From 1 salon to 18 without investors: The playbook behind Epic Hair Designs

Brendan: It took me two days to convince my parents and I did that by way of maybe manipulation, saying to them, talking to them about Richard Branson's experience with his grandma. One of the reasons why they wanted us to stay open was that women that were experiencing domestic violence so they had an out and they could get out of the house when they were locked down. Our marketing's now down to one person for the three people. We don't really have HR anymore. We use AI for hr, so. So we've been able to use it. Zenoti presents Grove Diaries. The fascinating stories behind the best brands in beauty, wellness and fitness.

Sudheer: Hosted by Sudhir Koneroo. Starting with a Single Salon in 2008, Brendan transformed a team of three hairdressers into a thriving franchise of 18 salons across Brisbane and the Gold Coast. Now known for its expertise in blonding, balayage and cutting edge styling, Epic Hair Designs is redefining the salon experience with a focus on high quality training, luxury services and community impact. We are thrilled to have Brendal here today with us to share the steps he took to building an award winning brand that makes luxury hair care accessible to all along with an inspiring commitment to philanthropy. Welcome to Growth Diaries, Brendan.

Brendan: Yeah, no worries. Welcome to sunny Brisbane. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, it's a beautiful day. Yes, so good.

Sudheer: So I thought maybe we'll first start with you just introducing Epic Hair in terms of here and now the what is the business? What category is it in? And you know, what does the business do today?

Brendan: Yeah, so uh, it started in 2008, now have around 200 hairdressers and apprentices across Epic Hair Designs. It is a luxury, affordable luxury salon where we do efficient hairdressing. 18 salons across Brisbane and the Gold coast. So southeast East Queensland.

Sudheer: Great, that's beautiful. So just across Brisbane and Gold coast you have 18 locations. That's pretty impressive. So you've not had to go out of the region yet to continue your.

Brendan: I looked at it a few years ago, but I think we got plenty of growth there. We sort of monitor the amount of potential clients coming into Brisbane and since COVID there's a lot of people moving up here. Uh, we see, we say a potential client is a female that's just turned 25 and there's about 350 new potential clients every single week. So that will continue growth of years to come in Brisbane alive.

Sudheer: So then I should say you're pretty efficient at what you do because I know a lot of other luxury salons in other cities but they don't see the figuring out the space to have 20 salons in a single city.

Brendan: Yeah.

Sudheer: Is very hard. So you're, you obviously be more meticulous to get there.

Brendan: Yeah, definitely. And there's a few gaps still in the city. And then obviously going down to the Gold coast, we've only got two down there at the moment. Eagerly trying to find more. And uh, I know we can have up to five salons down there.

Sudheer: So maybe let's go back and see and find out more. I want to learn first about how did you start this business? I know it was a while ago, 2008, but you know, what led you to actually venture into salon as an uh, industry and start a first salon?

Brendan: Yeah, so my background's Big W and Woolworths. I started there at a very, uh, young age as a manager around 2008. I just, I just always wanted a business. So I was looking at coffee shops, was looking at hairdressing salons. And one day I came across a salon that was for sale in Kenmore. Took me two days to convince my parents. And I did that by way of maybe manipulation, saying to them, talking to them about Richard Branson's experience with his grandma, lending him the money for his first magazine. And they lent me the money for the first seller. So started as a side hustle in 2008, the first salon went really well. It was quite expensive to purchase. However, it was a good running salon which taught me a lot about the salon industry. Then purchased the second one in 2010. I was still with Big W and Woolworths at that time and didn't happen until 2013 when I left them and I was purchasing the fourth salon.

Sudheer: Okay, great. So for five years you were doing this on the side in addition to doing a full time job?

Brendan: Yeah.

Sudheer: Great.

Brendan: And the reason why that happened was I went across to Dick Smith because I knew the salons were where I was going to head and I was going too well on Big W. And my job was I, uh, got up to 3,000 staff in the end, just in Big W. So my background, my industry is management and I made the decision to go for Stick Smith and I ran 34 of their stores in Queensland. However, they were bought off Woolworths by a private equity company and it ended up going into liquidation. So, uh, when that happened, I left there. And yeah, so you had very good

Sudheer: management experience with running real retail stores and uh, stores with consumers. So you understood what it means to run um, a business scale.

