Junior Hairdresser

Junior Hairdresser
Phillip Andrew @PAGladwinHair wrote on #HairHour, I paraphrase:

I’ll be finishing my training soon, and wondering how it’s best to start getting my own clients, Can anyone help? I’ve been looking mainly for models, but I’m about 2 months off of finishing and wanting to start to find the clients.

I replied simply with: I wouldn’t worry too much about getting new clients, worry about the quality of your work, then they’ll come flocking! Because hairdressing is all about results!

Then the NHF for Hairdressers @NHfederation asked:

Why do your clients love you? #hairhour #DontBeModest

And I replied, tongue-in-cheek, “Because I love them.” But the real answer is much more complicated than that!

Later in the frenetic discussion that is #HairHour, HerPassion @thehaircampaign wrote:

Admire your clients lifestyles, take pleasure interacting with them, delight them, understand why they visit you, and your impact on them.

And I thought, let’s be frank, “What a sycophantic, self-serving load of Bollocks!” But then again, analysing your business isn’t a bad thing – it’s just that I have issues with banal statements like, take pleasure interacting with them!

When I was a junior hairdresser and about two months away from going on the floor (becoming a stylist) the last thing that was on my mind was building a clientèle; however, it was then that Oliver went stylist to stylist around the salon, starting from the top, asking them if they wanted to do a photo-session after work that night – It was a Friday! Everyone was saying no because they were going out! The photo-session was to be a ‘before and after’ shoot of a secretary with curly hair for Woman and Home Magazine – No photo credits, just a fee of ten quid, which is worth about one hundred pounds today!

cassie

When Oliver finally asked me, out of utter desperation (because he obviously didn’t want to do it either), I said yes, and I was totally over the fucking moon. I can’t describe how deliriously happy and nervous I was, even though I’d already been on numerous photo-sessions and fashion shows as a junior, assisting a stylist. This was my first solo event! Oliver said, “Don’t tell them you’re a junior!”

About a week after the Woman and Home Magazine photo-session, I was handing blue hair-rollers to one of the junior-stylists (my most hated task) in the custom of a typical douchebag, one blue roller pushed on to the end of each finger! Oliver sidled over to us and said to me, “I’d like you to do a fashion show for Coco tomorrow. By-the-way, Penny Ryder phoned to say that Woman and Home loved your work.” And off he slid.

I looked the junior-stylist in the eye to bring her back to reality, so I could escape the irksome chore, then at my fingers with the last two rollers stuffed on the top and it looked like I was giving her a massive blue plastic V sign, and we both burst out laughing. Happy days.

But at no time was I ever thinking about building a clientèle or why they love me and I certainly was not admiring their lifestyles – I was just doing it!