Content Strategies for Stylists w/Jodie Brown

In this Episode of the Hair Game Podcast, @itsjodiebrown, shares her journey from being a hairdresser to becoming a global marketing educator in the beauty industry. She discusses the evolution of her podcasting journey, the challenges faced by beauty professionals in marketing, and the importance of having a strong online presence.

Jodie emphasizes the significance of Google Business listings and strategic content creation while also highlighting the unique experiences offered through her retreats in Italy. Throughout the conversation, she provides valuable insights and advice for beauty professionals looking to enhance their marketing strategies and grow their businesses.

Key Topics:

• The Journey from Hairdresser to Educator

• Transitioning to Marketing and Social Media

• Facing challenges in the Beauty Industry

• The Impact of COVID-19 on Career Choices

• The importance of Having an Online Presence

• The Retreat Experience in Italy

• Future Trends in Marketing for Beauty Professionals

The Hair Game (00:00) Hey Jody, how are ya? Jodie Brown (00:01) I am good, how are you, Eric? The Hair Game (00:03) I’m doing great. So for those who don’t know you, you’re a hairdresser turned brand and marketing educator for the beauty industry. You have a podcast. And I was just saying to Jodi before we started, I love interviewing podcasters because they don’t have any of that kind of anxiety that you get with a lot of guests. And it’s just, ⁓ you know, typically like you’ll have better internet connection, right? There’s like the simple things. Jodie Brown (00:30) You The Hair Game (00:31) You you’ve got a better kind of setup. You’ve got a microphone. So there’s less like technical problems, fewer technical problems that we have to, you know, resolve before we start recording. Anyway, you know, after almost 500 episodes, we’ve, I’ve really come to appreciate those with a great internet connection and, you know, good speakers and microphones and stuff. Jodie Brown (00:34) Yep. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, no, I totally agree. I have been through not quite at 500 episodes, but a few hundred and definitely like a lot more technical problems than I thought starting the podcasting game. The Hair Game (01:05) Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, there’s a few, there’s a few things you need to resolve, a few kinks to get out. ⁓ So you’ve got a podcast and the podcast is called what now? Jodie Brown (01:13) Totally. I actually have two podcasts. So my original podcast that I started back in 2020 is called Hairstylist Rising. And then my newer podcast, so it’s been about a year and a bit, we just rebranded to the Sawed After Educator podcast. The Hair Game (01:19) Huh? Very, very good. Okay, I couldn’t imagine having two. So hold on, you have two podcasts that you’re producing content for? ⁓ my gosh. Jodie Brown (01:42) Yes, and so the Thought After Educator podcast is a weekly podcast. Initially, I had big dreams that they would both continue to be weekly shows. However, I’m sure I don’t have to explain why that didn’t work out. ⁓ And so… The Hair Game (01:54) I mean, really quick, let me interrupt you. One of my taglines as a joke for this podcast is, these weeks come quickly. Jodie Brown (02:05) Yes! The Hair Game (02:06) It’s like the hair game podcast, these weeks come quickly. Jodie Brown (02:11) If that is not the truth. So the hairstyle uprising podcast is now a season based show So that is that kind of of chunks throughout the year The Hair Game (02:18) Got it. That’s cool. I love that. That makes a lot of sense. And the reality of how we produce the podcast here is we’ll have some some bursts where in a given week we’ll do two or three recordings, you know, to get something in the pipeline. I know some people will do like a flurry. They’ll spend three days and they’ll produce 15 episodes and then they’ll roll those out over the following months and stuff like that. I actually don’t like to do that that much because Jodie Brown (02:24) Mm. The Hair Game (02:50) I feel like as time evolves, I like to be a little bit more in tune with the way that things are going, you know, especially during the COVID years and coming out of the COVID years, it was like, I wanted to do it, you know, right on time. Um, all right. So you’ve got the podcast. You also have a retreat, uh, called escape to elevate. And if I’m not mistaken, your last one was in Italy. And why was I not invited to this Italian retreat? Jodie Brown (02:56) great. It was, yes, our last one. The Hair Game (03:20) Ha Jodie Brown (03:20) Well, guess what, we have another one coming up in 2026 on the same villa. The Hair Game (03:24) I’ll be waiting for my invite. That’s amazing. my God. I want to talk about that. Okay. So let’s just start from the beginning. Where were you from? Where do you live? Why did you get into hair? Cause you are a hairstylist and then how did you make it to the marketing world? Jodie Brown (03:39) Yeah, I Ooh, okay, I’ll try to make a very, very long story short, er. But basically, I got into the hair industry. I was originally born in