Brendan: They taught me a lot and I Enjoyed management. I enjoyed leadership and teaching people how to do their jobs and things like that and coaching. I also enjoyed the marketing side of it. I had a great experience being able to go down and just help design big W stores in my early 20s. And I became that became. I became a lead role in that, designing them Mark 7 saw and doing some projects for them down there. So every aspect of business I enjoy passion and uh, passion about.

Sudheer: So for very good reason. I think you've called your business Epic Hair.

Brendan: Yeah.

Sudheer: What do you. And I believe there's this concept of you want to deliver the Epic experience for guests. So can you expand on why did you call it Epic Hair and the concept of Epic Experience?

Brendan: So Epic Hair design. So it's, it's hard to find a business name and I think we selected a really good business name that was in 2010. The company had a different name before that, which was the previous owner's name. And I spent two years trying to work out what name and I just did based off the Epic Experience. Uh, have a few other companies now and they all have Epic in it. So I think it has a good ring to it. But the Epic experience really started in 2012 when I saw a lot of salons getting into super luxury. And I went and experienced that as well. And you go to a salon, they would spend a lot of time at the Basin. They'll, uh, massage your hands, do your shoulders, do other things. And people then were thinking luxury was a, like a thing that everyone wanted. And for a lot of people, time is the luxury it is. And that included me. I hated being in a cellar for that long. And I just wanted to get in and out as fast as I could but still have a good luxury experience. So instead of following that journey, we followed the epic journey. And our luxury experience was great products, the best you can get. So like Kerasals and Goldwell, GHD Straighteners. Beautiful salons offering wine, cheese and crackers and everything. Not everyone takes it. However being offered it is the main thing. And then where we did put the massages in was when they were going to be at the Basin anyway. So while they're waiting for their treatment to process or other times. So, so it didn't add actually extend to the time that they spent in the salon. So what that created is we got professionals. So we, we cater to lawyers and journalists and all those kind of people instead of just the, uh, the person that has a lot of time on their hands, which is a very, very few people, including mothers, they need to get in and out because they bought their children apart.

Sudheer: That's a very good point. Because even for me, if I go to salon, I just want my stuff done. But I'm willing to pay for, you know, the premium of knowing that I got a good quality experience. So I think you crack that angle where you're focused on the busy professional. Yeah, just the person who has the time.

Brendan: Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

Sudheer: But in order to do this kind of an experience, you've also said it's, it's a luxury kind of salon. So you, how did you go about getting talent? Because you have now gone to 18 locations and. Yeah, you know, having that many stylists and how did you solve for that to deliver that caliber within these.

Brendan: Well, it's, it's changed over the years. Back in 2008, when it started, it was very easy to find hairdressers and obviously over time it's gotten harder. There's a lot of reasons for that. Uh, funding for apprenticeships in Australia has gotten less and less. So having an apprentices costs more and more over the years. And this year it's at an all time worth, it's at an all time worst. But from, from, from the start, we just found different channels to get staff through. So we started doing visas in around 2012, which worked really well for us. The reason why I did that was I noticed that we were training staff, that they were going overseas. So I thought, okay, well, if you're going to take our talent, we need to take some talent back. That's worked very well for us. And probably 10% of our workforce are visas and they come with a lot of skills that help our apprentices and our teams grow as well. Uh, we started in 2020, an academy, our own academy, instead of going through an rto, so we train all of our hairdressers in house now. That's made a massive difference. And while everyone went through Covid struggling with staff, we never, ever had those struggles, which worked really well for us because of our own academy and the amount of, uh, apprentices we were putting through.

Sudheer: And how many people do you educate through your system every year?

