How to do the right thing in business
not often but it does oh your meeting has been live stream got it excellent got it our meeting is being live streamed well hello everybody and welcome i have a very glamorous guest today and we're going to talk about seriously um you can see she's gorgeous oh and so it's my absolute pleasure today to welcome to neil lawrence and firstly welcome to neil thank you thank you for having me so you are meeting from a much warmer place than i am today i am we would say it's cold today but you probably wouldn't how how how cold how cold is it today where you are i think it's 23. oh balmy i've actually got a heater on in my office today so yuma i'm meeting from nonaware land in canberra and um it is not a balmy 23 degrees so we get very excited when it's 23 degrees but it is a beautiful day so why i have invited to neil on today is because tanil is a successful businesswoman and she's also winner of best eco salon in australia in 2021 and 2022 but not only that she has quite a juggling act because she is a single mom of four and she's also if that wasn't enough a pioneer in the lotox hair industry she's also a spokesperson for domestic violence and sustainability but what is really just amazing how is how despite all these setbacks tanil's gone on to have four salons and today i really wanted to ask her to share her wisdom about how you can do the right thing in business absolutely sounds great so let's let's start like traditionally people you know the usual thinking is that you've got to be a big bad boss that you've got to you know make those hard calls and it's all about money is that your experience uh not at all i went a completely different approach with my staff and i have 29 of them now i believe and um i'm not a big bad boss at all i think i'm a really great boss and i hope they'd say the same thing but um i think uh being a bad boss is probably a very aged uh it's an aged approach and into employment these days and so we've we've really tried something different with our employees we we treat them extremely well and they stay with us and if we treat them well they treat our customers well and that everyone's happy so kind of it's been something that's worked for us and um we're very happy um i love that approach so was it 29 staff you have yes 29 and i think we often forget that our staff are our biggest advocates like i've worked for a department previously a commonwealth government department and often that sort of treat your their staff like almost like a problem to manage like particularly when it came to social media like don't say anything bad and it's like actually they're your biggest advocates you want them to be saying good things you want them to be saying good things about customers like if they're meeting with a customer i guess and they say oh is this a good place to work you want them to be saying yes yes yeah absolutely um we've uh we've tried to adjust our employment package to see to suit each individual employee and to make them happy and to make them stay with us to make our business profitable and it's something that has really helped and it's something that's a little bit different in our industry because it doesn't happen very often it's fabulous and i just want to acknowledge we have a number of people online including a friend from bris vegas hello tracy make sure you check out teneals and salons until i didn't actually mention the name of your salon so um please tell everyone the name of your salon and where they are ah it's called little birdie hairco and uh we have one in wynnum and another one in stafford in brisbane and then we have one further up north at malala bar which is uh on the uh eastern side of the beach and we have one further up north at gympie thank you i know the lula bar because i grew up in noosa oh nice way it's not too far away there so um tracy if you're in the neighborhood make sure to um book and to check it out so let's talk about your passion for sustainability sure and the i'm sure there's more we can talk about too in terms of the employment front and if people do have questions please put them in and we can come back to that so what got you so interested in lotox solutions um i had worked as a colorist for the best part of my career so up to 20 i think 24 years now i had predominantly uh worked for external companies as well as owning salons i had worked as a colorist so i had been exposed to color pretty much most of my hairdressing career and three out of my four pregnancies i receive chemical poisoning um so just go back not just once three out of four of your pregnancies three out of four yes so my primary job is what i didn't cut hair in the salon i just did color eight hours a day whilst i was working for other color companies i predominantly taught color i educated in color i mix bowls of color all day long so it was something that i was exposed to every day it's something i took for granted i never really thought of the toxins that i was exposed to because it was something i was never educated on and um when my first order was born who is now 17 my placenta was black and when i was questioned during her birth they asked me if i was a heavy smoker and i i didn't i wasn't and um they said what do you do for a job when i said i'm a hairdresser am i colorist and they said you've you've got chemical poisoning oh my goodness and you know hairdressing is an industry which although there are more men there are men in the industry but it's predominantly a female-based industry so you think at some point a lot of your the people who work in the industry are going to have pregnancies absolutely and we are three times more susceptible to getting breast cancer than you know in our industry because of the chemicals and toxins that we use which is like astronomical that is crazy it is crazy yeah and so it's something i'm super passionate about but that continued on with my second and my third pregnancy i was covered in hives constantly i had