The Beauty School Lie Nobody Wants to Admit with Carla Jones

[00:00:00] and who gives a fuck who knows about this big beautiful bill but I do no harm bill bullshit how the fuck is that affect me I don't fucking care I just do hair hey you're in this industry are you kidding me it's time for you to pull your head out of your ass and get involved and know what's going on other than that shut the fuck up if you don't think you can get involved you are definitely wrong let's do this episode to the very end and get involved

[00:00:27] 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 Sht I Told My Hairdresser

[00:00:50] hello everybody and welcome back to Sh!t I told my Hairdresser you guys we have someone important to go through and introduce you guys to but before we do hi Paula how are you? doing well Jason how are you today? you sound so good you have a new microphone and I am so happy

[00:01:19] I know let's work for you so you guys we're getting rid of our sound problems and uh we found out that Paula was the cause of it I'm kidding I'm kidding I'm kidding I kid anyhow I like to blame everybody else for all my mistakes and uh but anyhow please go through and follow us on Apple Podcasts Spotify wherever you get your uh your podcast give us a follow give us a like subscribe Instagram TikTok it also we want to hear your shitty stories so

[00:01:48] if you get on to our website at Sht I Told My Hairdresser.com send us an email send us like we just read one the other day uh it's gonna be amazing I think uh you guys are definitely gonna like lose your shit on a lot of things on off that email but uh we definitely want your story so let us know and like the industry like we say guys we are a word of mouth podcast so let everyone know about us because we definitely want to hurt some little ears and I think today

[00:02:13] we are definitely going to be going through and hurting some ears because we have a person who I've been really looking forward to having on who you guys are yelling at us on Instagram and all the socials like you just don't know what the fuck you're talking about well I found someone who really really fucking does because I'm the first one to tell you I don't know shit about fuck so we're gonna

[00:02:36] get to that part today with Carla. Carla Jones how are you? I am real thank you it's so good to be here I'm excited Carla tell people what you do because as soon as I found out this was a job and what you do I was like you're talking about over an hour I was blown away. Okay well what I do now is I actually consider myself as a fractional operations and accreditation officer for schools primarily um I actually when I came into

[00:03:05] consulting about 10 11 years ago I literally it was my desire um to be a social media and digital marketing strategist for hairstylists because that was just about the time social media really became a tool that was really used or beginning to be used but I felt it was a tool that wasn't understood

[00:03:26] how to really integrate it into marketing strategies and plans for hairstylists um and then in doing so I realized that while I really can't help them create marketing plans or strategies because many of them don't have operational goals you know we don't have revenue goals we just you know throw crap on the wall and hope it sticks kind of mentality and so then it sort of took me out of those you know the um

[00:03:53] focus of being a consultant and helping them in that area than just really looking at the business aspect of seeing where this is where they're really lacking and so that led into because as I was working on that side I also and a lot of people didn't know it was an independent peer evaluator which was an independent consulting for accrediting agencies and not only with NACIS which does accredit cosmetology

[00:04:17] beauty barber you know um massage therapy programs but I also was an independent peer evaluator with another accrediting agency called ABHES which is specializes in allied health fields um from certificate to degree so whether it's nursing medical assistance CNA I mean CNA those types of um phlebotomy those types of um programs and so I thoroughly enjoyed it as a former school owner

[00:04:44] I literally didn't want to walk away because before I started that I was a campus president for a couple of career colleges and so I really wanted to keep my hands in higher education and more so in the beauty school realm since of course I'm a licensed professional and so um being a peer evaluator with the accrediting uh agencies allowed me to still be a part of that side of the um business

[00:05:12] and so it just started to grow and I I didn't take clients as consultants but I enjoyed providing information whether that was school operations um just any insight and then I worked with NACIS as a peer evaluator for eight years from 2014 to 2022 and in July uh I resigned and then I always had um

[00:05:38] schools that I had visited would ask me you know or tell me if you ever started doing this full-time give us a call we would love to work with you so the day I actually resigned within about an hour I had about eight schools that you know had said that and I never really you know did anything for pay I would just always if they reached out to me I would provide them guidance just because and so that's how I really

[00:06:00] got started and I've always been in compliance related industries so you know my background isn't just the beauty industry I didn't get into the beauty industry until I was 30 something I literally went to college have degrees bachelor's degree and a master's degree I worked for general motors Pfizer Pharmaceuticals um l'oreal you would say so I've done a lot I really yeah I want to know something carla can you

[00:06:28] pat your head rub your belly hop on one foot and chew gum all at the same time what have you not done and what if I told you that not only did I do that oh my gosh I celebrated this year my son's 15th birthday wow no way yes so on top of that so I think this will probably let you know that if I tried to do the patting the head the jumping on the foot and all that at the same time

[00:06:54] no I was a 14 year old mother oh good for you yeah so I have and people you know people sometimes will say you just don't understand um I'm not the kind of person that gives everyone that pat on the back and you know it's like everybody gets a trophy I'm like at the end of the day you're talking to somebody got pregnant at 13 had a baby at 14 I didn't drop out of school I spent three weeks out of

[00:07:18] school after delivery and graduated a year early so talk to somebody who really gives a damn okay yeah you know what I'm from Utah and that's kind of expected here in Utah of young women yes I will make fun of my culture yeah well I don't want it to be a norm it was not something I did that's why my children are 12 years apart when I said that I don't know shit about fuck let me tell

[00:07:46] you I know oh man does because she's lived it yeah so yeah that's why we have you on the show I know I think what we're dying to know about though is tell us about this bill what in the crux of the biscuit because like I was saying earlier the devil's in the details tell us the details because a lot of this is so convoluted and I mean a lot of the verbiage is kind of you know um they they make things more complicated what they need to be can you decomplicate that for us

[00:08:14] I will say there has been a lot of fear mongering going on and the promotion of help support the schools right 92 and a half percent of the schools are gonna close you want to what 92 percent of those schools are gonna close not right it's not all those schools exactly because to clarify it this bill only impacts and would potentially affect those schools that receive title four funding which we know

[00:08:42] is financial aid so of all the thousands of schools in the United States that teach cosmetology they will not be impacted one bit if they don't receive any title four funding they may receive um some uh regional or local dollars through voc rehab or through um uh we uh the workforce you know dollars that may be available but this is really specifically for those schools that receive financial aid now when I

