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All About Hair...and So Much More.
Welcome to All About Hair—where education meets inspiration for stylists and hair lovers alike.
Whether you’re starting your career behind the chair or just obsessed with all things hair, this channel is your go-to spot for real tips, honest advice, and plenty of inspiration.
You’ll find pro techniques, career-building tools, and everyday hair hacks—plus the encouragement to grow with confidence and creativity.
Subscribe and join a community that’s passionate about great hair and even better vibes.
All About Hair...and So Much More.
EP 316: Solo No More: The Great Stylist Return
The beauty industry is experiencing a significant shift as stylists return to salon environments after the isolation of the pandemic years, seeking community, education, and structured career paths.
• COVID-19 caused salon teams to fracture with many stylists moving to solo suites or booth rental situations
• Post-pandemic salon experience revealed steep challenges with finding and training new stylists who missed proper hands-on education
• Beauty school enrollment is increasing (up 26% in New York state), with graduates seeking mentorship rather than immediate independence
• New stylists need systematic training to move from beauty school to behind-the-chair success within 3 months
• Structured education systems, employee handbooks, and clear career paths are essential for attracting today's salon professionals
• The industry-wide return to community represents a major opportunity for salon owners who are prepared with proper systems and culture
Check out my new course for salon owners at danisekeilitz.com that includes templates for education systems, employee handbooks, and training protocols to help you build the salon that today's stylists are seeking.
The Salon Success System: $97 Course
The Training Toolkit is your step-by-step roadmap to building a confident, high-performing salon team—without the overwhelm. Designed for salon owners, this course gives you proven onboarding strategies, easy-to-use training templates, and real-world systems that save time, boost retention, and drive growth.
Grab your FREE PDF of The In-Salon Training Toolkit today.
Level up your onboarding and education! This free toolkit gives salon owners practical, done-for-you templates and strategies to train new stylists quickly, consistently, and with less stress—so you can focus on growing your business, not reinventing the wheel.
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Train With Confidence. Lead With Impact.
Running a salon is hard enough—training new stylists shouldn’t feel like a second full-time job.
If you're constantly pulled in a dozen directions, struggling to teach while juggling clients, and wishing your new hires would just get it faster—you’re not alone. And more importantly, you don’t have to keep doing it the hard way.
Download The Ultimate In-Salon Training Toolkit today and start onboarding your stylists with clarity, confidence, and zero guesswork.
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Website: www.danisekeilitz.com
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We didn't just lose business during the pandemic. We lost connection, the laughter on the salon floor, the spontaneous education moments, the creative spark that came from working side by side. But something's shifting. Stylists are returning not just to work but to the community we've been missing. Welcome to All About Hair, where we talk shop, share stories and spill the secrets behind great hair and a great career.
Speaker 1:I'm your host, denise Keilitz, a former salon owner, educator and a lifelong hair crusader. Whether you're a new stylist building your book or just someone who loves learning about all things hair, you're in the right place. I don't know about you, but as a salon owner through the pandemic, our best year was right before the pandemic. I mean, we were going full on. I had 42 employees, we had education systems set up in the salons, we had a whole education team, we were going places. The whole team went out to California. There was like 35 of us that all went out for a global community education event and it was fabulous. We just had so much connection until we didn't and we tried to hold it together. I mean when we were going through the pandemic. Oh, you know, you remember the Zoom calls, the Zoom meetings, the um, uh, uh, things on social media that try to keep your teams together. We did it all and we did survive, but it was long, long process, you know, and when it first started we all know this I don't even know why I'm replaying it but we know that when it first started we didn't know what was going to, that it was going to last months on end, you know, and we didn't know that it was going to last months on end, you know, and we didn't know that everybody had to get unemployment and we didn't know what we didn't know None of us did. But I'm excited to feel it in the air. I'm excited to share this with you. I feel like, well, not just me.
