Building Salon Republic: Eric Taylor's Story
In celebration of Salon Republic's 25th anniversary, Donovan turns the table and brings our host Eric Taylor on as a guest! Eric shares his journey from Texas to California, detailing his experiences in sports, education, and the eventual pivot to entrepreneurship in the salon industry.
In celebration of Salon Republic’s 25th anniversary, Donovan turns the table and brings our host Eric Taylor on as a guest! Eric shares his journey from Texas to California, detailing his experiences in sports, education, and the eventual pivot to entrepreneurship in the salon industry. He discusses the challenges faced while building his first salon, the importance of mentorship, and the lessons learned along the way.
Donovan (00: 00)
Hey, Hair Gamers, this is Donovan, your producer of the Hair Game Podcast, and we have a special episode today where we are turning the tables. We have Eric Taylor as a guest today, and the day that this episode is dropping,
is the 25th anniversary of Salon Republic.
The Hair Game (00: 22)
Yes, how about that? I don't really like having the tables turned. I like turning the tables. I don't like the tables turned on me.
Donovan (00: 27)
Well,
don't worry, I won't make the questions too difficult.
The Hair Game (00: 37)
You are the
editor. So now you're the host and the editor. You hold all the cards.
Donovan (00: 44)
Complete utter control and you know, and this is you know, this is kind of looking behind the curtain This is my first time, you know showing I think showing my face probably on the YouTube side of it So people get to see I mean if people follow Slum Republic, they probably see me on the Instagram here there But yes, this is the ⁓ the mysterious Donovan that he references throughout the episodes
The Hair Game (00: 53)
Yeah, I know. It's pretty cool.
The listeners know Donovan, but they don't know all of Donovan. So it's nice that you're on here and they get to see your face. And before we go, before you get to turn the tables on me, I'd like the listeners to know that Donovan has a very special voice. It's one of those things that people don't know about Donovan, you're, I mean, you are, were a professional singer, right?
Donovan (01: 09)
Yep.
Aww.
Yeah, yep. Yep. I sang for performed professionally for about seven years on cruise ships around the US ⁓ Doing acapella. So, you know, those were the Well, you know, I've learned a few things over the years
The Hair Game (01: 40)
Yeah, that's why your voice is so silky.
So maybe you'll indulge us in just a quick tune before the end of the episode, just throwing it out there.
Donovan (01: 53)
my gosh,
we'll see what happens.
The Hair Game (01: 57)
Okay, so now you can turn the tables back.
Donovan (02: 00)
Great, well I want to start with just give us a brief history of you yourself, Eric Taylor, so people know a little bit more about you. Start with where you're from and your background, basically leading up to Salon Republic. What is Eric Taylor pre-Salon Republic?
The Hair Game (02: 16)
Eric Taylor, Pre-Salon Republic. I am from Dallas, Texas. My dad is first generation Italian from New York City. And my mom is kind of from the sticks in the countryside of Texas and as poor as poor can get. And my dad also raised very, very modestly.
And he found his way to Dallas with this company that he was working for a thousand years ago and met my mom and I popped out and I popped out as Eric DiGiacomo because my dad, like I said, is Italian. So I was born Eric DiGiacomo. DiGiacomo is a very common Italian name. If you ever… ⁓
care to figure it out, you can, if you Google search D Giacomo, there's 5 trillion D Giacomos in Italy. And it's loosely translated to of James D means of and Giacomo is like loosely James. kind of like Jameson would be a, an actual translation maybe, but, ⁓ it's a very difficult name to live with and English speaking countries, English speaking cultures, because
It's, it's got a space in it. D I space capital G I A C O. So growing up, I had teachers call me to walk a moly. I had, you know, the other kids called me some very, you know, derivations, ridiculous derivations of D Jock Mo. I was
Donovan (03: 55)
I'm sure
they're much worse than Juke Guacamole.
The Hair Game (04: 00)
Exactly.
There was de jockstrap. There was de this and de that. And, ⁓ so very difficult name to live with. and my, so my parents encouraged me strongly to change the name to something simpler between high school and college, which is kind of a natural inflection point in one's life. You know, you go off into a different kind of environment with different people. So it's easy to change your name then. And that's what I, that's what I did.
Donovan (04: 03)
There you go.
The Hair Game (04: 29)
Taylor, where did it come from? You know, was, I just kind of picked it out of a hat to tell you the truth. I mean, I wish I needed to develop some story out of thin air. I should ask Chet GPT to come up with a good story for me. There really isn't a very good story. I just thought that I liked the way it sounded and felt and wrote and looked and everything and I chose it. So it's kind of my adopted last name. Legally, it's my real last name. And you know, I exist in the world as Eric.
Taylor, know, ever since 18 years old, I'm almost 50 now. And, ⁓ however, my pre 18 year old friends and, and networks, they still call me, they actually really leaned into calling me De Jockamo after I changed it, of course, right? So, so I'm still called De Jockstrap and still called the Wacomoli with a certain percentage of my friends. ⁓
Donovan (05: 17)
Of course.
