 What's up guys, welcome to today's show. Robert's coming right up, I promise, I promise. I know you guys have all been waiting for this. I see you guys in the chat. Can you please do me a favor? If you're an OG, you've been watching the show for a long time, type OG in the chat. If you're new, you've never watched a show before. Maybe Robert brought you here. Who knows, type new in the chat. Also, where are you watching from? That's always important. I see we got some people from the UK in here. We got Michigan, let me move this up a little bit. Michigan, Missouri, Birmingham, Kentucky. People from all over the place. All right, cool. So thank you guys so much for joining us. We're gonna have a lot of fun today. We're gonna talk here. If you have a question, type Q and put in your question. It's as easy as a Q and then your question. You'll see it right here. That way, we can easily see when you guys are asking us something because the chat's gonna fly through and if I can't catch it, then we can't answer your question. So type Q, put in your question. We'll try to get to it as quick as we can. All right, guys, without further ado, we got Robert Cromines right here in the building. What's up, Robert? How are you? What's up, Matt? All those cities you mentioned when you were calling, I used to go to all those places. Yeah, you did. The thing for me and for you guys, maybe your audience that don't know me, I've been doing this a while. Probably I've been doing this longer than some of you are live, but I grew up in the old school of trade shows. I consider myself a busker. As time went on, I got bigger experiences, bigger audiences from 300 to 500 to 1,000. My biggest score is probably at least live is 12,000 people audiences. These are things that make you just freak out under your skin. If you get nerves already, you can imagine what that's like, but I love show business and I love the platform that's on our lap right now. And I just think it's a beautiful thing to kind of learn and experience. So we are able to communicate with our industry. You have such a following. It's such an honor. And along you guys right now that are listening in, this is going to be a love fest. You're not going to get too much negativity, but I will be saying I'm honest, Bob. I'm going to tell you the truth no matter how I see it. And you won't see a place where you can get offended. You'll see a place where you get enlightened because that's what's so beautiful about communication. And when Matt offered me the opportunity to jump on, I said, absolutely. And I said, maybe interview you, but the reality is you're the most impressive man in the beauty industry today, Matt. What you're doing from the educational background and everything you're doing, I made a story that I told my wife a story that I used to do 16 heads a day and 12 hair shows in the weekend. There was a time when I first met Matt, my hands could do anything you could imagine, but I have my own way of doing things. And I watched Matt do things, whether it's blow drying to create cheesy light effects or whatever I'm seeing, the dexterity in your hands is going to make you the most brilliant platform artist in the world because you understand teaching, you know how to come through the screen or the microphone and the degree of difficulty and what you're doing, all these little genres of hair, it's like you're a musical genius, you're like Prince because you're the best place, the soonest we've been known for. Tell my wife that, please. Your wife must never see you. She must love you so much from a distance. You're working, you're putting it out there. I can't get on my Facebook feed without catching a bit of you somewhere. And I just, I think, you know, I admire you so much, Matt, and I know we've known each other for a lot of years, but you are so impressive and how lucky the beauty industry is to have a guy like you representing it and giving all that incredible insight, absolutely for free, but I'm just saying you get better and better and I can't wait to see you live because there'll be no artist in the world that could stand up to what you're capable of. And that's a lot to do with your personality too. I met you as a kid at that show. I don't think you said two words. I used to work with you many, many years ago as a salon coach. You didn't say much. And the reality is what I see as you're the ultimate performer. You're absolutely, you know, able to do anything I ever was, except you can cut hair. You can make me do hair. That's all, that'll help. This is what I did without having that skill. Imagine what you would do. I have so many stories you don't even know. Like, so here's the funny thing. And I want to talk about Robert for a second because I know most of you guys know who Robert is. Global Artistic Director, Business Director for John Paul Mitchell Systems. You know, and I worked for Paul Mitchell for 10 years of my career as a educator. But what I want to say is, and my wife, you know, we're business partners together and I think you can, you know, kind of sympathize with that, you know? And we do everything together. So it's cool because we're a two-person team and we make all the free salon education stuff happen together. And it's funny, you called me Prince because that's, you know, that's one of her favorites. I'm not a Prince fan. But it's, you know, so here's the thing. So I want to talk about because, you know, I get a few chances to talk to you. I get way more chances nowadays to talk to you than I did back then. And back then, what I want to say is, you know, when I started in hair, I was a few months in and I shared that picture yesterday of me and you. And I was just a beauty school kid, three months into beauty school. And that day changed my perspective on what, from just knowing I wanted to go to hair school but not really knowing why and then watching you and just being so attached to what you were saying on that stage, just made me like know how much more there was available in this career and how it's really just like anything you want out of this career, you can make it happen. And, you know, I have a lot of passions. Cutting hair is one of them. But, you know, like doing this kind of, I was on the radio before I did hair. So, and that was, I started hair school when I was 21 and I didn't really know what I wanted to do with my life. So seeing you, hearing all of that and went right back to beauty school. I bought all Pulmintral products, lined my station, you know, and just got to work at that point. Like I just couldn't wait. I watched every DVD you guys put out and I just studied. And I spent, you know, that whole year studying and learning from what you guys were putting out on DVDs, which, you know, it's funny to think about now because we don't even make DVDs really anymore. But, you know, I learned from, you know, Takashi's hands and your hands and watching you cut with a razor and cutting a bob with a clipper. Like that's how I learned to cut hair. And then, you know, and then later, you know, DJ came along and I learned like the precision aspect of it and it took a whole different turn. So then I, but I was so glad that I learned your way first. Because I think when you learn precision, so it's so ingrained, your thought process isn't as free. And so I love having that combination. What I say, and I know you've said it a lot is that to become you, you have to become a lot of, you're a lot of other people, right? So like the first part of my career kind of obsessed over being the next Robert, you know, like trying everything I could to be you, you know, like buying two expensive jackets, you know, like I was spending my entire paycheck on a jacket to go to a hair show, you know, and silly shoes and all this stuff, just trying to become the next Robert and not really thinking about like who I was at that point. And then realizing that there's only one Robert like that's how there's only one of everybody, right? So, you know, I want to talk about the beginning, like the things that we do to become successful. Cause I don't, I know some of a lot of your story of like how you moved here and, you know, you got into hair and everything. But like for me, I was, I moved to the East coast to try to better my career, worked with Sam Burns and he would take me to hair shows and he would say, buy Robert Bacardi on the rocks. So like now I've already bought the $500 jacket spent my whole check and now I'm buying a $30 glass of vodka to give to Robert. And, you know, and I'm shaking and I give it to you and you just, you grab it, you say thank you and you turn around and I'm like, okay. And then I'm so nervous, you know, and it's just like, but that's the thing. And that's what I did. So for 10 years, you know, I tried to be the next Robert. I taught as many classes as I could. I learned every haircut that I could. I taught in every salon that would let me like, you know, I did all that. And that's where when I went to the internet because Paul Mitchell didn't put me on a DVD, right? So, and I say it's the best thing that ever happened to me because if they put me on a DVD, I would have retired, right? So, you know, now I started making YouTube videos and it all comes from what you learn in all that work. So I thank you always for, you know, the inspiration of, you know, just that path and trying to figure out what I wanted to be, what I thought I really wanted. And then me being able to kind of shift that and I use so many things I learned from you now in what I do. So I want to talk about what it takes, right? And that's kind of where I want to go. Like, what do you think? I look at stylists that, you know, maybe aren't the best haircutter, but they're successful or, you know, some people that are really quiet but they become successful in a career where you need to talk a lot. Like, there isn't a definition. I was even talking to my staff on a Zoom call right before this and I said, you know what, 10 years ago I cared about rebooking percentage. I don't really give a shit about rebooking percentage anymore because there's people that are very successful that have lines out the door that don't rebook. So like, the things that I thought were important 10 years ago, I don't even think about them anymore because successful people come in all different packages and I say success based on like, you know, just happiness, you know, work, like you're doing what you love every day. That's success to me. And I feel like I, every day I get to come here, sit behind a camera and just have fun and make and create. And I think you get to do the same. So I want to talk about that. What do you think it takes? Well, just, you covered a lot of ground there. Usually I'm the guy doing it. I know, I know, sorry. I listen every word. So I was three months into beauty school when I seen a video, which was VHS. You went straight to DVD. I did have VHS. Yeah. I seen my mentor that I wouldn't meet for maybe four years from them in live example. And I went to dinner with that night and my partner kept saying, be funny, be funny. I couldn't say anything funny. I was mesmerized. So I've also been in the ends of meeting people like great Vidal Sassoon and hanging with him. And he pulled me over after a show in Chicago and said, you're the best I've ever seen. Now he wasn't talking about my precision and it brings up the other factor. You got to work with what you got. Yeah. And then I may not be the most disciplined hair cutter in the world. I do my favorite joke on stage, Matt, is I'm not a precision hair cutter. I stopped cross-checking my work because I was disappointed in the results. That's hilarious. And what's really hilarious is how many people would