Speaker 1:There's actually evidence out there that people are returning to the salons, and by people, I mean the stylists are turning back to the salons. See, after the pandemic, when people came back to the salons the stylist they all wanted a well, a lot of them were scared. A lot of them were scared to be in the same room with other people because we were all at home by ourselves, right, and we didn't know if we were going to make each other sick. But so, if you're like me, after the pandemic. We all came back and we had to work. You know, five feet, six feet apart I don't remember the parameters, but it was hard. We actually worked with two different teams. We had a team B, team H. A team worked one shift, the B team worked the other shift. That way if somebody got sick on one team, the whole salon didn't shut down. We were had to get creative. One team, the whole salon didn't shut down. We had to get creative. You know, you know how that is, but we did come through. But I did lose a lot of team members after, after that, because people wanted to be independent, people wanted to work in the solo suites, people they wanted they had enough time to sit at home which I don't blame them and think about their own goals and what they would do if they owned a salon Fabulous. But I don't think working in a suite by yourself is owning a salon. That is not the same thing. Yes, do you have to know your taxes? Yes, inventory systems? Yes, marketing, yeah, but you're only, you're only doing it for yourself. When you actually own a salon, you're actually taking care of other people's livelihoods. Whole other, whole other game. That's a whole other conversation.
Speaker 1:Today we're going to start talking about post-pandemic and the shift in our beauty industry, and I love that. Okay, first things first. The problem COVID actually shifted how we worked. We lost our connection with one another. So before the pandemic, we had collaboration, we had spontaneous education. Well, we did in our salon hey, what are you doing? Hey, guess what I just learned from YouTube last night? Let me show you this. Let me do this. You know, we had it all. We had doll heads out on the floor, we worked on one another, we invited models in. We had it all. We had mentorship, we. Our culture was thriving. It was a fun place to be, a fun place to work, and everybody on the team was rocking and rolling and making money.
Speaker 1:And then we had the pandemic. We had isolation. I felt it too. I was actually afraid to come back after the pandemic. I was afraid to lead. I didn't have that same spirit about me. I don't know what happened. It was hard. Same spirit about me. I don't know what happened. It was hard, come on, it was hard and it was frustrating that people were jumping ship left and right. I felt like I failed them and it had nothing to do with me. It was a freaking pandemic. This was a worldwide thing that was happening, but, as a leader, we, we take this all on our shoulders and it's super, super hard not to Okay.
Speaker 1:Then, because of the pandemic, guess what just blew up with social media, and social media became our new education. It became our new education platform. People were learning off of Instagram and Facebook and um, there was a couple of other platforms at the time that that came up. They're gone now. I can't even remember the names of them. So, but the community took the back seat to the isolation and to the um learning from a distance, and so that's what people started gravitating to, and my team and the stylist survived the pandemic. We did, and we came out the other side.
Speaker 1:However, people came back uninspired and they felt very alone, and so what happened was there was a decline in our culture and a decline in the structure of our salon, because it took a it took a minute to get back and we had all these hoops we had to go through. We had, you know, we had to get licensed to say that we knew how to disinfect chairs and the floor and the mirrors, and you, you remember this if you went through it. So we had to, we had to work on that. And so then our formal education and our haircutting skills and all that stuff, it took a back seat, and that's what we thrived on was our education. We were all so, so taken back by the sanitation and the wearing the masks and all that that. We struggled, and the wearing the masks and all that that. We struggled.
Speaker 1:Okay, I struggled as a leader, our team struggled, and then what happened is so we had people jump in ship and then we were hiring new stylists, because you always have to hire new people and so we always hired from the schools. Well, guess what? What I hired? People, believe it or not, who got their license, never touched a head of hair at beauty school. Why? Because it was all online, kid you not.
Speaker 1:Now, great people, they mean well, but I hired this one girl. She did. She'd never shampooed anybody, let alone learn a haircut or learn how to hold the shears or learn how to hold a comb or nothing. So we had to teach them from square one, and no fault of their own. This is what the world was right. But here's the exciting part. Okay, that was tough, that was super tough and again, if you got through that and you're still rocking and rolling and you're still standing. Kudos to you. I love that, because leading a salon in those couple of years the hardest thing in the in the world, leading any kind of business in those couple of years and still standing afterwards super, super hard, but keeping your team together.
Speaker 1:I tell you I I failed, I failed I. I I failed, I. I I'm not afraid to admit that, but and it made me feel like a failure, I have to say it I felt like I couldn't, that I was doing something wrong, because the team was was splitting apart and what we had was no more. What I failed to realize is that, hey, denise, get back up on your feet, because you're human and the pandemic actually happened to you as well, but get back on your feet and do it again. Do it again. You don't have to stay down when you get knocked down. You get back up and you do what you know how to do. Well, I didn't do that, I. I didn't. In fact, I actually did the opposite again.