The Hair Game (05: 28)
Yeah, so let's see, I'm from Dallas and I grew up in a household where ⁓ both of my parents were pretty productive people. So my dad owned a real estate business, a very small real estate business, never had any employees. ⁓ He always did everything himself solo. He had his office there in the house and he… ⁓
let's see, at his peak, had five warehouses that he had bought, and he was running these warehouses himself. ⁓ very interestingly, with all the benefit of hindsight, being a business person now for the last many years, I really credit him for recognizing his own limitations. had… ⁓
His strengths were that he was pretty pragmatic. I think he had really good judgment. He knew what would work. He looked at a building here, a building there, and he chose the one that would work. And he was good at making it appealing so a tenant can come in. Oftentimes his tenants were things like auto repair tenants or like a storage company that would store
You know, like boxes or something. It's very unsexy, all of it, but, very practical. And, ⁓ but his limitations were that he had very low tolerance for pressure or, you know, things that he didn't like. ⁓ you know, he would get in these, these conflicts with the tenants. Let's say they stopped paying rent or let's say they screwed up. They would damage the building and take advantage of things. And he would get very upset.
And he, he, he, he lacked kind of that tolerance that's necessary when you're dealing with other humans who sometimes do things that piss you off and cost you money and cost you time and anguish. And so I think if he ever had an employee, he probably would have been a nightmare to work for. and, so I, he, he had the self-awareness to his great credit.
to keep things relatively simple. And so he never hired anybody. And what that meant was that my brother and I growing up were his de facto free labor. And so he would have my brother and I doing whatever. We would, you know, let's say a tenant and stiffed him and left, you know, a space and with a bunch of garbage in it. And he would send my brother and I over to the space or bring my brother and I to the space. And it was our job to clean out.
you know, this large warehouse and
Donovan (08: 17)
Sorry,
I thought that was going in a different direction that he was gonna send you and your brother out to like, you know, collect like strong men. Go break some ankles or kneecaps.
The Hair Game (08: 26)
That's funny. Well, he,
hundred percent would have done that if we were, if we, if he thought that we might be slightly capable of it, but given our, given our youth and, and, and, know, diminutive physical statures, um, we wouldn't have been very good at it. So what we were good at it, you know, let's say 10 years old up to 16, 17 years old, we were good at.
Donovan (08: 31)
Yeah.
Yeah
Yeah.
The Hair Game (08: 54)
sweeping a warehouse and cleaning up the garbage and doing all sorts of other things that were just necessary. And that was part of growing up. you know, I remember my parents, we had a yard and there were lots of hedges and everything. And it was my brother's and my responsibility to do the yard.
You know, if there was a Saturday where my friends were going off and playing, it didn't matter that I wanted to go do that. I had to trim the hedges and the hedge row was really long and it would take me probably two days straight. And so, you know, I would spend the weekend doing hedges when all my friends didn't have to do shit like that. You know, they could go off and play. And so, you know, it's I don't want to give the impression that this was like a tremendous adversity.
Because obviously, you know people deal with much more adverse things But it was more adversity than my friends had I that's for sure. ⁓ I Definitely, you know, there was some character building in there because my parents didn't F around with a lot of this stuff. It's like I had to do it didn't matter, you know, Texas it's 115 degrees, you know during the day and They didn't tell me when to do it
I just had to do it. So then I would complain at noon as I'm out there, you know, taking care of these things. And they would say like, well, if you don't like to do it in 115 degree heat, then wake up earlier. You know, it's that kind of thing. Dummy. And so there was a lot of things like that. ⁓ then I grew up with that, that I think were a little different than the other kids that I, that I went to school with. My parents did well enough to send me to a school that was
Donovan (10: 32)
Yeah. ⁓
The Hair Game (10: 46)
It was a private school, it was a Catholic school. ⁓ My high school was all boys. ⁓ We had to wear suits and stuff and there was discipline involved there, you know? ⁓ You couldn't eff around. And if you effed around, your quality of life went south fast, you know? So it's like you just learned that it was not in your best interest to eff around. So…
You might as well sit down and learn this calculus bullshit or else your life was going to go south fast, you know? Because nobody wants to learn that stuff. But you just, you figure it out, you know? ⁓ So my mom was also a highly productive person. She, she was born so poor. I don't even think they had any money, like zero money, not even a little money. It's like zero money. It's like they kill their own food kind of, you know, poor. ⁓
Like the my granddad my mom's dad built their own house built our house like physically built it from start to finish foundation all the way up there were gaps in the in the boards that make the walls and so when the wind would blow at night and blow it would blow right through the gaps in the walls and there was ⁓ There was like in some part of in one part of the house. She tells us there was a dirt floor and they would
Donovan (12: 02)
Bye.
The Hair Game (12: 11)
You know, and they didn't have beds and so they would sleep on the ground. And I think they eventually got a, ⁓ one of those things, like a furnace, like a little fireplace kind of contained thing so that it wouldn't, you know, catch the house on fire and burn it. And so that was how poor she grew up. And so my mom, my mom was no bullshit. You know, it's like, she has no patience for
Donovan (12: 34)
Yeah.
The Hair Game (12: 38)
kind of the luxuries of modern life. You know, she's in her 80s now, right? So that gives you some context. ⁓ But she has no tolerance for any kind of ⁓ complaining about anything that people complain about.
Donovan (12: 54)
No excuse that you could come
up with would compare to how she was raised. yeah, you didn't have a leg to stand on when it came to that. Yeah.
The Hair Game (13: 01)
nothing. Are you kidding me? No, I
mean, she ⁓ so so this was the environment that she was born in. And she had ambitions greater than those kind of around her. She went to a school with like eight people in it. You know, I mean, it's it's practically Little House on the Prairie stuff. I you know, obviously not that long ago, but that was kind of the environment country sort of stuff.
in the sticks in Texas. And my granddad was the kind of person who did everything himself. And he would go and buy cattle and raise the cattle and then get them bigger and then try to sell them for more and grow crops and stuff. So was pretty little house on the prairie. But she had greater ambitions. She wanted to go to a bigger city, which was Dallas.