laugh with me, meaning you're just like me. But what I am, probably the greatest that most of you have never seen is behind a chair with a paying guest. My son has a young hairdresser and my company watched me and I actually said, Dad, nobody could ever imagine you're that mesmerizing to a guest experience. I could have took a photograph of your client at any time and the joy in her face was really what it's about. You're a servant to the heart. And people forget that. Don't get caught on geos and change and rainbow color. We're there to service the client and especially right now, Matt, people are risking their lives to sit in my chair. Could we make a deal as an industry to be better than we were before COVID? If we got less clients than ever before, we got to celebrate each and every one. We are servants and I think what's helped me get to the top of this industry, I've always felt that way. But I had no idea the job I do today when I went to beauty school and none of you did either. And had not been for a VHS tape. And I met a friend of mine who was an Amnesia and my mentor, Paul Mitchell Usgaussman. He was a free world guy. He spoke his mind. He would drop an F bomb here and there, not legal now, and I'm not talking frizz. He would do things with curve combs and everything I've become is really because of that mentorship from afar, three months into my career when I knew nothing, I made a choice to follow that light. And everything I do today is a kind of an honor to this company because Paul was a beautiful man and his truth. And a lot of people don't do that. And the more manby-pamby we get with manufacturing and everything is wow, wow, wow, wow, like Charlie Brown's parents, there's no sincerity. He's looking for authenticity. I wish I could hear some here and there. So for me, it's who you get around that makes a big difference. And, you know, isn't ironic that we meet as young men and you're after something in a way I have the keys to because I had the ability to put you on a DVD. I think that we never really got to see. I'm sure if there was other situations I got to see you in action. But to me, look what became of it. Radio killed the video or the vice versa. Here's a guy dying to be on a platform ends up building his own parade, his own platform. And now you're the biggest dominant force in the beauty industry and well-deserved. And I just think what's going on right now is people are saying, oh, this is what I can't do. I can't do this. The governor shut me down. What can't I do? Why don't we just focus on what can we do? I got a lot of shit for this comment last week. The things you can change, drink coffee, roll up your sleeves and get it done. The thing you can't change, drink tequila. If you don't like the new president, have a shot on me. Now, my mother was an alcoholic. My sister is in a rehab more than we see her for her appointment. She's got a relationship there. My auntie found her 23-year-old son dead after an alcoholic seizure in his bedroom. The mother discovered it. I joke. That's what I do. I tell jokes. I lighten the load of what's important so we can laugh a little bit and you know, everybody's got the freedom to comment on Facebook and Instagram. All I look for is nice comments. You can talk bad about what you don't agree with. I think that's the perfect middle position. But some people, you know, I got called a D-bag and I don't mean dirt last week from a young lady. A D-bag. Robert Cromies is a D-bag. Anybody who knows me, who's ever spent any time knows I love people and I love the industry and I'm always grateful for what it's done for me. So I go on her little page somewhere and wherever she lives and I look at it there and she's got a beautiful page. Almost with Christian. I said, oh, you seem so nice on your page. The comment was retracted immediately. I go on last week because I got pretty political on the defying the government and I had little sheep and I talked to somebody yesterday I go, I didn't know what the sheep meant. So I pondered it for a while and I thought about it. And I thought, I think I wonder if they're saying don't follow the government or don't follow me. So I thought about it. And I thought, well, yeah, I'm gonna write and I thought about maybe 20 minutes Matt and I wrote down, there's more sheep in Scotland than there are people. Yeah, well, you're gonna do that. So I'm saying it's okay to disagree with somebody. Write the comments. One guy called me out really terribly. And when I looked at what he wrote, it was actually very logical. Heidi just did this. Some kids said, oh, I'm an alcoholic. I don't appreciate your alcohol jokes. I said, they're only jokes. I'm glad we agree. I said, but the reality was it wasn't really designed about the alcoholism. It's just, we're not focused on what we can change. So here's a guy that wants a platform. I won't give it to you. You decide to find a way and pivot. And I think a lot of people need to understand that. You can't wait on folks to die to get your dream. You've got to get in there and put the work in, the road work, if you will. I did as a young man doing trade shows. I would watch a Vidal Sassoon with small notes. You talk about some people are verbal. Vidal was not the music man that I am. He is not animated. He would speak on the smallest tone, but he was a trained actor. And his words would go through your soul and kind of like you're watching your favorite musician on stage and you think they're singing it to you. Every time the man spoke, I was in a puddle of tears. And this guy never even knew my name. So the reality of what you can learn from different people, you mentioned DJ and Takashi. DJ was a Sassoonie. He is the most precision guy, probably one of the best in the industry right now. Takashi was a hybrid of freakiness. And then I cut hair with a fork. So if you're a store, you're gonna become all three of us. What people can do right now is choose your mentorship. And with the internet, you can pick so many people to make the interpretation of you. You don't wanna be Robert Cromings. You can't take the scrutiny. I know I don't mean about the internet. I mean the strip searches, the airports. I go in the name of Marcus. Security guides follow me around. I look like a shoplifter. I went to a homeless shelter a couple of years ago to do a charity thing. They wouldn't let me in. They thought I was a resident. I mean, if you're gonna do this, you better back it up. I'll see people at hair shows judge me Matt and go, who the F is that guy? And they'll come sit in my room and then listen to my little voice and go, oh my God, or see what I do. Everybody's quick to judge. Our industry needs to be not so judgmental. You know, the reality is we're so quick to judge a client, each other. And if you're gonna leave an opinion, which could be a great thing, why should you crush your heart on it? Why you gotta put negativity in it? Just state your point. Everybody has the right to do that. And I just think that to me, when I see some of the hard stuff, especially around election time, we're all getting terrified to speak our mind. And now more than ever, we need to speak our minds. And we just gotta be polite to one another. So I could say to you, Matt, with all due respect, I could do to do, but I prefer to do it this way. I don't agree with you. That's the conversation that will help the industry grow and then do that wants to put some crap out there. I'm just saying save it for somewhere else because it's just, it hurts my little heart. And that's unusual for me to save it because I've had a hand in a lot of people's careers because it may not be I mentored them, but they seen an example of what it could be. You know, I would do a show in New York, IBS. I had a bagpiper, didgeridoo, I traveled the world with a rock band. I mean, I've done things. Some of the shows that we do are $4 million productions. There's not a dream I had as a hairdresser that hasn't come true because I picked a lane and I got into it and I got surrounded by massive visionaries like Paul Mitchell. Add a solar car and a solar farm 40 years ago before you even heard of a Prius. That's the vision I work for. And to me, to see this man on stage, he could, you know, in the old days he would say the F word a lot and they would tell him he couldn't say it and he would get fined by JP if he said it. So I've had that conversation once or twice, but I just said, I know the thresholds I'm allowed to cross. And Paul would go on stage and for 30 minutes not say a word and suddenly he'd raise their hand and go, what's up with you tonight, Paul? He said, well, they told me not to say F. So for me as a kid, I got to watch this man not be afraid to really speak from where he was. And I want to just tell for the kids out here, Matrix isn't a company. It was a man called Arnie Miller. And when you look at the incredible legacy of Anthony Moskola, the Moskola family as a whole, it was about people to believe in, Paul and JP are people to believe in. And some of the more newer companies that got up there it's about really believing in people that happen to sell and recommend shampoo. And that's to me, especially with Instagram, don't just be in love with rainbow lights. Look at the people, you know, to me it's about being in love with the people and seeing the positive side and train yourself to see the positive. It doesn't just come because Jesus loves me. I conditioned my mind. I don't use my horn. Now, if I'm gonna really hit someday, I'm sure I'm gonna do something to save a life. But I don't hit the horn when I'm in traffic. I don't give the finger to people. I don't mutter shit out. If I've got anything to do, it's a great comedy to watch, better than Seinfeld's show. You know, it's just that type of thing. You train your eye and being around people who see the white light are the people you want to hang with. In the school, they call them visionaries. JP is a visionary. You know, so for me, what you've done, Matt, you're a visionary, baby, you've seen it. Well, everybody else said, well, education's down. People don't want to go to classes. All the indicators before COVID, we're on the table. Class attendance is down, participation. Having salon meetings, nobody wants to go. Now with Zoom, I can do them all day. Now I can get on to technology when I could be breastfeeding, I'm not. I could be watching you and learning how to do a haircut or a highlight. This is the most fascinating time in the beauty industry and shame on us if we're so blown up with what's wrong in the world that we can't take advantage of what's right in front of our noses. The helping hands that you're under your sleeve. So being around people is critical. And I think if there's anything young kids are gonna miss, if there's no hair shows, I used to watch my superstar, Urban Rusk, Alan Benfield Bush was a great guy with words, talking about hair. He could make it sound like a science you didn't understand. I should buy a course. And you did. I've watched people, Urban Rusk used to see the F word all day. He was a lefty, one of the most beautiful hairdressers in the world. Working, you know, watching a Vidal Sassoon. You know who Annie Humphries is. I'm sure you all do. And if you don't, you better Google her. He once told a story about Annie Humphries and said, she's a great, when you think of the egos we put on her Instagram, she's a great intern. Tinting is a very old fashioned way of coloring hair. It's the lowest level of what you could imagine we do. We don't tint hair, right? And Annie was asked later why she joined the company. You know what she said? She had nothing better to do. You just never know whose lap you're gonna fall on. I would watch