Speaker 1:Um, probably a little bit too much information, but I kind of hid. I hid from my team cause I didn't know what to do and so I would make? I don't know. I would make excuses for staying at my home office. You know, marketing or rebranding or coming up with something. I could come up with a lot to do on a computer without facing people, and what my team really needed me to do is to be a leader and show up, and I had a lot going on. I mean, we had two salons and two completely different cultures and it was a weird dynamic. I was rebranding one salon. It was a lot. It was a lot, um, and I didn't feel like I had any help and I didn't feel like I had anybody that I could go to that understood what I was going through.
Speaker 1:Needless to say, there are people in our community, um, as salon owners, that we can always turn to. I mean, if you're struggling right now I mean seriously if you're struggling for whatever reason, know that our salon owner community really, really is a special thing, cause if you, it takes a weird person to want to own a salon. Weird in a good way, because it's not just business, it's people skills, it's psychology, it's time management, it's building a team, it's HR, it's a oh, it's so many things, and so it takes a special human to want to open a hair salon. Anyway, I'm getting way off track, sorry.
Speaker 1:What I want this conversation to be about is that there is a shift, and I feel it in my core. The shift is that stylists want to come back to the salon after being and trying it on their own. Now there are some successful stylists out there doing the thing in their own salon suites Great out there doing the thing in their own salon suites Great. But for the majority of people, they want to be part of something bigger, and if you have that culture and you have that place for them to grow and to want to become a better stylist and a better person, then you better be screaming it from the rooftops, because these stylists are looking for you, just like you're looking for them and you don't know where they are because we keep saying, oh, nobody wants to work anymore. No, no, stylists are being picky because they want to go to a place that offers them education, a growth path, a career path, a career not just money, a career with a 401k, with health insurance, with vacation pay, all the things. And if you're a salon that wants to offer those, or happens to offer those, and you're still struggling finding stylists, you need to get yourself into the beauty schools.
Speaker 1:The reason for this is because I'm going to look at my numbers here. Beauty school enrollment in the state of New York. Okay, I'm not in New York, this is just a just a stat that I found. Beauty school enrollment is up 26% this year in New York state. Now, you can look up your state where you are. But students are seeking somebody to show them the way mentorship and they're seeking structure because they're going to school and most states now only offer a thousand hours. They don't. That's not a lot of training, okay. So what are they seeking when they get out? Some kind of path? Help, what do I do? Okay, I've got this, this certificate, I've got this license, and I don't know what to do. Heck, I don't even know if I know how to cut hair. They need somebody to show them the way. That would be you Salon owner in the back. That would be you. Okay, you just need a system that they can get on board with. Okay, okay, I have a system, I have a course.
Speaker 1:I put together what I did in my salons. Okay, to grow into $2 million salon? Okay, I'm excited about this. I'm excited about this because this is the time that you need it. When stylists are coming out of school and they're looking for a place and you happen to be a place, you need to be ready for them. And how are you going to do that If you're working full-time behind the chair and trying to put together a system to train new people? It's hard.
Speaker 1:I did it that way for a long time. I stood behind a chair, hired brand new stylists in, said hey, you're going to um, watch what I do. You know, you're going to assist me. You're going to wash my yeah, yeah, it's all great. Okay, we've all been there and that's. That's a wonderful way to learn.
Speaker 1:That's how I learned is I came in as an assistant and then you, um, you just follow and you do when we, you know, you do some education on the side and, um, when you can, but most of all, you're just learning to work with people. You're learning to work with your mentor. You're learning what it is in a salon. That's all wonderful. Takes a long time, though, because it took me two years as a an assistant. People don't want to wait that long, nor can they afford to wait that long. They just spent over $20,000 in beauty school. They don't want to come out and work for minimum wage for two years. Who can afford to do that? No? So you need some kind of system in place to get them up and running from beauty school, just licensed, to behind the chair making good money within three months. That's the goal. Okay, I have the solution.
Speaker 1:I just released my course $97 easy, you got a hundred bucks to throw down. Okay, what this course is going to teach you is how to onboard a brand new stylist day one, what they should be learning and expecting and what you should be telling them. Um, everything from, um, why you started your salon to how you're doing things, to expectations, all the things, okay, and you might have your own. But this course will give you some great ideas on what to include, and it actually has an outline that you can print off and say hey, I want to make sure I have this checklist. First day, first week, first month, first three months. Okay, you're going to get that. You're going to learn how to develop a mentorship program in your salon, meaning you're going to give another stylist the responsibility of taking this brand new stylist under their wing.
