7. AI and the Salon, Part 2: Sam Brocato, Sam Brocato Salon

Hey everybody and welcome to The Connector, Intercoiffure's weekly podcast connecting salon owners and professionals with the leaders, artists, and innovators shaping the future of the professional salon industry. I'm your host, Gordon Miller, General Manager of Intercoiffure America Canada. And before we get started, if you'd like to learn more about Intercoiffure, please head over to intercoiffure.com. Once there, of special note, is our ICA Spring Gathering the Power of Connection? This business-focused conference for employment-based salons is coming up really fast, May 2nd through 4th in Montreal. Go to the events pulldown on the website to learn more. All right, and today we are here for part two of a conversation with Sam Bricado, the very successful New York City salon owner, intercoiffure, treasurer, and member of our board of directors. He's an iconic hairdresser, an educator, manufacturer, and perhaps best of all for me, my favorite AI-obsessed industry thought leader. Before we get started, if you've not heard the first part of our conversation, do head over to the show page for The Connector. You can do that on your favorite podcast platform. That's where you are right now. And look for our episode number three. All right. Welcome back to The Connector podcast, Sam Bracado. Yeah, it's great to be here, Gordon. I just always get excited at talking to you and always walk away learning more than I think I'm trying to teach. Works both ways. I think, you know, mutual admiration societies, especially when it comes to this AI topic, but we've been talking about all kinds of things for many years, so I always enjoy the opportunity to connect. This was an unusual one. We're here at part two on AI, and, you know, we usually spend a few minutes with any guests, you know, kind of prepping for the what's to follow, just kind of get ourselves on the same page. We just spent 45 minutes talking about our shared obsession about AI in the larger world and in the professional world and our personal worlds. And now we're going to do a 30-minute conversation. The condensation of the conversation. Yeah. But today's focus is really the reality of you and your team and the salon and what you're actually doing. Part one was kind of the big why. and talking around the landscape of AI and what it means for salons. But I want to get into some of your reality. And as I've said on the previous podcast and just now said, you are a little bit obsessed. Yeah, I have said it many times before, but basically I like to stand in the salon and look around. People will come up to me and go, what are you doing or what are you looking? And I'm not explaining it exactly other than just watching a movement of human beings. and I'm imagining, trying to imagine three years from now, five years, seven years, what does everything look and feel like and all? And then I turn around in a different direction and I say, okay, where can AI help get us there smoothly and effectively, cost-effectively, and all along making everybody happier, more joyful about the human relationship and experiences we're having. So that's kind of my basic rule of thumb is to study the operations and really drill into it after I look around a little bit. The person walks in the front door, they go to the desk. What are they doing at the desk? You know, are they called customer? Unfortunately, we don't have it happen a lot, but if they're having a problem, you know, I observe the back and forth. So if I have to pull away the other day, I had someone, you see the colorist, and she was having a problem with her communication. and I said, look, you need to go to ChatGPT and have it create five, six, or seven scripts for you. And each of the scripts is around a different customer. This one script is a woman who's 32 years old that says, I want my hair brighter. And you do it, and the hair is lighter. And she goes, no, I meant brighter. And so you had to do low lights. So somewhere between brighter and lighter that was in this communication. So that's one example. Scripts are absolutely amazing. I think the days of the song said, this is how we do our consultations. Everything is personalized now. So you can personalize it to a 12-year-old little boy. We have a couple in on Saturday, both of them 90 years old, husband and wife. And both of them very mobile. And, you know, how does a 28-year-old talk to a 90-year-old woman that's getting a color blow dryer? Well, you know what? If you're able to pull from the annals of history in a matter of seconds, you have it. So that's an example of how it can be used, you know, quickly and efficiently, right on the spawn floor. I mean, right on your phone. You know, you can even use it for translating. And that's, yeah, and that's using ChatGPT directly. I mean, now we have a lot of the tech companies and other companies that are inside of the beauty industry, you know, part of our community. um you know they're they're developing products and they're implementing it into their pos systems and reporting and all kinds of stuff but still you know there are ways to just literally use chat gbt or gemini or and you're doing a lot of that in your business and it's augmentation too though it's almost like i you know the other day um i was watching someone do something that it was clear to me that person needed three arms you know is trying to do something needed three arms Well, that means that they need to get an assistant over to give them a few arms. Now they have four. So that's augmentation and the ability to adapt to the needs of the moment via the physical needs of the moment, you know, whether it's a shampoo and blow dry. I mean, 90% of the time, people know the minute I pick up a blow dry, which is like I always say, maybe six to ten times a week, but I insist upon keeping my hands in the hair for as long as I can, And they watch me and they know if I look around, that means come over here and start going drawing it back and I'll watch the front because it's faster for her or him or whoever we're working on. And it's faster for us. And we keep moving. It doesn't mean you try to book something more, although we may, but it means that there's an argumentation that happens there. And that's how I look at AI. I look at it as a way to look at everything I look at through a set of eyes that understands who I am, but is vastly smarter than me. whether it's a payroll report, you know, a new client report. You know, we had 40 new clients. Okay, let's see those 40 new clients that were on the book a half a year ago. How many of them come back now? You know, what is their spend? What is their uptake on retail? These are all those things that I'd build little pieces of the AI to extract from me. And that way I'm not constantly having to ask, you know, management and people in the salon, although I've bugged a hell out of them all this time. But it's important to say, you know, that, as you said, these are like tools to augment, you know, the things that you are already doing, you know, have been doing for decades, you know, in many examples. I know in my gut, without having talked to you about this, that you've been asking those many questions, those same questions probably for decades. You know, what percentage of our clients are coming back? I mean, these are not new ideas, But now you're finding this new tool that gets you to the answer a lot faster. And so much of success in a small business today is about finding efficiencies of all kinds. Yeah. I know you know Terry and Steve Callen, but many, many, many, many, 30 years ago, when Steve and I were always very close to your friends, and Terry came into our world, and they ended up marrying all that. Well, Terry worked at Bercato for a while, and she helped create these mating spreadsheets that were all handwritten. Everybody had to fill them out and report to her. And I haven't pulled one out in a long time, but I'm thinking about doing it now that I've mentioned it. But basically, Terry brought a level of intelligence that was from the restaurant world that we didn't have. And now, that type of intelligence can be guided by a person, a human, that can take you there and say, here's the type of analysis that it can be done, but it's done in five seconds. It's done in 15 seconds. Maybe you're using the KIN report. You know, maybe you've aggregated seven or ten sources that you use, and those sources give you this constant flow of new information. And I'll say the reason that's important what you just said about the decades of asking, you know, somewhere along the way, I decided that this is my life, and this is my world, and this is my industry. And I know you've done the same thing. And what that affords us is the ability to build on good and bad years, learn from the tough times and realize, you know, like we've got a weird world we're in right now, you know, the geopolitics and all this stuff going on. And I have young people who literally come up to me and ask me, what do you think is going to happen? I'll tell you what, I've been standing on the inside of a hair salon for 55 years. and in those years, I've seen a lot of stuff fly by the door out there. Bad stuff, crazy stuff, happy stuff, sad stuff. I said, but all along, the door kept swinging and people continued to come in and sit down and get their hair done. Did we have to give away free service during COVID because people were out of work? Yeah. People that were paying maybe $185 to get their hair color done, did we literally say to them, when you go back to work, they're paying again. It's just the same thing, you know, a landlord should do. You know, when you're out, when you're closed, you don't pay rent. And when you re-over, you start paying again. And so, anyway, I'm rambling a little bit there. But I think the understanding of answering questions that you keep asking year over year over year, you keep fine-tuning them, and they become the little diamonds and gems that make up your wisdom and knowledge about your business. And the hair salon business is not that difficult. You always say that to me. It's not that complicated, actually, is what you say to me. Not complicated, yeah. But it is not easy. You've got to work. Yeah, there are places that people really shoot themselves in the foot. Super busy salon owner and hairdresser themselves, super busy. They shouldn't even bank their money in the business. It should be banked outside their business because it creates a false illusion. of, of earnings. So then they get put in the corner by someone who wants to be paid more or whatever. And I think, well, I'm doing great. Yeah. That's because you're generating 28% of the income. Right. And so that's just my, my thing. If I go over one and a half, 2% of sales, we have a problem. Let's jump into AI in your world, you know, from our earlier conversation, you know, kind of the, a big area, I think for you in terms of focus, because you always kind of mentioned it first, you know, is working with your people, kind of that human resources aspect in a salon of, and you got a few things that you doing in there So so let let talk a moment about that And I think starting with how you onboard people and how you think about bringing people in We used Briggs and psychological testing