We were lucky to catch up with Justin Gold recently and have shared our conversation below.
Justin, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard
Most salons in the beauty industry either pay commission or have booth renters, but we pay salary!
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I was born into the beauty industry, with both my mother and my father being hair dressers who worked together in running The Changing Room Hair Salon. Growing up around the dinner table it was all business every day. My parents dream for me was simply to go to college, seeing as I would be the first in my family to do so. There was always the encouragement to take over the family business one day but it was not what I wanted to do with my life. After I earned two Business Degrees, a B.S. in Finance and the other was a B.S. in Entrepreneurship & Small Business Management I set out on my life’s journey to figure out what I wanted to do with my life…after trying out many different jobs and living on the completely opposite side of the country, I still was unsure “what I wanted to be when I grew up?” That’s right around the time my mother took ill. I came home to help out the family business “temporarily” until I figured out what my next step would be. Well, ‘temporarily” turned into 15 years and counting. My parents created a great business foundation on which I have been able to build on. Coming from the corporate world along with my business degrees education background, I was able to elevate our company through systems and procedures, improved accountabilities, job descriptions, clearly defined core values, along with our mission statement and more. However, the foundation is really the secret sauce to our success. Our unique business model of employee compensation is unheard of in the beauty industry, we pay salary. The salary structure significantly benefits the employees as well as the guests. Most salons that are commission based create this “dog eat dog” mentality and competitive energy where stylist fight over guests that very often results in drama. Our salary structure eliminates any drama and fighting seeing as everyone is making money regardless of how slow their client book may be. It constructs a very nurturing environment in which multiple stylist can work together to solve a single guests challenges if need be. Because stylists have guaranteed income who are w-2’ed, they feel more secure in their home life knowing they are going to be able to pay their bills, they can easily show stable proof of income when wanting to purchase a car, apt or home. The byproduct of this security is less turn over in the staff. The secondary result is that the guest experience becomes superior to that of other salons; there is no drama, they can see different stylists at any time which best fits their schedules without it being awkward or causing drama, in addition they enjoy seeing the same, happy, and team working employees. Once again the strong salary based foundation my parents started with along with the upgraded infrastructure I was able to bring to the table, has netted tremendous results! I am extremely proud to share that we have been honored by Salon Today Magazine as a Top 200 Salon SIX times now, with even myself being featured on the cover for the 2022 edition. The salon has allowed me to open four additional companies within the beauty industry with one in particular, Rise Coaching & Consulting, which helped me figure out “what I wanted to be when I grew up” it is my purpose and my passion.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
One word will help set the stage: Covid-19. Owning a hair salon with 40+ employees during this extremely contagious virus has really tested my company’s and my own resilience. As the virus was spreading Gyms and Hair Salons where labeled as public enemy number one! The two month mandatory shut down in our city was extremely difficult for us as it was for many salons, so much so that many were forced to close permanently. Then when we were able to reopen, the journey seemed to consistently become more and more challenging. We lost a handful of team members to career shifts and relocations, many guests didn’t feel safe to return, the masks vs anti-maskers caused many problems, the added PPE expenses, I can go on and on… Being the captain of the ship it was my responsibility and duty to navigate my team through the storm. I had to make some tough decisions which included extensive cost analysis of my pre-covid business model, this resulted in having to remove low margin, high square foot services and those who performed them. However, the silver lining is that because I was able to keep the doors open along with supporting my team to the best of my ability, even those who had to be let go, the storm washed away any back room negativity and we have been ramping our numbers back up quickly!
How do you keep your team’s morale high?
This is one of my favorite topics I enjoy teaching my coaching clients through my Rise Coaching & Consulting business. Running a hair salon for the last 15 years with over 40+ employees, I have had many opportunities to learn best practices. We have an AMAZING culture which is so strong I give presentations to companies 10 x my size how to build a winning unified team. The goal is have everyone rowing the boat and for all of them to be rowing the boat in the same direction. The key to achieving this goal is to treat your team as you want to be treated, as human beings not numbers. When faced with challenges, put yourself in their shoes and do your best to see it from their perspective. I coach my leadership team that when dealing with difficult situations to approach the ‘tough talks’ simply as conversations not confrontations. Another great tool is to create a space where everyone feels heard and adds value to the company. I run my organization as a democracy not a dictatorship where we all vote on company decisions, we have open, honest and candid discussions during all company team meetings, and here everyone has a voice. There are several factors which help maintain high morale; hiring the right people in the first place is the most important factor – this is done by using our core values to asses and filter who joins our team and who is asked to leave, “hire slow, fire fast”. We have daily morning huddles, the purpose for this is to start the day off in a positive mind frame with personal wins or goals, inform the team of any housekeeping notes, and we give out any warranted team member shout-outs, which in turn creates alignment and synergy. Another very important morale booster is rewards, recognition and praise, we all want to hear words of encouragement and feedback, not just from management down but from peer to peer. We give out “monopoly” like money when a team member offers a “shout-out” written on a piece of paper along with which core value it supports, in our suggestion box! I could go on and on but these are some of the best practices we use in our company that have created a unified strong culture where everyone is rowing the boat and are doing so in the RIGHT direction.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.ChangingRoomSalons.com
- Instagram: @TheChangingRoom @RiseCoachingConsulting
- Facebook: The Changing Room Hair Salon
- Yelp: The Changing Room