Brendan: So it has a capacity of 100. We got up to 80 two years ago just because of the difficulties with current funding. We've got it down to 65 apprentices. However, we're working with the government on them. We're hoping to get it back up to 80 apprentices by this time next year. We'd love to have 150 apprentices in there. But it comes down to funding.

Sudheer: And so one thing is onboarding and bringing these people in the right caliber so that it meets your client expectations. What kind of strategies do you use to make sure these folks stay with you in terms of retention? What does the business do to attract employees to stay?

Brendan: Yeah, well, it's interesting. So Epic Hair Designs has a very good reputation for culture and just for the way we do business. And I think that's why a lot of people stay with us. Last year we graduated for, uh, 13 apprentices. Sorry. This year we graduated 13 apprentices and 11 of them has stayed. And I think that's a very good stat. Some people just decide to do another career at the end, which is fine, and we're okay with that. We have an open door policy. If someone leaves us in the right way, they can come back. But people, people see that and they just, they want to stay. Right.

Sudheer: And I think you have enough people, you said they're hitting the 10 year limit where they get the, uh, benefit in Australia, which I wasn't aware of.

Brendan: Yeah, that's right. So after 10 years in Australia, you get long service leave, which is an extra, I think, eight weeks worth of leave. We've got heaps of people hitting that now. So we've had a lot of people with us since 2010, I think our longest employees.

Sudheer: So one thing is you have all these amazing, uh, stylists. And you've also made it a point, I think, in terms of marketing and, you know, working. How did you go about getting into things like the Sydney Fashion show? And you're like, yeah, not necessarily the biggest guy in Sydney, but you are in there doing their.

Brendan: So we face a lot of that. So my passion, I think if I had a career, it would be marketing. Uh, and I enjoy marketing a lot. And I think that's why Big K designers did really well from the start. So when I had the, the force up to four salons while I was still at Woolworths, my main focus was marketing. And something I found over time was having partnerships was a big thing and networking was a big thing. So when I had one salon in my community, I, uh, would go to things like the Rotary Club meetings and different things like that and market and talk about the salons instead of just doing it in newspapers and that. And over the years we've become very good at having partnerships and we do all the biggest partnerships now in Brisbane. So we're the head partner for Brisbane Racing Club, but a head partner for the three main theaters in Brisbane. But a head partner for qpac, which is like the Sydney Opera House of Brisbane. And now we do a lot of work with charities as well. And we got into charities not because of, uh, wanting to make money from it or wanting to get new clients, but those partnerships has worked really well with getting new clients.

Sudheer: If you're enjoying the show, we'd really appreciate it if you left us a review on Apple Podcasts. It only takes a minute and it helps others find the podcast. You can also follow along on YouTube and Spotify, so you never miss an episode. Maybe I will come back to marketing in a second. Here in the charity section, you can expand on. What charities have you been engaged with? Because I know you spend quite a bit of your time, uh, around that as well. And I've seen Worker.

Brendan: Yeah, so, so much. We've done so much with charities over the years. And it started from a very young age of epic hair designs when we just got into things like cuts for a cause and that right at the start, I saw the difference it made for the hairdressers because they were using their skills and they were able to apply them and not have to donate or anything like that. And Woolworths, all the staff used to donate out of their pays. And I thought, no, no, you don't have to do that. You got an extremely good skill. Let's go and give back to the community with that. Then slowly Share the Dignity, which was a great charity that we Partnered with in 2015. Partnered with them ever since we started collecting sanitary products for women. A lot of our clients, like 95% of our clients are women. And we were part of their launch year and we had. We ended up with around 20 to 25 trolleys per salon of sanitary products for women that we were able to donate for homeless people or homeless women, which worked really well. But then after that, we got more into the monetary side of the philanthropy and giving back to the community. And that's where we started with Women's Legal Service Queensland. So at the start of COVID it, I think it was 2020, we were allowed to stay open, and we stayed open through that whole time. We thought that was very lucky. A lot of salons did close. But, uh, we were told that one of the reasons why they wanted us to stay open was that women that were experiencing domestic violence so they had an out and they could get out of the house when they were locked down. And we noticed that. So we, we thought, okay, we'll find a charity. And we found Women's Legal Service Queensland who helped women and children experience with legal advice. We found them and we started fundraising for them including starting our own war called the Epic War for tv. So another one of our side hustles which is the philanthropy side of things. So we started that walk and at that stage we thought can we raise a million dollars in 10 years? We got to that last year and that was in effort, sorry this year and that was in our fourth year of raising money for them. So I feel like it's a massive need obviously in Brisbane in the world to give back to people who are experiencing domestic odds and help them and the women that came to ourselves really embraced us.