shows with people, nobody in the audience cause I could learn something. And I don't care what's out there, you can learn if it's learning what never to do. There's a whole way to learn that I had to do it the hard way, making mistakes. I once was doing finger waves and I lifted the wrong black and white bottle, it could happen. I put it on the hair, salt and pepper, you know the rules. I start to wave it up and I start to see something going wrong, it's called lather. The lather was, I lifted shampoo and I could see at the same time, the audience seen it. And I had to save the day there and I figured I'd fess up and I told them and everybody laughed so hard. And this is my very second show with Gene Bra. And after the show, I apologized profusely and said, I can't believe I did that. I'm so sorry that will never happen again. She goes, that was hilarious. Do it again next show. So it became peace. People learn through energy, being excited, knowing that there's misdirection. You don't know what's coming next, whether it's your words or your action. This is a time to understand that people are gonna communicate and I can fit it all into a zoom lens or whatever way we're learning. This is the greatest time in the beauty industry and I've been in it for many, many years. And you know, they should learn from you. You know, people used to, my brother used to say, you know, you're watching Robert, but you're not watching Robert. You're watching them in the glitz of the lights and the stuff, but you're not seeing what he's doing at home. Do you know he's having $1,600 days? You know he's doing 16, he's building a business. You're not watching them. You see the car he drives, but you're not watching what's important. And you know, none of this is about money, Mark. I once made a statement in front of JPA. I make a million dollars a year, but I still spend 1.2. So it's not about money, right? I've never been motivated by money. I've always been more motivated by the lifestyle, the laughter, the joy, the fact that I can help people and grateful as heck that the beauty industry did all this for me. I've been to, you know, Saudi Arabia. I've been to everywhere in the globe because I went to beauty school and got a license. So when people meet me, they always seem so happy. One is it's a choice. And second, if all this had happened to you, would you not be grateful? You know, my biggest pet peeve, the industry say they love the industry. I go, well, tell your face. Because if you love it so much, so let's go to the floor salon model. If you slow down and have lunch because my wife was delightful, but if she doesn't eat, she will bite your arm off. By going slower, you'll have a better consultation, better technical, you'll get more upgrading, more retail recommendations. And give the client the experience and they will tip you more. Now is the time to really change the game you're playing, not because we've had a closure because we're having a restart collectively. Whole industry's got a similar thing. Everywhere I talk to around the country are seeing declines. We thought we were indispensable. It turns out we're not. And don't worry about it because you can't change it. What you can change is digital consultations. How can we put a little hustle and flow into our business? We all homeless have that feeling like we're brand new salon owners or we're hairdresser coming into the industry for the first time. We're all in a similar position. So it's time to get crafty and creative, not just with your scissors. How do we get people in and make a big deal about the safety protocols because these are becoming advertisements for my business right now. We're seeing more traffic than ever before because we've got these safety features that we don't budge on that are really proven out to be a dynamic thing that my team feels safe, my clients feel safe enough to yelp about. And we've also learned through millennium we went to Mevo too. We've went to cash-free curbside waiting, for your appointment. Tippi is a machine we use. I don't have to lick envelopes to fill a cash anymore. And it shows up in a private account. You don't have to show your husband. The technology is what we've been able to use the pause to pivot to because we were so busy before in the locomotion of squeezing people in, squeezing people in, no ratio of service, no average ticket to Braga bout. But if we did 12, we got there. Working smarter means you're gonna do it in three or four. My wife is a great example. I'll have her talk about it in a minute, but she's got an average ticket of maybe $330. She's taking her time with each guest, put color on, sit with the lady. She said, no entertainment for three months. Don't put it on and back to the next one. Because I can prove to you statistically that the more you've seen, the more often you drop the ball. Right. The more often. The consultation after three starts to suck because you're not putting the same gusto into the first date by the third. It's like, here, cut your own bags. I got you. I'm gonna have a hoagie over the trash can. I got you. We are guilty. Every consultation starts at the beginning every time. You must, must, must. If you get consistent with every client you touch, you will keep. And given them a great consultation, take some on a journey of experience. Do you want a haircut or a haircut experience? What do you mean by that, Robert? This is the color bar where we celebrate color. Even if it's a clear shine, I don't care. Get your mouth engaged. Put a little script together. I love Jordy Depp. I know he's in the hot water right now, but you give the boy no script, give him a microphone. He's an idiot. But give him a script. He's pirate to the Caribbean. Script there are a few things you want to do towards rebooking that Matt doesn't care about. It's towards the retail sales. I care about it. I just don't as much. Let me just say my wife retails at 35%. We have a new technology called Hairy Eye. We do an inner for and we scan her and Mary's not loving it, but she also doesn't need it for the kid with zero sales. And remember, sales is not about palmage or Matt making more money. It's about retention. The more product a client goes home with, the more retentive number like color addiction. Color addiction leads to more frequency of visit and gives you loyalty. So I'm just saying products prove the same way if you look at the data. People said to me on, I think the last time we spoke, what about Amazon? Listen, you have a choice. You don't want to play in this game. Go ahead and get QR codes all over your building and give them a nudge towards your Amazon store. And if you want to play the game and dream of a different world, if you're going to pay high street rent, why not make retail your business and imagine a 20 or 30? I think we got to be visionaries. I think you got to have that to kill in. Go imagine if I could do this and then get to it. Half the futuristic stuff the industry talked about has actually become a reality through one epidemic. So being able to change is a beautiful thing because most people don't. Like I wish I had Warp Rook Brothers closed. I'd be a millionaire right now. I wish I had went to that straight-laced normal guy. But you know, luckily my wife lets me live with her. She's got a car. I'm set. I'll do it in costuming. Me and Liberace, you know, it's one of those things. But I'm just saying, train your mind to see what's possible, what can you work on? And right now there's an opening in the universe like never before. And there's so many silver linings to this particular experience the industry's had and other industries. Airlines are down two thirds. They're gonna lose 200 billion this year. We're not the only people affected, but let's understand that we have more control over recovery than the airline does. Yeah. And so this was kind of our, so we had our staff meeting right before this and camera. And one of the biggest conversations was, all right, 2020, we're not even really like, we're taking a look at it, but we're not really looking at it as hard as the future. Like what is, because this is temporary, and what are we doing? That's loud in my ears. What are we doing to be different, to grow? Like, so when we got all shut in our houses, and I think you guys are shut down again, right? So in California, we're still going, but you know, when we were shut down, we were shut down for three, four months. And what did people do during that time? Like my thought process was I lost all my sponsorships, I lost, you know, the salon income. We lost everything, it just kind of went away. And so we had to take a step back and go, all right, well, what is the future and how do we make this different next time? And for me, it's, you know, we started coming up with our own thoughts, our own products, the different things that we could kind of move into. And then from a salon standpoint, you know, I just worked to get better. I had the freedom. I bought $900 worth of mannequin heads and I just started cutting. And like I said, you know, coming out of this, I want to be as good as I've always wanted to be, you know, with cutting hair. And so I started teaching classes every day live and just made it a commitment to just do something. Because I think what a lot of people did was they saw it as a stop sign and they just stopped and they didn't, you know, they didn't move. They were like, okay, now what do I do? How do I make money? I get that, you know, and then they figured out how to get the money from the government and then we did, we get better. And that's kind of like, this is where my head goes because I see so many people struggling on the internet. I see people complaining about different things, but what did you do when it was at the worst? Because what I've noticed on the internet is that I started posting videos, right? And those videos got maybe 50 views when I first started. And then maybe after two weeks got 100 views. But then after two months, it got 1,000. And then after six months, it started to hit 10, 20, 30,000. Now I've built up 1,000 videos on YouTube and now all of a sudden, you know, I'm getting 3 million a month. So like you look at that stuff, it's all planting a seed for the future. If I would have said, oh, this video got 10 views and never made a video again, then I never would have any of the, built any of the thing that I built now because I would have just given up. So if I'm gonna be a better haircutter, you're gonna have a better clientele, you're gonna have anything better. Like you have to start working on it today and every day and getting better at it. And I think Mary's a good example, you know, from a stylist, like she's something you can really look up to from a number standpoint, you know, those that when you look at it from that aspect, but just, you know, for me, it takes, it's so much about relationship at this point. Like I watch people, I saw somebody cut hair one time, worked in my salon, had the touch up on and cut layers in her hair while she was processing. And he was the most booked one I think I've ever had here. You know, he doesn't work here anymore, but like, you know, that's the kind of thing. Like, so what is it? Like, what is it really? Because now if he figured out how to be the best at doing hair as well, then he'd be unstoppable. So it's like, what are we doing? What is this business really about? It's about taking care of people and making people feel good. And that doesn't always mean it's the best haircut. It just means it's a feeling. It's something that not everybody has, to be honest. You know? Well, it's hard again, just to not judge, you know, I think when you describe that in my visionary head, I'm like, oh, that sounds like a new video I'm gonna make. Exactly. Exactly. If you look at what slows us down, and I'm just saying there's things that when you're slower, you know, this is the whole thing we're talking about here. You know, I tell people to give a great shampoo, there's nothing sharper in your salon than your sink. And yet for some reason, you miss the opportunity every time because you say you're so busy. And let's go back to life. You know, if I wasn't so busy, I'd go to the gym. You know, okay, well, if I wasn't so busy, I've learned Spanish. Well, right now I think we have a pause and what I'm saying, let's just say, what you should have learned through the shutdown was what quality time with your family and another life is worth. And what I'd love you to do going backwards is to build it with a balance of those two things which is important to you. And I think if you think about it from a working smarter, if you're thinking that I don't need 200 clients to be successful, Matt, I don't even need 150. I have 100 people who worship me. And when I see their name on my column, today's gonna be a good day. And, you know, the thing that gravitational pull a hairdresser can have to clients, it can be the entertainment factor. It could be the practical skills. None is, you know, more important than the other in so many ways. But if you could come like we talked about as your mentors, hit all five, hit all six, and you'll see that you won't need help from coaches like me and Matt. This is what you do. It's one of my favorite movies, Million Dollar Baby. He said, protect yourself at all times. The reason I chose this industry, I knew no matter what, I could protect myself. Right now we're seeing a huge epidemic of home hair. I'm not, again, no judgment zone, but I once delivered a pizza, Matt, and a guy pulled a Magnum 357 and took my pants. So I don't want to go to the neighborhood. And if you're a female out there, I am not sending one of my female stylist to some stranger's house. So I am not gonna be doing hair dash. Now, again, if you have to, you gotta do something. There's an elderly lady, 95 years old, Mary does make house calls to her to keep her safe. I'm not judging, I'm not judging anybody. There's people out there that have lost half their business. You could be a freelance hairdresser listening to this, and I want you to pay close attention to how I say this. Your business has dropped in half. You now have what I call a part-time business. Maybe what you need is a part-time job, not a full-time rent. And I'm just talking numbers here. If you got rent at two, three, $400, and you're doing a difference between $2,000 a week or $1,000, that rent is showing up as 30% of a $1,000 a week. So I'm just saying the world is gonna shift a little bit here. For some of you, if you're working freelance, you've got your own environment. I think that may be one of the healthiest outcomes, but you will see evolutions of salons that start to build these sort of cocoons and not be so driven by every square inch being occupied by service and starting to change the game a little bit. And I think this is a fascinating time to be a visionary. And I would say I've been in the business a while. I remember having a breakthrough as a young man on Color Bar, Wash House, Lather, Lounge, Take Home, dryers from the ceiling, color cathedrals. And then I had a dry spot 20 years or so. And it wasn't until this happened, my mind started working like that new car smell of, what's that next step? What does the future look like? And I think that we must be visionaries. And I'll tell you right now, I know your audience. As a haircutter, you cannot not be a visionary because I'm already seeing what I would do with Matt's bangs. I'm already seeing the color I see long before I see it in the color bar after I finished the service. Visionaries are what colorists work on every day. When I'm building the show, I've got to be a visionary. I've got to see something that doesn't live in the moment. And I think we got to take ourselves out of that moment, be a visionary for your own lifestyle. But what is the experience that a client risk in her life should receive right now? And if I could only have a hundred people, if I could only be with this group of people, who would they be? And for some of you with more people, you can delete a few. The ones that drive you crazy, you don't have to be that type of servant. Find your perfect balance of your life and your book and you'll never go to work again and you'll see all the things that you put into action will happen and you'll probably have a better lifestyle after this epidemic and what it's taught us than you did before as you choose to look at it. But if you think the sky is broken and you can't fix it, you're absolutely right. And I'm just saying, get help. There's other great experts, other people like you, talk to some of your neighbors in your neighborhood. One of my best allies in California, because she's got a similar business, is Ms. Kerry Davis. I would not know half the shit. I know if it wasn't for hanging out with a neighbor in my neighborhood. I'm Robert Chromines globally, but in my neighborhood right now, I want to do even more. And I think because we're all in a very similar boat based on law or regulations, we can probably help each other more and help and spread the word. And you got good ideas, tricks. You've got a new way to build clients or you found a way to get this happening. Spread the word. That's what platformers need is content. To me, I'll take a kid that's never been on stage mat because I know they sell, take home. I know they're building that 30%. I know all these things. I just let them list on the stage first time, plug them in. And all they're gonna talk about is what they know. And what they know is how to take people on a magnificent tour and build the expectation, how to learn the dialogue. I'm just saying, this is a world built on experience and I just want to say this to your color cutter guy. Is an experience remembered or forgotten? Right. Simple as that. Is a show I watched remembered forever or forgotten? There's things I remember seeing Paul Mitchell say that I'll never forget to the day I died. But I'll just sit in the same way and I could go through a list. So for me, I just think that what you want to remember is an experience deliverer that you should be given an experience that will be remembered for the rest of the life. So when it comes to referrals, coming back, you won't have to worry about any of this. Just like Matt doesn't have to. But don't let the experience be forgotten because that's what we've been guilty of as an industry before this. And I have data from Millennium to prove it. This isn't a hunch Mr. Cromings has gotten today. This is a reality filmed on information from 25,000 salons plus the people I coach around the world. And it is worldwide that this is happening. You know, Tom Harris, a mutual friend said he's usually had a number, maybe 6,000 and he's really now at 3,000. So I'm just saying our clientele's confidence has dropped right now. And with vaccine that may improve it. But right now the only way you can protect yourself is doing these things I suggest. I've suggested that for years nobody listened. Today the world is listening because now more than ever it matters. And at the end of the day because it's not about making a living, it's making a life. Why I was so excited my son will go into the business. It's the lifestyle he could have. And I don't want him working on clients walking in the door with great coverage and doing all that stuff every single day. I want him to find the ideal group of clients he loves. I want him to start making movies like you, maybe get on platform. I want him to find a diversity. What hairdressers need is diversified balance. The hair, hair, hair, stack them and rack them six days a week. You start hating people, come on you do. You know how we used to do that joke. Now I only choke a client if I wanna. So we become overbearing and we become less compassionate to what they need right now. And I'm just saying half the time I ever work on an adjustment on a haircut of another's team member, they'll tell me the client's crazy, crazy attitude, crazy this. I sit down and I go, she's not crazy. You just didn't listen. I'm like also a great listener as well as a talker. So hone in on what you're really trying to get out of. Put a little vision in it, close your eyes. Think of what you're great for. Visualize what you can change right now and make those changes. Take the availability of time and make it pay off. And you know, right now is a great time to do things and people are leaving our industry, salons are closing, no judgment again. But wow, I've never seen this since the first disruption of the internet hitting the industry. We thought that was something Matt, now to look at what's going on today. This is absolutely gonna change the face of our industry and others. We're gonna have to change. Everything will have to change because of what we've just went through. And there's a ton of learning in that too, which I find quite exciting. Yeah, me too. And I think one of the, one thing that you brought up that was interesting to me is that the way that our salons are structured now, and I wanna kind of hear, I know that you guys are shut down again, but some of the key things you put in place, because you did talk about color bar, you talked about take home, you talked about the toolbar, like all these things that were creations that created an experience, the tours, all that stuff. All that kind of goes out. I mean, obviously the color bar doesn't go out, but like the experiences, those have to all kind of shift and change. And we talked about Zoom as well. So you were doing a Zoom class before this, doing different Zoom interviews and those things. And I think personally, I've been doing Zoom classes every week now, being able to watch people and interact and see their faces all on one screen. I say, I used to sell a $300 haircutting class ticket to come to my salon, and I make my rounds, so I'd spend 20 seconds, one minute with this person, and then I'm on to the next person. And I don't see you again until I come back around. Now, I see 30 people in front of my screen, and I can pick and quickly react to all of them. There's so many benefits to what's happening right now. So let's talk about your salon experience, how you shifted that real quick, and just different things that you're doing on that aspect. Obviously, we're aligned on the protocols. So obviously we're doing temperature checks, couple of things I want to highlight. We do a kind of, it's like a hanging bag you'd get from a brand new jacket you brought. It's a zip-up hanging bag. And we had to also look at the planet when we're making these choices. So one of our salons, the color bar is now a color dispensary, still celebrated through the middle, but they apply the color on the station. But the client's not got so many seats. So I took out the waiting rooms, threw them out, I took out desks, reduced the fat there. I got rid of rising stars, which some people would call assistance. Now, when I say got rid of, I don't want three people touching a client anymore. They don't want it. So now my stylist is waiting up front to meet you, take your temperature check, get you in. You go to the first place, we give you that sealed bag inside as a perfectly sanitized and laundered smock with a mask that we make you switch into. You deposit your clothes, purse and everything else that you don't need inside and you really don't need anything because we already have your credit card on file, which means we're gonna