REALTalk 2024 brought real conversations to a full room of passionate salon owners, hairdressers and salon managers, showcasing why creating conversations for a resilient future was so important to this year’s program, writes Cameron Pine.
REALTalk is a business conference with a significant difference in terms of interaction and discussion with the wider salon industry, presented by INSTYLE and Styleicons. Rather than a room with speaker after speaker, REALTalk has been curated especially to bring out the inner voice of each-and every-salon and stylist, by having conversations that truly matter, sharing panels and the uncomfortable stories we often keep to ourselves. Starting in 2019 as a vision of long-term colleagues Jo Cowan and Cameron Pine, REALTalk has become an integral part of the learning pillar at Hair Festival and the importance of creating a platform for a higher level of business connection and education.
A room of more than 250 people at Hair Festival saw a shift in thinking, a new plan for culture creation and tips on how to unlock new media opportunities beyond the over saturated world of social media metrics. With many aspects of the industry under threat to price sensitivity, staff challenges and the overall skyrocketing costs of running a business, REALTalk 2024 created a five-hour breakdown of the skills and resilience needed to build a business with an everlasting brand culture.
With the management of staff and maintaining a positive and mutually rewarding culture increasingly intricate for salon owners, this year’s speaker line-up was centred around the people in our business and how to create the ideal outcome with a unified vision.
“We especially encourage interaction and questions throughout REALTalk, as well as throughout our three panels. We pivoted the content to uncover everything from the uncomfortable conversations we often don’t have to practical tips to take home and ways to stop wasting time on content or social media that isn’t driving your business and your team forward,” said REALTalk emcee Cameron Pine.
Putting the biggest issues of staff culture and team management from the get-go, Voulla Fronis set herself on a quest for creating a more motivated, engaged and productive team as the founder of new tech startup app, Gellibn. Gellibn’s real-time employee performance app enhances the feedback-giving and receiving process, through an easy- to-use platform that’s fun and interactive. It takes away the awkward and reactive comments and replaces them with proactive ones.
“Gellibn is here to amplify your business journey, helping you lead your team with confidence and achieve the success you’ve always envisioned. It’s that simple and it’s all at your fingertips,” said Voulla.
Voulla spoke of her history working in the salon industry and her love for the reward that building and inspiring teams provides. She has bottled these decades of experience into one platform the industry is already resonating with.
“It all starts with you. Everything going on in your business, home life, with customers, clients and the overall business operations is the responsibility of you – being willing is not enough, we must do,” Voulla said.
Fittingly, following Voulla, we then moved onto a Staff Management, Culture and Feedback panel that touched on the changing needs in people management and culture throughout salons and larger brands. Featuring Jose Bryce Smith, O&M Founder, Clive Allwright from Our Place Salon and Sheridan Rose Shaw, Creative Director of MAMAWEST, the dynamic panel delved into personal journeys of wellness and discovery.
Clive’s honesty through some of his toughest days and how he now inspires a team with healthy reward and culture came to the fore.
“My lowest point was Hair Expo five years ago where I hadn’t slept for three days and the doctor said if I didn’t slow down I would die. I am now proudly five years sober,” Clive said.
These personal stories led way to business stories of success.
“Weekly check ins with all of my team and responsibility for everything going on in my business is all part of leading and creating an inclusive culture” Sheridan said.
Jose confirmed that allowing staff to freely express themselves and creating and truly listening to your staff and clients is the best way to allow them to step up on terms that suit both the business and the employee.
“Sometimes listening can be the most powerful form of connection with your team,” Jose said.
This year we also took a look at the Salon of the Future and how we adapt our traditional approach to the entire salon environment with a 360-degree take on not just processes but the people within our business. Sponsored by CPR Hair, the session took a look at the Holistic Salon Service – what it means to be a holistic salon and how to get more from your everyday environment.
“We are here to discuss in what ways do holistic practices improve engagement and retention in-salon, some of the biggest challenges and where the future of the salon is going in the next five to ten years,” said CPR Director Cass Donnelly.
Featuring Natalie Chadwick, Digital Sales lead at CPR, Shakira Jade, Business Coach, Paul James Graham, Hair Stylist and Jade Jones, Holistic Salon Coach, the panel shared their expertise from in-salon transparency to smarter ways to communicate while saving time and money in-salon. Guests were also offered the chance to win a six-week holistic salons coaching program.