[00:09:12] looked at the numbers that was quoted by the U.S. Department of Education which of course is the overseer of the financial aid and while the numbers are the new metric of how they are going to measure and there are two things I think we should separate there is what is called gainful employment and yes and gainful employment

[00:09:37] and then there is another one that has to do with the default rates right and a lot of times they're talking about them as if they're the same and they're not so a student default rate the U.S. Department of Ed does hold schools accountable for a few years for their students who have completed their programs in in terms of their

[00:10:02] ability to repay the loans that they got all right so there is a threshold that schools are held to in terms of a default rate that would be assigned to their school because that that now licensed person um or the student who chose not to get licensed because the U.S. Department of Ed is not tracking licensing they're tracking income and revenue and that kind of thing okay and their ability to pay

[00:10:31] these loans back so I think the metric that they're looking for is a default rate of about 30 percent so if you hit 30 percent or over 30 percent yeah you're going to have a problem with the Department of Education so that could lend and lead itself eventually to you lose in Title IV funding also okay um but this bigger one the one behind the do no harm which is what you know um was the the label for the promotion of

[00:10:58] supporting what's the reason behind the label though that's something I do not understand okay what it is is they are looking at and I think we have to be honest with ourselves if I were to spend twenty thousand dollars and let's just say personally with my child investing in something that they wanted as parents or anybody making that investment first question we ask is what's the return you know and I think what has happened is the government is not seeing a return on the investment of the 3.5 billion

[00:11:27] dollars they're investing into schools with Title IV funding exactly and so what they're saying is the measurement is looking at over a three-year period if I compare a graduate from a cosmetology school who's invested I'm just going to make up an average number of maybe eighteen thousand we could go with twenty because I mean realistically I have seen where programs are at twenty five thousand dollars for

[00:11:53] one year program okay and so if we're saying I'm investing or I'm utilizing Title IV dollars to support someone on a twenty thousand dollar um tuition for a one-year program they're comparing that particular graduate or licensed professionals wages over a three-year period in comparison to a high school

[00:12:17] graduate no one who never got any other higher education training and what they're realizing whether the metric that they're using is right or wrong I think many of us who would be honest in the industry would really say even if the metric were right that number would probably be low it would not be equitable or close in the three years to someone who graduated from high school

[00:12:42] yes and that is really sad when you're saying because you know one of the things we tout is that we are licensed by the same agency that licenses physicians and nurses well not nurses they have their own board or whatever right um real estate agents all of these other people are licensed by our state agencies and so we tout that but we're not really looking at the true fact of the matter is the U.S. Department of

[00:13:10] has hit the nail on the head and they are accurate why are we investing and why are our students spending this much money to get a trade where over a three-year period they can't get over thirty thousand dollars now the excuse has been for over 20 years mind you I've been in this industry for over 30 I have a business background and miss me with all the bs okay at the end of the day and I'm a former school owner

[00:13:38] it lends itself okay it lends I had a school for six years it lends itself to going back to the source of the way the program is set up and many school owners will say we don't have to teach that the state board doesn't require that you you guys have heard it the state board doesn't require we teach that oh well we'll just wait till they graduate and they'll go get a job at a salon who

[00:14:04] will teach them the advanced color techniques that they should be getting in school correct and a lot of time the reason they're not getting that is because we don't have qualified educators with that particular skill level to even teach them or or what's happening I've seen this here in Washington state if you want to learn how to do the advanced color techniques the balayages and all that you know or texturizing with haircuts it's a separate program and that's going to cost you an extra five thousand

[00:14:33] dollars absolutely I know we have a school here that does that kind of stuff and and they and they teach on the side makeup classes and pedicuring and aesthetics and they have to pay extra for it and it's required yep and they tell the students that there is no there's nowhere in any state board and as a consultant who now works with schools and I have schools in over 30 states including Hawaii

[00:14:58] that I work with so at the end of the day when people say well you don't ma'am what state are you in because chances are I have a client I know your state board rules better than you do because I have to know those first at the end of the day I got to read it word for word okay because when you are a school who is seeking accreditation so that you could qualify for title four it starts with the state and so what many people don't know is an accrediting agency's job as well is to ensure that

[00:15:27] any other entity that you are regulated by that you are compliant with so yes I have to know your state rules yeah and then there are the rules that are set by the accrediting body and then there are the rules that if there are VA if you're a VA approved that's another regulatory agency that I have to make sure oh yes you are meeting their standards as well so people just think this is a one-off kind of

[00:15:52] thing oh you know and it's a fly-by-night and it's easy to do no it's highly regulated and anytime you have the government you know with their fingers anywhere then there's a lot more requirements and responsibilities that you have to look at so when they're looking at the how they're going to measure the student I am not saying that the metric is right I am not saying that what I am saying is schools have to stop using the excuse because it would be just like me when I got pregnant at 14 and I

[00:16:20] didn't want to drop out of school what was my only option I did decide to keep my baby so that was not get rid of it we're not talking about that the only other option I had because I didn't want to drop out because I didn't want to go to an alternative program for you know unwed mothers I wanted to stay in school I had to figure out how how am I going to stay in school as a newly teen mother and finish and do

[00:16:46] the work and do all of that this is what schools are not talking about and in my opinion so anybody can say what they want they can talk to me hey I'm a big girl I can take it at the end of the day we have to stop using these little excuses about hey they're not claiming all their taxes guess what contractors don't claim all their money either but they file taxes okay the industry is not where it is

[00:17:13] because our professionals are not paying their taxes or claiming all their money or claiming no no that is an excuse that we have used for years yeah is it something that happens absolutely yeah but let me tell you why it happens less now and all of us who have been behind the chair because I was behind the chair for about 20 years all of us who have been behind the chair fully understand

[00:17:38] that at the end of the day 20 years ago we had large salons that hired employees fast forward to now nine over 90 percent of this industry is independent and they want to be no one I mean there are not many salons that were designed the way they were with formal okay let's call it out with formal apprenticeship