back in the old days, 30 years ago at Lockworth in Louisiana. So I'm not, I was spending $125 on onboard just back then, 30 something years ago, to find out where a person, you know, showed up based on Briggs-Myers testing. Do the fast version of what that is for somebody who might be listening who hasn't heard about it yeah well briggs myers it basically tells you quote-unquote what type of person you are what's your strong suit you're red or you're all blue you're outgoing you're introvert or whatever and it gives you this sort of mix in that way it helps management leadership adapt and and work with you in these ways but what i've done is i've now taken ai and i've used uh briggs myers and the four other ones i can't remember off the top of my head that I uploaded the URLs, and then I uploaded all my tone of voice for the Sandbrook Horticulture and Salon, and I said, I want to create a test that a person can take to test. One is they can take anonymously on a portal on our site to see if they would be a good fit to come to work for us. They don't even have to tell us their name, who they are. They can go, well, I don't want to work there. That's what they, you know, blah, blah, blah. but if they do then they can come to the salon and we can take an additional test i want to jump in i just so love that because again back to efficiencies like you're letting them sort out whether they should bother coming to you but it's kind of framed within how you think about your business right i mean so you're in the driver's seat yeah you're having them go through that so they kind of self select themselves in or out which has more efficiencies you're not wasting your time with people who don't belong there. You know, I think most people end up in divorces almost always go, why did I try so damn hard to marry that person? And I just think that that's what happened. You know, as I said earlier, we did the other day. We sit around in a circle, we talk about a person, I feel this, I've observed this, I think this, and maybe this will happen. And we don't have enough science in it. And I don't mean science should overtake compassion and and the ability to really interact with people. But if you test people, at least it helps build some more structure around the hiring process, not wasting anybody's time and money. And I'll just say, Brent Meyers, and there are other ones that are pretty decent tests. They're free. You don't have to do it yourself. But my God, the ability to customize it to my culture and our team's culture. And there's also, by the way, a version of it that you can do for the customer. I'm not doing that. But that was also part of what the build-out looked like. So that's one thing we're doing that has to do with human resources is to, you know, and of course, always combining information, all the records that we have slowly but surely, you know, building out those records. I think understanding that what AI can offer you is a person that can do endless amounts of work. Can't do it feeling the way a human feels, but it can do it mostly thinking the way a human thinks. So why not use the tool if it's there? I mean, there's some masterful surgical doctors that are using robotics. And they're masters with their hands, but now they're using robotics. And now they have the three-dimensional AI studio event. There's one going on next week here in New York for heart surgery. So you're literally on a 3D camera, like, you know, Opus 1 or whatever it's called. I have one right here. but you're watching it in 3D, every minuscule piece of the process. That's all AI-driven, and it's so precise. I know this on a personal level. The reports on blood work, the reports on x-rays. I mean, a lot of really forward-thinking doctors, they're running that stuff through the AI to compare it to their own conclusions. It's not necessarily, again, it's like having a great doctor buddy. Okay, I've looked at everything. here's what I think, but now I'm going to put it in the chat to EBT or into Gemini and get, and get, because it's, you know, I mean, doctors work so much off memorization and just having this giant database in their heads. And now to have this other tool that can consider, did I get to the right place? That's brilliant. And we can do the same thing. I think a lot of what the human process is, is it, well, this customer sits down or, or in the chair and, well, this looks like that. And because this looks like that, Maybe it should be done like this. Yes. But, I mean, what would you rather? I want a doctor. I want to talk to someone. And like I jokingly love to say to people about doing hair, a customer wants to be able to turn around and say, I hate this to a human. Or I love it. And give you a hug. You know? That's so valuable for us. But what would you rather? Would you rather a doctor that can tell you five million scans and just look at in a nanosecond compared to yours? and say, this is what I see here. And that's what AI does. I've seen two examples recently where they caught something that the doctor missed. And both of them ended up in minor surgery, but were important to have. And so it's definitely a pitotine world. To me, education and medicine, those are the two places I'm the most super excited about what'll come. So, you know, back from the HR point of view, I mean, you're working on some things now. I know you don't have them done yet. but that you know to help you out in the onboarding process whether it's you know to help your people understand things better or understand processes or change training we talk about that for a moment do you see ai as a tool that's going to help us bring people in and