Morning tea then led into more on the in-salon experience and the often tricky subject of client management with Faye Murray talking about how to deal with difficult clients and complaints. Faye spoke to the importance of boundaries and knowing when to say no to a client, like when you aren’t able to guarantee the result, and the importance of price quoting up-front to minimise surprises.
“There’s also that ever too common second opinion. You know when you get home and someone else says, ‘it’s not what I thought it would be like’? Again, this is why it’s important to have a verbal agreement on what was discussed upfront so the opinion of the next door neighbour doesn’t cause an issue in-salon,” Faye said.
“Listen, don’t interrupt, gather all information, offer a solution in an agreement and share the action plan. 90 per cent of clients are happy with what you offer and only 5 per cent are believed to be genuine complaints where you failed to meet expectation.”
Founder of O’Right Steven Ko is a firm global warming advocate and creator of one of the world’s most sustainable haircare brands. Back in 2006, Steven was ahead of the trend stating that every brand would go green and that it’s just a matter of time.
On behalf of Steven, the brand gave a detailed insight into climate statistics and how greenhouse gas will cause a 7.4 metre rise in sea levels by 2040. Everyone in the audience were drawn to how O’right has led the charge in change, not just in haircare but for multi-national companies globally. Many big brands such as Apple, Unilever and Chanel have targets to become carbon neutral brands by 2030, 2039 and 2050 respectively.
“O’right produced the first carbon neutral shampoo in the world in 2011, while Apple the first carbon neutral watch in 2023,” the brand shared. “O’right has never been just a hair and skincare company, but a brand dedicated to giving people, society and the environment the best care they deserve.”
Showcasing products made with recycled caffeine-husk caps that have swept both domestic and international awards, guests were encouraged to look at both large and small ways to tell their sustainability story in-salon.
The last panel focused on Innovation and creative thinking, whereby each panellist spoke of how innovation and thought-provoking concepts help drive sales but most importantly elevate the salon experience. Aygun Sana, Head of Sales and Operations – AUS/NZ, Vish, Paul Frasca of Sustainable Salons and entrepreneur and business owner Kate Champion spoke to the power of this creative mindset.
“This dynamic panel revealed the importance of innovation not only for business, but innovative thinking in a creative landscape like hair. We looked at how important innovation is to the salon message by showing the importance of innovation and how it forces us to think outside our everyday processes to engage clients and people with your brand with new thought-provoking opportunities,” said panel host Jo Cowan.
Closing off the program with some real marketing metrics and a strong case for a salon media shake-up, James Fitzgerald from social media knowledge company SMK returned from one of the most talked-about speakers of the REALTalk 2019 program. While his company continues to find the most effective ways to reach clients beyond social media alone and continues its trajectory on the pulse of now, SMK is one of the few locally based global EdTech business specialising in marketing capability transformation. Offering master courses on digital strategy to twice weekly strategic training with over 30 hours of online monthly courses, James is all about increasing your Digital IP.
“The demand generation and demand conversion transcends well beyond social media and now softer metrics such as awareness and social buzz are seen as less important in a post-pandemic environment. Only 33 per cent of clients selected this option, down from 44 per cent a year ago,” James said.
“Engaged is not always correlated with business performance and outcomes. Just like shelf-space there is a point where additional spend yields very little return, and so we don’t want to spend beyond this. We need to know where to put money with marketing and not just post for the sake of it.”
Ending with a buffet lunch for the ultimate network experience, there was an energetic and positive buzz surrounding REALTalk. Attendees admitted they can’t get such a powerful energy from online or formulated training. The conversations on-stage and adequate question time proved just how the industry likes to engage in a forever challenging landscape.
Here’s to keeping it real and ‘Creating Conversations for a Resilient Future’, as the day was built for. With distractions, pressures and stresses at an-all time high, education and inspiration in this mould is the ultimate antidote when it comes to resilience.
For more information visit www.hairfestival.com.au
Images by Oneill Photographics
Catch up with INSTYLE and Styleicons!
- Subscribe to our bi-monthly magazine
- Check out www.styleicons.com.au
- Subscribe to our twice-weekly newsletter
- View our digital magazine
- Follow us on social media on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn