fabric is something that you know I don't know if it reacts the same but I doubt it yeah I think clothes are a little bit stronger than hair fabric and I think anytime you're adding a lot of moisture to the hair so that worries me but I would love to see the result of it I don't know yeah I'm very interested in knowing the result but it seems like a huge contradiction to everything we know about smoothing hair and humidity with smooth hair or humidity with anytime like anything like with like changing the structure of the hair right so it's interesting and I want to get my hands on it and try it out so hopefully we can get back to you to you guys on that the other thing that we we sent out to check out is this thermal cutting system from Jaguar which is is having me I'm I'm laughing about this because some guy is charging $125 more for a haircut with this scissor which is basically a scissor that is heated so it's supposed to close the cuticle as you cut and it tests are saying that it works which is you know cool and they're charging more mine for the for the haircuts with this scissor so another interesting thing I don't know we had two people cut themselves yesterday in the salon well actually you cut yourself out of the salon but um so we have two finger injuries and um you know I would hate to cut myself with this heated up scissor I can't even imagine holding it in my hand so another thing I'm looking forward to getting our hands on because it's also let's see if I can I'll cut my is there any image with it I'll post up an image um on the one I redo the video and I'll show but the uh it's basically a corded scissor so it has a cord I don't know and hopefully freestyle systems will uh maybe attach that to it so we're gonna have to hang scissor heated scissors as well so we'll see about that but um there wasn't wasn't a ton of new things going on in the industry the funny thing about our industry is I'm like we're doing a lot of research for this show but um it's not people aren't putting new stuff out it's like every company puts out the same thing on like a quarterly basis so trying to find new things um and new products to try out uh there was two things I wanted to do can you grab the uh the two dry shampoos that we have so we have um a couple dry shampoos that we use in the salon well most of the time we use palm Mitchell uh dry dry wash which we love and um so the big thing with companies now what I wanted to kind of go over real quick was that um they're talking about dry shampoos and it's almost gone nice but it's basically that uh there's no white residue so um I want to talk about the benefits of that because that seems to be the selling point for everyone and I'm like well I've never really had the issue where I've seen a lot of white residue I don't know if you guys have but um both of these state that they don't leave white residue they don't and they're both seem to be great we have surface um trinity dry shampoo and uh palm Mitchell dry wash both great products um surface kind of set this over so we've been testing the their products out a little bit but um and palm Mitchell dry wash we've been using since it came out so um both great um what do you think what's your favorite thing about dry wash uh I love well one this mount which is completely irrelevant but I do love the smell of it it's kind of irrelevant but it's whatever guest cares about like for us it's not what we look for but if the guests they will buy it just because this mouth yeah I being a guy with short hair my whole life I never really knew much about dry shampoos because I know for a long time it was a big industry faux pot you can talk about it and now everyone's got their own version of it um but I have friends who've been avid dry shampoo users for years and say they love just that it actually does what it's supposed to without the caking up or making that weird pancake dough on the scalp kind of thing so it's been I mean it's been great for doing exactly what it says it's supposed to yeah and so it's funny because I watch people sell this not us but um sales consultants so basically they take it and they'll spray it you spray that on on the black cloth so no white residue right is this one gonna spray I don't know we might have to grab a new one look no white residue either yeah not even product actually yeah there we go that's on it there we go wetter true story yeah so our test concludes that that was a little wetter they both smell delicious yeah and if you're gonna have three day old hair and you're gonna use this on it then you definitely want something that smells good right so um basically I think that's what I've heard from dry shampoos everyone's talking about selling it with no white residue I don't think it's that big of a deal um I think it was more of a powdery residue before anyways and it worked into your hair so it wasn't like um so well what the powdery residue leaves is the hair's not as shiny and it looks kind of dull okay after that and I I always felt that it was very um old lady like hey because it like almost puts a cloud over your hair yeah okay so that's the big thing with the no white residue and if we jump back to like the blowouts like this is great to like put in like right after you've just done a blowout to give it a little bit more volume a little bit more texture yeah yeah really like especially during a blowout if you want to really get that texture in there yeah um and lighten up the hair these products both worked really well so when I even love it for doing up