probably the one of the more important moments in their their time they're going to spend with a salon is that coming in effectively you know properly hearing all the right stuff and whatever whatever the steps are. So can you talk about that for a moment? Yeah. So we have been uploading all of the curriculum related to cutting coloring and everything into a syllabus that will build out in a way that can have like a master plan and you can go through it and be able to help a person get sort of a bird's eye view or 30,000 feet of what they're doing, where they're going, and really explaining to them. In fact, that infographic I sent you from what I pulled off in Whitaker's podcast with you, which was excellent, but it talked about how you move from being an initial investment cost to a profit contributor. And the shorter that time is, the better for both the full-on owner and the people that work there. And so that's one thing we're doing. We're creating the master database. But I think it's important to understand that in old phraseology, that master database it's actually a gpt or slash gpt agent and it's not just uh repeating things or memorizing things or just knowing things it's able to do things so if you say you're going to go through these seven haircuts uh it may come back and say well because this one's shorter or it can give ideas and thoughts and suggestions. So when I take a video, so when I take a lesson that's being taught, I take it and I have it made into a markdown file. And then a markdown file is then fed into maybe notebook.com, which creates for me an infographic or a video or one of those tools. And from that, I'm extracting the essence of what that is being taught to find out what are the things we can add to it. You and I both have lived in our education space forever. And I think about, you know, not so good educators versus, you know, great educators. One of the big differences is that the great educator has long been, we didn't always use this word, but they long have had the ability not just to teach, you know, but to coach. you know and and the coaching becomes more that kind of end of the kind of what you just mentioned it's it's all of a sudden where rather than just sharing stuff to a group you know it's that more personalized like looking at the circumstances of that person and what you just gave them and now the what-ifs and just adding more to the conversation coaching has to do with the essence of getting the person from where they are to where they're headed and i think people that take people along their path they'll take them from you know across the brook they step on the stone they step on the stone they work their way in the other bank and some coaches though can move from the progression the iteration to step changes and that step in a book across the you know one stone, another stone. That's not just iterating, that's making step changes. And I think AI can help consolidate around the idea of what a step change would look like. And if you say, AI, help me come up with some step changes here in this process. It knows what that means. It means not just more of the same or a little bit better, but really transformational. And a part of it's just so important going on. I know you and I have been talking about this since pretty much 20 minutes after chat should be dropped back a few years ago. It takes time, and you have to be patient with yourself to change some of your human habits. As I mentioned to you earlier, when I have someone, when I have a question, I always say, who's the human I want to ask the question to? But I pause and I go, AI, who is the AI I want to ask that question to? Now I have the ability to have a blended sort of response. It's taken me a long time to get to where I do it. I kept saying, hey, Holly, answer this question. And she goes, well, you keep telling me, I want to use it. I think that's an important piece of context about what's going on with using AI. I also just want to back up a tiny bit. I used a phrase a minute ago called a markdown file. And for those of you who are using AI and using this a lot right now, Most of us will take and copy a YouTube channel or podcast as I did earlier. But I took that podcast you did, I dropped it in chat, GVT, and I said, give me highlights, give me some additional thoughts, but most importantly, give me a markdown file. So what chat did was shrunk it down to a lot fewer tokens slash words slash dollars. I dropped the markdown file, the pure essence of it, into Notebook.ln and created the infographic I shared with you and entered And that important and that takes me quite a while to understand to learn because it saves money It gets to the essence of the question faster because the markdown file is none of the fluff It's none of the banners. It's none of the nothing. Not even punctuation, Harvey. It's just the words. And we're back to efficiencies again. And also, you mentioned NoFuckLM. You also mentioned, you know, thinking about who you talk to, you know, which really speaks to all the different platforms and what some are better at than others. And Notebook LM, when it comes to education, you know, is pretty freaking amazing. You know, what you can do. Anybody, you mentioned, you know, medicine and education. I couldn't agree more as to where the big change in our world is coming. Our industry, we've never been great, in my opinion. We've never been as good as education as we need to be, given, you know, the challenges everybody faces. And this stuff's mind-blowing in Notebook LM. It just gives one minute your take on Notebook LM for anybody who's thinking about how do we use this more in