migraines like the the most painful migraines of my life and um i had chemical poisoning so from then on in i was like i just can't do this anymore so i actually stopped doing colour education and decided that i would make my salons and my life as chemical and as toxic free as possible and what was it like when you made that decision where there are a lot of people doing this i mean i'm actually surprised that people are supplying these products when saying yes actually no one was doing it a lot of people are doing it now but back when i was doing this maybe seven years ago people actually thought i'd gone a bit loopy um yeah no one was really doing um toxic free hairdressing i guess it was on the path of that way but it wasn't something that was spoken about a lot and um i would i pretty much read the sound of every toxin possible so i was making my own cleaning products i was making my own washing powder to wash the towels in um i'm sure i thought i'd gone a little bit loopy as well but once i was educating them on what was actually going on their hair and what was they were actually getting exposed to they were actually gobsmacked so um and it was educating yourself on what was actually on the bottom of that shampoo bottle like if you look on the back of your shampoo bottle do you know those 25 ingredients that are listed there because you don't and i i'm saying some friends of mine you know when you go to the hairdresser do you know what brand of color they're putting on your hair and they were like i've got i've got no idea but essentially you were ingesting it it's going through your scalp into your bloodstream so it was actually quite scary i hadn't thought about that because of course i'm aware that uh your skin is the largest organ in your body of course things do get ingested but i hadn't made the connection between things on your hair getting ingested in that way yeah it's sitting on your scalp so it's hard to ignore it that way and so you you mentioned that you had this process of going through everything going through the bottles uh going through and making your own clean cleaners um what was the process like in terms of finding new products and to implementing this change like how long did all of this take i was actually very lucky that in a previous job of mine before i stopped doing education was i was actually working with a lab i was making i was actually making hair products so i got a little bit educated and a little bit exposed as to what the chemical components and what was actually going into hair products i was educated enough to make some really conscious decisions and it was hard trying to find substitutes because what happened was in a lot of products that were being getting made they were taking out the words such as ammonia which was the danger word and replacing it with another word or another ingredient which was twice as bad as ammonia but it allowed them to take the ammonia word out of there so we all thought the product was ammonia free but essentially it wasn't so it was quite deceitful in some terms but um it took it took a lot of work and it took a lot of googling and a lot of research but um i'm i still do it every day i'm always on the hunt for something better so i've got terrible insomnia so it's something i do at night time in bed i don't sleep um i don't always sleep as much as i should too i don't have to meet although i do but it is hard when you do have kids but green washing seems to be a real problem i've heard about this before but it's the first time i've really heard about it you know in your industry but yeah it sounds like it is a significant issue absolutely yeah um even things like washing our towels like in a hair salon we would our washing machine is like it's on for 12 hours a day it's constant and even the chemicals that are going through the towels which i'm then putting on my client's head like even to find a better option like i think i've gone through five different companies now to the fact that we use soap berries now because it's the most natural option i can find for my customers to use and once once i'm educating clients on hey this is what i'm using they're going oh i don't even know about these things i didn't even know what a soapberry was like where can i where can i find a soapberry or so it's actually it's fascinating and it's quite humbling for me and i do love being able to share that with our customers as well because some people do have allergies to a lot of commercial cleaning cleaners i can't handle fabric softness it really upsets me yeah i've never i've never used them i just don't see the role or the point i did notice like in the hairdressing industry as well that um color was getting made cheaper and cheaper and cheaper it was getting made offshore so the chemicals were getting more and more toxic and in in salons that i was going to for my for my job i found that uh there was more and more customers having anaphylactic reactions it was it was something wow yeah it was happening more and more often and i knew what was going on because i could see that the toxins were getting more and more that people it was it was astronomical what was happening but you know the connections just weren't being made so let's go back to this anaphylactic reaction so you've got a client they want to come in because they want to look fabulous you know maybe they've been having a bad day and the next thing they're having an anaphylactic reaction yes it happens it happens it's something at hairdressers we probably don't speak about enough but it definitely happens yes we we test patch so as a hairdresser is something we're taught in college we test patch on skin for a client not to have a reaction but it does happen clients are allergic to toxins they and it's there's a long list of things they can be allergic to so it does happen and the more toxic color brand is the more susceptible you are to having a reaction and so the next thing the ambulance is there like how does all this