Staying Ahead of the Game with Sue Davies

With so many of us struggling just to keep up, trying to stay ahead of the game could feel like a tall order. Well, here to help us navigate today is my friend, Sue Davis. She's a salon industry mentor who helps salon businesses with online visibility. But more recently, she's the owner and editorial director of the nice, shiny brand new Salonpreneur magazine, collaboratively working across the sector to empower business owners with higher level business knowledge. and skills. Let's get her on the show, shall we? Hello, Sue. Welcome to the Build Your Salon podcast. Good afternoon, Phil. Thank you so much for having me on. Oh, should I say welcome back? Because you are in fact, in fact, the first ever guest to have a second appearance on the Build Your Salon podcast. Wow. So there you go. You can put that on a sash and wear it with pride. I'm going to. Can I get a badge? You can. You can. You can. I'll make you one. There you go. I will wait for that in the post. I will get my crochet hook out. Anyway, for anyone who hasn't come across you before, why don't you give people a little potted history of who you are and where you're from? Okay. So there's an awful lot. I have. So I will try and run through them really quickly. I have been a mobile. I've been a home salon. I've been an award winning salon owner. I've been back to being a home salon. I have been an industry competition organizer, judge, director. I have been previously a magazine owner. I have been podcaster, Inspiring Salon Professionals podcast, which you have been on. I think you've been on mine twice actually. I have. Many other things I do. It's endless. And I always miss stuff. But I've basically been around the block. I've got a lot of T-shirts. And I kind of, yeah, now my passion is I still do work and do have a clinic as well, which I do very, very small amount of. But I do still love being part of the industry. And now I give back doing a lot of online visibility stuff and helping people with their Google business profiles and with their website, all the back end stuff that no one really gets, all that SEO and metadata and tags and alt texts and helping people kind of get that stuff a little bit more organized to help them be more visible online. Absolutely. Is that potted enough? That's potted enough. Yeah. We didn't plug the magazine hard enough. Oh, no. No, no. And of course, and then now. Let's talk about that. So we've basically, oh, you've got yours there. Well done. Why is it? It goes everywhere with me at the moment. Yeah. So the shiny new Salonpreneur magazine, issue one, out now.

And Sue is the owner and editorial director of Salonpreneur magazine. I'm thrilled and honoured to be involved in the magazine myself. So by all means, jump in. I will put the link to subscriptions in the description box. Jump in, grab your issue and let us know what you think as well. It'd be great to hear back. There's some amazing contributions in there. But and that's kind of what's led me to dragging you back onto the Yield Your Salon podcast again, because I want to talk about how we can stay ahead. So I've called this episode Staying Ahead of the Game, which is wonderfully vague. But essentially what I wanted it to be about is how we can. So I always think of you as somebody who has a mission to improve the industry in all sorts of ways. And very much around, you know, increasing our knowledge, empowering people to run more effective businesses, enjoying businesses more. So that taps into lots and lots of facets. So it's that kind of I always think of you as someone who's very keyed into the continual improvement of the industry. So before we jump in to to how we can stay ahead of the game in that sort of way, I wondered, given your breadth of industry knowledge and all the people that you get to talk to so frequently, how are we doing as an industry at the moment? What's your kind of temperature check on where we're at as an industry? I think we are. We've got a lot of opportunity. But I do think I've been in industry since 2002 was the first training I ever did. So I've been in industry for quite a long time and things we go. We constantly go through roller coasters always. But we're we've kind of in a place at the moment where I think whether we like it or not, we are still in recovery from COVID. There's still an awful lot of impact financially for some of the bigger businesses like the salon owners. And I see constantly problems with bounce back loans and all that kind of stuff. So there's a lot of financial hardship going on for people that have salons and have an employed model because they're struggling to keep their heads above water. And it's that's difficult. But we all on the on the flip side of that, we see this like huge shift in people that are taking their businesses or taking their skills into their own hands and creating their own businesses.

And entrepreneurism is just rife everywhere. And it's one of the reasons that I that we I bought the magazine back being called Salonpreneur because our industry is now made up of so many entrepreneurs and whether they realize that's what they are or not. I think that there's a problem there in that they don't even realize necessarily that they run in a business and that they need to be entrepreneurial. There's a lack of education around business as a lack of education around how you look after yourself as a business owner. And I think that's kind of where everything I'm trying to do at the moment kind of fits in. And we've just got a lot of people that are treading water, trying to keep their heads above it and really struggling. And I think that's where the main I think it doesn't matter unless you're in aesthetics, aesthetics does seem to be the area of the industry that is on growth, is on growth surge. Everyone else is kind of treading water. And we've seen the select committee that was on last week. We saw a lot of that being reflected through the evidence that was given to the business and trade committee. And we have, you know, you sort of speak, I was at Scratch Stars on Sunday night and watching the now industry celebrate themselves is amazing. And that awards is always like my fail. I've been judging it for years. I've been lucky enough to win two stars over my time. And but watching them, the love and the passion they have for this industry never diminishes. Doesn't matter how bad things are, they still want to celebrate. And I think we have opportunity to celebrate everything we do and everything that we provide to our clients. And we just need to find a different way of getting that out there to get more people in front of us. And it's just finding that key to getting people through our door to keep us being successful. I think you've touched on a number of really important points there. And I think there's I think first of all, I wanted to kind of just recognize that entrepreneurial spirit that you're talking about. And and I've been it's a joy to see because I've always felt that in our service, we've always been a very creative industry, particularly obviously on the hairdressing side, but also as far as far as a lot of the beauty treatments are concerned, as far as the certainly the nail industry is concerned. And there's always been this creativity in our service. And I haven't seen that creativity in business. And when you look at a lot of people's businesses and particularly a lot of people's marketing, it's kind of a bit stale and a bit funky. And I've been calling for a lot of years. Yeah, I've been calling for a lot of people to to just take a little bit of that creativity that you show in your work and just push that into your business and watch it fly.

