Beauty School Is Broken: The School Director Exposing the Truth

[00:00:00] hey Paula Dahlberg you ready to piss some people off no why not we don't have anything better to do real hairdressers telling real stories about their experiences from behind the salon chair and we are now saying the quiet parts out loud this is Sh!t I Told My Hairdresser it looks really good yeah new guy hello and welcome back to another episode of Sh!t I Told My Hairdresser back here with Paula Dahlberg's day and we got a

[00:00:48] lot of shit to talk about how are you paula i'm doing great Jason Townsend how are you doing good doing good got a new little haircut hopefully i don't like a thumb today got got to see someone new i've been wanting to see for a long time so finally got jared cut my hair at the keep if you're in seattle that's where the plastic place to be it seems like so i love it anyhow uh thank you so much for helping us grow uh please get on tick tock and on instagram give us a follow uh every new where you go through make sure you subscribe on apple

[00:01:18] podcast and spotify and just like the hairdressing industry guys we are a word of mouth podcast so make sure that you go through and tell 10 of your friends about us and 20 people that you hate because again paula likes to go through and hurt some little ears don't you paula oh do i ever i'm excited to hear from heather though she's very important things and it's exciting of what she's doing proactive thank you one of the yeah one of the things that we've been doing is we've been going through and kind of heading up this uh

[00:01:48] or heading up i would say uh we've been heading really into this you know do no harm bill and really kind of exposing a lot of stuff on that but one of the things people have been telling us is kind of like you guys have no idea what you're talking about well guess what guys we're going to the people who do know what they're talking about and the people who have read this stuff we're not going to really get too much into the bill but i want to talk about like how do people go through and they've been trying to go through and up raise raise up this industry and we have heather who

[00:02:18] who is uh basically the head of a school in north carolina and we want to talk to her about what she's doing she reached out to me and she was kind of like hey i've been trying to go through and change this stuff for years and you have and you're definitely not going to be part of the 92 percent that goes away if this stuff kind of goes through you know and it's not just heather we want to go through and bring all these other people on but we're bringing someone on later on who actually is a person who gives the accredited or helps schools get their accreditation

[00:02:46] as well though too so we're gonna go we're going to the source you know and we're hitting we're talking to the people who are in the trenches and heather is one of those people that is in the trenches so heather thank you for going through and being on the show we really appreciate it tell tell people a little bit about who you are and what you're doing and we'll then we'll get into all the other stuff um i so i've been a cosmetologist for over 20 years but i got into teaching about 15 years ago

[00:03:14] um and i started um the being the department head um in 2018 of the school that i taught at and um we basically um had a very uh micromanager i guess leader at that time that kind of like was just the school just started to disintegrate and um i actually wasn't going to come back and teach but she you know she kind of quit so i was i came back in and and they were asking me to take it over and i was like oh

[00:03:43] i thought about it and then i was like yeah let's do this because i really want to help my industry that i love so much um like uh we started off that year at 2018 with 12 students and we have maxed out now to 200 i don't even know if we can hold anymore wow but we've um we've changed a lot within our school compared to you had to have how do you go from 18 to 200 you teach them

[00:04:11] and your word of mouth gets out now i'm not going to say that i have pleased everybody yeah you can't please everybody i've had some disgruntled people that i've had as employees and i've had students that didn't want to do what they had to do and you know you have those things every day i'm holding on by a little thread and it's getting harder and harder but um but i knew that something needed to change you know with our industry just because of being in the schools

[00:04:38] um you can see the struggles and you can see what is out there that you know students need to get into the workforce and you know that schools just have to do better they have to do their jobs we can get them ready to go you just you have to do it right that's the thing you know so what were some of the struggles that you saw inside some of the beauty schools that you think needed to be corrected so that way these students can go through and actually have a career so the way that things i've have

[00:05:08] worked for and i think still do work for a lot of schools because i've been hired i've even hired here recently newer people that come from other schools and i'm like is that how you still do it you know and then it's like wow um so what are the things one of the things i saw the most was not enough clinic floor not enough clients yeah um not enough color theory not enough not a lot not enough time spent on cutting um basically more styling was done and and our students were lost when it came to

[00:05:35] color i was lost when i left school with color i had to go and learn it basically on my own we had clear all we had all neutrals and we just you know and if it was orange or brassy it was like oh here's some shimmer lights put that on you know so it was it was a lot so i didn't want anybody to feel that way so we um i hired strategically people that i knew would teach color well that was my first step i