work yeah yeah the ambulance is called they generally uh will have breathing problems they they can they'll start with their red rash those sometimes have breathing problems their face will go red um it's very scary to watch and you can imagine for a second-year apprentice he's rinsing that off at the basin and the client starts going i can't breathe it's it's terrifying and yeah in my salon in my salons i've never had that happen using the product you do now i've never had it happen wow that's another reason to go to yourself and you know funny since i've been since i've had a toxic free life and since i've been around i'm i work in a hair salon i myself have never come up in hives since wow so all of those things make a huge difference absolutely yeah i don't go home smelling like a hair salon anymore i don't have that constant smell of color up my nose all day and i people do comment on they walk into my hair salons and they say oh this doesn't smell like perm solution or this doesn't smell like a hair salon and i'm like it shouldn't it should just smell like any other business it doesn't have to smell like a hair salon shouldn't smell like chemical chemicals it is because it is now that you mention it it is a very strong smell like even if you're like in a shopping uh wall or something you can smell when there's a hairdressing cell on your body yeah you shouldn't have to smell that for those of us who are watching you know please pop in and say hi please leave a comment um petria smith has said definitely the best employment package i've ever had daniel is [Laughter] so you obviously have staff that do value you and treat you um very well and um has this been part of your success the relationship that you have with your staff and your customers yes i treat them like they're my family they're i'm like they are my family there's 29 of them and they are my family i never ever treat my employees like they i'm above them we are all the same people uh they i'm no better than them we all we're all on the same level if they're in the hard yards i mean they're with them like if they're having a bad day i'm in there with them like we are all at one i love fabulous and i and i gather that you're very big on inclusivity as well sorry i didn't catch that one on inclusivity oh absolutely yes absolutely i um no one is any different in my eyes we're all the same i don't care if you're a unicorn i don't care if you've got i don't care if you're shrek you're all the same in my eyes [Laughter] well that's a good way to put it i've just sort of have this mental image now shrek working in a hairdressing salon i love them all the same i love them and it shrek's good with hair well why not why not if he can do some foils i'm okay with that um fabulous and so with this kind of environment are there times when you have discord that you have to manage how do you manage that absolutely like let's uh let's not sugarcoat it there definitely is times with 29 staff that it's not all roses we do have days when things aren't smooth sailing and i think open being open and honest is something that is also helped me with dealing with staff as well like generally i find if something's happening in the salon there's a reason why there's someone's if something's going on with someone in the cell and there's a reason why and being open and honest and feeling like they can approach me as well knowing that my door's always open and just come and chat to me as a human being hey t i'm having a bad day can we have a chat about it and i find that really helps that's a really important thing because often we don't know what's happening in people's lives and what their back story is we just sort of see the symptoms of that which is the non-performance yeah yeah i think it's having that mutual respect you know i'm respecting you as a human being you respect me as a human being and we'll work it out together i remember in my previous department i was attending some kind of i don't know leadership session or something like that and one of the managers said that she made a rookie area error when she was first promoted and like obviously i don't know any of the people involved so it's sort of i'm relating about third hand but it's something that's always struck with me struck me and something i i sort of relate to um and she said she had this lady who had been performing really well and then wasn't performing well so she sort of slipped off the radar and so she called her in her office and sort of did the whole you know i'm a new manager i bet i better manage this well you're not meeting you know you know your your milestones you're not delivering on time you know you better you know ship up you know shape up you better do a better job kind of uh talk so she had that kind of conversation and then not long after this lady left and she sort of went oh i didn't think i was that much of a bad boss like oh okay but you know she's left that's that's you know how it is and then much much later she learned that this lady had actually been going through domestic violence and sleeping in her car with her children at the time and obviously she didn't feel that she shared and this manager said that she carries this lady on her shoulder now it's been such a lesson for her you don't know what's happening in people's lives absolutely and what and what a lesson to have learnt from that exactly you don't know what's happening in somebody's life yeah and it's not something you're going to just say oh yes i know i'm doing prep at work but there's a reason i'm not performing at work absolutely there's so much going on and you know you're feeling you know quite downtrodden as well and what a way to lose possibly a great employee well yeah you know if the converse you know i mean this this lady who's a manager relates this as an example of where she really could have had more empathy and she's like i said she certainly learned from that so it's not a criticism of her and it takes a lot of vulnerability