So it's wonderful to see that kind of entrepreneurial spirit. I think it's a shame that it had to come from necessity, though. It's a shame that it's come from a place of us really struggling to make ends meet in that traditional salon business model. And you've touched on a number of the pressures that we're facing in terms of employment, in terms of training, in terms of those pesky youngsters who don't want to work hard and all those wonderful things. Well, I think it's such a shame, though, Phil, because the youngsters, we do give them a hard time. And I think it's a generational thing, isn't it? Is that as you move through the generations, you look back at the, you know, maybe there's envy there that we're not 20 anymore. But I think if you look at historically, every older generation always looks down on the generations below them. And it isn't anything that we're doing any different to like what our parents or our grandparents did as we were coming. You know, if you look in the 60s, when everyone was like moaning about the Beatles and their hair, men having long hair. I mean, you know, how awful was that? But these transitions happen all the time. And at the moment, the transition is, you know, this group of kids that are coming through and like the sort of 20-somethings that are coming in now. You know, they've got to face a whole different world. You know, they come in having to be and having grown up in a social media world. So they don't expect to do anything other than be on social media. But the reality of that is that it doesn't always work, which we know. There's so much more to marketing your business other than social media. And they're just, they kind of, they, sadly, they've been misled to believe that just being good on social media is going to work. And it does have to do with people. I would argue, though, that part of the problem is that they haven't been misled and that actually, okay, so in my personal opinion, there are too many salons. There are too many salon businesses out there by about 20% here in the UK. So for everyone to make a good living, and I'm talking about excellent wages and that ability to keep investing in your business, I think there's about 20% too many businesses out there. And I've also felt for a long time that not everyone should be self-employed. Not everyone has that in them to run an effective business. So I do think we're in a period of adjustment. But the problem is, and part of my job, I think, as a coach, is to make sure that the right ones survive. And they're not. It's not the ones that have got crappy standards. It's not the ones that couldn't give a damn about their customers. It's not the ones with the grubby windows, but the ones that are thriving, surviving and thriving, are actually the ones that are really good at social media. They are the ones that are really good at marketing.

And maybe this is where I kind of miss it. I miss that angle is because I'm not a great Instagrammer. It's not my thing. And I've never been a great Instagrammer. I was just being given a lesson this morning by Teresa Foddering on how to do carousels. And I'm like, oh, just don't make me do this. But that generation have grown up with that. But like you say, they can get followers, they can get business, they can get people to come to them. But that inability to be able to create an effective business long term is maybe where they're going to fall down later. Once all of those people have gone through their service. And we know clients fall away. And if you aren't able to maintain the service side because you're so busy doing the social media side, which isn't always going to work. It doesn't always work. I mean, I'm a great believer. I'm not going to need to go back to Yellow Pages because it doesn't exist in its format anymore. But there are so many other ways you can grow a business and that you can manage your business. You know, we know we have conversations all the time about different things you can do with AI and the different ways that you can make your business operate in a more automatic way. And we need to kind of harness the stuff that's coming. I've had some really fascinating conversations this morning where lots of these things have been coming through. And how we can what we can offer to make people's worlds easier and make people's worlds better. But we know trying to make people buy into that stuff because they have a belief that the way that they're doing it at the moment is the only way and the right way. And that there's nothing else out there for them when actually they just sort of like took the blinkers off a little bit. Maybe their world might open it. And I think actually that's where the where the opportunity lies with the generation that's coming through, because I think we inherited the way that salons were run and without really questioning it. I don't think, you know, we all accepted that there was a certain level of hard work that had to go in and a certain standard of training and a certain way of doing business. And we inherited that from our parents and grandparents and nothing had really changed in the salon industry for 50 to 100 years, particularly in hairdressing. Nothing had changed for, you know, centuries, let alone decades. And I think what we've got now is a generation coming into the industry that don't accept that. And they're not prepared to work 45 hours a week and they're not prepared to, you know, double that if they're a business owner. And so they're very much around doing business on their own terms. And I think there's actually a lot that we could be learning for that, particularly when you when you talked about how we look after ourselves in business. I think that slightly more I don't want to use the word selfish, but for want of a better word, that slightly more selfish approach to business might actually serve some of our generation really well.