[00:06:02] cleaned house right i just i got rid of everybody and i i restocked and i got people who knew what they were doing um my team is great some of them but yeah most of them and then um moving forward allowing the students to have the freedom to book their own clients with online booking and you know and having them have the apps and solicit when they're out somewhere you know yes so we we use gloss genius at our school and we we have a receptionist she books clients that call

[00:06:32] in but what was happening is most of the people coming in the door and this is not anything i'm trying to say that's mean we're the same old things it was roller sets it was terms we needed we need real we need real like a lot of color coming we needed to do some things so i said look these students are young they're out talking they're out moving around they're on social media and the first thing they do they set up their social media as a student and here's my link the very beginning some people just

[00:06:59] don't beginning just go in the break room and they sit and wait so wow exactly but that's we don't have time for that like if you're sitting and waiting we're gonna find you something to do and so they link they like you they can click the link that the students put out there or they can talk to people and book them then and we put it on our website here's the link you can book yourself or you can call and that has made a great change we i think between our aesthetics department and our

[00:07:24] cosmetology department for the month of april we did like 809 clients so that was that was pretty good for a school and um big big tickets big ticket items like with baliage color corrections um everything we we do it all and the students at the three about 400 mark 400 hour mark they're doing all of that um you it can be done it has to be done methodically you have to be able to set it up you know and plan

[00:07:53] it you have to have a plan you know but i have seen a lot of the way we've restructured our curriculum it's still by we use the milady curriculum but there's nothing to say that you have to do you know get your infection control out of the way you use your infection control through all your services but you can teach whatever with color how you want to teach it you know the curriculum is that guideline that you use it's a tool but there's nothing wrong with teaching them how to go to work and do it

[00:08:20] you know there's nothing wrong with that um we follow our state board guidelines we we do everything that they tell us to do trust me because that's what keeps us open as our state board you know we have to do that we have to respect it and i do respect the board but our clinic is open 80 of the time that they're in school wow see and that's the thing is that when i talk to people they get out of school they're like i never did any hair that's ridiculous you know and it was like they were sitting around waiting for someone to call or someone to book in and it's like when i was going to school

[00:08:50] okay those little old ladies they're kind of dying off now so the roller sets aren't like because when i was going to school back in the oh my just like my son calls it the old 90s you know um it was like we still had all the grandmas coming in with the roller sets and getting the perms and we were still using frivolous fawn you know the uh rinsers on their hair and things like that you know and

[00:09:15] that was just part of it so we had a steady stream of people coming in and now things are different they're like they're lucky to get like one haircut a week i'm like what are these schools doing for you you they have to change i mean you're not doing anything for the industry and and it was a hard push because um i did get ridiculed a lot by by by some of my old other teachers that were there they were like this is too much this is too much i said no it's not i said when they get into

[00:09:44] the salon they're gonna die i said because you're on your feet 24 so i mean you're on your feet all day and sometimes into the evening depending how good it goes and you know you you have to train them for that now this is what it's for it's a live project this is what it's for there's there there was a lot of pushback but then you you know then all of a sudden they're like oh wow this is good you know and then we get like you know a lot of a lot of uh recognition from a lot of

[00:10:12] you know different sources that are like you need to call heather and ask her what she does at her school you know that's a good compliment um and you know the board constantly has been on other schools to get their clinics open and i do believe that moving forward that that might be something that hurts a lot of schools when they go in and see it's not happening because my inspector will come in and do a survey and they'll come in and do a survey and they'll see what's going on

[00:10:35] yeah they're serious and um so you know respectfully yeah that's great i mean i that's the thing everyone's always afraid of state board coming in when you don't have any problems or like when your shit is tight i don't care you know i think the last time the guy came in you know i mean i think i got a little like one little thing it was just kind of like yeah i had a towel on the station or something like that

[00:11:00] i'm like if that's it you know i have no problem with that i kind of welcome you guys to come in and actually go through and actually do more of a critical job so that way they keep the standards up for everybody my state board person comes in she'll spend an hour and a half there we'll visit we'll chit chat we'll kind of gossip a little and she doesn't name salons but she'll i'll ask her what are all those other salons doing that are not you know clean or ethical or anything like that and

[00:11:28] she just goes off and i'm like oh wow you know every year yeah yeah yeah and i enjoy it because there's some new laws that i need to know about and yeah it's just a good visit with her and i respect them very much yes oh heck yeah i respect them and the board doesn't isn't always going to be very clear they're very vague so you're not going to always know what new rule is out there like you always have to check the website i don't know if it's like that there but you always have to see what's been

[00:11:54] updated um the other part about that too is i would rather my school get a 95 rating because i have students working if you have people working you're gonna have something it's gonna happen when you have all those students out on the floor and you know it's like herding cats sometimes but like you know it could be one little thing it could just be oh she didn't double drape for this chemical she

[00:12:20] forgot to double drape and it might have been because that student had just shampooed it out and was coming back to do the toner and had the double drape on but hadn't put the double drape back on yet and then you know it could be anything like that i it's whatever as long as i stay above a 90 i'm happy because our school is very clean but but little things like that that's what hey that's the worst thing i have to worry about that i'm doing very very well that you want to what though yeah

[00:12:48] you people you should be so happy with some of the schools that you get to now like some of the schools i've walked into oh my god they're so nice yeah i mean we had to rock the toilet at my school just to get it to kind of go through and sit down properly and flush and then i remember yeah because back then we didn't blow dry hair that wasn't a thing you know i mean it was like everyone went under the dryer and i remember trying to go through and plug in an iron or curling iron and there'd be

[00:13:13] water around the outlet you know and we never got doomed but yeah back in the day that was just the schools yeah the school i went to too i mean like the water would drip from the ceiling when it rains you know it was it was bad yeah it was yeah and then you know it it's unbelievable but i will tell you that you know we wear our stuff out so we have a really pretty school but it gets it gets used

[00:13:37] so about a good once a month we'll have a sink that has to get fixed or something though you know our maintenance department will come in and fix it and you know that's all fine but we we wear it out but i'd rather see if you're if you're a school that's getting a 99 you don't have students in it you know they never want to give you 100 trust me they don't but they'll find something one time she came in and she i i knew i had 100 like i got 100 i know i do and we were working everything was going great

[00:14:05] she found a little drip coming out of the the the pump for the shampoo and she took off for it oh wow i'll take that any day exactly i was like no problem i'll take it so what are you doing now heather to go through and change some of these laws that are kind of being you know and or what are you doing to enact new laws to go through and help some of some of

[00:14:32] our industry i should say so i have a lead instructor that she and i um we sometimes have to like walk away and go into a separate office and think because it's so chaotic it's so many people so many students and you know we were just hearing a lot of stories students were telling us you know how hard they were struggling and trying to finish school it was taking them almost two years to finish school and um so basically i said you know this just isn't right i said these students are doing

[00:15:01] great work they could go to the board right now and take the exam the exam is not hard anymore you know we used to have to do a whole freaking day and do like 50 different you know competencies and they're just doing a few and it's just like they could go take their test and go to work right now like we know they're ready and um and i said i just need to and we started researching other states and you know virginia who is my bordering state they just dropped cosmetology to a thousand hours and i was like well you know it doesn't make sense like north carolina needs to kind of look

[00:15:31] we've been 12 and 1500 forever 1200 for an apprenticeship you go work in a salon full time six months then you get your full license and then you're 1500 you know that extra 300 hours you would think oh well that's not so bad no that it's a struggle to keep a student engaged is a struggle yeah so they don't want to do nothing but be on tiktok sitting at their station which drives me insane so basically we sat down and we looked at other states and we started talking about it and we were

[00:15:58] like yeah i think we should we could drop to a thousand or maybe 1200 because you know people would freak out you know we need to make sure that nobody freaks out i said let me talk to you on that right there because so many people are going to go through and disagree with you on this lowering the hours because they think that more hours the more you're going to learn the more you're going to get out of school it's not it's how like what you were doing you were saying earlier is how you're structuring the education and how you pack it in during those hours that's what matters it's

[00:16:27] not the amount of hours you miss school that's right a police officer in north carolina can go 900 hours carry a gun rest somebody beat them to the ground 900 hours know the law you know but we have to get 1500 and the thing is is like you know i knew i was going to piss people off i didn't give a shit like yeah i love it i'm going to piss people off because i was seeing people up like fighting these schools need to be open these students need to do 1500 what the hell do you know because

[00:16:56] things have changed and if you're doing your job as an educator right you can teach somebody in a certain amount of time and they can go out and get into the industry and that's the problem yep and i pissed a lot of people off i'm still pissing people off i think i've been like that's all i think i've been i've been i've pissed off a lot of people but you know when we finally framed what we were trying to do we were looking at it how it was going to help the workforce and you know um state legislatures

[00:17:26] love that because you workforce is what the state legislation is all about you know it's getting people into the workforce so when we come up with these um ideas and then we're like okay a thousand or twelve hundred you know one or the other like how this would work out there has to be a curriculum redesign with the state we know that and and that'll all happen after this goes through i said

[00:17:48] but then why is it that when we get to the module where you have to do facials manicures pedicures students don't want to do them no they don't want to touch feet they don't want to mess with those old nails they're like i don't want to do this why do i have to do this to graduate it's not even on our exam right it's not even on our state exam right and we don't want to do them when we get out of school it's not gonna i haven't i've never done them i've never done them i've done done them i've