Sudheer: So it's nice to see that. So one is knowing what your cause is and then your customers, guests who are coming and appreciate that you truly are honest to your cause. Yes. I'm sure it builds loyalty because you know ap, this business lives by a set new balconies.

Brendan: Yeah.

Sudheer: And I think what I've seen with some other businesses what you're saying which is I think once you get involved in these causes the uh, it also helps with marketing because you're driving awareness about yourself.

Brendan: Well we didn't expect this and when we do the epic walk so this year it's on the next year so 236 is on the 2022 of March, uh, when we do the walk we have an uplift of about 600 new clients per week. Totally unexpected. And it's gone on more and more every year and next year odds have be more but the exposure from that has really shown the Brisbane community what we're about and it's true to our heart. We, we started for the right reasons, we're doing it for the right reasons and the community gives back to us which is really nice.

Sudheer: I think it's interesting for people to learn that when you have enough concentration and density in one city like you have in the Brisbane area and you invest more in the local community and engagement and all that stuff, it pays off because you have enough salots to pay off that investment. So I think even people, many salons which are big successful get started would create focus on density in one city before they lord said the city because that gives them a lot of efficiencies. But what you're pointing out is very different which is the local community engagement is fairly common that people say you should engage but I think you take it to a next level in terms of how much you engage and you're partnering with so many businesses and all um, that, so that's a good tip for everyone else. Also the explore.

Brendan: It's a lot of fun. Like I've been doing this job for 18 years. I need a new side hustle now. I'm not used to being in a job for 18 years. And we even do a. We've got the epic gala. We've done two of those, which is a big gala. And around 300 fewer clients come. They buy tickets to it, they donate. That raises a lot of money. So it's, it's just a fun good thing to do.

Sudheer: You're giving campaign as turns into a whole activity and engagement model with your guests.

Brendan: Yeah, that's right. Yes.

Sudheer: So that coming back to marketing. So that's one element. But what else do you do in terms of marketing and driving clients? Because you have quite a few salons in a single location.

Brendan: Yeah. So marketing. When I first started, uh, in the marketing side of hairdressing salons and one of the reasons why I chose a hairdressing salon is I didn't think salon owners were marketing their business rights. So I looked at other industries to look at how they market their, their businesses and I really looked at the booking industries like airlines and like hotels and I copied off them and even our website. The way the booking app works is the same way that other industries cooking apps work like Allacor. They got a very good market loyalty program. Qantas has a very good. I think it's a worldwide global standard of loyalty programs. I uh, look at what they do and that's how we sort of market our business. Yeah. And that's where I get my ideas from.

Sudheer: So having a good, uh, way to represent your loyalty program in marketing and positioning your business is an integral part of how you drive.

Brendan: Yes, that's right. Yeah. And when I first started marketing the salons back in 2008, so when I bought the salon, the GFC started. So I think the GFC started around 14th of April. And the handover my salon was the 14th of April. So I really had to go in with a bit of a discounting kind of strategy. And hairdressers don't like to discount their services, which is understandable. Uh, but we did that and we used vouchers instead of percentage offs. We delivered vouchers to letterboxes around the community and that worked extremely well. So we just looked at different other industries and went, how are they marketing their businesses?

Sudheer: So that's a good tip. I mean, I think it's not just blind marketing. Spending lots of money on digital ads, uh, advertisements and paper some magazines, but doing all the kind of strategies you mentioned.

Brendan: Yeah.