Yeah, indeed. And it's funny, actually, you say that, because I know someone we both know in her salon, she's got a couple of I think one is around 30 and one's in her 20s. And when she asked them what their next what their goal was in five years, it's to work less and earn more money. And which is what we all want. Ultimately, we'd all love to work less and earn more money. Yeah. But the younger generation believed, believed whether that's right or wrong. And it can it's proven to be true. But they believe they have the right to do that. And they believe that that can happen and will happen. Whereas we see that as a bit of a shirking of responsibility, probably, because we feel like we should work more. When I keep thinking, I really actually want to tailor my week to do Monday to Thursday because I don't need to work five days a week. But I find most often I actually find myself sitting on my laptop probably six days a week out of choice. Not that I have to, but I've got creativity in my head that I need to get out. And so I'll sit and do stuff. Yeah. But I don't think the younger generation do that in the same way. I don't think that not that they're not as committed, but they're just not in the same place. And maybe of our generation, we've got all that knowledge we now need to put down. And that to me, it feels like and I hate the word legacy, but it feels like it's that even in the magazine, there's an element of all of us that are writing. It is part of our legacy of what we bring in. Most of us are in more mature years. And so we have all this knowledge and this experience that we can hands out. And like Wendy Garcars, who's writing the magazine, has got this like this whole wisdom bridge thing of it being a two way street. And we need to pass that knowledge down to them. And equally, there's stuff like, you know, Sue, this is how you do a carousel and how you do it effectively needs to come back from that younger generation to me. We will talk AI on that because I've got a little bit of software you're going to love. But it's all that stuff, isn't it? And it's that share. I think for me, everything, the biggest problem we have, and we were talking about this last night, weren't we, is about the tribalism and community. And the fact that we have become very, very tribal in the industry and we are, you're either, if you're in aesthetics, you're either a medic or a non-medic. If you're in nails, you either use this system or use that system. And if you're, I mean, I'm never quite sure of hair. I don't know that you get it so much in hair. It certainly used to be the case. If you were in love with a manufacturer, then that was, you were a weller salon and it was like a stick of rock and it went all the way through kind of thing. But tribalism only divides us. You know, you feel like you're part of something, but you're only part of a really minor little thing.

And what we actually need to be doing is engendering community and somewhere where we all feel welcome, we all feel included and we all feel welcome to be part of this massive. I mean, our industry is bloody amazing. And I don't know, and we shouldn't be segregating ourselves off in that way, I feel. This is where the paranoid idiot in me starts to kick in. Yeah, go on then. Well, I start to wonder who does that separation serve? Well, yeah, absolutely. Because there's always somebody who benefits from that. Yeah, totally. And if you take it, take the whole industry model as being very, you know, over the last 10, 15 years, particularly in the UK, we've seen this fragmentation. So that employed model is no longer the norm. And we've basically taken a salon of 15 people, whacked it with a hammer and turned it into 15 different businesses. Yeah. Who does that serve? Well, I mean, there's some people who do really well out of that model. So, for example, you know, the example I gave on the podcast a few weeks ago, our manufacturers and suppliers love that model because then we've got 15 people buying opening orders. There's no efficiency in that model. It's an inefficient model. It's an inefficient model as far as labor is concerned, which probably suits the government because there's less people taking unemployment benefits. And it certainly serves our manufacturers and suppliers because there's inefficiency in our purchasing. And there's a very interesting model. I'm trying to get her on the podcast, actually, as a lady up in Nottingham, who's basically got all the salons in the town to start working together so that we can put our purchasing power together, for example, and get some of those economies of scale back. And that's where I see AI as the great leveler, because suddenly we've got opportunities to access marketing and automation, which were previously reserved for much, much bigger businesses. So it brings us back onto a level again. Anyway, that's me being paranoid. No, but do you know, though, but interestingly, you say that and about who does it serve. And actually, like you're saying about, it makes it better for numbers for the government, for who's on benefits and stuff like that. But watching that select, and I'm literally putting a blog together at the moment to go up on the Salonpreneur website, which by the time this goes out, will be there.