[00:18:18] done hair that's it i've done one when i was in school and yeah that was it yeah i did them in school but i never did them when i got out and then and so we were like well why do we why can't they just go if you have a separate license for nails you have a separate license for esthetician why can't you take a small piece of this and make it just for hair why do you have to and then give them the whole umbrella if they want it right but you're still going to have to go do ceus to understand how to do acrylics if you've never really done them because i'm going to show you

[00:18:48] how to do them we're going to do them on a nail and then we're going to move on yeah and so the thing is is like we discussed it we looked we researched and we found this um segue of a hair designer and i was like this is cool let's let's talk about it so when i've contacted someone that i know in legislation and sat down and had a cup of coffee she goes you gave me something to think about i was like okay cool she and i've been friends for a while i was lucky i'm lucky to know that that kind of

[00:19:16] person and before i knew it two months later i got a phone call well because they had just ended session but they were going to have a short session coming up in 2026 and she she called me she goes i need you to come uh come and speak to the um legislative oversight committee i was like do what she goes yes i need you to come speak i said okay i said okay and then i hung up the phone i was like you've got to be kidding me but i thought i can't let her down she is my friend and i know

[00:19:43] she's you know she's doing a good job for everybody she's great so i got there did my speech got bipartisan support wow everybody loved it they were like heck yeah let's get on board with this but i did not know when i got there that a bill had been drafted i had no clue nice so she called me up to her office she goes let's pregame i'm like okay i get up there and you know i'm it's kind

[00:20:08] of intimidating and we sit down and i've known her as a friend not in her position right then and it was a completely different person and i was like respect and so she flips out the bill and i'm going you drafted a bill you drafted a bill i thought my school is going to kill me because you know i told them i was going i communicated it but i didn't know a bill had been drafted so that was rough but it's okay so i sat there and she read me the bill i was like okay let's go so we went out

[00:20:37] there and we did it it's passed so far it has passed it's there's three things it has to pass financial this the senate and then the house so it's passed financial it's passed the senate and it's getting ready to go to the house but the thing is is like one little intricate part in there that had nothing to do with me it had been sitting in legislation for a long time was our natural hair care license oh 37 37 states in the country has deregulated natural hair we are one of

[00:21:05] the few states that still has it what do you mean by deregulating natural hair so there's a natural hair license where it's braiding twisting locking silk presses 37 states have taken it away from licensure we're only like there's only a few handfuls left we're one of them it has been on the docket for a while to reduce to like take it out completely i had nothing to do with that but it's unfortunate

[00:21:30] because it got stuck in this bill the senator that was on this saw this segue and wanted to jump in and he jumped in and then it caused a whole thing and that's that's getting but it is getting done correctly like i was like i talked to the senator who's supporting it and i said could you please talk to the executive director of the board and get this right i said because what you're saying is you grew up and braiding hair shouldn't need to be licensed i said but it right some of it does

[00:21:59] you know you need to look at like the infection control you have to shampoo hair you have to know how to shampoo hair like there's the the tension and i don't know what the other 37 states have done i don't know how it works but one of the things that was happening was a lot of people were coming over here from other countries like nigeria african braiders amazing right been doing it their whole life there's no licensure but they were coming here and having to do 300 hours to get a license to do what they've

[00:22:24] always done yeah and then the test was not being passed the pass fail rate was terrible because of the language barrier so there was a lot of issues and it got brought to the you know legislation a couple years ago so this is how it came about but they are fixing that um that but they had to put an amendment and so that's going to be probably cause it when it goes to the house and gets passed it's going to have to go back to the senate and then get passed again and go back to the house and it'll be done

[00:22:51] and then it'll but it's going it's it's everybody's supporting it it was just that one little piece that was a hiccup that i had nothing to do with right but um i don't know how they're going to fix that but but here but here's the thing though guys this is a person who you're a hairdresser you went to beauty school you're now teaching in a school and now you're helping pass bills yeah you know by just making some phone calls and being and putting yourself out there i just can't believe i've had

[00:23:19] so much hate for it though like oh i've had a lot of hate wait wait till we post this on instagram or something like that you are gonna get we get loads we love it yeah you know well if you if you sat in the school and listen to real people that are in right in school struggling not everybody's mom and dad is paying for school you know this is a trade right so if you want to go to school and

[00:23:43] do 900 hours and you want to do haircuts styles chemical reformation and hair color and get out and do that that that's you have every right to do that i mean you should be able to choose it's like above it's like a la carte it's a stackable licensure i think it helps the workforce it helps people support their families i'm not there for me i'm there with the students for the students and i'm not there just to to worry about my job or anything else i want to see the industry do better

[00:24:11] i don't want to see anything get this is a great industry i don't want to see anything get deregulated i don't want to see anything you know go away i mean it seems like we're on the forefront all the time like you you know there's all these like scares from you know legislation and whatnot you know about cosmetology because of the loan default with the department of education like you were talking about with the do you know harm um that's a big deal because we do pale grants where i'm at my

[00:24:39] my class does pale grants and that that is that's that's scary um because that would hurt a lot of people what but here's the thing though is that they're not going to be all taken away they're going to be taken away from the schools that are not doing what you're doing exactly exactly and that's why we're working our butt off but that's the problem that other schools do not see they don't understand and i and that's what our board is fighting for so much is get your clinics open and

[00:25:05] get to work and i mean i'm gonna tell you what our north carolina state board is amazing like they're amazing that's the thing is that there are so many schools out there that shouldn't be operating as a school you know i mean they're going through and they're being franchised out and they're having these people who own them who have they have no idea how to run a school they don't know anything about hairdressers they never sat behind it or humped a chair for like 30 plus years like i have or paula

[00:25:32] you know or you 20 years behind the chair or working with students and being a director in a school and being an instructor it's it's it wears on you like it's i'm getting tired because i feel like i've been all i can be and i'm doing something to help and i know my time is coming soon but it's like this industry never lets me down like there's always something i can do with this industry whether it's behind the chair in a school anything i can i can pick and choose that's what the beauty of it is and and i want

[00:26:02] to see students succeed that's what i'm here for to do is to help them succeed and you know but there are people that make it really hard for that to happen yes yeah and that's and that's a problem and i think that's where like a lot of this is being cut down you know which i which i i'm i'm kind of okay with you know i mean because we have people like you that can go through and set the standard yes you mean and say like here's how we do it i was i was talking to someone yesterday and she was like she

[00:26:28] like i was saying a person does accreditation we're gonna have her on the show like really next month and she's like we need people who are in there showing these kids on how to go through and learn business skills be financially responsible you have them going through and using apps to book their own clients when you first got there how many people were coming to the clinic for to do you know uh to take appointments i mean you were having back then compared to now what's it like

[00:26:56] now and i know it's oh we you know like i said we could do 60 to 80 a day um and then we open up monday through friday eight to five and um actually actually till yeah till five we're open till seven but we'll cut off our like last color at five because they have to clean up and do disinfection if it's a color correction now that's a whole different thing that has to come in a little earlier like that has to be a booked appointment with a consultation because that could take some time

[00:27:23] um but the thing is is like it used to be a handful of people that came in that were the same people and this sounds terrible that are dying off you know it was the ones that had been coming for years and it's the same stuff so once we you know up that i mean you have young young people that are on tiktok saying hey i'm in cosmetology school come see me i'm certified now and it's it's all over the place like they're coming in because they're not going to have to pay four and five hundred dollars

[00:27:50] to get their hair done and they're coming in and they're getting a pretty freaking good color and you know we're we also partnered with wella um we get a lot of education through well it's just a really good color line to use in a school because it teaches them that number system if you can learn that number system you can learn any color line and we we do that we do red can shades well uh um of course we do all the fashion colors and things like that but yeah i mean we're crazy this is good

[00:28:18] yeah but that thing is you're teaching them how to go through and be successful in this industry and that's where it starts because i i've met in the back room with other people and they're like you know like well you you own a house and you do this you do that i'm like yeah from just cutting hair i specialize in just cutting hair you know i was never taught that i was never taught to be financially responsible or to save money up for a down payment or save money for my taxes and things

[00:28:48] like that i'm like why not how come this is not being taught in schools well i'm glad you brought that up so one of the things i agree with you 100 we started implementing and i think this this year was our fourth year that we've implemented it um we actually partnered with our small business center that was in within our school yeah and we started doing a beauty biz summit and it and so we would

[00:29:13] have it on main campus in the in the auditorium and we would invite people in that were business euros from the industry and taught them about how to do their taxes how to you know how to manage their money that is something that i totally agree with because i wasn't talked to about like should we do commission first or should we do booth rent or you know right and that's a huge thing yeah because a lot of people want to go through and like we had someone on a long ago it was just like they brought him in

[00:29:40] as a booth renter so they can make money off of them but there was no clients coming through the door i mean you know i think the average booth front here i'm talking about the mean i know there's some more that are higher like if it's around 900 950 a month um and then you have your private suites that probably run 12 to 800 1800 a month but you know you're looking at 950 a month is pretty high when it

[00:30:04] comes to like no clientele you got you got to buy all your products you know and that's not cheap anymore like the products are eating people alive so this is a hard industry yeah it really is you got to work your butt off for real really people don't think that they just think that it's like they think if you build it they will come and that's not the case anymore you know and that's what they don't understand you know it takes a lot more than pretty tools and the high dollar in supplies to to

[00:30:34] build a client it takes a lot more you have to be there i know a lot of this with this 32 000 a year mean of coming out of school i'm sorry but i think a lot of it has to do with how hard you're willing to work yes you can go in a commission salon and make more than that um you just might not want to be there i have the students that'll come out of school i do and their work they're working and they're doing great but they they were the some of the students that were the like the hardest struggle for me because it's arrogant and just thinking that you know they knew everything

[00:31:03] when they walked in the door because like i told you you can watch anything you want on youtube university you know yeah tiktok so they'll come in already one with the ones that come in arrogant saying that they everything and they they bring in things and they're going to tell me how to do everything uh-huh yeah it's a struggle and they also come in you know um thinking that you know they don't want to start from the beginning but you have to like you have to i mean you you do you understand

[00:31:29] that you can you know you're not going to get your license taken away from giving somebody a bad haircut but if you give somebody marissa you're going to be in trouble like right come on but you know i've had several of them that we didn't get along and i'm i have to be very you know i can't take anything personal you know even though i'm thinking in my mind what i'd like to say but when they get out you know they think they know everything they're working in a suite you know

[00:31:54] they're like oh yes and i charge like two and four hundred dollars for this color and i'm thinking how many people are paying it oh but that but on their social media they act like they do and they said oh and you know school never taught me that i could charge this what i'm worth and i'm thinking you just got out of school i'm like what are you bringing and it's it's so and they were the worst students like their kits when you did the kit check it would look like you could grow corn in there

[00:32:21] like it was awful the worst student ever but you know so you go through things like that you do teach them you know these things but we feed a good meal let me tell you i put a good meal on the table but it is up to them if they want to come eat there you go some of them do and some of them don't but for the most part i think you know we do pretty good i still have some it's there is a lot of there is a lot of entitlement out there it's really hard yeah there there really is you know i mean my wife teaches

[00:32:48] high school you want to talk about entitlement come to the high school where he's at it's crazy i couldn't you know we have high school students yeah we we do have a high school program what one of the things in north carolina we have what they call career college promise and they actually can come for free oh cool yeah so they come in for free and with this new license this new license the students can come in and get that 900 hours before they graduate from high school and they didn't have to pay a dime for it and they can be out of they can be in school making a living

[00:33:19] yeah excellent right and then yeah they can do a part-time program 900 hours they can get out in two years easy through high school i mean if you're coming full-time you're obviously going to get out in less than a year but you know that's like part-time through high school yeah but they can get out and get licensed i mean it's fantastic yeah oh my god see that would be amazing and there is actually no

[00:33:42] real age requirement to start like our our programs they can start their freshman year in high school very cool thanks so much for going through and like explaining a lot of that to us you know i mean because that's amazing that this is what you're doing i mean and and really making a difference in this industry and that's why we want to bring people like you on the show so that we can kind of explain to people hey you can do this too down to the schools though it all comes down to the schools

[00:34:11] the hour requirements are one thing it can be done in a thousand to twelve hundred hours it can be done but for a full cause license but but the people that just don't understand that i i don't know if it's because they've been around schools that haven't been as productive or have done as much i'm not sure um but more than likely is probably what it is you know what i mean blows my mind exactly i got a lot of idea i got a lot of hate heather i'm curious do you have a do you have a part in

[00:34:40] there where um you help students out with the psychology of their clients and how to deal with emotional people do you have a segment in that that you guys teach we do talk a lot we do talk a lot about psychology they have to take a psychology class um which is not not in my program but it's outside of the program they they can take a psychology class which we we do recommend because if they um come in to

[00:35:08] cosmetology they can get associate degrees with our college and that does include business and includes psychology now if they go through the certificate program which is you know just not wanting to do the extra classes we still teach within the class about how to handle clients and things like that um we also you know go through um teach backs is what i call it where we sit down and

[00:35:34] we do scenarios so we'll sit down and actively live act out live situations um because we have some doozies come through the door and that's nothing compared to what yeah we've had them sit there in the chair and just start yelling across the room what are you doing to my hair oh my god you know in that nice southern like where i'm from and and they'll just be like i don't know when the last time i don't think i've ever had foils and there's her folder right there with her client you know her uh all of her

[00:36:04] stuff that she's had done and the last service she had was foil and we're just like she's just you know these people are and then the student's looking at me like they want to cry and and you know that's that's why we do live projects because this is real life and so i'm just like you know most of the time i step in if they start talking really bad to my student i'll rinse their hair tell them to leave you know you're not you're not gonna talk to my students like that but most of the time i'll look at my student and be a support system and i'll just i'll just walk over there and i say well look

[00:36:33] the last time you got you know you got your hair done here this is what you did oh yeah that's right and i was like that's why we keep notes that's why we keep client files so many people don't keep notes or they don't i put everything in the salon computer they can see people can see even the receptionist like it says don't book with jason you know or here's what's happened and there's many times they've canceled but teaching people how to de-escalate in the proper way is probably

[00:37:01] the most important thing you can teach someone inside of a salon because it's just gonna happen people are people you know and oh yeah boundaries i mean students what their boundaries it is okay to have boundaries with clients and with other students do you do you ever go through that with some of your students or have any of those situations happen oh yeah so we have the i i

[00:37:27] personally feel like cosmetology schools are the most diverse learning platforms there are you can't get more diversity in the world than you do in a cosmetology school um and when you are with it within that that world and everybody's in there and everybody's thinking differently it could be a perfect storm but it it is a opportunity to learn how to do better in my opinion so what you're not used to

[00:37:54] what the norm isn't for you needs to become comfortable because this is the world that you're living in you just don't see it all in one place so what i love about it and it really makes me happy when things like this happen whenever we do have um something blow up yeah usually it's settled we get it settled but we come into a situation where we talk about it and and you know we'll bring in experts of course we have

[00:38:19] on campus support we have lots of support for people to be mediators to because you do have to de-escalate some feelings and i'm telling you and you guys know in our industry it can be some high feelings and so oh yeah we we have our own self-taught hr department salon i mean it's just like yeah they all think that you know yeah there's a authority so the the great thing i see is that when we sit down and talk about it we're just like you know is this is this your is this your coping

[00:38:49] mechanism is this your skill set is this how you treat people is this what you do and it makes them self you know it makes them be self-aware it teaches self-awareness it teaches how to think before you speak and i feel like that when we go through that with students that it does help i don't i'm not saying i've saved them all but i've definitely helped a lot of students see different and um you know because we we have people from our walks of life every you know gender you can think of that

[00:39:16] you know people want to be addressed as um every religion um we you know we have muslim women that come into our clinic that want their hair done but they can't be seen and we have we have male students and you know so we accommodate that the best way we can in i guess you could say within the board compliance because we can't take them into a room that's not designated a clinic so we we have yeah

[00:39:43] so we have things that we can put partitions around yes and we totally respect it and it's it's it's really awesome because we have students that's never met anybody that would wear a burka and not not really know how to to to handle that situation job or didn't yeah it's true but that person wants their hair done too yep you know so think about it you you've got to learn how to be around a lot of

[00:40:10] different kinds of people and put anything that you feel away like you you you've got to learn that and that's life you don't have to agree with everything but you can be respectful and you can still like people yeah absolutely and that's a lesson that we teach you know and so but there has been some things that have gone down oh we've we've had to call police before um you know that's the thing i

[00:40:35] was like we got to get to some of the crazy crazy because this is shit on my hairdresser yeah we've had people yeah so we've had a student not that long ago that walked into one of the classrooms and she was having a really bad day and she bumped this one girl who comes in smelling like weed about every day so she bumps this one girl with um with her book bag and and the girl just went off i mean like it was going down i was like oh yep here we go somebody's getting ready to get cut and you know

[00:41:03] so i'm like gonna get the public get cut whoa hang on what oh they're getting ready to fight like this girl what i kid you not i don't care she smokes weed that's that's but she comes in smelling like it you know she does it first thing in the morning probably to calm her calm her nerves down because she's she's one of those people that come from a place that she will cut you so and we have students that you know come from all different walks of life and get into confrontation the only thing they know

[00:41:28] is fight fight so this girl bumps her with her book bag throws her book bag down she's having some kind of bad day doesn't say excuse me and as soon as it happened and sure enough it was going down and i was like oh dear jesus you know so i'm trying to get this together the security officers come through they're trying to break this up we call the police that that happens it happens two or three times here and there we've had students that just have these falling outs right there in the middle of

[00:41:56] the clinic floor you know wow the stupidest stuff and um but we we've we've had it happen i mean i know you went to beauty school so you know you've seen stuff i'm sure we've seen it yeah yeah yeah we've had the cat fights we've had the you know oh yeah even because there was a couple of myself and a couple of like one other straight guy inside the school and we were dating two or three of them and let me tell you it was like we oh yeah it got into a bit of a fight as well too