England. My mom was a hairstylist and salon owner back in the UK. And she literally started as a shampoo girl when she was like 11, because I guess that was a thing back then. She bought her first salon at 21. so I always like, people think I’m joking when I say that I… teething on perm rods, but that is fully factual. I was in the salon with my mom when I was like two weeks old when she was going back to work as a business owner. That was just kind of the reality of it. And then I now live in Canada. we moved over to Canada when I was, I think it was in like 99 for the last time. We went back and forth a couple of times and I knew from being probably about two years after that, that I would end up being a hairstylist. I saw my mom love her job so much and also beyond that, be able to create a really beautiful life for us working part time when she was older. So I was like, okay, this is, know, when she was done with salon ownership, I saw so many different facets of the industry from a really young age and I’ve always been very creative, very artistic and so that was kind of the way that I viewed the industry as getting paid for creating art. all day. I also loved how fast-paced and ever-changing it was. It doesn’t really give you much of an opportunity to be bored in their industry because things are always evolving, right? So, similar to what I love about the marketing space. And so I finished hair school when I was 17. I started working behind the chair. did an apprenticeship, which I know there’s varying versions of that across the US and Canada. I worked in a salon and kind of learned the craft there as well as going to school for like short periods of time. And that was kind of my entry into the beauty industry. over my, was working behind the chair in the beauty industry for 15 years by the time I officially stepped away in 2020 to go full time into my online business and marketing. And I was a commission stylist. I was an independent stylist. I actually worked in sales at a distributor for a very short period of time before I had my son. So I saw all sorts of sides of the industry. The Hair Game (06:18) I really love that that you went to work as a salesperson for distributor, given that sales is like anathema to so many of us in this industry. Tell us how that was. Jodie Brown (06:30) So I am thinking back now. Let me give some context. I was 24. So I’m gonna think back to how I actually got into this. I was moving. And I think what had happened at the time is my now brother-in-law was actually dating someone who worked in sales. And since I was very, very young, I was googling how do I get a job on a cruise ship when I was 18, when I’d just gotten into the industry. So being able to travel and being able to work from anywhere looked… really appealing to me. ⁓ So I found a company when I was moving cities, ⁓ I found a company that was hiring for a sales rep position and the territory involved like the Canadian Rockies. It was just a really great territory. And I’ve always been good at sales. Like even when I was an apprentice, like I was like, like, know, when your salons would run like sales competitions and like have targets and stuff, I would win them. all the time. And so it’s like, I think I’ll be good at this. I know that I like to travel. So that was kind of what I went into. I started dating my husband and moved to another ⁓ city. And so I switched to working in sales in another company and I really loved it. I thought it was really cool being able to connect with, like you said, the more corporate side of the industry. ⁓ It also introduced me to working with educators because I was going to ⁓ I was going on road trips and taking educators from different brands with me. And so it was a really cool kind of part of my career, but I realized relatively quickly that it wasn’t something I wanted to do for the long term. ⁓ And in my personal case, I ended up getting pregnant with my son and then it just didn’t make sense to go back to that type of role afterwards. But there was… The Hair Game (08:14) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Jodie Brown (08:27) A lot of it that I loved, I loved the actual sales part. I didn’t love the ⁓ sales position, we’ll say, like that piece of it. So that was kind of what it was like for me. I think there was a lot of highs and there was also a lot of like, know, also at the end of the year when you’re like, okay, I’m seeing how much this actually cost me to be in sales. I’m not sure this is something that I want to continue long-term. And I’m sure that’s very different. The Hair Game (08:55) interesting. Jodie Brown (08:56) depending on the company that you’re working with, but that was my experience. The Hair Game (09:00) Okay, very good, very good. Okay, so after that, you went back behind the chair. Jodie Brown (09:05) Yes, I did. one salon owner actually that I knew, well she was the manager at a salon I’d worked at for a while, she opened a salon. And so she reached out to me and was like, would you consider coming back super part time? I know you just had a baby, but like, would you consider coming back? And by that point I was very