And so she ⁓ eventually got a desk job somewhere and then, that was horrible. And there was, you know,
Oftentimes employees weren't treated very well, especially women employees weren't treated very well back then. So she wanted to get a better job. She eventually became a flight attendant at Braniff. For those old enough listening to the pod, you might remember Braniff, that seems like a thousand years ago now. So she wore those kind of poochy outfits in the 50s and 60s and.
Uh, to become a flight attendant was kind of a big deal, especially from, for somebody, you know, in the sticks. Cause all of a sudden you're, you're getting paid to fly around the world. You're going overseas. You're going to Hawaii. You're going to these extremely exotic places that many people in the environment from the environment that my mom was from never expected to experience. And so, um, she was able to kind of get herself, um, you know, or raise herself.
to the level where she was having these experiences. And so she met my dad as he was traveling for work on a flight after a flight. And ⁓ they settled in Dallas and then had my brother and I. ⁓ getting raised in this household, sorry. So my mom became an artist. So she stopped. ⁓
being a flight attendant because the hours were insane. You you'd be out of town for 10 days or whatever, and then back home for like one day and then out of town for another week. So she stopped doing that. And she thought of something that she could do while raising my brother and I in the house. And ⁓ she became an artist. She became an oil painter and her name is Frances Di Giacomo. She has a presence online, although it's kind of a primitive presence online.
But ⁓ she was rather successful, still is, still paints and sells her paintings for quite a bit of money. She's done a good number of portraits for famous people, know, ⁓ not necessarily paintings just of famous people, but famous people have commissioned her to paint them. ⁓ A lot ⁓ of ⁓ athletes, Jim Brown from the old days, Emmett Smith, Dallas Cowboy.
Roger Stabok, Nolan Ryan is a famous baseball player. She got commissioned to paint a Warren Burger who was a Supreme Court justice. She painted the King of Mongolia and a number of people. She became a painter for some kind of big, I guess you would call it a patron, a patron family, some big money kind of families in the South who paid her to paint portraits of them. ⁓
And she's painted a lot of landscapes and things like that. So rather successful, mean, like, you know, to, actually make money as an artist, like a, like that kind of an artist where you're painting like things that people don't have to buy. That's hard, you know? and I think she did that. She was able to do that primarily because of some of the things that I heard, you know, her talking about at dinner time growing up, which are things like.
It matters, the subject matter that she paints. It's like she can't paint whatever she wants. If she wants to actually sell the painting, she needs to paint something that people want to buy. And it sounds very obvious, but many artists are, they think that they should be able to just paint whatever comes into their inspiration and that somebody should buy it. And they should have, they should.
be able to make money doing that. Well, my mom kind of balanced this practicality with the ⁓ skill of the art and ⁓ probably selling 20 paintings a year, you know, and these are pretty expensive paintings. So, you I grew up learning these lessons on my dad, ⁓ kind of that very unsexy reality of a warehouse.
of the warehouse business and then the rather more exciting reality of the art business with all of its kind of artistry and creativity combined with kind of the pragmatic nature of it. You know, having to paint things that people actually want to buy. And I grew up thinking that I wanted to do something on my own too. My brother, who's four years older, had, I think the same philosophy.
Although he and I are quite a bit different. ⁓ He also wanted to do his own thing. So he became an architect and that was kind of his way of combining the desire to do something creative with the desire to and the expectation that one should be able to make a living doing this creative thing. so when I graduated, I went to college, I was pretty athletic, you know.
And by the way, I did pretty well in school. I, um, you know, a smart enough to kind of, I made it well in high school. was whatever. And then in college, was, um, uh, business. So I was, I first started in marketing and, know, in college, you can kind of start with one thing and then change it if you want. Uh, I started with marketing and.
Donovan (19: 33)
What'd you major in?
The Hair Game (19: 56)
through the first year of marketing classes, I was like, you know, this isn't that interesting to me. And then as I'm talking to the teachers, they're kind of outlining what life after college looks like for somebody who majored in marketing. And I'm like, I don't really like that idea very much. And it just seemed like a fricking lifelong grind kind of like.
like low paid and underappreciated and kind of that kind of a thing. And I was like, I don't think this is good. So I'm going to go over here to this business thing because I think it's more practical and then I can, I can kind of cram something creative into the practicality of business. And I think I'd learned already a lot about both
you know, a creative endeavor as well as a business endeavor, just with my parents being around. But I did the whole business thing. it was horrible. I hated school. I mean, I was good enough at it. I was fine. My grades were pretty good, but I hated it. And so there is a lot of tenacity that comes with, you know, hating something and doing it well, you know.
Donovan (21: 20)
Yeah.
The Hair Game (21: 22)
So, but I was also, I had this major part of my life that was sports. so, and before I got to college, my favorite sport was volleyball, but it wasn't terribly popular. ⁓ I played for the state boys, Texas state boys team called, it was called Tejas. And ⁓ so I was really good at volleyball. ⁓ But.
kind of the main sport that I was doing was baseball and I was achieving some things in baseball and so when it came to college time my parents are like you know you should be able to get a scholarship in college for baseball and I was like okay if you think so and so they worked pretty hard to to get me a scholarship I went to Pepperdine and Malibu
I applied to schools all up and down the West Coast. I was tired of Texas weather. It was just so God awful. You know, I, I joke that there's two weeks per year where the weather is good in Texas. And it's like once in the spring and once in the fall. And that's, that's still the truth. And by the way, like, you know, you want to talk about global warming or not? It was 115 in the summertime.