do a cash repay. They put their stuff in this garment bag, we store it in a slightly different place. Once it's been used, it goes through a laundry service and comes back again. We reuse them every single time. Clients go crazy over how efficient we are at it. We make it seem like you're picking up something from the bridal shop. And it's all done in the peace of mind. The optic of the client is what you've gotta think about. We created the six foot distance and I didn't just wanna block out furniture and say, don't use this. I repositioned every station. I took the high road on it. I moved freestyle, which was a lot of work on my back. I did some of this myself. I re-gutted one salon because it was called Walk-In. So which dumb ass would think they're gonna do well with a salon called Walk-In after an epidemic? So I changed that to Robert Cromies salon at the beach and real quickly responded. So we talk about assistants. They used to make coffee. We did all this stuff. Cucumber water, citrus water, cappuccino. It's a coming at you. Cookies on a tray like this, all photographs. So you could do it just like, well, I was spending 6% of my revenue on that, Matt. So we took it away. So I've now got an efficiency on the business. We're working with a call center. We're gonna, more and more people are self-checking out which means I can actually say to my people, I can pay you more because you're wringing out the client. You're doing it all. There's no disappearing from my experience with you. And by the time you walk to the desk when they say, do you wanna make your next appointment? You go, nah, I didn't talk about that. Or nah, I don't know, I got a product. If I'm looking, you're right in the eye after, I did your hair, I said, Matt, you know you look the best every four weeks. Let's book it right now. Suddenly I got you in my books and I'm just saying this is the reality we gotta be and really hone in on that. And I think that there's some beautiful changes we've seen obviously making a big deal about the safety features. Let me give you a term that I think some of your business guys may like, over-manage. Now that sounds like a really negative 1980s. But if you go to Disneyland, they over-manage certain items. They actually over-manage dry cleaning. You know Disneyland has the biggest dry cleaners in the world. But here's the two I want you to think about. Light bulbs, they're fanatical about. They never want light bulbs on that parade or anywhere else. So they over-manage light bulbs. Gardens and flowers, they over-manage. So here's what I tell you on the safety protocols. Over-manage them. Go further. Go gold standard. When you're wiping down a station, it's not like I'm having a party and you're coming over to my house and it should appear clean. What it should look like is you see me like a platform artist, Matt. Barbersight and the shit out of that. Going in places you'd never think they would go to. I mean, I want to see you like, what's that comedian, Sebastian. He's so animated. You want to do it like you're a rock star hairdresser. You know what I mean? Make a big deal about it. We have a little open and closed sign on the station. Green means gold, red means it needs sanitizing. We also got from Minerva, those little dust bags. People were running around, whose hair could I brush up? Should we trick the system again? And we love it, love it. I did a model transformation this week, a big pile of hair and I made her sweep it in and disappeared. I'm just saying we've seen so many system changes. The hairdresser on one-on-one with the client has affected their retail sales. They're feeling more quality from their hairdresser. They're seeing it in gratuities. There's a lot of silver linings to be had here, but these protocols aren't a choice. It's not half mask. If you don't wear a mask in our industry, you're a mask hole. I hate to say it so bluntly, but the reality of this right now is because of what you do for a living, you have to take extra precautions. And people are wary of going to businesses. So that new client traffic we're seeing is all coming from reputation of word of mouth of our sanitary protocols, not just beautiful hair. So keep the mask on, keep distance, go to public affairs if you're in this business. Now, if you're listening to this and you don't work with many people and you're never going to be around people, do whatever you want to do, but if you know you're going in to see it, years ago I did a show and it was called The Young at Heart. And really it was, I misdirected the audience. In the first day of the show we had these girls in latex, 43 colors. It was a great opening to gathering. Well, the next day I brought the costumes back, but I had another group of models and I brought them up on stage with dim light. You could see down the line, you could see the latex. So you knew it was going to be hot and sexy. You could see the pink hair, the green hair, the blue hair. So you knew it was going to be fun. So we all come up as artists, we come in from the back, we start doing the hair, not too much close up. I'm not giving nothing away, but it's a lot to do with lighting. And as we get to the lighting there, eventually we finish our work and we light up and we bring it out. These girls were 78 year old show girls from Las Vegas. So when they got the audience erupted because they felt the reality of who our customers in all ages. So I used to call it the young at heart. Secretly I called it oldie locks. Now I call it girls I used to go to school with. People with my clientele have got older. I don't want to give any risk not to my team member, not to my family. There's people disagreeing whether they should close or not defy the government. Not in your life at Magana because if they're telling me to close I'm going to obey the law. Simple as that, simple as that. So I would got pretty revved up there. You can see why I'm a pretty good platform artist. I like it, I like it. So what I want to do, I'm going to go into something real quick. If you guys have questions, I'm going to have some questions but I'm going to bring in a pretty member of the team. There you go. All right, so let's start posting your questions here in the chat guys so that everybody can jump in and we can answer questions. Hey Mary, how are you? Hi Matt, I'm so good. Thanks for letting me be a quick stand in for my husband while he says hello to some of our distributors. Oh great, cool. Yeah, so he's just going to say a quick hello to them so I'm here whatever you need. Hey, that's exciting. So I want to talk actually, since I have you, let's talk about the salon a little bit because I know you're not in it now but you were in it and you were deep in it working. So let's talk about your experiences. I know that you're successful behind the chair for sure, I've worked with you at hair shows, you're meticulous in how you work and you're a lot of, I see the way that you prep Robert to make Robert look really good. So and he can make himself look good but I know that you're a lot behind that as my wife is with me. So let's talk about the salon and just your clientele, your feelings when you went back in and then what you were doing that kind of helped you just make people feel comfortable, those kind of things, let's talk about that. Yeah, well, we got to go in, the first time we got to reopen we were only in for four weeks. So it was like one month to the day and we did, we put in all the protocols, we really went to the next level with everything. I know you guys all saw that online, like Plexi dividers, the taking temperatures at the door, all of that stuff. And I feel like we were all just getting in the making it feel like it was second nature, didn't feel like something we were practicing anymore. And just when that happened and we were getting used to wearing the masks for eight hours a day, we got shut down again. And so it was a little bit of like, it was a let down for our team, you know, to some degree. So everyone kind of had these conflicting feelings of like, damn, not this again. But then at the same time, they were like, okay, well, you know what? We came back the first time, they'll reopen us again, like we can do this. So it was a little bit more familiar. So in that regard, it was okay even though it was disappointing. And then the second time we got to reopen, we closed for six weeks and then we got to reopen for three months. So we had a solid three months under our belt, which was wonderful. And, you know, we just stuck with all the protocols. We didn't lighten up on any of them. And really all of our guests, every single guest just had nothing but great things to say. We've gotten nothing but five star Yelp reviews and not only with the end result of their hair, but they all add in, I can't believe how clean and sanitary and safe the salon is. I've never felt better. I feel better being here than in any other store I have to go into. Better than the grocery store, better than Home Depot. And that speaks volumes, you know, because like Robert, you know, wherever anybody is on how they feel about this pandemic, we're still in a pandemic. So when people are picking and choosing where they can go, choosing to come sit with us for three hours, it's a choice, you know, it's a luxury. And so we've been really grateful in that regard and the clients have been really supportive. They've been, you know, the little things that they attach to where they'll say, Oh my God, like I love touchless checkout. That's so cool. You know, where maybe sometimes people were like, Oh, I don't know if I want to get my credit card. Now people are much more comfortable with it going into, you know, their secure file and Mevo. They put their credit card in and then they don't have to pass it back and forth between the reservationist and, you know, just really limiting those touch points. Okay, so we both, we both use Mevo, which is our salon software. And then you guys, so what, let's talk about touchless. So you store their information in their account basically. So you have their credit card on file and everything. That's something that we don't do yet, but we actually, we process our credit cards with a different, we use square, I believe. But so you store that, I think you can store it in that as well, but so you do a touchless thing. And then, and then that's pretty much it. And what's the tipping thing that you guys are doing? So yeah, so people can still, of course, if they choose to tip on their credit card, they absolutely can, but again, we are cashless. So we don't have, I don't have a cash drawer. So if somebody wants me to break a 50, I have nothing to get, they can give over the 50 and our team will take it, but I have no change to give. So in an effort to kind of alleviate that, well, we have an ATM in the back of our salon. So, you know, guests can certainly get cash if they want to, but we also partnered with Tippi. And Tippi is like a little iPad kiosk basically. It's a separate transaction. So you can't hold somebody's credit card there. But, you know, Matt, you've checked out, you know, Matt, how is everything today? Oh, you know, you loved what Robert did. This is your total for today. Can I close it out on that? Or did you want to leave a gratuity? Oh, I'd like to leave a gratuity. Well, we have two options. You can put it on the credit card, or you can use Tippi. And if you choose to use Tippi, it'll go directly into Robert's bank account tomorrow rather than him waiting for it to get on his paycheck, whichever you prefer. There is a small charge that the guest incurs for using Tippi, but it's really great because, you know, guests, they want, you know, when they give us the tip, they