And it's well worth going and watching that video, because the figures that come out from that, the evidence that's provided at the select committee, is that the model of like fragmenting that business into 15 different businesses is that the government, because I haven't got the figures in front of me, I haven't bought the piece of paper with me, but I'm sure it was something like £3 billion a year lost in VAT to the government and in taxes and in high contributions and all that kind of stuff because of the way that it's broken down. Because, and it is, and in so many cases, the employers are breaking their model apart so that they can save money because they're spending on average 20%, maybe even more than anybody that's in a business with no employees. And so it means, it's their way of surviving. It's become a survival technique to be able to maintain having your bricks and mortar business because you're in a lease and you can't get out of your lease. And it is, I mean, like the economics behind it, I mean, we could sit talking about this for hours, Phil. But the economics of it are so, so much the reason why this model is happening. And then the government's losing all that money. And then they don't understand why there's, why there's so much tax avoidance, why there's VAT avoidance. And there's just, there's an awful lot of stuff that's wrong. And we are being, we're kind of being minimised down to being individuals, which is not healthy because the more individuals there are, the more competition there is. And the more people are taking on roles that they're not, that they have no experience to take on. And if you haven't got an entrepreneurial spirit in you, then that comes back to the argument you were saying about this 20% too many businesses because everything's fragmented. And, you know, if you had a salon, who was I talking to the other day? They'd had a salon. I think it might have been on that, on that select committee again. They were just one figure that they had, one of the biggest apprentice educators and people that works with apprentices in the UK in six months have gone from 150 apprentices down to 50. Now that model, we're going to have no apprentices left. Our industry has always been an industry of education and helping people rise through the ranks. That's gone. In another year's time, we're going to have no apprentices left. And in hair, that is dreadful. Yeah, it's a really interesting situation that's panning out over the next couple of years because, on the other hand, we have slated the education that's been available, particularly in hair, but across beauty as well. You know, for so many years, we've said that these qualifications don't serve us and colleges don't serve us and that apprenticeship model's broken and all the rest of it.

But you watch over the next couple of years how we try and manage without any of that. Actually, I think that is part of this adjustment, though, because if we've got less young people coming into the industry, over time, we have a reduction in the numbers of people that are around, which will, you know, I talked about that 20% too many. That's part of the adjustment that needs to happen. My problem, though, comes back to that legacy argument that we were talking about, in that if we break that chain, where's the knowledge going to come from? Where's the understanding going to come from? Where's all the expertise going to come from? If we're not recruiting people continually, there's a break in the chain and one of the links goes missing. So, well done you for filling that gap. Well, try it. Try it hard. But I think as well, though, it's like, you know, we're talking about, sorry, because it's one of my big bugbears. In 2021, I sat on, I was very fortunate. I was at the time Deputy Chair of the Federation of Now Professionals, and I was invited to sit on the National Occupational Standards panel for the Now Standards. And due to the way that the bureaucracy works, those National Occupational Standards, I bear in mind, and my biggest problem with this is that gel polish in any salon is the go-to nail service. It's been that way for probably 15 years. And gel polish is still not taught in college. It's still not taught. It's still, you have to do a one-day conversion course once you've left college. That's not acceptable in this term, in this time. So, in 2021, gel polish was added to the National Occupational Standards. National Occupational Standards were updated because there was a lot of outdated information there. Gel polish wasn't even in there because they'd not been updated since 2005. Gel polish happened in 2009, 2008-9. And they still haven't made it. Because of the bureaucracy that the awarding bodies sit under and they only update their curriculums every so often, those standards still have not made it into education. And I know it's not just nails. This is across, like, every standard that was updated. They're still not written into the qualifications. And when that, and so we have, like, what, the people that are coming out of college are still coming out with the wrong education. And until that changes, I mean, it's a big step that's going to happen once those curriculums change. Because then we might actually start getting people in the industry that we haven't got to retrain, costing the salon owners more money. And it is, and it's just a perpetual cycle of, yeah, of the death of our education. Because it just doesn't work. Yeah. I think certainly in the hair side.

That's another whole podcast. No, I think you're absolutely right. I think in the hair side, because people can't afford the level two apprentices anymore, because level two, they can't carry out any service to help pay their own wage, really. Certainly not to start with. It's an expensive thing for a salon now. So we're going to go through a phase where, basically, if you want to do hairdressing, you're going to have to go to college full time to do your level two. But then it just kicks the problem into the long grasp, because historically, it's always taken us another year after they've done level two coming into the salon, because they haven't been taught the salon ways of doing things at all. Isn't it? It is, and even with, I mean, I know, when the hair standards were going through at the same time, because I know we were looking at all of the DEI situation around nails and how that would impact nails. And obviously, DEI impacts in the hair industry for textured hair is huge. And that stuff that's been in the standards since then. And it still isn't making its way through into education. And that's that and that one even more so than anything else is just so it's so necessary and so required. And we still aren't meeting what the like the NOS are and what have you of, you know, have you in the NOS work together. And they are the authority that pushes this stuff forward. And if we if they can't make the colleges or the colleges, if they can't make the world in bodies change, then what hope do we all have? But anyway, education ran over. Yeah. So let's focus a little bit more on the people that are in the industry. And we're trying to stay ahead of the game a little bit and we're trying to keep up to date. And those things are an investment, investment of time, investment of money. And if we're trying to, you know, tread water, make ends meet, tighten our belts. Is it fair then that salons are cutting back on their continual education and their training? Um, I don't. I think it's a really difficult position. If you're an employer, I think you do have a responsibility to maintain your employees skill level because things change, things update. And if you don't update them, you could be in breach of insurance, you're in breach of so many different things. So you could be your insurances could be invalidated. You could have issues where they, you know, they may not be carrying. If you just look at like glove usage and stuff like that, you know, there's a massive argument on glove usage. But the National Occupational Standards now say you have to have that. And if you're if your staff haven't been trained by someone that carries out and works for the National Occupational Standards,