styles it's a great um add-on tool for that true story true story all right let's get into two more things real quick and then we're going to get ready for our day um I want to talk about holiday promotions and Brian I know that you've talked about one that you've been wanting to do for a long time so I just want you to do a little rundown that might be a cool tip for somebody to use in uh yeah actually it's it's a great way to make sure that you've got yourself some business during the slowest months of our winter which is usually get some some talk going in the salon and basically it's a promotion that from the beginning of December to the end of December it's how I wanted to run it you can change it however you want but from December 1st to 31st when you leave if you book your neck or pre-book your next two appointments before you leave name goes in a fishbowl January 1st one name gets picked out and then they get free haircuts for a year and what's funny is every time I've ever brought that up the first reaction people's like whoa are you talking seriously like free haircuts for a year I'm not doing that but when you think about it you're sitting there asking one stylist in the salon to give up 45 minutes a month an hour a month for 12 haircuts at most and in return what you've done is now had way more guests booked for their January February appointments because if you think about it in a salon everyone that's ever been to that salon is going to be back in the month of December because every holiday new years everyone's coming back in December and now we're sitting there give them a reason to come back in January and February yeah other fringe benefit of that is maybe now you're getting clients that were not pre-bookers or not you know ones that plan ahead with their hair appointments to now start doing it to get them used to planning out two months ahead and it's just it's very and we kind of touched on last week I think but it's really taking your busy time the busiest time in the salon whether it's today is your busiest day or the month of December is your busiest month and being smarter about the way you go about business because we're in a business if you're busy usually that's when customer service lacks all these different things you don't rebook people you don't upgrade services you gotta look at to see the most people how do we get them to come back January February let's run promotions let's do something some kind of contest like that is very cool I mean you could even give away I've heard about people they've given away iPads but think about it I mean it's you're gonna spend $399 you would have spent that on a on a newspaper ad you would have spent more than a mailer yeah on a mailer and there everyone is going to rebook for January February you're going to make that iPad back over double so it's like little things like that that are creative ways to get people to come back sooner I want Drea to hit on she's really big into braid bar and blow up bar we've been talking about a couple weeks the difference and what Drea was saying to me was what is what do we like more what I think for me is how do you incorporate both of these things in the salon exactly so braid bars are becoming just as popular as blow up bars they're supposed to be the new quote-unquote trend you're seeing in Hollywood all these different braids being put into up styles or even everyday styles but people don't always know how to achieve them I think it's cool to maybe not necessarily do an entire bar of braids but like we were talking about doing it more as an add-on service it's making it that upgrade or quote-unquote luxury yeah it's it's about creating an experience right so just like the blowout bar everyone got upset the blowout bars were coming out what what if a blowout bar opens in my town well we have blow dryers we've had blow dryers way before blowout bars so it's a matter you tell me that we style hair here we do style I had no idea so um I think the camera messed up again being very finicky today um but you have a you have blow dryers you have you can create your own blowout bar experience create a braid bar create all of these different menus in your salon so that you can attract the people who are looking for those type of services somebody's turning white over there um boy so uh it's like as we speak it gets wider and wider um and all fairness I think that spray was a little closer than instructions I also think it's a little more concentrated in there that's so fast yeah there's also not any oil in the tablecloth so um so yeah just create the experience create the menus and you know develop the blowout bar for yourself and the braid bar braids are huge everyone's doing braids now well I think not me but everyone else she's using them so I think it's cool to be able to change around the blowout experience because for the longest time nobody was getting blowouts right and now we've incorporated it to being something fun and interesting and who doesn't want to add on a braid because honestly it's more creative than just blowing out someone's treat yeah yeah and everyone gets attracted to I don't know what it is everyone gets attracted to braids like that catches your eye more than a blowout more than anything well I what I love about braids is it shows off um dimension and color so wow within a hairstyle yeah and then you don't have to close all right two more things we can hit on real quick um we have our celebrity changes yeah so the first one we're going to pull up is good old Jennifer