Donovan (22: 41)
Ha ha ha.
The Hair Game (22: 41)
You know,
in the mid nineties, just like it's 115 in the summertime now, you know, and, uh, and so it was, it was just horrible. And, and as a high schooler, I'm watching Baywatch, you know, David Hasselhoff is running down the beach with Pam Anderson. I'm like, that's what I want to do. You know, like F this ridiculously horrible, you know, too cold, too hot weather of Texas. And so, you know, my.
Donovan (22: 59)
You
The Hair Game (23: 10)
My dream was to go to California. And so I applied to a bunch of schools up and down the coast in California. And the idea was to use baseball to get to, ⁓ you know, to get the best situation in college. eventually Pepperdine took me and they actually had the best baseball team, which is kind of ironic. So a lot of the worst baseball teams didn't have any interest in me. So that just like, what does that tell you about life? You just got to turn over lot of stones, you know, and it's, I realized that
⁓ that my dad put a lot of work in behind the scenes of actually calling the coaches and stuff. And we would jump on the plane to go meet the baseball coaches when they were playing like local schools, like UT or something like that. We would fly down to Austin. And so eventually that worked and I got a scholarship to Pepperdine to play baseball. And by the time I got there though, they had just won the NCAA championship. So it was like kind of a big deal.
Donovan (24: 08)
Well,
yeah, that's a big deal.
The Hair Game (24: 09)
And, and so I got there and by the time I got there, I had hurt myself. senior year in, in, ⁓ high school, I was a pitcher and I developed a tendonitis issue in my rotator cuff and my right arm and right shoulder. And so it made it painful to actually do anything. So I got there and I was kind of a, I was like a loser recruit. I was like the worst, you know, they, they spent money and effort on me to recruit me, but.
Donovan (24: 34)
no.
The Hair Game (24: 39)
You know, as is the nature of sports, you know, sometimes you get hurt. And so I showed up and I was useless. And so I played for one year. I threw in three, three games, one inning per game. You know, I did fine, you know, for each inning. And, but, but it would take me weeks to get my arm to the, to the point where actually I could actually lift the arm above my head, you know, because the inflammation would come in and all that.
Donovan (24: 44)
Yeah.
The Hair Game (25: 09)
So I spent the whole first year pretty much in physical therapy. it was just like, like nobody, no freshmen in college, all of a sudden living on the beach, Pam Anderson and David Hasselhoff, just like right over there on the beach. And like, I'm in physical therapy every day. Like that was not my idea of how to do it. So I quit and ⁓ never looked back on athletics. ⁓ You know, I started surfing, but
But basically I just got really interested in, in making sure that, you know, I was going to find something that I really liked doing and, and then making sure that after I graduated from college in Malibu, California, that my lifestyle wasn't going to plummet, you know, because lifestyle is pretty damn good in college, you know, when, things are getting paid for. And, I had this like, you know, underlying anxiety of.
shit, I'm going to graduate in two years and what the hell am going to do? You know, and was watching some of my older friends get out, get jobs. Some of them liked their jobs. Some of them didn't like their jobs and stuff. ⁓ so I became very interested in looking at different, ⁓ different businesses and, I wanted to, I really wanted to start my own business.
Donovan (26: 31)
Well that leads me perfectly into my next question before the inception of Solano Public. Did you start or want to start any other businesses before Solano Public?
The Hair Game (26: 45)
So I looked at a whole bunch of different things. It's kind of like, you know, before you get married to a girl or boy, you want to, you know, kick the tires on a few and figure out, you know, what's compatible and all that. And I think that was the case for businesses as well. I mean, I had the… I knew I was going to be kind of dumb.
you know, 22 years old coming out of college, you don't know anything. It's like everyone talks about hair school, how you don't know anything when you come out of hair school. It's kind of the same with college. You don't really know anything. mean, they teach you a lot of theoretical things, but a lot of it is kind of ⁓ difficult to really figure out where the value is in the real world and all the soft skills that are necessary. But ⁓ I looked at…
I don't remember a lot of the details, but I mean, the salon business was one of the businesses I was looking at. I was, the reason that, you know, I happened upon it was because I was pretty close to my barber. He was a hairstylist really, but he was, he had a few guy clients and I was pretty close to him. I'd been going to him in Dallas for years and.
He did my family, it's probably a typical family situation where he like did my mom for years and so my dad just by default went to him and then the kids by default went to him and so I was going to him and in the college years I'm sitting there and I'm thinking like, all right, so there's 12 other people here in the salon, like how does this work? Like you have to, you know, I'm gonna pay 50 bucks for my haircut, do you have to?
kick 25 to the salon or how's that work? And it was a kind of a traditional booth rental salon. And I'm like, interesting. So you pay, you know, $250 a week to work here and there's 12 other people and you know, there's the owner over there. She's sitting at the front desk and you know, it was very typical setup. And I'd just gone to him for so many years that I just picked his brain for so long. I mean, probably 10 years.