your staff are going to be and your salon could be working against the standards. And if you don't work to occupational standards, then your insurance potentially will not cover you in the event of a claim. So it's you have to stay ahead. You have to keep renewing and updating. And whether you do that yourself and you teach your staff, I've seen the standards and this is what we need to be doing to make sure that we are covered. You have to update. And as I say, whether you do that internally through your own systems, particularly if you have the if you have the ability to teach, you should be doing that. But sending people out on courses to make sure they're not only enhancing education, but maintaining the skills that they have at a professional level. I don't I think is an obligation that we have to our clients. And what about those smaller businesses then that don't have employees, you know, taking if you're the only earner in a business, taking time away, investing in some of the training? You know, at least the employers can send two or three people on the same course at the same time or get an expert in. It's a big investment, though, as a solo, isn't it? It is. However, at least so like now now now we've got to bang the drum of like getting your pricing right, because there should be an element built into your pricing. That allows for you to take a day out, two days out a year and go and enhance your education or go and maintain your education, because it you know. Yeah. I mean, obviously, it depends what course you want to do. You can do an online course. It doesn't have to be expensive. It doesn't and it doesn't have to be an awarding body and it doesn't have to be accredited. There's so many ways that you can do CPD without having to spend money. And for example, with Salompreneur, you can, if you're a digital or a print subscriber annually, I've set up a wonderful system. You can go online and you can do something called reflective practice. And if you're not sure what reflective practice is, basically, you go into your lovely Salompreneur magazine, you flick. Oh, surprise, surprise. Because you're right in the middle. But, you know, you could take Phil's article. Phil's article, all about the use of, you know, the quiet revolution, how AI is reshaping the beauty business. But you can read that. And Phil's article's got so much amazing information in. You can go away, go and write 250 words on our portal. There's a little lesson, there's a little assignment at the end of the digital magazine.

You can just write 250 words and we'll give you a certificate to say that you've done some reflective practice. That goes towards your professional development. So, yes, you might have bought the magazine, but if you buy the digital, it's $9.99 a year. That's not going out and taking time out for a course. No. And so not everything has to be going off to do a course. Although I do feel there is massive value from, especially now after so long of online, online, online through the pandemic and the years that we've had since then. Online is amazing. But I do think that we really do need to get back to grassroots in real life, in-person training, because you learn so much more from being in that space with all those other people. And that whole thing we're talking about, that wisdom bridge and that sharing of information and knowledge only comes when you're in a room with other people. Absolutely. If we're going to, you know, we all know the sometimes quite harmful online community world and certainly the very shallow online community world. If we want depth of community, there's only one way to do it. And that's basically getting in the same room with other people who are either learning the same thing or believe in the same thing, which is a beautiful segue, I have to say. Why don't you tell everyone about the opportunity that you're giving people to get in the same room later in the year? Of course, yes. So on the 5th and 6th of October, I am jointly hosting with a friend of mine, Nina Atfield, who owns Luster Lash and Lashphoria. We are co-hosting an event called Salon Business Connect. And it is a two-day event. Mr. Jackson is very kindly going to be speaking there as well, along with many other very wonderful people. We have got people like, yeah, White Phil. We've got Ryan Powell. We've got Erica Fremantle. We've got a wonderful guy called Matt Adams, who's actually a bodybuilder, but does a lot of motivational coaching and stuff with female clients and for business and for bodybuilding and stuff as well. So he's got a very different view of how we can take things forward and build our minds in a stronger way. We've got Tracy Fenson, Debbie Allen. There's so many different people. I can't even think half the people. And I think we've just got a wonderful man called Mario. I can't think what his surname is. It's gone. Anyway, he's very wonderful, but he's all about branding and how you set yourself apart. So we've got lots and lots of different things, one day focusing very much on business, one day focusing on well-being mindset and personal development, because they're the things I think in today's world where we are so entrepreneurial, we do have to really recognize that it isn't just as simple as putting an advert on Facebook or a post on Facebook or Instagram.

Having someone come to you, taking their money and then departing, there is so much more to it than that. And when we are on our own and we are, because we are probably the loneliest we've ever been as therapists and business owners, because there are so many of us that are now solo professionals and working at home or working mobile and or renting a space. But we're all very, very just us on our own. And it feels very much that way for people. So now, not only do we need to enhance our business skills, but we need to enhance our knowledge of how to protect our well-being and how to bring about a better work-life balance for us. So although, like you were saying, I feel like, you know, there's a lot of the younger generation don't work the 45 hours plus having to do another 30 hours because you're the business owner. They don't take that model, but so many of us still do. And I think that we really need to just get a bit of a harness on how we allow our businesses to run away with our lives. And as far as, you know, we've talked about upskilling and levelling up and I've titled the episode about how we're kind of keeping pace with change and trying to stay ahead of the game a little bit. Is it anyone's job to make sure that happens? Is it simply a case of the marketplace kicking your ass in a certain direction or is there a government role there as far as that keeping skills up to date is concerned? Or should it come from, you know, actually my favourite model is what you've alluded to, which is where it comes from the insurers. A little bit I've always felt that they could have a much stronger role in upskilling. But whose job is it to look after the industry's future like that? I do think that we all have, we have an individual and a collective responsibility. Individually, we have to maintain our skills. We have to make sure that our skills are updated and maintained. And maintenance of our skills is a minimum, I feel. Updating them is something we should be doing all of the time. And if we can add something to it, you know, and the thing is, I think we're all very quick to go, oh, my goodness me, I've just seen this amazing new machine, this amazing new treatment, this amazing XYZ, shiny object syndrome.