Sudheer: Now you also done a bunch of work around memberships. Now when I've been talking to people, memberships are very popular in the us but in Australia I've not seen many people. But you've been, you know, experimenting with it, so it would be interesting to share. How have you wrote experimented? Memberships?

Brendan: Yeah. So memberships are a part of our business. They work very well. Uh, you do find you get a very little client from memberships for whatever reason. And some of it would be that other salons don't offer them. We have two main types of memberships. One membership is they get credit on their accounts. It's like a gym membership. Money comes out of their account every week and then other ones which are unlimited memberships, like the blow dry side of things. Uh, and obviously that was one of the reasons why in 2018 we changed the Zenoti because it was one of the only software we could find that, that did memberships.

Sudheer: That's good. So I think that's an interesting defect that memberships are also a tool to acquire new customers. It's not just about how you run your business. You know, people who are willing to be very loyal and they're active users may get attracted to the way you designed how you want to engage with that.

Brendan: Yeah, yeah, it's about having the whole CRM set up. So, so it's emailing the membership people that are on memberships, keeping making feel of informs of how special they are and yeah, they feel like they've got that luxury experience just through having a membership.

Sudheer: So as you built this business, if I were to ask you, I mean every, every founder has some different traits which has uh, traits that we use as.

Brendan: Yeah.

Sudheer: So you know, when building any business, every falter has various strengths and weaknesses. And you know, I was curious for the success you've had, of course you had the exposure as a manager, uh, of running a business before and all that. But in terms of your traits, what characteristic of yours do you think has helped you most in being successful?

Brendan: I would say my passion for coaching people and showing them how to do whatever job they want to do or learn. I think that's really important. A lot of people can't get into this industry. Like I'm not a hairdresser and I think one of the main reasons why is they don't want to see other people grow, they want to see themselves grow. And I think that's extremely important. Having the academy and doing training we did training from a very young age. So from 2008 we just started. We started the goal or training sessions and we, we really got everyone into that and that helped me. Men, that's kind of tied that I have with hairdressers and that relationship I have with them because they could see I wanted to. To coach them and get them to their absolute potential. Yeah, the marketing side of things. I think that's a big reason why I've done wells for this business as well. Yeah, just all those things.

Sudheer: And uh, it's interesting because comes to mind another gentleman van Council, when Van Michael Salons.

Brendan: Yes.

Sudheer: He has the same trait which has been very passionate to see a stylist do well.

Brendan: Yes.

Sudheer: And it has. And that's the reason, I guess even for you, it has paid off that people stay with you for longer term because they know that you are aligned with their interests.

Brendan: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. No, I prefer, I prefer to see other people. I'm not really in the spotlight myself. I try not to be. I just like being in the background and having things going. My partner's a TV presenter and he's the one that loves being in the spotlight and it works really well for us. So, uh, I'm in the background organizing all the events and he's the one that emcees all the events. So. Yeah.

Sudheer: And I also know that you have been pretty meticulous about attention to detail in mv asset. Like outside of the things we talked about in marketing and other things. Even when it comes to technology, your guest experience, you know, you work with our company, but you keep challenging and pushing monary of no, it has to be this way. And that's. You've gone ahead and done things quite different than the rest of the people.

Brendan: Yeah, I think that's, that's again, my learning from what other industries do. Instead of looking at our industry, I, uh, look at how other people set up the loyalty program or I look at how retail manage retail industry manages their retail side of things. So industry's got a lot of facets to it, like loyalty, the services, which is in the important book that everyone just focuses on. Um, but it's everything else. And that's why I really try to push the boundaries with different things.

Sudheer: And yeah, as you build your business, you've been very selective about the brands you work with. And hilltack. Can you give me a little color more on why you picked? Like, I think you're really a believer of color being an important element of

Brendan: your business and of that there's so many brands out there and I like luxury so I like good brands and I think people are willing to pay what it's worth if they're getting the right service. Uh, we chose like Goldwell is the color that we use and one of the main reasons is because it's just so conditioning for the hair and we couldn't find anything else that compares to it. And it was really important for me not being a hairdresser knowing that our hairdressers practicing I guess responsible hairdressing and I knew that would make a difference. But also Kerastars is an industry leading product and they cycle through their, I guess their whole portfolio every three years and they make it new and exciting and they keep getting bigger and bigger and I think globally they just keep getting bigger and bigger. Uh, and again I want the top brand so I know my clients will want the top brands. So that's why we've kept on that kind of trajectory with, with those brands.