Speaker 1:So guess what? Salon owner, you're not doing everything, because we tend to do that right. We tend to take everything, shoulder it. Nobody could do it like I can. I mean because it's our vision, right, vision right. I understand I did that for a very long time until I delegated, until I asked for help from my team who believes the same thing I do, or they wouldn't be working for me when I started asking for help. Not only did that empower them, gave them responsibility, but it made them feel really proud to work there and it actually attracts more stylists to work there. Weird, weird enough when you have a mentorship.
Speaker 1:So you'll learn about creating a mentorship and then also you will get ideas on how to bring resources to your salon to have ongoing education that doesn't cost an arm and a leg. Not all of us can afford to hire one of these big name people to come into our salon and teach for a day, nor can we afford to shut the salon down for a day. I mean, it's expensive and it's a commitment to have education in your salon. So part of this program gives you ideas on how to do that pretty inexpensively. Okay. That you maybe not wouldn't have thought of. Then it also wonderful when you finish this course, you actually unlock an exclusive offer.
Speaker 1:That unlocks my employee handbook template, which is all your rules and regulations and your expectations, and it lays it all out there your, your, how you get paid health insurance, whatever it is that you have going on it. It takes care of all the legal formalities. It takes care of all what your expectations are your culture, your vision, your mission statement, all those things Okay, but what it has in there, too, is actually verbiage that you could put in there and you could steal it line by line. I don't care um for commission salons If you're a commission salon, if you're a booth rental salon or if you're a small boutique salon that doesn't even maybe you don't even carry retail in your salon. Um, so there's different scenarios and there's all kinds of scripting in there. So you can steal it. You can make it your own, the template, yours to put your logos in, to uh print out as is, if you want. Um, but it's exact. It's pretty close to the exact same handbook I had created for my salons. Pretty close, it's not exact, I'm not gonna lie. Um, then my um, my uh education notebook. Oh, my gosh Education notebook. Total, total game changer for us Used to be when I would hire stylists out of the um schools.
Speaker 1:Yes, I would want to train them. Yes, but I didn't have any system, I didn't have any kind of way I was going to do it. I didn't have a map, I didn't say a checklist, I didn't have any of that until I did, until I sat down and said, okay, what do we need? And this, so this education notebook is a template again, but it goes through and it has your classes laid out for you. So how we used to do it is one day a week, uh, we would select, and it's usually our least busy day, and if you have a POS system or a computer system, it'll tell you what's your least busy day.
Speaker 1:Ours was on a Tuesday, believe it or not. So we would have education the first half of Tuesdays, but we were open seven days a week. So actually our Sundays and Mondays were super busy because other salons weren't open. So we would do it Tuesdays and it um, and it might look different for you. Maybe you do it in the evening, on an evening, I don't know. Uh, that's on you.
Speaker 1:And then, um, once a week, all of our new stylists would come in and they would take the class. They would have a mannequin head. It has a list of supplies that you need as a new stylist and what to bring to the class. Each class would teach them some people skills, like, maybe, how to read body language, maybe how to read face shapes, maybe how to do a consultation. Um, anyway, each class has something that builds their people skills, because you need that and your communication skills, and then uh, then you have little activities around that. Then the the meat of the class, though, is their skillset.
Speaker 1:So, whether that's a foundational haircut, whether that's, uh, hair coloring, I have these classes laid out Like I have. I think I have five haircuts in there, but you can add any haircut you want in there just by following the same template. Then I have basic hair coloring in there, with basic skillsets like highlighting, uh, a touch up, uh, you know basic, okay, um, men's, men's stuff in there too. I you can add to this if you wanted to add balayage, if you have something like a smoothing system or a perm system you want to put in there. You just follow the guideline or the template of each class and you can do it. It's easy. That is a game changer, because then it has checklists in there.