And we're all very, very quick to jump on it and go, okay, so this could be a new revenue stream. But that isn't always the way to go. I don't, and I mean, I've, I've learned the hard way over the years of doing, you know, I mean, I've done, I think probably all of us have added elements of like, we've seen the new, whatever range of whatever, whatever products it is that are in our salon. And we go, yeah, we have to have that whole collection. And particularly in nails, it's like, you know, all the glitter companies, and I do love a bit of glitter, but you, every, every, you know, three or four times a year, you get new, new collections come out. And you're encouraged to buy all of that collection in glitter. That can be six to 12 colors every time. But do you actually need all of them? They're probably very similar to something you've already got. That money, and that's where you can save the money there, invest in your education. Don't, don't go after the shiny all the time. And I think that, so there's an individual responsibility, but I think collectively, we do need to kind of, and I think part of this is part of why I want the magazine running the way that I'm running it, is that we have this collaboration of all of us that have got so many years of experience and understanding. And we can reflect on things that we've done that we would like to change, but also that we have a power to kind of help people understand things in a different way. And collectively, we can start making change and make people understand that there is, there's strength in community, there's strength in working together, there's strength in connecting. And when we actually have that, that maybe then that osmosis of all the stuff that we all know can kind of go into that big melting pot. And that's probably very idealistic, really. But there's got to be some osmosis of that information going in every direction. And we need to recognise that there's, I mean, particularly in nails, there's been calls for the whole time I've been a nail tech, that you, we need regulation and we need all of this stuff. We're like, we are not a regulated industry. In actual fact, we are a really regulated industry because we've got the health and safety executives sitting there who regulate us. And because, just because they're not saying, oh, here's a licence and you can go and practice, doesn't mean that we're not regulated. We are so regulated by them because, you know, if you don't abide by the health and safety work act, like the factories act of 1974, if you don't abide by that, you can end up in prison. That seems quite regulated to me. And ultimately... We get the same calls in hair all the time, that there's no, you know, you don't need a licence to be a hairdresser.

There's no register of hair. Well, you can have a licence for hair. You can, but it's voluntary. And I tried it for two years. I paid my dues to see whether it made a blind bit of difference. Yeah. And, but the problem that I had with it is that the, so to call yourself a state registered senior hairdresser meant that you had either a certain level of experience or your level three, instead of just a level two, which I had. So I was a state registered senior hairdresser for two years. But that's just another way of recognising a qualification that none of us had faith in. That was my problem with it. It didn't make sense to me. Now, and the other problem I've got, actually, I think that to sit alongside the health and safety stuff, what we could do with is a piece of legislation, which says for you to carry out a hairdressing or beauty therapy or aesthetic service without insurance is a crime. Yeah. And then overnight, suddenly, everybody puts the emphasis onto the insurers. Because the problem with, as soon as you start putting regulations and ranting now, you've got me riled now. I know, let's go, let's go. Let's go. But as soon as you put anything like that in place, you've already talked about the glacial pace of change. And the problem is when we're innovating, when we're bringing new services in, new ways of carrying out existing services, the legislation can't keep up. But the insurers can, you know, if you go to an insurer with a new service, they can tell you within 24 hours normally, whether it's covered under your policy or whether you can pay and, you know, they can respond so much more quickly. So if we made it illegal to operate without insurance, suddenly we've got a responsive, dynamic way of regulating the industry. Because those underwriters will make a decision and they will assess the risk and they'll work out. And they are the best people because ultimately, anything we do, and even down to, you know, if you're in hair and your hair dryer isn't pat tested, if in your nails and your nail lamp has been pat tested, once it's gone beyond its warranty, you are in breach of nearly every insurer. Some insurers do not require it. I have to say some, there are some that don't require it. But the majority of insurers require you to do your due diligence and ensure that your machinery and equipment is fit for purpose. Pat testing is part of that. And I think, you know, and that's just sort of something that because that takes it out of, you know, that's not something that we need to do to make it work. That is something that's a requirement under, I can't remember what the Act is, Electrical Safety Act, whatever, I can't remember what my Acts are now.