ready to get out of the house a little bit more. So I agreed to go back on a part time basis. And I had moved out of town at this point, so I had like a 40 minute commute to the salon. And when I started that salon, it was, I hadn’t worked, like we discussed, I was in sales, I had moved a couple times, I hadn’t worked in that city in five years. I didn’t have any sort of clientele base to go back to. And that salon was in an under construction area, was literally no, none of the things that I was used to when it comes to building a clientele, when I got into the industry, it was very much like what salon you worked at, know, handing out cards, like time, referrals, that kind of thing. When I went back, it was in 2015, which was kind of when social media was starting to play a bigger role in the industry. Yeah, exactly, and so. The Hair Game (10:19) Yeah, Instagram. Jodie Brown (10:24) I would say for my area, I was definitely one of the early adopters in that. So I started listening to podcasts on my commute and I was like obsessed with learning as much as I could about marketing. I don’t even know, I wasn’t aware of any at the time, but I don’t even know if there were any hair podcasts in 2015. The Hair Game (10:44) No, not yet. So Gordon Miller, I credit him. I’d be surprised if I was wrong about this, but I’m pretty sure Gordon was the first one to do a podcast. He was running American Salon at the time and he called his podcast American Salon Stories. And I knew Gordon and I listened to the podcast and then I started the Hair Game podcast. And by the way, this was 2000, oh my God, if Gordon’s listening to this, he’s gonna get mad at me if I get this wrong. I think he started in 2016. Maybe Gordon, you started in 2015, but I’m thinking it was 2016. And then I started the Hair Game podcast at the end of 2017, which was August of 2017. So it was right in the beginning. And I’m pretty sure I was the second one. But again, could be wrong. Maybe I missed something out there, but yeah. Jodie Brown (11:19) you Okay. Mm-hmm. Wow, that’s amazing. Right. Yeah, so you know all about being an early adopter then. I think in multiple ways. ⁓ But yeah, so I was listening to digital marketing podcasts because that was kind of what was available at the time. ⁓ you know, All My Marketing Made Easy, Jenna Kutcher’s show, there was a podcast called Being Boss. So there was kind of more marketing specific, like entrepreneurial type podcasts. And I was taking what I was learning there. The Hair Game (11:46) Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yep. Yeah. Right. Jodie Brown (12:08) and applying it to Instagram because there was no like go buy a course in how to do Instagram for hairstylists at that time. And if there was, I was not aware of it. So I was very much like trying to absorb what I could when it came to marketing and then use the free platform because I had a daycare bill, my husband was doing an apprenticeship, we were very young when I my son and. You know, it was one of those things where I was like, I need to build a clientele faster than I ever have before. And now there’s tools where I can do that. And so that was kind of my entry into the marketing world was learning how to attract clients for my own chair, behind the chair, working as a stylist. It was cool too, because that was kind of when the balayage, you know, wave was taking hold of the industry. So. I came back and I was like, this is fun, this is cool, I wanna do this, so I was learning that and then like almost niching down without really knowing what I was doing at the time until I started to learn what I was doing and get more intentional about it. So that was kind of how I got into the world of marketing behind the chair. And then just to kind of like fast forward till 2020 on that, I realized… you know, over that next five years, I was loving the marketing part more than I was loving the hair part. And I, you know, was getting a lot more into, ⁓ like I was getting asked a of questions. I was really getting into that world of like being kind of like a go-to person for the hairstylist I knew when it came to like using Instagram to grow. And so when 2020 happened, I don’t, I still don’t know what was going through my brain. Cause when I say this like out loud, I’m like, The Hair Game (13:31) Interesting. Jodie Brown (13:55) what we shut down in Canada and I literally a month later after doing a lot of soul searching reached out to the person I was renting a chair from and I was like, I’m stopping doing hair and I’m going to start doing social media as my full time job. So I let go of like my entire clientele and I went all in on in 2020 and that’s kind of the rest is history, I guess. Yeah. The Hair Game (14:21) Interesting, very interesting. I wonder if COVID had not happened, what would have happened? You might have kept going, because it’s hard to let go of a nice clientele who’s providing a lot of income and providing your lifestyle. Jodie Brown (14:27) Yeah. Yep. You know, I think you’re absolutely right. And I think that I don’t know what would have happened if it never happened. Because what to me, COVID did is it kind of