Sudheer: Love the show. Leave us a quick review on Apple podcasts. It makes a huge difference. And don't forget to follow us on Spotify and YouTube for more episodes. And as you've grown to 18 seconds a launch from being just one and two et cetera is that have you evolved your offering in terms of what is a spectrum of services or it's always be safe.

Brendan: It's always been the same. Like we mostly focus on color. I learned from a very early age in this industry that when I went to the back, back office and it was full of uh, empty color bowls because they got used that it was going to be a good day. So the focus has always been on color. We tried doing nails back in 2014 because I thought well everyone's sitting there having their colour process, they might as well get their nails done. Big mistake. We, we took it out after a few months. It really didn't work. People wanted to go to a uh, professional for their nails, not a hairdresser that wants us to do nails and that, that just didn't work. So we do other things like keratin treatments. We probably do more keratin treatments than any other brand in Brisbane and that's because it's more a loss leader for us. So we get new clients from then coming in and getting the keratin treatment. We do it at a very good price. Apprentices do it so it gives them practice interacting with the clients and it gets me behind some soil.

Sudheer: I ah think that's good point because I think some of the Best businesses have been built by being very good at a narrow thing versus trying to go broad.

Brendan: It can't complicate things. Yeah, it's extremely important. That's it.

Sudheer: So, uh, the knowing your core expertise and delivering on that.

Brendan: Yes, uh, absolutely. And we're looking at hair loss at the moment. So there's lots of new hair loss programs coming out. Yeah. And we are going to trial it in five salons over the next few months just to test it. Not sure if it will work, and I'm not sure it would be a part of our brand. But again, it could become a loss leader, like keratin treatments, where it gets a whole lot of the new clients. The complex color.

Sudheer: I have been a big believer of this, by the way, because I'm also losing my hair.

Brendan: Me too.

Sudheer: I feel. I feel my salon knows that I'm losing my hair.

Brendan: Yeah.

Sudheer: But nobody ever steps up and says anything to me, saying, hey, you're losing your hurt. There's some things you can do to slow it down. You stop, like, you know, I think they're just not trained to do that.

Brendan: Yeah, that's it. And that's where we think there could be an opportunity, is we have clients that all have the same experience. Yeah.

Sudheer: It would be a great service for the client who are getting to that age where they're starting.

Brendan: Yeah. Well, we think we're on to a very good product. Like, we do a lot of research, we find the best products, and I think we've got the right one. So. So we'll see.

Sudheer: So you did mention earlier that you, for your first salon, you had to lean on your parents, and they helped fund it for you to get going. But from there to getting to 18 salons, how has your journey been in terms of growing and the capital required to grow?

Brendan: Yeah. So every salon, I purchase the next fund with the profits from the last one. I haven't needed to get any loans, other business partners or anything like that. So that's been a good part of my journey. I'm now looking. Well, I have been looking at maybe growing it a lot faster than what I've had have been. So I'm at 18 salons, could easily be at 30 salons. So potentially could get investors or something like that in to do it. However, the salons have definitely had good times and tougher times. Never, never bad times, which is good. Before COVID it was growing extremely fast. Covid, it was going extremely well. But, uh, we sort of slowed down the growth because of COVID And you just had the uncertainty and since COVID there's just been a lot of changes with legislation, with funding and with productivity that we're now really at the moment just standing our ground and just working on efficiencies that the world has got coming our way like AI and other different technologies.

Sudheer: So that's interesting. So 18 more. Most people do end up needing capital but you be patient to get from um, what to do to 18 get a stuff on your own. But yeah, you clearly have perfected the quality of service and what you do so there's an opportunity to scale faster.