education, AI generally. Talk about Notebook LM for a moment. So Notebook LM, which is what you go to when you look it up, Notebook LM, and you hit create or create a new notebook. You can upload anything you want. So this morning I uploaded five different podcasts. uh three industry two not industry i first got the markdown files which is now my new habit and and each of those podcasts i dropped into notebook lm for free okay because i don't even have a i don't even have the 20 dollar a month paid because i don't i just don't push the edges that much so you drop it in there and it will create for you very quickly a um an outline of what it was. And then it gives you, I think it's eight choices now. Create an infographic of visual, create a video, create a slide, create a podcast. So if I have a topic I'm trying to learn, like you saw me do at the meeting in Chicago about the federal funding. I don't know if you saw that, but I actually took some information about federal funding for Cosmetology Schools and created the infographic that's really phenomenal, the way explaining what's going on and what the changes are going to be. So I quickly got a really good thumbnail view and understanding of what's going on. So you can build a whole correctional amount. Yeah, and I want to clarify. So what you're talking about is using this platform to get a better understanding of something in various ways, potentially. But I'm assuming those five podcasts were probably in a similar lane. you he said i want to learn about x so you found five podcasts that talk about x in various ways probably from various points of view you know you put you load them all in there and and now you tell you know um notebook lm kind of what you hope to get out of that and it gives you a path to follow and learn precisely two of them were marketing but i'm i'm intrigued with the whole world of marketing and uh three of them were salon related to tie it all together so i notebook lm if you're looking to learn more about, you know, just the educational aspects and value that can come out of AI. It's a great place to look. I'll just add to that. Somebody asked me the other day, because I heard you mention Notebook LM on our last, our first podcast, and they said, can you help give me ideas about it? And what you can do is take a sanitized financial statement and upload it into Notebook LM, sanitize it, take your name off of it, anything that attracts, because it's not totally private. And it'll create all of those things about it. It'll come back and give you a podcast talking about it. It'll give you an infographic, explain it to you. If you do a P&L and a balance sheet together, it'll teach you that. If you don't feel like you understand numbers well enough, there you go. That's a great way to start. You go to Chattapity and you say, I make $80,000, $60,000 a year. Let me build a budget. This is the zip code I live in. This is my general workflow. It'll give you a project. you take the budget, you drop it in a notebook.lm, notebook.lm, teach me how to stay on budget and deeper understanding. And I'll close with this on that. Notebook.lm, because it creates infographics, is incredibly powerful for visual people. And I know I'm very visual. If I hear it, I see it, then I really, and then I could do it, but I really get it. And the podcast thing, I'm always fascinated because I love podcasting, obviously. And so when it first launched, it was like, oh it has like a two-person podcast and so i'm like what are you gonna do with that um and i think most importantly what it is is it's an audio tool where you you it has a conversation about what you're potentially learning and you get to listen to it as well as read it as well as experience a different way you don't have to publish a podcast is my my point i dropped one and and uh i think it was for gadabout flan one of the earliest one that did i did our 10 of our intercoffier flan and um i i i turned it on and it started talking and there's a button that says join and i stopped and i said hey hey hold on a minute this is frank i own data about i had a question about something you just said hey frank we're glad you're here with us we're glad you joined and then it'll start explaining it so it you can actually uh make the the podcast even more built out by question and answers. And then when you share it with your team, you know, it's there for that. You can share it and not share it. Right, right. Like when I'm finished, when we're finished, I'm going to walk down to Soho and on the way down there, I'm going to listen to a podcast. I might listen to, you know, the way. Right. I love it. I love it. More podcasts. Everybody should listen to more podcasts. There's so much good stuff out there. All right. Let's talk about customers and customer care specifically. Salons don't exist without customers. and so ai as it relates to supporting customers and supporting your team and supporting customers i mean you're doing some unique things again you know you are using one of the ai concierges i'll kind of focus on that as a starting place yeah talk talk about that because that's a i i think it's going to be the most important thing that's hit the salon since online booking and that was that started probably close to 15 years ago or so and um i think it's going to be as bigger bigger soon quick yeah the way i look at it is then if you listen closely to what's going on in any world of ai the smart businesses are realizing if you have 10 people working for you you can easily have 30 by creating agents that are under the demand or control of those people and so at the front desk imagine you have in our case we have at least four people i think we have seven people that are capable of being at the front desk. So you take those four people and you have an AI answer machine, so to speak, a booking platform, and it answers when they have somebody in front of them or they're busy and it says, hi, I'm, in this case, Sam Bracadison's online answering. How can I help you today? And then sometimes some people will say, I don't want you to help me and hang up on them. But what happens is immediately the desk, and they're very good about it because they love having that person answer for them. They'll quickly call them right back and say, hey, I saw you called and we want to get your book. Or it'll send a link and it'll say, here's how you book. And it just goes straight to our website and it books it. It happens when you're closed, after hours. 