removed the illusion of security, right? Because anything can happen. Like when you’re doing hair, like I could have broken my wrist and the same thing could have happened, right? I wouldn’t have been able to work something along those lines. And so for me, it really like illuminated something that I had really thought was like a secure, The Hair Game (14:56) Yeah. Jodie Brown (15:05) continuous bet and when you are an independent stylist, if you stop working, you’re not making money, right? So it really gave me the space to, I guess, assess what I was doing and also like knowing that I didn’t wanna have two jobs. Like I had a family and I was really passionate about this thing. it wasn’t. even that I didn’t like doing hair anymore. I still like doing hair. was still doing good hair and loving my clients and everything. It was more that I had space to pursue something else because of the shutdown and that cemented my love for that new thing, if that makes sense. The Hair Game (15:48) Yeah, no it does. How long were you guys shut down in Canada? And I’m sorry, which city? Jodie Brown (15:54) So I was working in St. Albert, which is kind of a, it’s a ⁓ outlier of Edmonton. So Western Canada, ⁓ it’s in Alberta. So just kind of like, yeah. So we were shut down for, I want to say it was at least a month, six weeks initially. So it was a long time. It was not a short period of time. The Hair Game (15:59) Okay. I mean, we were shut down almost a year. well, in California, yeah. Jodie Brown (16:24) Wow. Okay, right. So, you know, there was like on and off times, I started working from home, like relatively quickly into it. So I’m probably not the best source of like facts for how long we were actually shut down. Yeah. So, ⁓ and you know, The Hair Game (16:38) Yeah, you’re not the only one, yeah. Yeah, the shutdowns, all it meant was that it pushed the industry underground. Yeah. Jodie Brown (16:47) Right, right, right. And you know, I think what’s interesting too is like, it seems like such a long time ago in some ways, and then in other ways it feels like it was yesterday. Like it’s such a weird, I think like COVID just warped my perception of time so much, ⁓ but things didn’t get back to normal for a really long. The Hair Game (17:04) Mm, totally. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So you decided to become a marketer and I guess a marketing coach. So, so tell us what you have on offer now. We talked about the podcast. ⁓ you have a retreat, but, ⁓ what, what do you, if somebody wants your, your skills and your advice and things like that, how do they get it? Is there an online course? Do you do speeches? Jodie Brown (17:17) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, so I have an online course specifically for educators. When it comes to the rest of ⁓ the industry and this industry that I love so much, I actually started a marketing company, like a content marketing agency, almost by accident during building out my education. So what had happened is like I was building out this education, I was like, and I’m someone who when I am doing something, I’m like. obsessed. Like I was the same way as a hairstylist. ⁓ I’m the same way still, I would say. And so I was like launching education and putting out content and doing all these things. And people would reach out to me and say like, could I just hire you to do this for me? ⁓ And so I ended up saying yes, because I was in the startup phase. And like we discussed, I just let go of entire clientele of my whole business. And one of the ways that I actually started out was doing social media management for a couple different like beauty businesses and salons and a distributor actually as well. And so I wanted to kind of test the method before I launched education. During that time, I just got approached by so many people that I couldn’t really do it myself anymore. So I hired that support and that’s grown into Align Creative Co. So. I do content strategy as well as done for you marketing and content creation for sloths, for educators, and for independent stylists as well. The Hair Game (19:12) Got it. ⁓ So for, well, let me ask you this question. What would you say amongst your clients and the beauty professionals that you talk to, what’s the biggest problem these days that people are trying to solve? Jodie Brown (19:27) when it comes to their marketing. The Hair Game (19:28) when it comes to their businesses, yeah, they come to you and they’re like, yeah, I mean, I’m assuming it’s they don’t have enough clients or, know, they get clients and they don’t come back or whatever. And then how do you solve it? Jodie Brown (19:44) So there’s two main problems I would say. Number one is what you said, like the visibility piece and getting clients and marketing strategically because I think what’s happened is our industry is so chronically online, a lot of us, and we’re very much in our bubble, right? So hairstylists predominantly follow other hairstylists, other educators in the hair industry. And so they’re seeing so many different ways to show up online and they’re not necessarily aligned with the goal that they have, right? So a stylist will