Brendan: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sudheer: So since you mentioned AI, uh, I'm curious because I know you're very hands on with technology as well. How do you see the role of AI in the salon industry the next few years?

Brendan: Yeah, when it first came out so chatgpt, I had it within a month, my whole office had it within two months. And it's advanced a lot, but I think both of it is advanced. ChatGPT is advanced, but the way we talk to it's advanced as in we've learned over the years how to use it. A lot of people that don't like it, they just don't know how to talk to it or how to use it at the moment. It's really, it's made office a lot more efficient and we've needed to because of productivity changes since COVID and because of staffing costs since COVID and for example like our marketing's now down to one person for the three people. We don't really have HR anymore. We use AI for hr so we've been able to use it in that area a lot in salons. We're now looking at using it for health and safety for when people have issues in the salon, they can talk to an agent and the agent will triage them and work out what way they have to go in, uh, what path they need to go down. Does it need to be notified? To myself, to my operations manager. It will talk them through. Have you spoken to your manager yet? This is the things you could talk to your manager about. So we're using it for safety. And the things in the office, One of the next things we will look at our uh, receptionist being able to use AI and that would be one of the another big time saver but also will help with receptionist outer hours when we have no one there. And uh, it's funny, people are on their computers at one o' clock in the morning because I can tell we have an E commerce business assistant as well and people are buying products at one o' clock in the morning and they will be doing the same, taking bookings at one o' clock in the morning. So.

Sudheer: Interesting. So I mean the receptionist is a fairly mainstream trend which is starting in other industries as well, service industries, you know.

Brendan: But I've noticed that a few places I call now an AI receptionist and they can answer a lot of questions and it feels like you're talking to a human. They tell you they're not, you're not.

Sudheer: Yeah.

Brendan: And it's only to when you get to a difficult question that it will give you to a human and it works seamlessly.

Sudheer: Absolutely. But I think you had an interesting observation is that here and now one could use AI for in the recruiting from an HR perspective in terms of the health and safety in the store. So there's other ways people can be exploring and using it, not waiting for somebody to solve this problem.

Brendan: Yeah, I think, yeah, that sounds.

Sudheer: Now going back to marketing, I had a question in terms of how extensively have you used social media or your style for your stylist is uh, how much is it a part of your business?

Brendan: Yeah, it's a big part of our business. Like we're on all the platforms and we've got a really good following. We're even on TikTok and we've got a good following on that. We don't sit find many clients from it. So our salons get around, around 1,400 new clients a month and only around 100 of them come from social media which is not a big part of our marketing. So I think it's more brand awareness telling people about what's happening. But I don't think people, new clients actually decide to come to our salons, maybe other salons, our salons based off what we're doing on social media. It's more from our ah, partnerships and other marketing things we might do like Google.

Sudheer: Do you find, do you do referral programs or do you find results from that or how does.

Brendan: Yeah, we, we do referral program. I actually don't know the percentage of it. And it's just the simple one that if you refer someone they'll get $20 off and you'll get $20 off as well.

Sudheer: So if somebody were trying to start off a new business, I mean in beauty wellness space, I think you said salons, you wouldn't advise it in.

Brendan: I wouldn't advise them. And it's funny, my parents or my family was in salons way before I was and they said not to do it, I think it comes down to productivity. The productivity shift in the world has changed at the moment. It could be a good thing in 10 years when AI takes over a lot of jobs like full centers and things like that. However, uh, trade. The trade industry in Australia is really struggling at the moment. I'm lucky I had the backing of all the salons that I had when we got to this issue. Now, uh, I'm lucky that we had the academy where we're training our own hairdressers. But to set that up, to build a culture, that takes years. And I don't think it's going to be possible or be an easy task for anyone for a long time.