i think to share um a such a circumstance like that where it's not necessarily been the right thing but i understand that this is also a space where you are quite an advocate for uh assisting women as well yes absolutely um we are the first hair salon in australia to be going through an accreditation to be an advocate for white ribbon which is huge for us i mean we do have predominantly female clients we do predominantly employ women although we do have some men we employ and we provide a safe space for women and it's you know when women are sitting in our chair they share a lot of things with us and it's important for us to be able to have the tools to safely be able to to help them it's something that i've experienced in my past and i wish someone had been able to give me some advice and steer me in the right place so we are a safe zone at the salon we are open pretty much every night and we are a safe zone so we do have people that rock up at our door with their children and say hey i've got nowhere to go can you please help me and it does happen we it happens and um we have been able to give them the tools and support and say hey here's a local shelter can how can we assist you how can we help you so that's something i'm super proud of and it's something i will always continue to do in my salons wow and you're right like as as a as a um as a stylist you are in a privileged position it's not just that you are doing someone's hair you are having a relationship with them and of course if you're having a bad hair day it's usually not just a bad hair day there's there's things going on in your life and you know if you've had you're not feeling fantastic about your relationship or other things what will you go and do usually you'll go if you can afford it you'll go and get a good haircut and they're in a vulnerable position when someone's in your chair they're feeling vulnerable and sometimes that's the time they want to share with you or they don't have someone else they can talk to so they'll come in for the pure fact that they want to speak to someone about what's going on in their life for two hours and as a hairdresser going through college that's something you're never taught you never talk with hey how do i help someone who's come to me crying in a situation how do i how do i help this person so it's something that i always promised myself that i would educate my staff on and be able to provide a haven for women so wow and you're right i think you are uncovering that there are a lot of things that you are now doing that you weren't taught when you were starting out lately but i gather you are now teaching your stuff about how to work in a different way yeah i think whereas we're starting a bit of a new evolution of hairdressers here they're a bit more mindful of what's going on in hairdressing other than just doing hair doing hair is actually the easy bit it's all the other things that are coming along you know the evolution of hairdressing the sustainability the the uh being kind helping others in need using our platform for other things than just doing here and do you think um this commitment to these kind of ethics and values has helped with your business or has it become a more expensive layer it's definitely become more expensive and more expensive i won't lie and say it hasn't but um i always promised myself that i would give back and this is my way of being able to give back and help i have everything i need i'm happy i'm very happy with my life and i've been helped a lot along the way so this is my way of being able to give back to the community and i don't see the point if i've got this platform to use and to be able to help people why wouldn't i um that's always been that's always been my motivation um and i can't see why other people wouldn't do that like in in a salon environment like if you have an instagram page with a lot of followers on there and you're able to help someone by donating to a charity on a friday we do foundation fridays so every friday we donate our portion of our sales to a foundation every friday why wouldn't every salon do that if you and i get that times are tough during covert my gosh they are and let's not pretend they're not you know just every tiny little bit helps just a little tiny bit helps or you know and give back where you can so foundation friday how does this work uh every friday we donate to a charity um we alternate the charity so it's not always a domestic violence charity we generally have someone in the salon who will pick something that's close to home to them whether it be a an animal-based charity so the local animal shelter a women's charity even a trans community charity and we donate a portion of our sales that day to that charity zebra new comes in that day the portion automatically goes it's generally about 40 of our sales that day goes straight to the charity so around about 40 of your sales on a friday goes to a charity of choice yes yep definitely that's a huge commitment for um a small business now i know you've got four salons so you're not small small but you know the definition of small and medium enterprise fall within that um yeah that that is huge so and how has that affected your bottom line i think we account for it in our bottom line and it's uh it does affect it definitely but it's a commitment that i've always made like i said it's something that i always thought i would give back to and you know there's days during those weeks during kobe we weren't able to do that because we could you say that again it's my watch going off [Laughter] it sounds like you need to say it again anyway and let's be realistic there was there was months in covert we didn't do that because we were paying 29 staff and we were shutting down so it's not something we've always been able to do but in the months that we've picked up from covert it's something that i will continue to do yeah wow and we do a lot of fundraising for local communities uh we we've done a lot of pride events