see someone who’s working with brands and maybe is trying to build an education platform. They’ll see that they’re doing something that maybe gets a lot of attention and they’ll try to reverse engineer a strategy from someone with a completely different business model and goals. So I’d say like lack of alignment in their strategy is one of the biggest problems and which leads to difficulty in attracting clients. The secondary problem, which is a lot of stylists, educators, salon owners, and I work with a lot of people who do both. I work with a lot of people who are like trying to build a brand as an educator or work with brands as an educator and are also trying to work behind the chair and run their salons and whatever else. and their main crunch is the time to be consistent because they’re doing all of these other things. So essentially, I’d say the problem that we solve is that we create strategic content that gets to their goal without having to consistently be the one who’s doing it and figuring it out and trying to build the strategy. The Hair Game (21:30) yeah, those are, those are two huge ones. And I see people kind of flailing around with the alignment piece. The time is just endemic across society. ⁓ we all have that issue and especially as new things crop up, it’s like tick tock. Okay. I now need to do tick tock. And then of course, every now and then there’s something else, right? There was, what was the one like? Three years ago, it like Clubhouse or whatever. And then, right? And then there’s podcasts and there’s books on tape and there’s, what do I consume? What do I spend my time trying to do? Google, all this. So how do you, so once you talk to somebody and you’re like, okay, so you’re flailing around a little bit. You need to focus in this area if you wanna, if you wanna increase your clientele. How do you solve for the time piece? Jodie Brown (22:01) Yes. So that’s why I’ve held on despite so many times people are like, you can’t scale a service business. I completely disagree. And the hairstylists listening who have built successful businesses will absolutely know that too. So that’s where Align Creative Co, which is my content agency comes in because we take it off of your plate, essentially. We do it for you. The Hair Game (22:50) Okay, so that’s difficult, isn’t it? Isn’t it hard to have someone else running your page for you? Because so much of it, let’s just talk about Instagram, so much of it is personality. So how do you do that? Jodie Brown (23:02) Mm-hmm. Yes, yes. Well, basically the way that we do it, like I’ll just tell you what we do for the people, because we have a lot of clients who are personality brands, right? And so often it’s like not the recording piece, although we do have something coming up for that. ⁓ The recording piece that’s difficult for people, it’s the doing things with intention, measuring the results and making sure it works, right? So for example, Say you are an educator and your goals on social media are to grow your podcast, to attract new followers, and to get people on your email list, right? When you are the one who is doing all of the things, it’s very difficult to like zoom out and maybe once a month go in and think, okay, what am gonna do? What am I gonna record this week that’s gonna hit each of these goals? How am gonna make sure that I’m getting visibility? How am I gonna make sure that that visibility is turning into new leads for my business? And how am I gonna do this on a consistent basis? that is, it’s a whole other skillset, first of all. Like I do this full time because I have to do this full time in order to keep up, essentially. Like things do change that often. And then also there’s like the measurement piece, which is very difficult on a platform like social media where there’s so much validation tied up. in what you do, right? So what I see when people are doing this on their own is they’ll think, okay, this thing is going viral the most often, so I’m just gonna only create that. Meanwhile, they could be totally letting go of the lead generation piece, the strategic brand building piece, and all of those other things that maybe don’t get as much attention but actually build the business. And so we do the strategy, and then we’ll say, okay, in order to create this content that we need for the month, We need this content from you. So when I say content, I think what a lot of people think of is the video and the ⁓ photos and things like that. I’m referring to like the created piece of content. So like the caption, the voiceover, all of that kind of stuff. And so then we will just need to get what we need in order to create it from that person. So they’re still showing up with their voice. Like we’re not a canvographic agency. That’s not what we’re doing. It’s not something that I think would be an effective strategy for a personal brand, especially in 2026. ⁓ We’ll do the video editing. We, know, all of those types of things that take the time, but get the results. So that’s how we kind of infused. Did that answer your question? Okay. The Hair Game (25:30) Mm-hmm. Yeah, it does. And about how much do you charge for this? Jodie