But that's a requirement. And the HSC require that we do due diligence to make sure our equipment's safe to be used. The insurers require that we do that. So the fact that we think, oh, it's okay, we don't need to worry about having a must-off pack tested, actually a couple hundred quid a year. Well, I mean, it used to cost me a couple hundred quid a year because I have quite a lot of equipment. But usually it's only a couple of quid per item and just to hit, you know, it's... Well, I'll show you how dedicated I was to upskilling. I did the training. Oh, did you? I have often thought about it. I got so fed up with paying other people to test my equipment that I bought the piece of machinery and did the training. It's only an online course. Yeah, it's not a lot, is it? No, no, not at all. And then you just post the machine away once a year to get it calibrated and I did all my own pack testing. And it's probably, to be honest, do you know what? And for anyone listening, it's probably one of the best pieces of CPD you can do. Yeah, it's certainly saved a lot of money over time. It's paying you back in dividends. Well, I quite like doing it as well, stacking everything up. You don't realise how many bits of equipment you've got until they all land in a heap. You've got an awful lot. So I just want to kind of squeeze in a little, what might come across as a bit of a negative point, but I don't want it to be. I want it to come from a place of love. And basically, you know, when you're looking at putting an event together or when you're putting a magazine together, there is a process of editing and curating that's going on. So you're deciding which contributors you're going to have and which pillars are important. Is there anything that you can see in the industry which is falling under that kind of shiny object syndrome? Is there stuff that you think that we might be focusing on either as technicians or as business owners where actually we're putting a bit too much emphasis and perhaps it doesn't credit it or it doesn't serve as well? Oh, that's an interesting question. Then, oh, what shouldn't we be doing? I think we probably need to focus. I would like to flip that into a positive, what we should be. There's so much stuff we probably shouldn't be doing. We shouldn't be taking for granted. We'll go down that one. We shouldn't be taking for granted that everything is going to remain where it is. We need to build resilience into our businesses. We need to understand that we are going to have to become very, very good at pivoting again because we've been there before. But we are going to have to become good at pivoting and we're going to have to become more adaptable because I don't think currently we're adaptable enough.

And I don't think we can, as professionals, we can react quickly enough when things change. And I think in the next couple of years, like we've been, there's going to be a lot of shifting sand under our feet. And at this point, we don't adapt quickly enough. And so we need to focus on how we can build resilience for our businesses and for ourselves. Is that a feeling of overwhelm when it all goes a little bit peaked on? It's not a nice place to be. No, no, not at all. Let's end on some positive stuff. Yes, let's do positive stuff. So if you could look back, what would you say is the best piece of advice you've ever been given? I've been given a lot of advice over the years. And the thing, when I knew I was going to have to, the thing that pops into my head is a great friend of mine, Jackie O'Sullivan. I can remember I'd been, I had my salon at the time and I'd taken on sub-distribution. I'd really, I'd overextended myself just a little bit. And I had, my business was in, I had two different names. I had an academy name and a salon name. And somebody local to me had basically taken both my business names and swapped them around. So my academy name became her salon name and my salon name became her training academy name. That eight miles away from me. And I was really, I was quite miffed to say the least. And I was actually quite affronted because I kind of did know her a little bit, but not a lot. And the best bit of advice that she ever gave to me, my friend Jackie, we sat on a plane coming back from a competition I'd been running in Dublin. And she said to me, Sue, what you've got to do, you've got to stop trading under these names. And what you need to do, you need to have your name front and centre of what you do. Hence, I now have Sue David, like Sue Hyphen, because Sue Davies is a very common name. It's quite difficult to get that as a website. So I've got Sue Hyphen Davies. So like now, nearly everything I do for me sits under my name. And I've got lots of brands within that, but everything now sits within my name. And it's like, and I get quite precious about that I am Sue Davies. I love that. Yeah, got an E. But I think, but I do think we all, we all put so much, and especially, I think probably for your salon, you do need to have that brand name. But don't let your name disappear underneath it. Because you are a person in that business. Didn't hurt Vidal Sassoon, did it?