do, they want us to have it right in that moment. Yeah, exactly. And so, you know, in our team, they're schooled on it. They know if they feel comfortable, they can certainly tell their guests, you know, I prefer cash or I'd rather you use Tippi because I get it in the moment. I have some team members that prefer the client to put the tip on the credit card so that they can, you know, track it and it gets taxed and they have all that, like, accountability. And the nice thing about Tippi is there's a dashboard. So you can check it at any time on your own accord. You can see who's tipped you, how much they've tipped you. It's really great because before we used to stick our tips in an envelope and lick the envelope and write someone's name on it. So obviously, like, that's out the window now. So even when a guest hands cash to the reservationist, they put it, we don't have envelopes anymore so they'll put it inside like a receipt or just we ask the guest to hand it directly to the stylist because they can certainly accept cash. We just, again, we don't have that cash drawer but Tippi's been great and it's a really great way for stylists because I think that we forget about our tips and it's almost like free money. And I feel for me when I get a tip in cash, it's like it never happened because I had to spend it the second I get it. But having it on Tippi is like, it's a little bit more accountability and I can see that, you know, if I did $100,000 in the year and really show that I made 20% gratuity, I made an extra $20,000 by way of tips where if it's in cash, unfortunately, unless I had the strength to really put it away and count it after, I'll never see it, you know? So it's a really cool way to be accountable. That's very cool, I love it. So let's talk about the show you guys just did. Can somebody watch what you guys just did, the show that you did earlier on the internet? So if they registered to watch it, I believe there is a recorded, Robert and I will both be posting the video so they might not be able to watch it all the way through but we're gonna throw, we did live voiceovers today on silent videos. So we're gonna throw voiceovers over those videos and then we'll post them on our social media. So maybe not be able to see it straight through for two hours but you'll be able to see the three colors and the cuts. Very cool, and this is actually what I want. So let's move into this real quick because I don't wanna hold you guys up too long but repurposing content which is what you guys are talking about doing, right? So this is kind of how I like to do things and I think stylists should think about this stuff because what I say to everybody is you're creating content all day long. Like that's what we do. The problem is we don't capture it, right? So the more you capture, the more you have little bits that you can take from it. Like if you record Robert all day talking on your phone, you're probably gonna have 500 little one minute pieces to then chop up and post on social media later. So when I look at, like I do a live class every day that I can, I go live and I'm live for an hour and a half, two hours, just like I am kind of right now and then this is actually just to collect, right? So we're collecting, I'll do a fringe a certain way and I'm like that will work really well for one minute here, one minute there. I'll do a separate voiceover for that piece or now I've just been teaching the classes and being able to take what I'm saying from it. So as a stylist, Mary, and as you guys are working in the salon, let's talk about like different points within the client visit that people could be creating content for their social media or things like that. What are certain things that you do and then I can share a couple of things but what are some things that you guys are doing to collect that stuff? Well, let me say this with go feelers. I would just say don't forget about the protocols. I would film that. I would film that entry of my guest coming in, temperature check, you know, her getting her freshly gown. We wrap the brushes after they've been sanitized and washed and saran wrap so that every client gets that sensation of a brand new experience. So that's definitely one starting point and you know, the chop up that you're, I know you're gonna do to this program. I wanted to advertise the class we did this morning. I take out the center back of the hair with a razor and it gave this great Salvador Dolly little mustache. It's two seconds long. I then take it into pick play post, multiply it till it goes over a minute so I can put it on IGTV and it got 3,000 views. Yeah, I'm just saying there's stuff that you would probably throw away that you wouldn't use. You wanna go back to MTV did a great job last week. They all they did was showed history and there's some great things in there. And I just think that, you know, one little trick before I give Mary her list, storyboard. So if you wanna do what Matt said, a fringe story, storyboard the fringes you wanna do. If it's a bonding story, storyboard it. Hair dresses are great with visuals. Sometimes our fantasy mind can go crazy but until you storyboard it, you're not gonna have anything. So I really believe because I work with sometimes large teams, working with a client, pitches are great ways to communicate. But if you're looking for a vision of how you could use different parts of content, storyboard what you're looking for. If it's a red story, you've got it in a storyboard, you know where to go collect from and then repurpose that content. I mean, it sounds very green of you Matt to be quite honest. So what are the things you think are worth the capture? Oh gosh, everything. I think one of the things that I like doing, which I'm trying to sort of reach out to my local community to build a client till that way is the teaching artistry part of when I put the iron in my guest's hand and show them how to style their hair. I capture them doing that because 10 out of 10 times once I do that, that guest is buying that iron and the protect and the products that go with it. So I wanna show to the local community of San Diego that yes, I do like great haircuts and colors but I also wanna show you how to style your hair at home so you look and feel great. So I try to get a glimpse of the, for me personally I've been trying to find a way to capture a glimpse of what it's like inside our salon. So even, and the other thing I'm learning which I'm not great at because I feel like as an educator I wanna give so much but really less is more. So it could even be just doing that one curl on the iron like exactly how you wrap the hair like a ribbon from the base to the tip of the neuro rod. Like just doing that so it's, and then you could repeat it and just give like a little blurb of a how-to. People can read that because everybody wants everything so much faster. I think a consultation would be a great one to put in play if you have a guest that's okay with role playing I think that the consultation is so underused. Digital consultation if you could film something like that. Can I comment? Yes, you can do whatever you want. Can I, this is your podcast, I crashed. Guys I don't ever do that. I'm a student of the internet so I'm just saying I'm watching lots of guys. One is Garen from New York. This guy was Madonna's hairdresser. This guy's touched more celebrity hair. Did a tutorial with an editor. So it's a digital tutorial. She's doing her hair. He's telling her what to do through camera and she's going through and it was priceless Matt, priceless. Getting into that digital consultation. We're working with our social media company right now and what they're focused on while we're closed is to start of advertising these free digital consultations. And the great thing about a digital consultation you'll see how much time you need. You can get people excited by the future. You'll know what type of process is involved, what type of cost is involved. This is the new way to do what we used to do in bars and coffee shops. We've got to get into this. So if all this pause is done is give you ability to do it. But to me, if you could caption that you're doing a one-on-one interview with a guest at home. The UK have an organization you may have heard of called 365. They created a whole business savvy network in the UK because the UK market is very about the precision and not about the service. So guess how they actually recruited so many customers they offered a free consultation. And it lifted their market to such a level. They were known as the salon. And I said, what is it you do differently? They said, we give a free consultation. I was waiting for them to say we put stuff in their drinks. We, you know, I'm waiting for the secrets of the universe to unfold. We give a free consultation. So let's take that to the new world, the digital world, capture it, show people doing it. There's so many new points. You know, we got a couple of friends. Jason Reyes is the band of an edit. He can take a video. We got so many hundred views on he'll come in and cut it up. Like he's Rodriguez from Spy Kids 12 and make the end of this piece that you don't even recognize and get two million hits on it. Yeah. It's like you've got to go back and chop it up and you've got to stay in love with the story you're telling. And I think there's so many captures right there to me having my model of the other day sweep her hair in the vacuum. That's a capture. Yeah. Also getting close on the capture. Yes. So I feel like if you're great at it, Matt, you always do that. But just for the viewers like not being 90 feet away. So if you are going to cut someone's fringe, just getting right on top of it so that that's what they can see. Like they don't necessarily need to see the whole station and what the guest is wearing and all of that stuff. But just like Robert said, the storyboard of it. So if you write down what you want to show, make a point of what parts are purposeful and capture that because it could be so meaningful in just a short amount of time really like closing in so there's all hair in the frame. Exactly. That's one of the things that people. So what people don't realize that gets the most attention is hands and hair. So like what sparks like these are the, this is how my brain works. When you start talking about consultation and how that's underutilized, I totally agree with you. The challenge is if you film a consultation, no one watches it. But the way that they could watch it, which would be kind of cool is capturing the audio almost as a podcast type feeling, but then throwing that audio on top of you actually cutting the fringe or doing whatever you did to her hair to do that makeover. So now you've got the audio from the consultation on top of the actual makeover that you create. And then that's a piece that catches not only hairdressers but also people like people love seeing those transformations and they might not listen to the audio but the ones that do will really capture that. Thank you so much, Abhishek, that's so genius. So even if they think they're open for curtain bangs when you're cutting curtain bangs and she's saying I'm open for it, you're right there doing it like that. And then that way, right away they start watching, right? So it's all about, and that's kind of what we're saying. So like, we're always creating but we just have to capture it. Well, the other thing that I love because I'm a showman, that's kind of what I've done in my later years. So I once did a show where I started with this non music, zero music, only like Star Wars beginning with that scroll and the whole corporate coming over running backstage going the music's off, the music's off. But I had