I, you know, from the time that, you know, I first started kind of being observant about what was going on in that salon. And it was nice that, that I was able to go to the same salon because I was able to see changes over time and all that. And so that was, and I, I generally liked the, the nature of the creativity, you know, of the hair industry.
the people who are in the hair industry obviously are creative people and You know, I often kind of say that my nightmare would have been Becoming like an insurance salesman, you know And then I have to apologize to any insurance salesman who like to listen to our hair podcast Which I I assume there are none but I just in case there might be one I want to apologize to him ⁓ My sorry ⁓
Donovan (29: 59)
Sorry, Sal. Sorry, John.
The Hair Game (30: 04)
My nightmare was becoming an insurance salesman and doing something like excruciatingly boring that I would have no interest in. And the opposite of that in my mind was the salon business. Like, God, it's kind of fun. Like people are creative and cool and you know, they enjoy their clients and there's like this vanity aspect and in a good way, not a bad way. ⁓
You know, where people are, are made beautiful and there's like joy and satisfaction that comes from that. You know, they leave better and happier, more satisfied than when they came in and you know, how powerful is that? That's amazing. Like that the warehouse business doesn't have that, know, the insurance business doesn't have that or whatever other kind of nondescript, you know, bullshit business, ⁓ jobs there are out there. And, ⁓
So I had my eye on it probably from before I consciously thought about it. And then kind of fast forwarding to when I graduated from school, I was dating a girl in Dallas when I graduated. And I moved back in with my parents and her, and so I started going around town looking at salons. And I was trying to do, I was trying to learn more.
You know, because I didn't feel like I was, ⁓ I knew enough to open my own salon. ⁓ So I started going around to salons and I would walk in to just random salons. ⁓ Of course, the one that I had been going to for so many years, I'd gotten to know the owner and, and, ⁓ you know, I learned some there and I would walk in other salons and be like, you know, I'd just like to talk to the owner. And so a few of them were willing to sit down and talk to me.
And most of them looked at me like I was insane, like, why are you here? Why do you care? ⁓ You know, are you going to ask me for money or something? And and and then my really the inflection point was when my girlfriend's hairstylist moved to one of the first studio based salons. And my girlfriend, her name was Emily. Emily went and got her hair done.
by her hairstylist in her private studio for the first time. And Emily, you know, left us, she had a great time. She left the salon. She had graduated and was living at her parents' house, which is right down the street from my parents' house, which is very, very convenient and cheap. And she would get on the landline, because we're talking about 1998, and she would call me.
And I would say, she told me about this new environment that her hairstylist went to and how amazing it was, how happy she was, how she had her, you know, she painted the walls her favorite color of whatever, and she was playing her favorite music and had pictures of her kids up, you know, all over and ⁓ she was controlling her own schedule and ⁓ she sold products to Emily and Emily bought the products and
She's like, she's, never seen her so happy and I've known her for all these years. And so I thought, my God, that's so interesting. And it was literally five minutes from my parents' house. So I jumped in the car and drove down there and I walked in the salon and 10 feet in the salon, looked around, I'm like, my God, this is for me. Like I know exactly what they're doing here. And I think I know exactly why they're doing it.
And a guy walks up to me, his name is Keith, and he asked if I needed help. And I said, I lied to him right out of the gate. said, I'm looking for a haircut. And so he walked me around, introduced me to a few people. Nobody could see me because they're busy. But I got their information. And then by the time we kind of made our way back to the front of the salon, I'm like, so here's the
here's the real deal. You know, I just graduated from college and like, I really like the salon industry and I'm not a hairstylist, but ⁓ I really like it here. And ⁓ do you mind if I just hang around with you? Like I'll, I'll roll around with you and you don't have to pay me. I'm living with my parents. I don't have any expenses. And so I did that for about a year and he was my mentor. ⁓ So within that year,
I learned a lot of things. learned how to make hairstylists happy and successful. Well, I should say it this way. I learned what makes hairstylists happy and successful. And I learned that them having control over their environment without a lot of the difficult things related to going out to a storefront and opening your own.
thousand square foot salon and putting in stations and things like that. ⁓ I learned just how great them having control of their own spaces. And I learned how all of their personality and creativity could shine and they can service their clients better and they can have a better quality of life and make more money. And…
Donovan (35: 39)
How developed was the concept? Did they have individual built out studios? How far along in the studio suite model was it at that point?
The Hair Game (35: 50)
So this was 1999 and it was pretty well developed. so Keith, my mentor, put up his first salon, I believe about 10 years before that. He was a barber by trade and he had the ambition to open his own barber shops, which he did in Lubbock, Texas, or Amarillo, Texas. And I think he got up to five barber shops.
And you know, small barber shops with five, six, seven, maybe 10 people max. And he said that his life became, it went from, ⁓ servicing his clients and the things that he was good at and liked doing to constant conflict, dispute resolution, you know, between the barbers and the shop or the hairstylist. Cause it wasn't just barber. He had a hairstylist in there too.
it constant conflict, mayhem, difficulty, people mad at each other and things like that. And he's like, okay, so I wanted this. I wanted to have my own, my own shop, but I didn't realize that I was going to go from doing the thing that I liked to doing a bunch of stuff I hate. And so he's like, but you can't just like.
Donovan (37: 02)
Hahaha
The Hair Game (37: 15)
not do it anymore. I'm like, when you do this, you commit to something for a long period of time. So he's like, ⁓ I'm going to try to put barriers between, you know, the beauty professionals. And so it started with, ⁓ I don't remember the details, but it started with probably like a curtain or something. And then he eventually
Donovan (37: 37)
Yeah.