Brown (25:45) So our packages start at $1,400 a month. Yeah. The Hair Game (25:48) Okay, so this is a robust thing you’re offering. And I mean, as you’re describing, I’m thinking this is a lot of work. I mean, this is one-on-one, right? And there’s not just one-on-one consultation, figuring out really who your client is on a pretty deep level, what they need, analysis, and like technical stuff. You’re talking about doing editing on, you know, Jodie Brown (25:52) Mm-hmm. Right, yes. Yes. The Hair Game (26:15) single pieces of content. So you need to have people to do that. Right. ⁓ and then like how many pieces, how many postings or how many pieces of content are you helping with per month? Are you suggesting somebody put out there and you’re helping with give or take? Jodie Brown (26:34) So our base like packages started three posts per week and honestly if you’re a strategic like that’s a good amount of content and especially now with the way and of course that can expand and like it really is on a case-by-case basis we do also have like a quarterly almost like a VIP style package but I can give you the link and people can kind of check out what that looks like if they’re interested in that but we do find that you know the more The Hair Game (26:39) Wow. Jodie Brown (27:05) the more strategic you can be, the more, I guess, bang for your buck you’ll get with content. Because here’s what’s changed about Instagram in the past couple years, in my experience. There used to be almost like this guaranteed amount of reach, right? Depending on, no matter what you put out, it was gonna go in front of your followers. That divide has gotten massive now. You can put out a piece of content that gets… 500 views, can put out a piece of content that gets 500,000 views. That’s not that crazy of a divide anymore. Whereas I feel like it used to be more like building your email list. Like you build a following and then you’re guaranteed a certain amount of reach, right? It’s changed. Interest-based algorithms are coming up a lot more now. And so with that, you used to be able to guarantee a certain amount of visibility based on volume alone. ⁓ That’s really not the case anymore in my experience. We do need to have that strategy and that’s why everything I do has a brand first approach. Whether that’s the retreats, the services, everything we do starts there so that you’re not wasting time creating the content. You’re actually doing the thing that’s gonna move the needle for your business. The Hair Game (28:25) All right, now let’s get to the retreat that I’m going to get the invite to in Italy. Is this a once a year retreat? Jodie Brown (28:30) you So we do our signature retreat in Italy once a year in October, and then we actually have done, we’re doing two next year, and we’ve done two a year in the past as well. We started the business in 2023. We’ve had one year we’ve done one, and the rest we’ve done two a year. The Hair Game (28:54) And where in Italy is this? Where do I need to fly into? Jodie Brown (28:58) So the October one is just outside of Rome. It’s in a town called Campagnano. We have a villa that’s kind of… We rent a villa, obviously. I wish I had the villa. ⁓ The Hair Game (29:08) Yeah, right. Yeah. We go to your, the Brown Villa. Jodie Brown (29:13) Yeah, exactly, my home away from home. ⁓ That is, it’s in the Roman countryside, it’s beautiful. And then the one that we’re doing, we’ve done other retreats like in the springtime, we usually do those in a rotating location. So next year in 2026 in May, we’re going to Corfu in Greece. Yeah, that one’s sold out though. The Hair Game (29:15) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Wow, so exotic. Most of the hair retreats are, you know, conveniently located around the United States, but I see that you’re trying to make it exotic, which is nice. Jodie Brown (29:43) Right. Yeah, yeah. You know, it’s one of those things where like I told you before, I was kind of Googling how to work on a cruise ship when I was like 18 years old. And, ⁓ you know, speaking to that timepiece and that like, you know, endemic thing in our society, what I was really going for when I thought about this retreat, when I thought about what I wanted in a retreat, which I couldn’t actually find, it was being able to be totally, totally removed from my day to day. The Hair Game (29:55) Mm-hmm. Jodie Brown (30:16) So when I first took my first trip to Italy, it was my first time taking time off from my business, like actually not having my laptop not working at all. And I noticed how much more creative I felt and how many new ideas that I’d been stuck on a lot of things that I was getting clarity on just because I was totally removed from my day to day. so… I think one of the things where, you know, going back to the time issue that a lot of us are facing, it’s really hard to carve out white space. And one thing I’ve noticed is there’s a big difference between time and mental capacity, especially in the really creative parts of our business and the really strategic parts, like the vision, the messaging. That’s a big one. Not to mention for a lot of educators and leaders in the