written this beautiful message and everybody was reading every word of it. So me, I could do a digital reference, we do a consultation, then I take that sound off and now I read, document and commentate over it of what was important, what she said. So it's the visual hairdressers need. They don't want to be just talk tap. We need the visuals. And I don't know if you'd agree with this Matt. I love a good photograph and I do see photographs that do well but me, a little bit of motion. I just feel as the way to lure people in. And I think this is something that's a science you want to get good at if you've got ambition to be an educator to build a draw. And if it's what you're trying to do to build your business, you want to become an expert in it. And I'm just saying there's so many ways you can do it. So many ways you can chop it up and how many stories you can tell based on what you're looking for. And don't be scared kind of like Matt, diversify. You know, I hear kids suddenly said to me at the schools, talk to them about their brand. I go, their brand right now is zero. I say do all of it to you to establish what your brand is. Don't forecast your brand. We had a situation a client called said she wants blonde hair, looked at one of the girls we recommended her Instagram page had a lot of brunettes. She didn't feel comfortable going in based on what the page said. Now the girl actually is a beautiful blonder but she doesn't have it represented on her page. So if you're a builder, represent it, represent it in the thing that would make an ideal day for you. If it's extensions, if it's using flaunt, if it's using color, but don't get stuck with one or the other. And think you're trying to, you know, be the next rising star for BTC. I would say, and right now, it's being very specific to what you're trying to get in. One of my, on my page, if you guys are watching this, you're not following me. Last week I did a Macy's Parade. It's one kid called Macy that works for me. She used to be a client at my salon when she was seven years old, Matt. And now as a stylist and she went through our assistant program right before COVID. So we put it on the floor. Well, she started doing some TikTok videos or reels. And when you watch these, don't just see the end result. This girl is an educator. This girl is two years deep and she can educate without knowing it. And she only got nine or 10 likes on it. And I said, give me them over to me. And I put them on my page and they got 2,000 hits. She got a hundred new followers. We can bring attention to things because the reality is, Fern the barber used to perform to three watchers. Now he's got 245. Matt, to me earlier. 245,000. 245,000. I think you guys all know that. Matt talks about having circulation every week right now about nine million viewers. We're a big organization. We don't have that scope. I'm just saying these are things that you would imagine impossible. And from people you at least imagine can do incredible things. And all we got to do is study one another, pay attention to people before you're so quick to cast an opinion over some shit. I said, what did it make you think about? It's okay to wrestle with stuff. I love to wrestle with stuff. And there's things I see and people, there's things I see and people say, I mean, that was the worst thing I ever seen. I go, that's not what I seen. I seen something else there. I seen another way to look at it. You're trained to see that. It's kind of like when you're doing hair, you're not knowing what to do. Try looking at it at a different angle and see what happens. And even over the years, because I'm a bit of a party mouth on stage, I get into trouble and I get a complaint letter. I didn't get them a lot, but I get a little letter to JP and I'm, oh, and then I would think about how that old lady may have felt or how somebody I said, you know, and never try, I'm like, I take it into consideration the next time I open my big mouth. I once said I was a schizophrenic, half businessman, half artist. Seems like no harm. Some lady said, Robert, I love you, but my sister was, you know, locked up in a straight jacket for two years. And I said, you know what, I'm so sorry. So the next time I talked in the same sentiment, I said, I have a split personality. You know, I've got this and this. Is that any better? I don't know. I mean, here we go, in a little bit. I mean, it's better. We'll have to do it. Yeah, we won't put that. We need to get better. You know what I'm saying? That's the minute you're gonna take and chop up and get me. I'm gonna lose that all from here. I don't think that's what I said. This is the funny thing. Like, so this is the internet. You put everything out there and we talked, you talked about this earlier, but just like people either negativity or whatever and early into me creating YouTube videos, one of the videos that I did a men's haircut and like I cut men's hair. I cut a lot of men's hair in the salon, but I'm not like, I'm not from the barber. Like I'm not, I'm not a barber per se, but so I do this clipper cut. I called the pompadour haircut. It was very popular at the time and it blew up. Like it was the biggest video I ever made and the worst haircut I've ever done. And it's still to this day, you know, I think it has seven million views and I probably got a ton of subscribers from that. And here's the thing. When we talk about brand and what you're doing, when you put things out there, like the girl that you were talking about with the brunettes and she doesn't put a lot of blonde out, you do need to project a little bit when you post on the internet what you want to do. So like if I, you know, as now I post mostly haircutting things because that's what I want to do. It's what I feel like I can educate about and I try to use other people to post the other things. But like that, you know, it's usually the video that you don't think is going to take off that does or the one that people don't like the most is the one that will take off. So, but it's not a bad thing and any attention is good attention to me and the more reach you can get. So I'll post videos that I know people hate and I'll post at times that I know it's gonna get the most because I just want to create that engagement. I want them complaining a little bit because. I definitely want to talk on this man. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah. So years ago I was doing something for BTC and they wanted to do that mean tweet game and I went through my feet. I had no mean tweets, not a one. Then I had a haircut to two million viewers and boy, oh boy, did I hear it because I just lobbed off 16 inches a hair with no look like no regard. Not true if you know me to be the artist I am. So the comments section is what I find most fascinating. It's the modern day applause and good batter and different. I like to look at it on that haircut when it's coming in pretty negative. I just choose not to look at it. But recently I got a little emotional and I posted something on the internet and it went viral. We got about 100 to 150,000 views on it. And I just spoke from my heart and there was certain people that would come in with certain perspectives. For an example, a guy said to me, I mean, I love you, I think you're cool man but what's up with you being a hairdresser wearing a hat? I said, well, if I was a proctologist I'd wear pants. The reality is people are quick to judging. I'm just saying, I want conversation. I want people, I want to have discussions but I don't want everybody talking crap to one another where you want to have a fight with somebody. And that's what I've seen happen. I've seen Tabitha posted a few months ago got into a little Joe Biden quote and got hatred. I haven't crossed these lines. I can see it from both sides. I just say that sometimes it's really understanding and respecting others. You know, if it's a, you know, here's an example of what I did. I follow people who do bright, bad things on maybe just to show them I'm watching you too. And that guy I talked about proctologists, he became my number one fan. Guess what he's hacked? Hashtag is pirate, pirate tag. Really, you don't like me, I'm the fellow pirate. I'm your brother from another mother and you made a decision. Some of the stuff I got called terrible names this week and one of them when I looked under the points of you that were on that column were brilliant. One of my friends said to me, I didn't like your alcoholic comment. Our industry is suffering already. I said, I understand that. My mother's been affected by it. People have been affected. It's not a joking matter. I said, but the reality of what you said is what you didn't say is what you've been through. What you said was, hey, Robert, get some new material. I just felt like, you know what, I know you. You're nice to me face to face. And why would you dare put that negative shit up there for others to see? And it wasn't the most harmful. The other girl called me a D bag and it wasn't dirt. So I, you know, and you know, my kids see that if it's a model you don't like and you go up there and go, that looks like jackass, that model watching the feed. What do you think that does to her? Are you the guy in the salon that when people are leaving going, that looks terrible? I mean, that is not the cheerleading industry I want. I want to celebrate. And if you got nothing good to say, don't say it. And I made that comment to somebody on my page. I then go on her page and notice that she looked Christian. And before I knew it, the comment was taken down. The young man that said to me of alcoholism not being a joke, I totally agreed. He wrote me his response. I said, that's what you should have posted was your effect on it. And not so much that I have a problem getting new material. If I was Elvis, I'd still be singing blue suede shoes, baby. There's nothing wrong with repeating yourself when you know it's right. And I just think that people should learn to find the goodness in it. What did you like about it and put that down? And if all you can see after watching me is what I liked about it is when you stopped, I can live with that. But the reality is there's too much hatred for people who say they love people. There's too much negative stuff flying around. You can still make your point, but you don't have to call people out and criticize their work. Because when I go into where the message came from, really people, you can't throw stones if you live in a glass house. The internet is a two-way machine. And my daughter taught me years ago the controversy on it helps. She said, Dad, every week, I'm gonna write some shit on your column to get it. And it breeds. So I had a comment with a kid, Christiana. I don't know if you know Christiana, he did a beautiful box ball. Very soon, hi-tech, matte and leather, lebutin inspired. Colin did the color. I put it on my pages. Oh my God, 500 of the worst comments, memes. I have never seen that. What would you do? I call Fernie, Fern, what do I do in this situation? My kid's called. Some people thought it was me because there's no frame of him. So they were hating on me, giving Paul Mitchell shit, going through all these things they didn't like about it. And I'm thinking, what can I do? And my son said, delete all the comments. I said, I don't wanna do that. He said, pull it down. And I said, I don't wanna do that. So as a result, I had Christiano personally contact every single person that had a negative comment. Can you imagine you wrote some shit there going, hey, it looks like that guy in Dumb and Dumber. And then Christiano types in, hi, this is Christiano. Yeah, you know, I know it's unusual. It's strong work. I think he justified it, gave