Sudheer: So let's leave salon sound. But in general, in the beauty wellness, if I come up with a new concept and theme or what would your advice be to such an entrepreneur who

Brendan: wants to get going, get going in the beauty world? Yeah, yeah. Oh, uh, I think the beauty world is, is amazing. Like, I, I sometimes wish I got into that world. I think doing bookings is a lot easier. The training side of it's a lot easier than hairdressing. And it's very important. As the populations around the world age, they're looking for the beauty industry. You can see that by the results it's getting. So, definitely I would recommend an entrepreneur to look at that. We've seen a lot of them do very well in Australia. There's a lot of massive chains of beauty in Australia, their arts in, in hairdressing. So I definitely would recommend someone do something like that.

Sudheer: Great. And is there a company that you admire that has been, you know, a learning source for you as you built your career?

Brendan: Uh, it's funny, I always look at Qantas. Their loyalty program is amazing. Everyone, no matter what happens, is very loyal to Qantas in Australia. And maybe it's because it's an Australian brand, but they, they do a lot of things right. I know they get some things bad in the media and everyone can be pretty critical of them, but I'm a loyal Qantas customer and I can see why. And I reflect that in what we do in, in my hairdressing salons.

Sudheer: Uh, it's interesting how, uh, the loyalty design and how you communicate it can influence that. Because I am m not from Australia, but I'm flying from here to Melbourne. And I was like, there was a Virgin flight and there was a Pontus flight, and I was like, no, I'll take the Pontus flight to Epoch and itself. So I myself found Myself choosing Qantas.

Brendan: Yeah, well they say like their, their lords of programs, world leading when you look at even what Emirates are doing and other multi programs too because I mean all of them um, are like my loyalty points. It's one of the good bonuses you get as a, as a business owner and yeah, you can see that they're following what Qantas do in theirs as well.

Sudheer: Great. And is there a person uh, around um, you as you've been growing up in your career that you've learned from that you look up to?

Brendan: Yeah, my general manager, Shane Wright, she's, I've known her since the start. She used to work for my color company Goldwell right at the start and I found it important myself not being a hairdresser to have a very good hairdresser that had the same ethics as me in the company. And she hasn't been a hairdresser for a long time. She's more trained hairdressing but she, I uh, definitely look up to her. I think she does an amazing job and her ethics and everything that she does for our company has really helped

Sudheer: us grow and running a business doing a startup is always hard work. I myself have found that can get very busy. What do you do to make sure you keep a balance of you know, your personal wellness, you know, while running a business?

Brendan: My personal wellness is working on the business and I only worked that out like five years ago. I'm like when does it stop? When do I stop working? Six or seven days a week and I just worked out well, this is it, this is what I enjoy. So that's my personal wellness.

Sudheer: So basically I guess you love what you do so much that you don't then it burn you out as stress.

Brendan: Yeah, that's it.

Sudheer: It is the very.

Brendan: We do travel a lot so I do enjoy travel. Usually try to do Europe each year uh, or go to America each year as well. So we, we, we myself and my partner, we, we do a lot of travel and I think that's our time away. But I still enjoy getting up every morning and spending about an hour doing my emails and all that kind of stuff and usually come back with a whole of new ideas that I want to get working on.

Sudheer: So on your next travel you should make your planet around energize to be at zero desynergize event.

Brendan: Yeah, that's it. In Seattle next year. Yeah, yeah.

Sudheer: Great. So if you were to ask Teleconsumer, you know, why should they choose epic hair? How would you frame it in symbol?

Brendan: I know they're going to get a good service. I know we're going to care about their service. The hairdressers that we have are extremely talented and no one else trains the hairdressers like we do if we don't get it right. And of course we have tens of thousands of clients every single month come through the salons. We'll make it right in whatever way. And it's a very family orientated type of salon. Even though it's large, every client will feel that.

Sudheer: So yeah, Brandon, thanks a lot for making the time to be part of this sharing the insights specifically around the whole way you approach marketing and I'm sure Vicky can appreciate that marketing isn't just about spending money but about being more strategic and how you engage with the community. And you know, uh, congrats, some great success again, it's small and I look forward to, you know, really get outside this area too.

Brendan: Growth Diaries is brought to you by Zenoti.