beauty industry that fear of being seen plays a big role and it can be a little bit isolating when you’re building something online. So there’s the community aspect as well of being able to have conversations with people who actually get it, which a lot of us don’t have in our day to day lives. So that’s kind of where, you know, the locations are beautiful and they look great on Instagram, but that’s not actually why we chose them. We chose them because having a complete… like shift in your surroundings. And this isn’t just my opinion. This is like based on, you know, there’s evidence to back this up, really does allow you to change your mindset and see things from a different perspective. And so we also curated these retreats to be really intimate, which is different as well. Like we cap it at seven attendees. We really want it, yeah, there’s like a lot of one-on-one work. The Hair Game (32:02) wow. Jodie Brown (32:06) You know, my business partner is a photographer, so she does like a full brand ⁓ journey for you. We create content while we’re there. So it’s a very intimate, very luxurious experience. And that was something where we felt like we needed to be in Europe specifically to create the actual ambiance and experience that we were going for. The Hair Game (32:30) Very cool, very cool. a lot of the energy be going? Should it be going into Google, Instagram, TikTok? referrals, what do you say? Jodie Brown (32:41) Right. Well, this might not be like the most popular answer, but I don’t think that we are in a space where we can have like only one. So I’d say for hairstylist salon owners, if you have a local business, Google’s are not negotiable now. Like we need to be mindful of showing up in search for sure. And then like there’s, I kind of think about visibility as an ecosystem. So. Because attrition, I think has become a lot more difficult now too. Someone will Google you and then they’ll go to your website and then they’ll look at your social media and they’ll maybe reach out from social media, but it’s really difficult to pinpoint that origin now. Tracking’s harder, right? It’s not as easy to figure out where someone came from initially unless you’re asking them and even then they might not remember. So I do think having, yeah. The Hair Game (33:31) Right. Well, even then, they, right. Yeah. Because of the multiple touch points. Jodie Brown (33:37) Right, right. And then maybe same thing, like they might find you on Instagram and then they go to check out your reviews, right? So I think that at minimum, what I would recommend is definitely Google and then a social platform. Instagram, honestly, for our industry, I think it’s still somewhere where it’s a brand building presence. Even if you’re not getting a ton of reach and maybe people are finding you other places, I do still believe that you need to look like you’re in business still. on Instagram, because if someone comes and it’s been 20 months since you posted, they’re gonna think like, this is weird, what’s going on here? Exactly, so it doesn’t necessarily need to be like an immense volume of content there, but strategic content and consistent content is still important. I do know that there are some hairstylists who are having great success on TikTok. The Hair Game (34:18) Yeah, are they still working behind the chair? Yeah. Jodie Brown (34:36) Do I think that’s a mandatory platform for hairstylists now if you’re just working behind the chair? No, I don’t. Like, there’s other cool things that you can do on the platform if you’re wanting to maybe get into that creator space or, you know, whatever else, but I don’t think it’s a mandatory thing. What I do think is mandatory is definitely Google. I would say absolutely have a website at this stage somewhere where people can go and you have a hub. And then Instagram, do think is still really important. The Hair Game (35:04) Absolutely. So it’s become painfully clear to me in the last couple months, especially since I went to the Vegaro kind of conference event thing, and I moderated a panel and the, ⁓ you know, we had a bunch of, you know, super duper high profile pros on the panel and I opened the discussion up for two questions from the audience and the questions. were so basic revolving around, mean, almost as basic as what’s Google. I mean, it was almost that basic. And there were people there who didn’t know that having a, it used to be called Google My Business, but now it’s like Google Business or something. You know, they kind of change things. Right, business listening. They weren’t aware of that. Jodie Brown (35:57) Yeah, business listing, something like that, yeah. The Hair Game (36:04) And, you know, as somebody who produces content, you know, on a regular basis for the last several years, we’ve talked about it quite a bit. ⁓ but it still hasn’t quite, ⁓ flowed all the way to people who need it most. And I remember thinking, you know, aha moment, I guess I’m standing there and we had just discussed all these rather sophisticated types of. marketing things, and here the audience was saying, what’s Google Business? Jodie Brown (36:38) Right, right. The Hair Game (36:39) And I was