The Hair Game (37: 39)
He started putting like walls, like actually, you know, with studs and drywall and everything, he started putting walls in between the stations. And he realized that the more freedom and ⁓ independence and the more of, you know, kind of their own space that he could give to the beauty professionals, the more they thrived and the fewer conflicts there were. And, and so he, ⁓
He was doing this across his locations and pretty much did it with all of them. And then he's like, okay, but you know, the shops were not really created to do this. I think I can build a ⁓ purpose built facility where people have their own space. It's not rocket science. And they'll have a little more space and like the dimensions of the area will be better. And I can put in like plumbing and stuff.
And so he did that. put his, opened the first studio salon in Amarillo, Texas. And I want to say it was like 1989, 1988 or something. He went into a grocery store, a former grocery store that had failed. And I think it was a big space. I think it was 15,000 square feet or 20,000 square feet in Amarillo, Texas. I mean, you can imagine.
You know, we have 20,000, we have 20, we have a 26,000 square foot salon with Salon Republic right now, but that's in Beverly Hills, California. I mean, there's, you know, tens of thousands of beauty professionals within just a couple of miles of there. Amarillo, Texas doesn't have anywhere near that many people. And so to build such a large salon of a new kind, mean, God, you know, the ball, the, I'm not going to say that. ⁓
You know, the risk that he took was crazy. But it worked. So he built a beauty supply in the front part of it, similar to the beauty supplies that we have at Salon Republix, although much larger, and built studios within the rest of the space. And it was very successful and people loved it. So he ran it for a couple of years and then he's like, I'm going to the big city. So he moves to
⁓ Dallas and he put up his first location and I think 89 or 90, 1990. And so by the time I met him, I think he had built maybe four locations and he was doing well. ⁓ He liked what he was doing. The beauty professionals loved their studios and everything was awesome. so I, well, I shouldn't say everything. Obviously, the normal conflicts that you have in business, but.
It just seemed to be a model that the customer, the beauty professional enjoyed so much and the clients. The clients, to have that one-on-one time with their hairstylist versus what you get in kind of a traditional open salon, the clients loved it so much more. And it was so obvious to me. I was like, I told him after some period of time ⁓ rolling around with him ⁓ unpaid, I was like, Keith,
You know, I think I want to do this. I'm not going to do this here in Dallas because I would be competing with you, but I think I'm going to, I'd like to put up my own salon and somewhere else. And I think I want to do it in Los Angeles because I know LA I've been there for four years ⁓ during school. And so I, ⁓ as I like to say, I dumped the girlfriend and I moved out because I was still dating Emily. ⁓ Emily wanted to get married. What's that?
Donovan (41: 22)
no. Thanks Emily. Peace.
Thanks Emily. Bye.
The Hair Game (41: 27)
Bye. So
Emily went, no, Emily was great. She wanted to get married and I was like 22, 23. She was the same. were babies. And I had no income. I was like, how do we get married with no income? You know, this isn't like the 1940s, you know, that all of her friends are getting married and like these ridiculous things that were like.
⁓ One of her best girlfriends got this huge engagement ring and showed it to me. I'm like, you know, okay, so Johnny didn't buy that ring. know, Johnny, Johnny got out of college three minutes ago and she's like, well, Johnny's parents bought the ring. And I'm like, that's just embarrassing. Like, you know, you're not even ⁓ a, Johnny's not even an adult yet. I'm not an adult. You're not an adult. It's we're too young to get married. And so, you know, we need to build a little bit of a foundation in our lives. And then we get married.
Donovan (42: 10)
Oh boy. Oh boy.
The Hair Game (42: 24)
Not that I want to break up or whatever, but I'm like, so I really want to put up my first salon and I think it would be great. I think Los Angeles would be the place. And she's like, well, I'm not going to LA unless you engage me. And I'm like, well, I'm not going to engage you until we spend more time together, you know, a couple more years.
So, and I'm gonna be in LA, so LA's awesome. You know, she had been visiting me for a few years, you know, and I understood her perspective on that, totally. But we were not seeing eye to eye on it. So that was it for Emily, bye. So then I went out to LA and ⁓ took me about a year to year and a half to put up the first Lawn Republic.
Donovan (43: 06)
Yep.
The Hair Game (43: 19)
And that was in ⁓ Studio City, which is just north of Los Angeles.
Donovan (43: 24)
How did you choose that first location?
The Hair Game (43: 27)
⁓ I remember exact locations that I was looking for. I probably had five locations kind of right up to the end before I was gonna sign a lease and make a commitment on one. And I remember the exact locations. To this day when I drive by one of them.
You know, inevitably if somebody's in the car, I pointed out to them. My wife knows exactly which located because I've I pointed out to her 15 times 30 times which locations I was looking at the studio city location. I think I thought had the right mix of everything great area, you know, high incomes, free parking, nice parking, convenient parking, decent price on the space. So I didn't have to charge the beauty professionals too much.
enough windows studios to make people happy who felt like they had to have windows, all those things. And that's really what it boils down to. And it's kind of the same today. 25 years later, not really sure much of that has changed. Maybe as Ebden flowed a little bit here and there, but the essence of it is still the same. And so that space…
We're years in that space and it's still a good space. It's been improved over the years by the landlords. Unfortunately, the shopping center traded several times to new landlords and every time it trades, it trades at a much higher price and that means the property taxes and the expenses go up for us along the way. ⁓ So that's just the nature of it. ⁓
In the beginning, I thought I knew what I was doing. I didn't know what I was doing. I had the benefit of having Keith as a mentor. He answered a lot of questions for me. He guided me as much as he could. But I still just did so many things wrong. So many ridiculous things. You don't know what you don't know, right? And so kind of one of my favorite anecdotes was
Donovan (45: 41)
Yeah.