um yeah where we can we give back and so how has your community responded to this very appreciative yeah very appreciative yeah and i'm gathering that this is something that's come very much from your heart and it's not a marketing gimmick but has it also improved your brand yes i'd say it's probably improve their brand i i'd say we definitely get a nicer type of clientele who come in who are appreciative they would come to wrestlem because on a friday because they know that a portion of their hair will go towards giving to a particular particular charity um we are a vegan salon so they like to bring their dogs in on friday if we're giving to a dog charity yeah definitely it has attracted a certain type of clientele and i'm okay with that i love that we just did it on friday people come in their pajamas like that's great i love that wow that sounds fabulous that sounds like something that i would like in canberra i can wear my flannels [Laughter] if we wear pajamas every friday and i was like well some people have lovely pajamas i mean there's a lot of designer pajamas that are that are out there yeah so if you are talking to a business who is looking to set up and they want to have more of a um an ethically minded approach they want to do some good how would you advise them to start in terms of sustainability or in terms of uh giving back to the community well probably both just how they could do some good uh in terms of sustainability i would say start small give yourself a small little sustainability audit so if it was a business i'd say go around your business area and say how can i improve can i change this lighting up can i can i switch my coffee pods to be biodegradable compostable pods can i what can i do to reduce my waste can i can i change my paper up can i um can i reuse the rainwater to water my plants just simple little things it's making those small adjustable changes that eventually just become a way of life um and you kind of you can't even remember what you used to do before in terms of giving back to the community start small you know you're not going to be able to afford to give back every week on a friday or run these big fundraising events you know everyone's not able to do that start small you know do a fundraising event and you're selling a particular charity you know start super small give 10 a week it doesn't have to be anything but if you're fortunate enough and you're blessed to be in a position that you can then don't be afraid to if you've been blessed give back i think this is really important too like you know from my frugalistic work too you know that habit of giving back i mean i do think in terms of the karma point of view the universe does receive that and i think it does come back to you but it has to be in balance like if you give away all your money you have nothing left for yourself and lucky you'll end up feeling resentful about that anyway it won't be done in a positive way yeah yeah i sleep well at night but i'm happy well i i'm kind of obviously i was going to say you just said you don't sleep when i do sleep the small part well and it's your four kids how do they fit into this just as you know a last thing to discuss so you've got how how old are your children now and how has the juggling act been it's definitely a juggle they are 17 13 8 and 20 months so three older girls and a boy my elder three were raised in a hair salon virtually they tell everyone that they're like i was born in a hair salon um uh they always had i always had a cot in my office and they have always all four children have been at work with me since pretty much they were two weeks old i can't stay away i guess i guess hairdressers and sellers feel like home to me so the baby was always in the carrier and i was always blow drying and there was always someone to hold the baby so they've always been at work they are just so used to it now i just don't think they ever know a different life but i'm so super organized at home and i have to be because my life is so busy um i was saying someone the other day i plan my meals out 30 days in advance and they were like what yeah not even i do that i'm like seven weeks yeah yeah it's five seven days sorry three days yeah like i'm so systemized at home and um i do things to help me with you know i have a grocery list that's associated with everything because i just need to be so organized because the moment that slips off a bit then it's complete chaos at home so um i do have wonderful support from my family um shout out to my wonderful mother who just lives around the corner and helps me every day and i do have a a wonderful nanny that helps me one day a week and they they keep things on a level calm playing field for me but i the kids are fun they're my fun when when things that work a little bit chaotic the kids provide the fun so it is a juggling act the same as any other parent is we make it work we do indeed so want something done give it to a busy mum she'll find a way exactly right we make it work and you know on days when i need to bring the kids to work there's at least 20 other mothers in there going right who needs a snack i'll go put the tv on like there's always there's always in there they can't get away with anything community i love it well you've you mentioned earlier where your salons are but could you please tell people perhaps those who may have just joined us uh where they can find you and your saddles absolutely so the brisbane locations are at wyndham uh and then there's one at stafford which is sort of within the city and then further up north at malabar on there on the eastern side and then up north again in gympie wonderful thank you and if you were ever planning to open a salon in canberra please do let me know it's too cold [Laughter] well yeah it is lovely though that's lovely lovely and cold maybe one day well thank you so very much i really appreciate you being my guest awesome thank you so much for your time i appreciate it thank you
2022-08-03 14:32