like, ⁓ my gosh, okay, we need to go back to the most basic thing here. ⁓ And so we’re gonna put out an episode of just what Google Business is and how to do it, you know, like a walkthrough. And I’m gonna do it with our head of marketing who goes into our Solonary Public Locations and does that, literally holds people’s hands and does it for them. You know, well, Doug can’t do it for them because they need emails. Jodie Brown (36:52) Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. The Hair Game (37:08) holds their hand and helps them do it for themselves. So, I’ve been mentioning it now more and more, hoping that the listeners who haven’t quite done that yet, ⁓ go on to Google and create a listing. Because the reality of the way that clients search for a beauty professional or anything these days that’s geographically based is they go to Google Maps. you know, or the Google search engine, but mostly Google Maps, because they don’t want to drive more than 15 minutes to a hairdresser. You know, so they’ll go to Google Maps, they’ll look in their area and they’ll search, you know, hairstylist or hairdresser or salon or something like that. And if you don’t have a Google listing, you will not show up there. Jodie Brown (37:56) Yeah, so true. I think too, like it’s interesting, because I actually just this morning did a podcast recording for my podcast with a guest who was talking about ⁓ AI search for hairstylists too. And like, not just like, I think when we say AI search, it sounds like going into Chadupti, but just every search platform now has an AI function, right? And actually one of those top things that they had found when it came to The Hair Game (38:08) Mm-hmm. Jodie Brown (38:23) how clients were finding you and what was getting into the Google summary was a Google business listing. Like that was one of the top ways that they’re categorizing. The Hair Game (38:32) Yeah, I think, I mean, I’ve heard lots of numbers. I’m not sure anybody knows for sure, but you know, whereas Google might’ve been 40 % of how hairdressers or service industry people are found. Now it’s like 70%. You know, it’s, so anyway, very, very, very important to do that. Jodie Brown (38:55) Yeah, 100%. The Hair Game (38:56) else you want to talk about before we start wrapping up? Okay, do you have any horror stories? They could be you screwing things up. They could be other people in your salon screwing things up, or they could be you marketing horror stories. Jodie Brown (39:11) my goodness, hair horror stories. ⁓ I have, I mean, I have a couple. I’ve got, you know, my own hair horror stories, like in hair school when. I signed up to be the guinea pig for like a full head lightning when I was like a level three all over and had like white chunks. So my hair was literally all over orange. I lost half of it. That’s happened multiple times since actually, despite, ⁓ you know, knowing better, I think the experiments. And then I think the biggest horror story was I was behind the chair during the, and it was more just a moment that was not the best. I was behind the chair during the whole everyone wanted gray hair. entire phase. And that, so many multiple horror stories there. I remember the first time I ever did it, thinking that, my client was a level one and she was like, oh, I want this gray Pinterest photo. And I was like, I got you. I had the Kenra Guy Tang, gray color stocked. And despite 10 years of color theory, I could not get her hair to lift. And so just that piece, The Hair Game (40:12) Yeah. Jodie Brown (40:25) going in over and over and over again, we finally got there. It was a 12-hour color correction that I had quoted like $400 for, so I think that’s like my biggest like of living memory thing. The Hair Game (40:30) Hahaha Yes, that was your minimum wage ⁓ service. That’s really funny. Jodie Brown (40:39) Yeah. Needless to say, I did not niche into that particular service. The Hair Game (40:47) Mm-hmm. That’s amazing. Any last words for the community? Jodie Brown (40:52) think just, ⁓ you know, my biggest thing is like there’s so much overthinking when it comes to marketing and when it comes to putting yourself out there and creating content. And I just always encourage anyone who is marketing to measure their results by the clients in your chair and what you’re getting out of it, not this like validation addiction that seems to be gripping. this industry because we’re constantly looking at influencers and we’re looking at all of these things and comparing ourselves to people with completely different business models. And so I think that’s just my biggest word of advice is when you are marketing, like measure the results that matter to you, not the results that matter to, you know, the the influencers or other people in our industry that you don’t have the same business as. The Hair Game (41:43) Yeah, great advice. All right, Jody Brown. It’s Jody Brown on the Gram. And what’s your website? Jodie Brown (41:50) Yes. JodyBrown.ca. And then if you want to learn more about the retreats, can go to escapetoelevate.com. The Hair Game (42:01) Awesome, thank you so much. Jodie Brown (42:03) Thank you for having me. Bye.