The Hair Game (45: 45)
when, ⁓ so we're building it out and actually I'm going to start with, with an earlier one. So I chose a contractor and the contract that I signed with the contractor wasn't very good because I didn't know what I was doing. And so there were chunks, there were weeks of time when I wouldn't see one worker in the space. And so we opened late, you know, which upset people and
cost me money I didn't have and all that. And then kind of closer to that opening date, I had bought styling chairs and shampoo bowls and shampoo chairs, all that kind of stuff. ⁓ I had contracted with the company to ship these things to the space. And the salon space was on the second floor, right on Ventura Boulevard, a very busy street. And so the truck arrives one morning.
with all the stuff in it and I'm there ready to go, know, ready to, to, you know, tell them where to put the boxes. And the dude rolls up on the street and he's like, all right, here you go. And he basically just, you know, opens up the tail of this enormous 18 wheeler and he's like, ⁓ and he's like, all right, you know, have at it. And I'm like, have it what? And he's like, well, these are your boxes and you know, you
take them out and take them where you take them. And I'm like, what do you mean? And it's just me. And there's like, I think there are like 80 boxes or something. And each one was fucking heavy, right? Like a styling chair, you know, it's like metal, a base, you know, a pump weighs like, I don't know, 75, 80 pounds. And ⁓ he's like, no, you have to take it. And so it's just like, nobody told me that.
I just assumed that somebody was going to take all the boxes into the salon. And so I think it took me five, six hours. And I swear to God to this day, I think my back problems came from that one incident where I had to carry every single box. I didn't even have a dolly.
Donovan (47: 55)
Wow.
I was gonna ask if you even had a dollar, no? You didn't even give me, didn't, no.
The Hair Game (48: 01)
I didn't even have a dolly.
No, he didn't have that. Well, like he wanted to go. He wanted to leave. Like he, he, did not going to sit there for five hours. So he helped me take the boxes out of the truck and he was pissed off about it only because he realized that if he didn't help me take them out of the truck and put them on the sidewalk on Ventro Boulevard, that he was going to be there all day. And he had other things he had to go pick up. Right.
So he helped me put them, we basically stacked them along Ventura Boulevard, probably eight feet high, these boxes stacked on each other, all the way down, maybe a hundred feet along Ventura Boulevard. And with the traffic rolling by fast and everything, it was just such a good example of how stupid you can be when you do things like this.
You know, college doesn't teach you shit like this. Like you only learn stuff like this when you do it, you know? And it's like, it's like street smarts, right? Versus book smarts. Book smarts is bullshit. Like useless practically. ⁓ And so anyway, I eventually got everything done, but that was just a good example. And I probably have another hundred examples of stuff just like that. You know?
Donovan (49: 26)
Well, I was gonna ask
you about a Solana Public Horror Story, since we always do horror stories. It looks like we got to it a little early, but that's okay. We gave him a little ⁓ early taste. That's probably a one,
The Hair Game (49: 35)
Mmm. Yeah, that was a pretty good one. I'll…
As I'm talking, I'll noodle on… I mean, we have plenty. my gosh. Yeah, they're starting to flood in, so I got others if you want to.
Donovan (49: 44)
Yeah. So…
So how long before you felt like it was working at the Studio City location? Enough to the point where you were ready to expand.
The Hair Game (49: 57)
It worked immediately. Pretty much worked immediately. Now in the process of getting the thing from conception to open, know, that process is extremely uncomfortable and it's still uncomfortable. You know, we have 41 locations now, 25 years in, we have about 80 employees, 70 employees.
And we have, you know, construction team and, know, we have people who know what to do. ⁓ obviously I don't have to do all those ridiculous things like I just described, but I still have tremendous concern, worry, and anxiety for every new opening that we have. ⁓ so back then it was almost like the ignorance was a little bit of bliss because
While I was very worried, you know, that it wasn't going to work, that this new concept wasn't going to be accepted. ⁓ I didn't just, I didn't know just how many things I had to worry about. So, there's, you know, it can be rather excruciating that process like internally. ⁓ so I remember early on, I think my attorney told me that it was a stupid idea.
Donovan (51: 23)
You're a tono. ⁓
The Hair Game (51: 25)
Yeah,
no, yeah, my accountant said something akin to why would you do that? the city of Los Angeles who had to grant my permit, you know, construction documents and give me the right to open business, you know, as it, as it works, ⁓ you know, in any kind of, ⁓ sophisticated society, like you've got a
develop plans, spend a lot of money, takes a lot of time, then you send them to the city and then you need approval. And so the city took forever and I didn't have enough money to wait forever. And then they came back to me and they're like, no, you can't do this. And I'm like, what do mean I can't do this? Like I have a lease. I have to pay rent for 20 years. I'm, you know, I'm bound to this responsibility.
Donovan (52: 10)
Why not?
The Hair Game (52: 21)
And by the way, I think I had enough cash for like three months. know, like I didn't have any margin of error, you know? And so it was this horrible process you're making me, you're reminding me of all, you're making me remember all these horrible things. And as the story was told to me by the person in building and safety in 1999, ⁓
an attorney for the city had a like woke up in the middle of the night, all of a sudden concerned that this that I was trying to do something illegitimate and woke up in the morning and said, we're not going to allow this. And so they came back to us and said, no, you can't you can't do this. And so that led to a process of I don't know how long.