Speaker 1:So when your new stylist has done something, you could check it off, that they know how to do this, that you're comfortable with them taking on a new client and coming into your salon and they're not going to lose that new client for the salon. Because this is what used to happen to us is who's not busy is the brand new stylist. So if you got a new client coming in the salon and you've got I don't know two or three new stylists who aren't doing anything and a new, a new guest, comes in the salon hey, I've heard about you, wonderful reputation and they want to get in and they want to get in right then, and there, and you're in, your receptionist said we would love to take you. And then you hand them to a new stylist who doesn't know your culture, doesn't know how to do whatever it is this person wants done and they want to impress the owner or themselves or the client. They take it on anyway. They're afraid to say no.
Speaker 1:And then you end up with a well, a client that's probably not happy, a stylist that just lost a little bit of their confidence because they didn't hit it out of the park and now they're going to be afraid to take another new, new client, and then you risk the reputation of the salon because that new client probably isn't going to come back in because they're not happy. Well, you, who should be getting the new clients are your seasoned stylists. But they're so freaking busy that they can't. They don't have any time to take new clients.
Speaker 1:So what this is going to do, you get these new stylists up and running quickly, fast. They can start taking the tent touch-ups, the haircuts, simple haircuts, until they get their their, their confidence, and you see that they can do more. Um, the smoothing systems cause they can get certified in that really, really quickly. You give them, those clients take them from your season stylist a level six touch-up. A new stylist can do Okay and explain this to the team. You're not just going to start robbing everybody from from their clients. You know. Explain how this works. So that way it opens up the new clients. The seasoned stylists get those and they get the bigger tickets too, because maybe it's a balayage or something like that, and then it gives them enough time to be able to take bigger ticketed things.
Speaker 1:You see where I'm going with that anyway. But you need a system, and so the education notebook provides that system and you don't have to create it because it's already done for you. Plus, you also get some other bonuses that I've thrown in there, like um, um, but the, the, the experience for clients. Um, it just gives you a really, really easy system for how to have every client have the same experience in the salon. It's kind of fun. Then I have also thrown in um, oh, how to create your own success plan as a salon owner, and that's that's kind of a game changer, believe it or not? And then I'm also going to include, of course, my 15 little things that it takes to be successful. That is just something that you can take. You can hang it up in your break room, you can put it in your handbook, you can. It's wonderful, and I think I've thrown in like 30 more little things that I've come up with over the years.
Speaker 1:So, anyway, I hope you take advantage of this course because, like I said, stylists, beauty school, beauty school people are going to beauty school and they're getting out of beauty school needing a place to go. They're not asking about booth rental anymore, they're not asking about solo salons, they are not asking to be by themselves. They are asking for collaboration, mentorship, education and a career, and you want to be that place that they come to to interview. Okay, you want to. You want to build a team.
Speaker 1:Anyway, I'm excited about this, and if you sense that there is this coming back to community feeling out there, let me know, let me know your thoughts. You know, if you're feeling lonely as a salon owner and you feel like you can't find anybody that wants to work in your salon, and you got this big lease to pay and give me a shout because I can give you some ideas on how to get them, how to get your salon even recognized in the community, because that's a huge thing too. You want to be the salon the stylists want to work, right, so, and you want to be ready for it when it happens, because it's going to happen People don't want to be in the salon suites anymore. I sense it. I sense it. Anyway, I hope this helps you, I hope you hope it gives you a little bit of like hope, hope. It gives you hope.
Speaker 1:Um, because I gotta say we have the best industry out there. We are our industry, the beauty industry. Being a hairstylist is the best career on the planet. I really, really believe that I mean we change so many people's confidence levels. We get to touch people. We get people trusting in us. We get to create. We get to listen to great music all day long. We get to touch people. We get people trusting in us. We get to create. We get to listen to great music all day long. We get to wear fun clothes. We get to be who we are and nobody really asks questions and we don't have to sit at a desk all day.
Speaker 1:So, look, you chose this career because of all those reasons. So you want to be ready for when the masses start coming back into the salon. I believe this is going to happen. I believe. So, anyway, you go out, make it a great day and always remember when you know better, you do better. Thanks for tuning in to All About Hair. If you loved this episode, hit, subscribe, leave us a review and share it with a fellow stylist or hair loving friend. You want more tips, tools and behind the scenes goodness, follow me on YouTube or head to my website at denisekeilitzcom. Yes, I know it's hard to spell, so don't worry, the link is in the show notes. Until next time, keep learning, keep creating and keep loving what you do.