[00:42:23] oh my gosh and it's nothing's worse than seeing somebody jerk somebody's hair out like the extension come completely out yeah it's like a small rat on the floor you're just like oh and it unfortunately you know it's better since i've taken over because i think a lot of them are really scared of me i don't know why but they are i don't know why i'm not that mean i mean i'm just i just follow the rules but we have we have good students that we really do like that was just

[00:42:51] that just happened last this past semester that just ended we're in our summer semester now but um and you know we got it all straightened out like everything is good now and those students actually graduated and went on but whoo that was rough and then um you know we've had we've had clients like i said that would just we have this one we call them um well they're sisters they come in every week

[00:43:14] uh-huh and if you ever wanted to get anybody conditioned they're gonna do one of the sisters and it's like yeah so they're like severely um hard on those students i mean they'll reach up grab like what are you doing what is that like oh my god did you who taught you how to curl hair i mean this is this is real so it's uh it's hilarious because those students would be like i don't want to do it again i don't want to do her hair anymore i don't want to do her hair anymore

[00:43:42] and i'd be like well you might have to one time again but you're gonna be okay get used to it yeah because you have to you have to kind of take your lumps and kind of learn along the way so and we have had some people in the chair like we had this one lady that was a diabetic and just hear her blood sugar got low and and this girl's foiling and all of a sudden this lady just starts sliding down and she starts sliding and she slides right out the chair and that student goes oh

[00:44:09] fuck miss lawless miss lawless fucking shit i'm like oh that's bad so we're got the ems coming and we're pulling foils out of this lady's hair so her hair doesn't fry off and spray them down with water and trying to get these because i'm thinking they can't take her to the er with foils and it's like this is going to be bad she's going to have more problems than just the lightener in her hair like she's not gonna have any hair so that that was a mess yeah we've we've had some

[00:44:35] we've had people we had one old lady pee her pants in the chair one time that was great yep she's peed right on herself yep and the student the student comes over and goes miss lawless i think my i think my client pissed her back yep of course she did of course she did because why the hell not it's cosmetology school it wouldn't be a day without somebody pissing the you know pissing in their pants you know so and but you know for the most part i have to say i'm very very lucky and blessed

[00:45:03] that my students come to school want to work i'm not going to say i don't have i have some that won't don't want to and it's a constant battle but it's gonna happen it's gonna happen but what you're doing is setting the standard you know i mean and that's why we wanted to have you onto the show to go through and tell people like this can be done you know and we don't have to go through and do the old school way you know i mean it's like we have a new way of doing things but we have to

[00:45:31] keep up with what's going on we have to make the changes like you're getting a bill passed that's incredible yeah i ever think 20 years ago this is the position you're gonna be in oh god no 20 years ago i was i was just out there working my butt off trying to learn all the new things and yeah you know trying to keep up with everything and um and here you are here you are changing things and making a positive influence in this industry and thank you oh thank you for saying that we're not gonna go

[00:46:00] through i'm gonna put your information into the show notes if you guys want to go through and reach out to heather please do she's in north carolina if she can go through and answer any questions for you i'm gonna go through and get her information on as far as tiktok everything goes on to or instagram apologize into the show notes uh please reach out to heather ask her questions pick a brand i'm pretty sure she probably doesn't have a ton of time but i'm sure she'll make time for this industry

[00:46:25] that's for sure yeah so heather thank you so much for being on the show we really appreciate it thank you it was great to talk to you i'm gonna keep watching all right all right let's get a little shitty with some shittiest in shitology hey Jason Townsend are you still in cosmetology school no i dropped out my mom's a hairstylist and it's pretty much in the blood so that makes me

[00:46:55] hairstylist too so i don't need it so how do you make money i just get on tiktok and on um instagram and i post stuff on there i'm come out i'm a blonding expert so i do blondes but if you want to be a bitch i don't want to do your hair because i don't do bitches uh so how many follows followers do you have oh i got a couple hundred you know i mean i i don't uh just follow me i hope it works

[00:47:20] for you honey oh i know what i'm worth so i make i'm gonna make money okay and with that stay shitty and see you next time hey listener persons if you're enjoying this podcast please give us a rating on apple podcast spotify iheart radio or amazon prime podcast or wherever you get your favorite shit it definitely helps out our algorithm also check out our shitty post on instagram at

[00:47:47] shit i told my hairdresser where you can give us a follow and like some of our content if you'd like to get your story on our podcast go to our website at shit i told my hairdresser.com you can leave us a voicemail using the green mic icon or send us an email and if you like us tell 10 of your friends and if you hate us tell 20 and remember stay shitty listener persons