Well, no, this is it, exactly, isn't it? I think, like, if I, if I had to say, if I still, my husband always hates it when I go on about this. But my maiden name was Covington, which is a much classier name. And, and if I just do it. And you're probably getting a .com as well, can't you? No, I probably could. We did nearly double barrel me, but it was, back in like 1993, it seemed a bit pretentious to do that. And obviously now it's like quite commonplace. But, but to be Sue Covington, or whatever, Covington, whatever, Covington, whatever, it would have been, it would have been standout name. But to be Sue, I mean, I literally, like, if you want to know anything about me, you can Google me, but you do need to put Nails of Beauty, because otherwise you just get an author from America. Because I do Google myself occasionally, just to see where I'm, where I'm stacking. And I still haven't beaten the author in America. Well, if you want some competition, you type in Phil Jackson. No, I know. And those are just two problems. There's a, a basket, well, you can't even put Phil Jackson coach, because he's a basketball coach in America. Oh, no. And, and very famous, and an author, and all those good things too. So, never going to get that .com. Yeah, we need, we do need to kind of, we need to be us, I think. And I think there's a whole, there's a whole thing around authenticity at the moment. And, and I think, you know, to do anything, you need to do it with authenticity. And I think the only way people will recognise you being authentic is if you do it in your name, and you put your name behind it. You know, it's like everything you do, you know, your name is always out there. And I try very hard to have my name out there. As much as I've got, like, my salon inspector, and I've got Inspiring Salon Professionals podcast, it is still always hosted by, run by me. And my name, you will always find my name in there, apart from the fact it's good for SEO. Very good point. Straight back down to earth. It's really good for the SEO too. Well, this is it, but you've got to be realistic. And like, you know, we need to use that stuff out there. Because if someone, if someone comes across your, your salon business, and they don't know who owns it, if they knew, you know, like with my salon, if they knew that Sue Davis, who actually did all these other things, you know, it gives me credibility to be that successful salon owner. The fact that I've been a competition organiser and a director and a judge, and I've written for magazines, I've done all this different stuff. But it gives me credibility. So if they then go and search me, they can see that I'm a genuine professional that is passionate about what I do, that loves what I do, that shares the knowledge and does all that stuff. And they're probably more likely to come to someone like me than someone who's just, I don't know, I'm not going to give out silly salon names in my head because I might upset somebody. But we all know there's some very, very, yeah, could do better salon names out there.

So owning, owning your name and being proud to put your name on it. So you've done an awful lot, but if somebody was going to try and follow in your footsteps, what's the one piece of advice that you would leave behind for them? I think probably, oh dear, I've got two things going through my head. And one is, no, actually, do you know, it's what I'm going to know, I've changed my mind. It's going to be jump. Because I've had to jump a lot in my career. And I came across, his name's gone from my head completely. I can't even remember who his name is. But Steve, American TV show host, his name's gone. So, but he's got this whole thing about jump. And believe that when you jump, your parachute will open. Because inevitably, it may take a while for parachutes to open. And sometimes you may have to tug a few times on that string. But don't live in the fear that you shouldn't do it. And actually, and even, sorry, just bringing you into this a little bit, Phil. But there's something you said to me a little while ago was like, if not you, then who else? Because you have to have the belief that you have the right. You have to have the belief that you can do it. And if you're listening to this podcast and you're on the make, trying to make a decision, I've always been a believer in like, you just say yes and you work it out later. And I think that you just sometimes need to have the self-belief. And if it doesn't work out, you learn a huge amount of stuff on the way. Well, there's a little cliche which I'm living by at the moment. I've got it written in the front of my journal, which is basically, it'll be all right in the end. And if it's not all right, it's not the end, which I think is a lovely way of putting that. And there's also, the other thing that's spinning through my head is like Stephen Bartlett, which was so resonant with me last year when I was going through quite a lot of challenges, was like, when your gut says no, listen and unpack it later. And I think, but that's why I was having a bit of a spin in my head because that seems quite negative in some ways because it's about a no. But it is just about that, having that self-belief. All of the things that were going through my head are all like self-belief things and just making sure that when you, and it is that whole thing of like your gut, it's trying to push you in a direction and you need to listen.

And if you have that, if you're about to make that jump, believe that it will work. What's the very best thing about working with the salon industry? The people. Don't you, I could get all emotional now. It's been a bit of a week. But I think it is the people. And it's like the moment for me is being surrounded by you guys that are helping me with the magazine and that collaboration. And I think that when you get good people coming together to do good things, which we do on a daily basis, whether you are a solo, you get together with your client and you create magic at that nail desk or at that chair. We create magic every day. We make a difference to people every single day. And whether that's within people, within groups like ours with the collaborative columnists and the people that are supporting me at the moment, or whether that's you and your clients, we make a difference to people every day that makes them smile. We do. And you do. I promise. Thank you. What's your favourite way for people to keep in touch with you? Go on, say Instagram. Go on, say Instagram. You know you want to. I love it. I've been trying to be so much better on Instagram. And it's actually worked. And someone got in touch with me and they love the magazine and whatever. And she wants to come and do some work with us. So it's great. So Instagram, I'm trying really hard to get into. I mean, really, I'm on Facebook. I'm on Instagram. I'm on LinkedIn. I'm not on TikTok yet. But I keep being told I need to be. So basically, you can just, any of those ways, you can just find me. And, yeah, you can find me under Salonpreneur Magazine. You can message me there. You can find me under Sue Davies. You can find me under, well, it's my under Sue Davies Inspiring Business Excellence. I'll find everyone what it is. But Phil's got all the links. And they'll be in the show notes. They will all be in the show notes. Thanks so much for your time today, Sue. It's been an absolute pleasure as always. So there we have it. My conversation with Sue Davies. What do you think? Why don't you reach out and let me know? My email address scrolling at the bottom of the screen right now. Also reach out if you would like to feature in a future episode of the Build Your Salon podcast. I'd love to be sharing your success story with my amazing listeners. Phil at buildyoursalon.com. I would love to hear from you soon. Just seven short days until I'm coming in your ears again with another dose of my wise hour wisdom. And until then, take care.