his point back. I think that was a build. That was a win. To me, there's things out there that you wanna do. One guy gave me grief about something and I looked at his page and I seen a picture of him and his son. It was around Father's Day. And all I wrote back was after he wrote terrible things to me, I said, as fathers, I think we have a responsibility. And the profound example we set is what they follow. And I just think he became a number one fan. You don't have to disagree. You don't have to write bad stuff. You can still be truthful and speak from your heart. But at the same time, just think of the other people's feelings. And you know, to me, I love the banter. I love the conversation. And I do my best to respond to all the positive comments. You know, this is an industry if we can't stick together right now, we're gonna have issues in our future regardless of when the cure comes. For sure. Well, I just wanna say thank you for taking all this time. I know we've been going for a while and you have other things. I'm sure. And it's funny because I did a video and I don't have like the best, my wife's much better at like seeing the big picture. Like I just create, create and I don't think a lot. And so I had this girl, I was cutting this short pixie cut and she was chewing gum the whole time. Which is kind of fine until you speed up the video which is what I do. Like I speed it up a couple of times faster so that I'm cutting this pixie faster so people don't lose, you know, I don't lose their attention and she's just chomping away at the gum the entire time. And so you would think you wouldn't put that video out but for me, it's hilarious because you put it out and people just go nuts and they hate it. They hate the gum chewing. They like, but it makes them talk, right? So that video got way more views than anything else. And that's the big difference between like a real corporate video like you can't put those things out sometimes because corporates kind of scared of it and I get it. But like when you're creating and grabbing attention on the internet, those things are perfect. And even though they're a mistake and a lot of people would say I screwed up and I won't put it out there. I think that one of the biggest things for people to know and kind of listen to Robert too, like it's okay that people are gonna complain about your stuff. And I actually, I used to write back to everybody and I used to block them and do all these things. And now I've realized that the negative comments when you build a community, especially like the people that I still see on here live that hung in through this whole thing, when you build a community, they have your back and you start a negative comment and then you get somebody else sticks up for you. And then it starts a conversation or you start a conversation with that person. To really just kind of push things in a better light. There's no sense in going negative with it. And like Robert was saying, like you don't need to fight back but at least you can speak your opinion and start a conversation and that's what the internet's all about. That's the new way of one-on-one really. It's a game-changing industry. I describe it like a snow globe. You can shake it around right now and we're gonna see what happens. And am I still optimistic we can make it? You know Matt, the next time we talk I may not have a salon in San Diego. My rent in one store is 30,000. For five months shut down, my back rent was 205. These are all things people don't recover from. Somebody said in one of the comments, so it's all right for you, you're at the beach. They said, because I was at the beach, I'm very fortunate that my girlfriend has a job. My wife has a job. So I said, well, I may be cutting hair down here soon. Everybody's so quick to judge. Every penny I've ever made in the beauty industry into my businesses. And I think it's very important to know that yeah, I'm not too big to fail and nor is MD too small. Certain businesses will stand the test of time. And for me, you know, having a rent of 30,000, if you just do rough math on it, I gotta do a certain number to make that rent happen. And if I can, it's not a failed salon guys. It's a failed business. And what I may need is a smaller location with less rent on it, which is what we do. But I would close with this, no matter what situation you're in right now, believe in data, believe in the data you get proved and renegotiate a little bit with your landlords and such. I ended up getting a percentage deal from a landlord that wanted 30,000. How can I do that? It's my third shutdown. So percentage of rent is zero while I'm closed. I think this is a beautiful thing. I'm not sticking it on the end. And my other guy who's what I call a handshake landlord, he gave us a rent during this whole epidemic. So that's gonna work out and he hasn't closed the window. So I expect that grace. And I just say, now there's no shame in it. Try and find a way to get a better deal, whether you're a freelance artist or whatever, see what you can do to take the overhead out of the business so you're not sweating it so that you can be more effective as a business operator. And I just feel that if you're in a situation like me, if there would be no way if my landlord hadn't buckled, I would still be in business today. So that's how slippery it is. So I'm not out there just judging you all. I'm not set for life. I'm just saying it's an interesting time and you've got a choice of what type of pivot and what direction you're gonna take from this. We all know what's happened, but what have we done to go to that next level? And I just love spending time with you today, Matt. I can't wait to see how many little diamonds you chopped this into, but congratulations on the community you have built. And I would say when we started the call, I was probably the first rock star hairdresser on a stage that people seen that had the lifestyle that went with it. To me, you are that guy that people should be looking at and watching because what people did then is they put in their mind, I could be a guy like Robert Cromings right now. People are looking at you, Matt, going, what could I be doing to do some of this stuff? Because it's still very possible. This market is still quite wide open and the winner's circle is by far not completed. And when we used to do trade shows and all those shows, there was a winner's circle. I was often in it. I was the best showman there was and I miss it. And there's an opportunity right now to be the greatest showman, educators and inspirational pieces no matter where you live, no matter who you're working with. I love the internet and I love how and all I am every single day, I just pretend to be a hairdresser but I see people with skill sets every single day that just, oh, it makes me just enamored with their brilliance. And I'm just saying it's the best time we've ever had in the beauty industry, regardless of what's happening out there and we're gonna see some huge, beautiful differences in all of our lives and wellbeing, which I really look forward to as a visionary. For sure, yep. Well, thank you, Robert, so much. And definitely everybody out there, make sure that you are paying attention to what Robert's doing. You can follow him at Robert Chromines and Mary's Instagram is Cuomo Chromines, right? Yeah, Mary Chromines will get you there but she's got, she was a visionary. So long before we were married, she did, you know, Cuomo Chromines, I go, she's kind of working off her daddy's name. But now I'm working off of hers because she's a dynamic educator and I'm sure you only got a few minutes for the day but she's beautiful insight and as smart as you can be in learning every single day and much like me and all with all of it. So she's still got that child in her that's still enamored with every bit of it. I think she represents the industry, especially the female side so beautifully. More than you wanna really be me and Matt at home where you live. You wanna be more like my wife, Mary. She's just an incredible example what a hairdresser can do behind the chair. I love Instagram but there's certain people do things just for that show. And that's a wonderful thing, you're learning stuff but when it really comes down to picking mentors to diversify them, find a woman who does something just like you do that has the skill like you have and I'm just saying that's what it could be. And if you look at how hard you work with three well-placed clients a day she can have a thousand dollar a day. I got a lot of feedback on the internet. I live in Missouri, I live here and I'm like listen proportionalize it. I told you my rent is 30,000 years is three. Make it work to what the scale is but that's the performance after 25 years in her career that she deserves. And I'm saying we all deserve it and it's a beautiful thing to see in my own home. A beautiful example of who we could all be like. She's an inspiration to me every single day. So what a pleasure, thank you so much Matt. Well I definitely wanna have her on here doing some hair soon. So I would love that. And like I said I'm trying not to color as much. So if we could just, if I can get her on here doing some color that would be awesome and so people can see her hands. Cause when you walked away I said she makes him look very good. So I've seen it, I've worked backstage, I've seen it. And she's building content not as much as you but she's coming up there and we've made a commitment to do more and more. I also wanna get into some of the theatrical stuff which I kind of got into in my show which I haven't done on stuff like this yet but I plan to get to it. One show we thought about in the past with the alternative hair show we got to do that remotely. So we got to film six models from around the country. A beautiful statement of love, of people of color. It was something just glorious but again starts with a storyboard but I'd love you to feature my wife. She's got great content and again you guys wanna pick heroes who you wanna be like and I'm just saying she would be a one if I was at a hair show in Chicago today and she was on my middle chair doing color. Every single woman in the audience gonna wanna be just like her on the love that we share all the way through. It's not just about the hair, the lifestyle. She's a hairdresser behind the chair. She's traveling, she's educating. That may be the blend that sets you free. Maybe your blend is spending more family time and being more effective at work. That's the joy of the beauty industry. You've got those choices. Look what Matt and I did with ours. Yeah. All right, cool. Well, thank you guys so much and let me know when you get those voiceovers done on your stuff. I'd love to share it on here. So, all right. Thank you, Robert. Thank you very much. I'll talk to you soon, all right? See ya, Mary. Bye, Matt. Bye. All right, guys. I hope you guys enjoyed that session. It was a long one, but we got some good stuff and that's what I'm excited about. Thank you guys so much. Everybody that hung in here, there's still quite a few people on here watching live. So, thank you guys. Tomorrow, I'll be back on here. I'm gonna start trying to do this podcast. More of just have guests on talk. Let me know what you think of that in the comments. I'm gonna start trying to do that on Mondays in the afternoon and then Tuesdays I'll do my live class like I always do. So, thank you guys again and I think that's it. Loved it, cool. I'm glad. All right. All right, you guys are awesome. Thank you so much. Enjoy your day. Enjoy your Monday. I'll see you guys tomorrow right here. Same place, Facebook, YouTube, all of that. Thank you so much for watching. Thanks guys.