It felt like a year. It wasn't a year. It's probably a month and a half where we had to go back and forth and promise this and do that. We had to make changes to the, to the inside of the salon and, all sorts of things that, you know, cost more money and took more time and da da da da da. And, you know, it kind of reminds me of, some of like the business principles that sometimes you hear people talking about. ⁓ you know, there's Murphy's law.
Right? You know Murphy's Law? What's Murphy's Law? I'm gonna turn the tables on you. Do you remember that one?
Donovan (53: 49)
Mm-hmm.
Well isn't it Murphy's Law is like, isn't that anything that can happen will happen? Or something along those lines?
The Hair Game (54: 01)
That's right. So anything that can go wrong will go wrong. So you ever heard of Schultz's law?
Donovan (54: 08)
I'm not, no, I'm not familiar with Schultz.
The Hair Game (54: 12)
Shultz's law says that Murphy was an optimist. All right. So that was, I learned that one pretty early on and my mentor, Keith, that was his favorite thing. That was his favorite thing. so you learn pretty fast that you do what you can to ensure that things go right and then you at the same time prepare yourself for when things go wrong. And I didn't do that early on.
Donovan (54: 16)
Nice.
The Hair Game (54: 40)
You know, but that's a really important part of like navigating the world. so anyway, there were those challenges, ⁓ you know, when we opened, ⁓ so yeah, everybody said that it wouldn't work. People like advisors were like, no, that's dumb and never work. I remember one of the first hairstylists that came in. ⁓
Yeah, I mean, she came in and she was like, ⁓ you're never going to get 45 hairdressers to work next to each other. And I'm like, okay, well, thank you. Thanks for the advice. Bye. So, so she, she chose not to, take a studio, but, I, I, after we opened, it became very, very clear, very fast that it was going to be great. And
Donovan (55: 21)
haha
The Hair Game (55: 36)
I think out of the 40 studios, we still have 40 studios there. Out of the 40 studios, think I'd 20 people had taken studios and they were good people and they had good businesses. And one of them had some high profile people and like celebrities and stuff. And I thought, oh my God, this is awesome. So awesome. So I worked the front desk for about, let's see, two years, two or three years. I was 80 hours of work.
80 hours a week in the salon. I didn't have enough money to lay all the flooring for the studios. So as people rented studios, I had to like run to Home Depot and buy whatever floor was on sale, you know, within my, you know, price range, which was zero. ⁓ And then I would throw the floor in the back of my car. My car would like go low riding down the street ⁓ to the salon. And then I would
carry all the tile, you know, up one by one, 20 trips into the salon. And then I would lay the floor and I didn't know how to lay the floor, but I learned and ⁓ because I didn't have the money to pay anybody. I had to clean the bathroom myself. I did everything myself for the first year. And then slowly but surely I was able to get enough money to ⁓ pay for a janitorial service.
you know, to pay for, you know, I met a handyman, this guy. ⁓
⁓ Rafael. So Rafael was my first handyman. He was a kid who was involved in the gangs in Canoka Park. And I met him through his dad who worked for the general contractor that I'd used. And his dad was worried about his kid and I hired his kid as a handyman. And so Rafael, yeah, he was a good kid. ⁓ You know, for all the time that I knew Rafael, he was a good kid.
When he left to go home, he was not such a good kid. He was banging, I guess they call it. He was running around with his crew doing bad things. I remember there was a point where I actually offered him a full-time job, even though it kind of would have eaten into the profit that the salon was making. I offered him a full-time job.
Because I felt like having the accountability of showing up on time and kind of exposing him to, you know, a healthier way of life would be good for him and kind of keep him out of trouble. And he turned it down. then I, and, he felt, I think he felt ashamed that he turned it down, that he chose that path, you know, the fork in the road, so to speak.
you know, you don't, somebody like him doesn't get a lot of opportunities like that. I was trying to give it to him and he turned it down and I think he was a little ashamed and he didn't want to come back and do any work on the side for me. And I hear, I heard that, ⁓ things didn't go well for him after that. So, ⁓ but the time that I knew him, he was a good kid and, and he was a hard worker and, he was good to his daughter and stuff like that. So, you know, I remember things like that.
⁓ it being in the salon, 80 hours a week, you see a lot of things there's, we had a hairdresser who was down in the parking garage blowing cocaine while his client was, you know, being, was getting processed in his studio and her scalp started burning and you know, she, she ran down the hallway and bunch of other hairdressers and I ran over there and you know, rinsed her out and took care of her. And then I went down into the.
parking garage to find the hairstylist doing cocaine in his car and kicked him out of the salon. You know, there are things like that. I mean, there have been wild things happen. So I'll just stop there, I think.
Donovan (59: 46)
Yeah, those are many, many stories that I'm sure you've heard throughout the years or seen.
The Hair Game (59: 52)
Yeah, I don't want to implicate anyone or anything.
Donovan (59: 57)
Alright, so that's pretty good. I think we're gonna stop right there. We're gonna make this a two-parter because we got a lot more to cover. ⁓ I guess you are important enough, Eric, to become a two-part episode. Congratulations. So, yeah, we'll, ⁓ we'll come back next week to finish up our conversation.
The Hair Game (1: 00:03)
Yes! I got a two parter.
Thank you.
Look forward to that.
