Executive Management

For over 2 decades I thrived in the hair industry. Growing and maintaining client relationships. My specialty was busy executives, I have always had an uncanny ability to reach the unreachable. Each client presented a new challenge. Busy important people came with an entirely new set of challenges. Executive work is a negotiation on a HiWire. A careful and tedious task that requires finesse and a strong hand. You are dealing with the kind of client that not only gets what they want, but they get it fast.  How do you produce a product that lives and must conform? Expectation management is the only skill required. It is not the way you cut their hair or color it. It is how you treat the person in your chair. Executives need one thing in a hair stylist’s chair. To be reminded that they are human, and they have hair. Just like everyone who works for them. Most days they will hate the hair on their head. If you can find a way to moderately improve the state of their hair as well as slowly begin to lower the expectations they have set for their hair. You will have begun to perform what seems to be magic. 

 You see the truth does set you free. Your job is to gently submit the truth for their approval, un-washing their brains of what every fashion magazine ever said is possible. Men and women alike there is no lack of comparison and data that they are flooded with daily. For just one second a person with a title and employees and who is worth millions is stripped free in your chair. Use this station wisely, and not for selfish gain. You have been given a seat of influence to the influencer.  

So, start at the beginning from a place of truth. When approaching the executive it is of the utmost importance you remember a few things. They are human, they have feelings, and they probably hate their hair. It is the only aspect of their life that they can manage control or buy better. So humbly allow them to brag and complain about all the other things while you focus on the one thing you can do better than them: hair. I have found after a few sessions of this dance the work grew easier because of trust. The best way to grow that trust is to underpromise and over-deliver. I always required 3 sessions with a client till it was fit for my approval. Often clients felt better after one session, but I knew my standard of work needed 3. 

One session can change a life if you just listen, executives are no different from normal people, just like celebrities. At the base of it if you strip us all down to bare bones. We all just want a mirror to see into ourselves and know; that we have done something right. Search for the good in every client that sits in your chair. Look past all the signals they are trying to send. Look into the heart and often you will find the thorn. Something is keeping them from getting what they want. There is humanness and nothing will change that for anyone. So lean in and be human with them. Set yourself lower, listen, and remind them.  

Its ok we all hate our hair sometimes. 

XO, Chuck