[00:18:03] training programs for new hires a lot of those do not exist even though we will say oh salons well I take apprentices no what you do is you take high classified assistants or runners where you know they're getting towels they're getting coffee they're doing stuff you're not teaching them more you're just using them and so because we have more of an industry that is independent we're not teaching them how to be

[00:18:30] successful as independent operators in school we are still talking about we don't have to teach that I literally heard a school owner say in her um story as a part of this what they're doing in their one big beautiful bill is we're teaching more finance and I don't think people understand that finance is a different discipline yeah okay I don't think people grasp that yeah okay it's a different discipline

[00:18:58] um and we are not teaching them to be independent so you're not teaching them to succeed because the number one reason I left Pfizer pharmaceuticals to join the beauty industry was because I have freedom and flexibility so now you're telling me that we think we're going to take that away we're only going to teach one way that literally doesn't exist anymore and then the other I'm going to call them a villain

[00:19:27] and so I would welcome any conversation with the corporate executive whether it be a super cuts whether it be a great clips whether it be anything if I had a school today you would not be welcome in my school why because you pay minimum wage and you only hire part-time it could be two days a week and then you have this unrealistic expectation that they're going to be able to earn more than a non

[00:19:57] or a post high school trained person correct and I don't even get the ability to work or earn commission because one you're not driving traffic through the door with promoting for the salon so people aren't coming in so when I do get my two days a week to work I only made 750 an hour because I didn't get enough volume to even earn the commission well our problem is not that our people are not paying our

[00:20:25] problem is we still have a huge part of our industry that is underpaying our professionals and we need to call it out yep thank you and the schools will say oh they're gainfully important absolutely absolutely oh there's no way there's no way the math is going to math no it's not math then correct if you've got chick-fil-a or you have you know on the west coast we have uh what's the other one the burger place that everybody loves um in and out um you know florida used to have an in and out

[00:20:55] i'll tell you that story offline one day but anyway i was raised in florida um but uh in and out or whatever those employees are making 12 and 15 and higher an hour and we have someone invest 25 000 in a skill that definitely they can make the money but we're not providing the training and then we're sending them to some place that's not even hiring them full-time so we're not being honest with

[00:21:23] ourselves about what our internal problem really is and i can guarantee you that the minute we stop supporting regis because regis owns a lot of those chain salons oh yeah yeah they own a lot of them and so when we start stop saying here you're not welcome here until you start paying our um style it's

[00:21:47] 15 an hour minimum there's no conversation because we're not training our students for your locations we can't get to 30 000 a year or 35 000 a year with you no no and so exactly and that's not without taxes it's a bullshit so when you think about it guys on the real deal if we don't start changing

[00:22:11] the way we educate so that we can really start empowering and and providing the skill the knowledge the know-how to the students to be independent or salon suite renters which they want to be what's the problem with them wanting to be that this is why people get into the industry we can we can pick and choose our path no different than an electrician can choose their path an electrician can

[00:22:36] say i'm going to be an independent electrician whatever their rules are i don't have to be a part of an electrical company right right no they're not limited nobody looks down on them he says hey he started his own company we look down on that oh my god she's graduating well the reason you have something negative to say is because the people who are responsible for providing the skill the training

[00:23:01] the knowledge that the students need to be able to go into that independently are not doing so not doing because yep yes the state board gives us minimums and they give us categories and they tell us how many hours are associated with that category but guess what they don't give us they don't give us the content they don't tell you that you cannot have a basic intermediate and advanced color training program

[00:23:28] they don't say that they just said hey you're 350 hours in hair color or whatever they tell you you know i get to choose how i want to do that and so when we look at it yes a high school person is eligible to work a full-time job and make thirty thousand dollars but here's the kicker in 1986 i was employed by

[00:23:54] general motors i was a manufacturing supervisor my nail tech at the tail 12 mall near pontiac michigan okay that was in southfield i think tail 12 is in southfield michigan worked part-time she worked from four to nine i made out of college with a bachelor's degree thirty seven thousand dollars that was my first job out of college that was good back then really good yep but

[00:24:22] she worked part-time as a nail tech and she made 39 that is why i left corporate america yeah that's why i left college told me that she worked four to nine because her husband was i think he was like a plumber or something but when he came home then she came to work but you're telling me you work part-time and general motors has me doing 12 hours a day and i gotta do overtime to get to thirty nine thousand

[00:24:48] dollars and above yeah i'm in the wrong industry yep and that is literally that is that was the breaking point for me and i was a new graduate so people cannot tell me that a part-time person who works independent cannot make thirty nine thousand dollars a year in today's money you know we're talking about 1986 you said and we're comparing exact same numbers to today today i was just thinking

[00:25:16] about that that's what blows me with the earning potential being even greater because now the industry supports the choices across the board you can pick and choose any position you want the problem is our schools are built on an old model that doesn't serve the students in a new

[00:25:39] industry now and new regulatory requirements correct so true i know i am going to piss school owners off and that's not the intent the issue is we are not going to change the requirement july 1st is week after next it goes into effect they've not made another decision otherwise wow now could it go down to the hour and there's a stay some miraculous decision but at this moment it doesn't look

[00:26:07] like it so i think as opposed to the schools um continuing to say of course of those 92 and a half percent of those that receive title for funding are going to close the question should become what are you going to do to stay open yeah because you have all the power the school owner has all the power to change anything they need they can change their curriculum they can you know do something totally

[00:26:34] different we can now have a basic advanced and intermediate on different why are we not re-evaluating our curriculums every semester or once a year why in january are we not if there's a new balayage technique or some other braid technique or whatever because there are states that do you know still require a license for natural hair georgia is one of them and so at the end of the day the school owner gets

[00:27:04] total control over the content they put in their curriculum and their programs they can also my thing would say and i told people if i were to open a school today because people say well you're not a school owner you don't know no i deal with schools every day if i could think of it in this way i own about 30 schools because i work with about 30 of them oh there you go so at the end of the day and they're all over so yeah i get to see difference and i have these same conversations with them

[00:27:33] because what i tell them is i say hey i've been working on preparing you guys that that is not an issue it's a moot point for you if you choose to listen be open to something different and try it but we have to look at what colleges do universities have different areas we can get degrees in why do we not have tracks in our program that a student at a certain level can choose they want to go the

[00:28:00] salon ownership route why can't they choose at a certain period they want to go to booth renter route right and why can't they choose at a certain hour requirement and other things i want to be the salon renter route so now i have special and specified training that's more work that's more work that's more work for teachers that that they're not prepared for they're not but that's the thing we just had a beauty school uh basically like what was she ran the beauty school in north carolina and

[00:28:30] that's what she's been doing that's what she's been yeah all her curriculum so these kids are getting out and making money and she says oh my god it's going super well they went from 18 students to over 200 students and you would have a wait list if you could guarantee because i told them i said you know what why here's the thing you want to talk about oh we get licensed every school in the in the united

[00:28:53] states requires a license so you're not unique okay there's no sense in promoting that that's why they pay to go to school so they can get a license you're doing your job that's the basic of what you're doing is preparing them for that state board that's not the only thing we should be doing because if we call ourselves career ready institutions then we have to provide career ready training thank you thank you

[00:29:21] jesus is it yeah true and career ready training is not based off of k through 12 educational policies it is based off of what a job would require if they were to go there or what they can expect if i want to be independent you know a lot of them think well i can work my own hours guess what i work for myself i have my own company and and there's it's not uncommon for me to do a 12 hour a day it's not

[00:29:47] uncommon okay so i mean you're not going to get a pat on the back or whatever there are certain things that come with certain choices that you choose in the industry and when you do choose to be independent if we were teaching the student we would teach them that being an entrepreneur means you are responsible for every aspect of your business yep you want to work less go work at a salon a corporate there you

[00:30:12] go if you want to go through and be your salon owner like you want to do all that stuff you're going to be working hours you never thought you had exactly exactly there is no off time like i i had a call this morning with um one of my schools in texas and um i have to reserve days that i don't take calls because i have other work or do or deliverables i've got to get to school so i've got to build some

[00:30:41] time into that so yes i work for myself but i tell people this is the craziest thing i swear i get excited when friday rolls around it's like i'm working at somebody's job even though you know we say well you work for yourself you can take all the time off you want baby when thursday night comes around i am so excited for friday because one i know i'm not taking calls okay i have no calls so that

[00:31:08] would be uninterrupted work or i do have a break to go grocery shopping i do have a break to do this you know something but i look just as forward to the weekend now as if i did when i worked for general motors or when i worked for phyzer pharmaceuticals and i'm self-employed yeah so the work actually intensifies when it belongs to you oh absolutely yeah and i think if we were like we were talking the other day i'm a plumber i'm an electrician i'm a janitor

[00:31:33] yeah absolutely somebody has to go fetch the toilet paper oh well i guess that's me on the trade side of it don't get into the people side of it okay so the people side is the manager the the uh the the diffuser we got uh stylists who don't you know there's an issue between the two or somebody said something or not you know just a whole gamut oh yeah and i think it would be easier if we brought

[00:31:58] those things into the school because that's what the life of it is and then when we talk about it we have to understand over 90 of our students are female we have a high percentage of those females are single parents okay one parent households um we're building programs these women do not have the luxury okay they don't have the luxury to toy around for three years no they came because this was

[00:32:25] what they were told a way for them to be able to be have flexibility to still make money oh no and there's no reason now a hundred thousand dollars a year money though no right and we have to be honest what that looks like right there's something that that i work with when i work with stylists uh and it's more important on this side with the stylist side is when i work with them and

[00:32:50] they tell me this is how much money they work we start with my acronyms of availability flexibility and capacity let's talk about that do you have the availability if you tell me well no i don't work these hours in these days okay that's availability is not you know it's minimized the capacity if your availability is minimized you don't have the capacity without the pricing right so if i'm going to be available less and i want to make more i gotta increase the prices on the hours that are

[00:33:20] available and then if i remove flexibility i'm only going to be available tuesday and thursday between nine and six but i want a hundred thousand dollars honey i don't know what um magical kingdom world that's in but unless you're doing eighteen hundred dollar services on a day that's probably not going to happen on two days a week well carly it sounds like it sounds like what you're wanting to do with the schools is take away the fluff of what they're giving the students because there is a

[00:33:49] rawness i mean smacking these kids with a bunch of reality without scaring them away is a is really hard balance at the same time they need to know the reality of what this industry is really like there is a grind there is a hustle yeah and they're not teaching these kids this and it is a big smack of reality i've worked with a lot of students that have come out of school and they said we didn't know it was going to be like this absolutely here's here's the the problem we are selling them fun we are

[00:34:17] selling them the kit we are afraid to be honest with them in admissions about our expectations medications because it's career ready and not the 13th year of high school right right you know it's funny that you're saying this because i was teaching a lot of classes for bedhead and they would pay me to go into different cosmetology schools and teach makeup classes and great experience for me even though it didn't pay much i had this one amazing student in provo utah and she said i just want

[00:34:45] to follow you around for a day at the time i was doing weddings i was working in the salon i was working with the news i mean my whole day it was 12 hour day i said if you want to come and follow me for the day that that's great and by the way you're going to be carrying all my bags you're going to be carrying about a hundred dollars a hundred pounds worth of product and so i i told her meet me at the salon at eight we'll get in we'll set up our kits um you'll you'll get to see that i have to get

[00:35:10] all of my brushes clean uh make sure i have all the hairsprays all of my curling irons my flat iron my hair dryer all the makeup has to be completely sanitary brushes have to be cleaned and then after an hour of doing that we'll head to the first gig and then we're going to go quickly and do this this wedding very very quickly and then we're going to go back to the salon we're going to take care of a couple of more clients and then we're going to go back to the studio and we're do makeup on this politician and at the end of the day she looked at me she said i can't do this i said this is what

[00:35:38] it is that's exactly what it is one it sounds glamorous really carry my bags if we stopped number one we need to raise the standards of admissions for our programs the u.s department of education here's the thing the u.s department of education only requires a 67 percent attendance to maintain financial aid that's not enough that's not even close to let's just break it down

[00:36:08] even further what that really means okay on a thousand hour program you are saying that i can literally miss 333 hours of training because here's what will happen i can make up the hours to graduate that i can do but i will never be able to make up the knowledge missed from that time that's your

[00:36:33] entire freshman class that's the entire freshman time or that is more on the practical you're rewarding complacency basically that is exactly right for the dollar well for the dollar for me give me all the education i could not get enough i now you know someone who had an mba degree going into cosmetology school was shocked right i i like was a little taken aback i'm like okay this is school

[00:36:59] and why are we treating this like it's the 13th year of high school don't call me a kid because at the time at 32 years old i had an 18 year old and a a five or six whatever it was four four year was 18 yeah they're 12 years apart so it's whatever math is i had a six year look i'm trying to do it now had a six year old i literally rented a room two hours away from a lady i didn't even know to go to

[00:37:27] a school my husband kept my daughter so if anybody was making sacrifices to go to school it was me so when i showed up every day i was not there for foolery i was not there for you to sit up and try to be friends with these other students i sat in the front of the class and i would even tell her miss elbow we wasting too much time on that okay y'all y'all do that at break to the point where they

[00:37:53] made a name tag and it said miss capri which was the name of the school i wasn't offended i was not offended but i think we have to stop treating this at at 17 and 18 they are young adults we've got to get away from the kids and young adults come into a career readiness work program with career readiness and it's rules policies practice procedures and expectations and if we get in there in the first

[00:38:19] day we don't make it all about the kid and they think it's here to play but then when you make them stand up more than one hour or 30 minutes god forbid my back is hurting i'm tired oh my god when is break honey i didn't my car i didn't get my coffee today oh you know what sorry you missed starbucks sweetie at the end of the day everything in my classroom is timed everything is timed i understand miss jones i'm tired yep yep i understand honey but you got to get that done and you got about six

[00:38:47] more minutes let's go you know let's keep it moving i don't want to hear it because on the floor in the salon and i tell them you and i can go back and forth you can tell me you don't feel good but when that light bill is due when that 700 car payment is due nowadays because see back in our day it might have been a 275 car payment now it's 700 with a seven year financing yeah okay so it's a whole different landscape and if we're still training them as if we were back in 1994 then no wonder the

[00:39:16] industry is where it is right now because nothing has changed in the way and we're choosing and where does it start like it or not it starts at the school level that's right because it's basically okay here's the thing we don't pay enough attention to it because i'm just gonna say this out loud 90 of it's women and this country does not care about women absolutely and even i mean jason go back to the history of

[00:39:41] salons i mean back in the day let's go back to the 50s or the 30s or whatever right one we know there was a period of time that they were deliberately segregated now from that they're basically still segregated and we're trying to you know hey it is what it is at the end of the day it doesn't have to be because we're not providing that training you know you'll let cynthia run away from having to do my hair just because of the color of my skin we need to be teaching texture not the color of my skin

[00:40:09] one of the one of the exercises i would do with my students when we got to texture is blindfold them yes we would blind and make them use your tactile senses there you go and i would deliberately have people that i know come into the school of different races ethnicities different hair textures with those ethnicities ethnicities and races so it would be hard to tell what color what

[00:40:35] color am i right yeah and so they would sit there and they would feel and i have a niece whose both parents are black african-american whatever they may have something sprinkled on both sides right but if you were to see her she looks just like paula their texture and all yeah people when i say this well there was a class i taught up in edmonton where this this this woman she's beautiful and just whiter than me and her whole family was black

[00:41:05] she showed me a picture she said this is my family yeah i made a joke of it and i said you mean you're always going to be this color absolutely and so this is why because i needed them to get past the fear of color and understand that you're not servicing my hair is not black i mean like or it could be as a dark brown but right i'm black i'm a black person right african-american that has nothing to

[00:41:29] do with it because the texture of this african-american which would be my niece is yours yeah so at the end of the day that shows you it's not about the color of my skin it is about me teaching you how to manage the different texture and here's where it really boils down to this product and it really does so kia um likes to say the texture right i mean she calls it what does she got texture and ray she calls

[00:41:55] it fabric right here is a fabric yes if we learn the different fabrics and what i'm going to use um as if we were washing clothes right we know different detergents or different temperatures and speeds that go with different fabrics we know how to turn the iron on that goes with different fabrics that's all hair is it's a texture it's a multitude of fabrics not a multitude of ethnicities or races and so if we

[00:42:24] get them to focus and that was the whole basis of that exercise and you it it really was fun and it broke because when they you know got to their final person and they took the guests and they were able to take off their their blindfolds they were like oh my gosh i thought you were you know bring a person of jewish descent in with really really curly high texture right same thing so at the end of the day

[00:42:52] we that was one of the things that helped build a comfort level and change the mindset of what they're actually doing and learning to do so all of our students could do everything and i wasn't in the school and i wouldn't do it today we're not we would we weren't a high braiding school right and the reason being is braiding is typically reserved and the types of braiding um that you know african-american

[00:43:20] clients want are really outside of what we really have to teach and they and they take too much hour too much time so if i've got six hours of time i don't want a student just taking six hours i would rather them be able to have a multitude of opportunities on different services to help build their skills consistently and so that's why we didn't do a lot and i didn't allow students who had that skill outside because people would come to them i want to request them because i know they do it

[00:43:49] outside right and i'm like well no they're not on the floor doing that particular service today no they've had one client they can't take anymore there we had to move them over and and and that was just to build equality of training into the school so every student got an opportunity for every subject matter and every type of service that would walk through the door because one of the things is i don't know if i'm going to end up in utah you know i mean realistically yeah and if there

[00:44:18] are not people that look like me with hair like me who do you think i'm gonna be doing yeah if i want to do hair it's very true i could turn you on to a lot of friends just come to me i will build your clientele trust me but we have to get out of color yeah we so we got ourselves in this situation you know i mean with the bill everything that's kind of going on how do we get out of this situation

[00:44:44] you know i mean because it's like we got in was one of these we actually left out we've got to talk about is that there's a whole different side of the legislation that's being lobbied by the beauty industry you know i mean that's kind of what got us into that yeah i think they've been lobbying for years on the same thing and it has worked they have built tremendous partnerships and relationships with congressional members or legislators um and the lobbyists have as well and unfortunately i think we

[00:45:12] underestimated the commitment to this administration's um policy desires and one of them was an impact to title four and i don't think we thought deep enough um as the powers that be as school owners as uh lobbyists or those who had that this congress or congressional house senate whatever would be focused

[00:45:36] on upholding what this administration really wanted and this time the answer for us was no right right and i don't think we were prepared for that because this is not the first time and i know it's the first time outside of the industry people are hearing about it this is the first time that we don't have a we we have limited chance of success of um you know fighting for this and it being

[00:46:02] sort of um put on this back burner okay guys we understand we're going to give you a pass the next four years the next six whatever it has been and then we go back at it this time that didn't happen and i just don't think anybody was prepared for it and so i'm done with kicking the can type thing really yeah this is a hard stop right and i also think we have to also be honest that there are i i

[00:46:30] liken it to the real estate investment industry right we've got groups of investors coming in now buying up title four funded schools mainly because they're title four funded correct yep and they are lowering the standards they have no connection to the industry they just see dollars by minimal you know and what they'll do is they'll take a top school that's performing well training grade students

[00:46:55] they start looking only at the bottom line what we can cut what's not necessary we don't have to give a 90 uh flat iron when we can give the 17 flat iron right let them graduate and buy the 90 flat iron that the tools they can't afford it the tools you gave them they can't afford it they can those tools need to be able to last them through school and the first year or so in the industry they really do

[00:47:23] and so yes if i'm going to charge 25 000 and three thousand dollars of that is a kit and in some states that three thousand dollars is a 50 markup and they that's a profit item for them as well because the school only earns income in two real ways the kit is a third way unless it's regulated by the state that you can't charge extra you have to charge costs but outside of that if we don't get

[00:47:52] butts in the seat and we don't maximize our clinic floor those are the only two revenue sources in a school yeah and retail yeah and what and here's the thing retail isn't doing that well either and the and the thing about it is not a lot of schools sell it anymore because the consumer has alternative waves of purchasing it yeah amazon yeah yeah yeah so if i were the school my school would have an amazon

[00:48:20] account and we would we would sell our retail through there and i would just not even worry about investing in retail i would take my percentage commission off of amazon and keep it moving the important thing is about the knowledge we're not you know i can't fight a system um and what i want the students to know is how to select the right product for them and where to go to support it so that

[00:48:45] they still can earn money from it right you know and so if i can't if i can't beat them out if i've got customers who's saying well i get it from amazon baby you can place your order right here i'm gonna teach this wait a minute go ahead and have them place their order right here and it'll be delivered to your home and then we get the the kickback come straight to the school's account exactly

[00:49:11] okay so we were talking a little bit earlier about legislation legislation and lobbyists and um you've met you said something so profound so yes i'm switching topics here okay um subjects um you were saying earlier that a lot of these people in legislative legislation let me get that out um really don't care unless life is lost right about about regulation and unless they are directly

[00:49:37] affected they really don't care less and how how do we how do we deliver that message to them saying yes it does concern you on a personal level every time your child goes to a salon every time your mom goes to a salon every time your grandma goes to a salon in some manner this can affect you yeah they might not die but we had somebody on yesterday where somebody one of the people in the schools

[00:50:02] were using the same wax pot of wax for a 16 year old brow and gave her herpes because they weren't okay so we're not killing people but we're definitely affecting lives how do we get those stories across to them i think one of the things and you know we share too is in the classroom we tell or we teach right and i think with legislators and there and and we also and jason you brought it out they don't

[00:50:27] listen to us because we're women it's almost like a nagging wife right yeah you know i mean men put us actually in the salon for socialization it's like get them out the house get them away from me they can go for a few hours and enjoy themselves with their girlfriends right yeah then it became an industry so now we have an industry right as opposed to a social tie and so now we have that industry sanitation and disinfection is one of the most important things i say it's highly important i don't

[00:50:54] think it's one of the most because i think there's other safety things too we have to think about that we could cause harm in terms however when we talk to politicians or legislators about that i did say that the reason they don't take a serious is because there are not enough people dying and there are not enough injuries being reported that are a result of something that comes from the lack of sanitation and disinfection in the salon environment or the barbershop or wherever and so if we take the

[00:51:22] mindset of the school we need to stop telling because we keep saying that right but they don't have a visual of what that looks like we have to start really doing the show and tell and we have to see the see here and the do and those are the three components that i teach with instructors a valid lesson has for a student is they have to see it they have to hear it and they have to do it and when we have all three of those components connected it now makes it just like the story you told me earlier

[00:51:50] about yeah yeah okay tell those stories and we have to show them the results because here's the thing that we are also wrestling with that i didn't even get to bring out is think about it and i i heard a legislator say this well why in the world and i think it was here in georgia why in the world would it need to be this amount of hours when i can see my daughter go to the store 16 years old buy her color off the

[00:52:18] shelf and then come to the house and color her hair and it looks nice that was here in utah by the way and i'm completely embarrassed i'm completely embarrassed okay it is their reality and so what we have to start doing is understanding the psychology of the people that we're talking about and we're not talking we're talking as as passionate professionals and they are literally looking at this

[00:52:42] like logically it doesn't make sense so we have to start talking them to them logically and and showing them photos of this and and taking and making it personal so what i what argument we could come back with with that same senator or legislator is i totally understand but can i paint a picture for you using your daughter's example if you don't mind right we're gonna get really political and we could

[00:53:07] literally transfer an experience that happened to us to the daughter using that like one i had a client that didn't inform me that they were allergic to a hair color and it was one of the chemicals in the hair color and i didn't ask her it was a semi-perman but it doesn't matter when i find there's an allergy i'm not using any hair color we're gonna figure out something else but she didn't tell me the next call

[00:53:33] i got about two days later was she was in the hospital and i mean literally with pulse leaking pustules on her scalp and she knew she was allergic but she didn't notify you of anything no and i always had them fill that form out about the allergies asking specifically and she marked no she was not my mother-in-law was the woman who was a person who called and said this has happened

[00:53:59] to her before she knew she was allergic and i said but mother jones she put on here no and she said no this has happened she would say baby this has happened before and i felt so bad but then i knew one i i protected myself okay right with the um with the wave it wasn't a waiver it was um an intake form because there is a difference between a waiver and one of these days we'll talk about that

[00:54:24] but um you know everybody thinks they can waive their right to do something wrong which you cannot when you know and i'm going to say this since we have a moment when you know you are doing you are been requested by a client to do something that violates your license that you know you should not do that goes against manufacturer's rules you do not waive that client's rights you are a hundred percent liable even if they they they complete a waiver hands down you're going to lose in court because the

[00:54:51] judge will hold you accountable to what your license requires you to do and part of it is from sanitation and disinfection and protection we are licensed to protect as well part of that is to protect our right and so i'm going to i'm going to let our listeners know the story that i told you i've told the story so many times um i had i worked for a company that did a live fiber optic feed for cnn msnbc fox news and in utah we're a highly political state so the most of the people that i

[00:55:21] did hair and makeup on were politicians and one of them very lovely woman deceased now was mia love and she was the very first um black senator female ever voted in in the united states and she was one of our guests and we became really close she's a great woman and um at one point i heard that she took our hours down from 2 000 hours to 1600 hours and i really kind of didn't like that then a couple

[00:55:49] weeks later i was in new york doing hair and makeup on models for a hairdresser and the one model came across to me and she had her eyes were kind of goopy and i said are you okay she said oh i had a cold and every time i get a cold i get conjunctivitis and i'll well you have pink eye and she said yes and i said okay i'm gonna have you go last and even i went to these other hairdressers that were one was out of lasco one was out of florida and i said she's got conjunctivitis i really don't feel

[00:56:15] comfortable doing her makeup they said we're paying her 13 300 an hour you're doing her makeup i'm all okay so i said we're gonna do her last because i have to sit there and decide how am i gonna do her makeup all the makeup i had to throw away the brushes i had to throw away and how much money that was going to cost me then the next morning i was flying back to utah and i was doing makeup on mia love now if i hadn't had that education of sanitation disinfection and um and

[00:56:43] contamination cross-contamination even i would have done her makeup with those brushes and infected her now if i infected her that would have affected the okay so i'm i'm giving you the whole roundabout the company that i worked for that was national and they would it look would have looked but on them they would have lost money our cameraman would have lost money and i would have lost that job well since i knew what to do and kept her safe then a couple of months later she was hiring me to do all of her ad

[00:57:11] campaigns when she came up for re-election and one day we're sitting at her house and i said i don't understand why you took it down from 2 000 hours to 1600 hours and she said oh well you see all my braids and you know my black hair and i said yeah she said i can't find anyone in utah to do that but all these women coming from africa can do my hair but they don't they don't need to go to school and learn everything that you guys learn so they just need to do braids i said but mia what about

[00:57:37] sanitation and disinfection and then we need to get to the medical part of it too and i so i told her that story and she said oh i wasn't aware of all of that and it hit her hard and then we're also going to talk about the medical part okay do you know how many clients and we're white here and most of the women are blonde and so we have no protection to the sun the uva and uva being raised and we're high in altitude here and so we're closer to that damage do you know how many clients where i detected

[00:58:06] moles on their head that was actually cancerous and i sent them to their dermatologist okay luckily in my 34 years three people three people that went to their dermatologist and the dermatologist said this hairdresser knows what they're talking about finding this mole because this could have been bad so that's the kind of education we're talking about and that's the kind of education our students in schools need not the superficial not the fun not the you know i tell people all the time there is a

[00:58:33] difference in the student that we get yes they may be uh young okay just turning 18 but they now move from pedagogy k through 12 to andragogy which is a whole different type of learning for adults and so if we expect a 17 or 18 year old to be career ready then we have to start helping them transition and holding them to expectations and working and guiding with them as opposed to teaching them that everything they do is going to be fun you know what this soft parenting that has happened

[00:59:03] and everybody gets a trophy mentality has to at some point come to a head right and in cosmetology school that is one place well no you know i have literally watched educators not want to hurt a student's feelings to tell them that that cut is not a good cut there is still some work you've got a weight line that literally we need to clean up now us telling that person may hurt their feeling today

[00:59:30] but us not telling that person is going to hurt their profession tomorrow yep and the first client that is dissatisfied they're crying they want to now come to social media and she said this to me she gave me a one google rating honey you earned it yeah but guess what you earned that one star instead of us

[00:59:54] challenging the student themselves teaching them how to see what we see right as opposed to saying it looks good you did a great job take a step back and say i want you to take a look at it and i want you to think about the things that we have covered around weight lines around tapering and things like that what do you see i think it might be a little heavy on this side you're right there what else do you see

[01:00:21] so now it's not so painful but it's needed and you're also training their eye to catch the things that you would have just said they look good and then everything from there would have looked just as good but been horrible and so you know i hear it all the time i read it you know in the facebook groups or whatever what can we do to make this fun anatomy and physiology you know what anatomy and physiology

[01:00:45] is serious yeah let's make it engaging let's let's do something different let's not try to teach 72 pages in one week how about that what about taking the most important parts out of anatomy and physiology for this module session and teach that and then reserve the balance for maybe two other modules right we

[01:01:10] incorporate it nobody ever said a chapter has to be completed in a week because god knows the retention factor is not going to be there nope definitely you know i have i have my instructor's license and i take on apprentices and my first apprentice i read this amazing book and my ladies wrote it and i wish i would have had this kind of um teachers when i went to high school um read these kind of books and there's five

[01:01:37] different degrees and levels of learning and there's and with those five different levels of learning you have to learn how to teach and um my the first apprentice i had i told her i said look i don't know what to do i know what not to do because i had a horrible apprenticeship myself and i studied this book like crazy and i came up with a curriculum for her and realized she kind of had a chronic case of squirrel and i

[01:02:02] realized too she could retain something she read for about 15 minutes so i said okay we're doing 15 minutes of theory then i want you to go and work on your mannequin head and then i want you to read and and i wouldn't stick to the same topic of out of the book that she was reading i'm all okay now we're going to do 15 minutes of nails now we're going to do 15 minutes of color theory now and it got her through really really well but that was her um style of learning and once i learned her style of

[01:02:30] learning and it was and she's successful to this day she's great and we don't we don't spend time doing that we teach everybody the same way right and so when we go back jason to this big beautiful bill and all of the things that's happening these are the things schools are going to have to start figuring out how to provide training such that in the first year person even working part-time can earn thirty thousand dollars a year the other thing that you know and i think about this all the

[01:02:59] time what would i do what would i do what are some of the things that the schools could do and one one school owner online said to me is well when they graduate there's nothing that i can do i can't control what they make whoa i said well i said hold up i said what about incorporating a post-graduate program that they don't pay for it wow what about when they graduate every quarter you're hosting a workshop

[01:03:24] for your graduates what about before they graduate you literally introduce them to the post-graduate tracking form right because they got the education so now what you want them to do when they start working it's a spreadsheet and they're tracking all of these things that you've taught them you know so instead of spending five weeks on state board maybe we save that five weeks for that transitional training

[01:03:51] and we incorporate state board from day one in everything they do so we don't need a class at the end where they're now afraid correct because if state board was taught consistently the way we set up the way we you know tape a bag for trash the timing all of that the student it would be second nature for a student

[01:04:14] to walk right into any state board and know exactly what to do and be confident but if i could do a post-graduate pre-setup and then when that student graduates every quarter we do a full day's workshop where we are actually reviewing what they're making we're talking about um uh options that they have new marketing strategies whatever you would have a handle and at the end of the year guess what would be sweeter than nothing we are even

[01:04:41] going to bring a tax person in here exactly to help you do your taxes yep and that's a thing that the financial literacy has been left out of all this you know what i mean and it's been crazy so and some of them don't want to let them know then and that's okay then they're the ones that fall off and you know what yeah well here and can't save them all and here's the other thing i think as as opposed to financial literacy we talk about budgeting because really what the average person needs to know

[01:05:07] is how much money do i need to make right and most of them forget that if i'm going to go the entrepreneurial route and i'm going to booth rent i'm going to do salon suite or i'm going to try it i not only need the money to cover that i forgot i got to factor in the money i need to live pay the bills just maintain so while i my mind says i need thirty five hundred dollars a month that's to live so that

[01:05:33] thirty five hundred dollars they may have made but now they're short for the business and they're like i'm not making money because you forgot the formula and the formula is the be plus pe equals mtrn now what does that mean carla's framework right for teaching it it is your business expenses plus your personal expenses equals the minimum total required okay there you go it's minimal yeah so if i can tell

[01:05:59] my student and show my student based on the information they've given me is miss jones this is the money i need with my daycare and i'd like you know a few dollars to go to savings and i still want to take the kids to the movies i'm gonna need that thirty five hundred but this is what i want to do so now i'm gonna show katrina here or sandra it's fifty five hundred and based on that and based on what

[01:06:25] you're telling me we're gonna run those numbers and this is this is how you're gonna need to start this is what you're gonna need to have in place so they don't need that after they get done because here's the problem when the real world hits them and now i'm out of school and rent is due and i don't have that job yet or i'm in that position and the clients aren't coming i don't have the bandwidth or the

[01:06:47] mental capacity to try to figure it all out now i am in i am in gorilla mode yep yep absolutely that's it but if i were to think about my one-year program as a two-year contact okay not two-year program but two-year contact every metric i now control you see so schools don't have a we're gonna close issue

[01:07:12] they have an issue of not wanting to do exactly and that is the biggest problem i'm thinking as well the truth is that what they're doing is they're going through and saying like we need the government to go through and give us like a few more minutes another year another four years no they already have that time it had a good time they've mismanaged it they have mismanaged it they're blaming the government now which it's they're actually their own fault that for what's happening because they're the ones who caused and created the problem you mean and that's and that's

[01:07:41] where we're really really at instead of being at ten thousand dollars to go through and go to school they're charging 25 to 30 thousand dollars 24 20 yes they are and here's the thing for 25 to 30 thousand dollars you've already been paid for my one extra year you really have yeah and for you to host something quarterly for me to come back in and you're bringing a professional and you're making it a great one-day workshop where hey i'm calling you or i know i can call and talk to whatever

[01:08:05] i mean literally i had put together a program and i said you know what there is not one school not one school that offers their students a coaching program not one what if they could graduate and then through whatever you have i created two products that actually i told them you're not so i'm not selling this a deck a card of debt i mean a deck of cards i'm selling a program and at the end of the day

[01:08:30] you would be the only school that is graduating your student in a coaching program yeah who does that no one that literally they're not paying five thousand dollars or eight thousand dollars for if if you incorporate this part and then 30 days when they graduate they could spend with me when they're getting started to set the foundation and then quarterly they come back with you it's a win-win across the board this is how you control and protect your metrics that

[01:09:00] the u.s department of ed is now holding you accountable for so if a school is really going to close it's going to close because they chose not to do something different there you go that's not that they could that's it that's it that's it right there carla yeah thank you so much for all this information and your time you guys if you need to go through and get more information because i know

[01:09:24] you will and a lot of you out there do not know that with anything that's even going on and what carla's explaining guys if you want change you got to be the one that goes through and does it and you need to do it differently listen to what carla had to say we need to do things differently and really explain them thoroughly if we want change in this industry so i'm going to go through and put all your information in the show notes i'm going to be tagging you on all the social media posts and everything please reach out to carla find out as much as you possibly can and again thank you

[01:09:52] so much for being on the show thank you thank you wonderful and i thank you so much paula jason you guys you're wonderful and i love the show thank you keep doing what you're doing we need it well i'm here there you go all right all right all right let's talk some shit with shitology hey jason

[01:10:17] what'd you learn in cosmetology school this week oh my god it's been so amazing we learn all the new tiktok dances so i can go through and do the dance now with a pair of scissors hop on like one foot the dances are so great you know and the signs that we're learning how to make so we are you know tiktok like really going and then i just learn how to go through and make pictures uh like it's okay if they're fake it's all right but it looks like i'm doing hair i said i post on my instagram my following

[01:10:41] is getting huge oh my god so amazing oh well i'm curious how many cancer cells and moles did you find on clients heads today and suggest that they go to a dermatologist oh fucking gross paul i want to eat that close to someone's scalp yeah and this is why 90 of your accredited schools special interest schools are going to go out of business and with that stay shitty and see you next time hey listener

[01:11:10] 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 posts on instagram at should 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 should i told my hairdresser.com you can leave us a voicemail using the

[01:11:35] green mic icon or send us an email and if you like us tell 10 of your friends and if you hate us till 20 and remember stay shitty listener persons