24-7. 24-7. And we have had a few weird hour calls. And I invite anyone who wants to call and hear and interact with it. it can answer 500 or 1,000 calls at once. So if you want to call and just hear it and talk to it, just know that you are being recorded. So you can even say hello if you are. And just say, you know, I called the other day, and I say, are we close tomorrow? No. Yes, we're close tomorrow. It's a snow day, whatever. Here's how I see it, though. You onboard a receptionist, a guest service person. Now, all of a sudden, they not only have, First, they have this AI assistant to make sure that everybody is covered, but they also, sooner than later, have an agentic level, which is part of this, but I'm not saying specifically what it is. But it's an agentic level that takes the AI assistant to even another level to leverage to human. So the human's able to do more, be more, show up more. because let me just tell you, anyone who wants to be 100% human-less, I don't know about that, babe. I think the human touch is the place to be, and we are in such a great position as an industry because it's so, I mean, how many of you work all day cutting hair, looking at a computer? You. Nobody does. Nobody colors hair looking at a computer all day. So that's what's so great about us because the low-hanging fruit of all automation is that which is done systematically on a computer, not with a pair of scissors or a paintbrush or whatever it may be. So I'm in love with it. I think the online booking, which we have a great system, is slowly going to shrink away to answer box. And the people that love it or younger, uh they're native to it already and they're accepting it um i you know some of the more mature clients uh can get a little weird about it um but we're like hey we don't want to miss a call what's the difference in that and an answer machine other than it talks to you really nicely well and the other side too and you know i i think i've tested most of the ones that are in our industry right now you know there's a couple standouts and there's a few that aren't necessarily but we are being trained by the rest of our personal lives in terms of interacting with business restaurants i mean that these are being used in restaurants in growing numbers quickly i mean they're being adopted into restaurants for for booking you know my favorite little mexican restaurant in in chicago um a year ago put in a really outstanding you know ai concierge i was blown away by it in part because um it actually did a better job than the people it was a very small place they weren't putting a lot of money into the folks answering the phone it was a better quality it was a better experience my doctor my eye doctor my dental all of them are using these concierges american airlines you don't get people you get ai talking to you so as humans experience it more and more every single day in their lives it's just a matter time before they're not only going to be more comfortable, they're going to expect a salon to have that kind of service because it's going to be that good at some point. Yeah. Well, I think it's important to recognize that, as I said earlier to you, is that the world is built around the human form factor. And that's why, you know, everything's being built the way it's built as it relates to AI right now and technology. And that as we move forward, it will move quite fast and there be categories of work and workplaces that are going to really hockey stick and go fast Mm The hair salon is not one of them Right The hair salon is not one of them You know if I could snap my finger and say one thing I would love to have more than anything else, it would be two things. One is a way to clean the floors like a rumba, but something much more sophisticated. And a shampoo bowl, not all of them, because we have some amazing shampoo. as I mentioned a few minutes there about Frances McDormand coming in, which I have to drop on. I do do a little name dropping. But she was so blown away by the shampoo she had, and she was just diggling and happy about it. So the touch of the human is so important. But to me, a really sophisticated car wash for the hair, where you can punch, I want the steamy, and I want scalp massage, I want warm water, all those things, that is just, to me, so Jadson. And I just love the idea of it. but you're not going to get rid of your regular shampoo bolt no but you know in japan for more than 10 years now they've had robotic shampoo machines and i've heard really rave reviews about them and they've just gotten better and better over time and you know interestingly too i was watching some tiktoks over the weekend and um korean hair salons you know it's very common for them to have the the kind of ai empowered mirrors over there i guess it's a real thing that has not taken off here. So, you know, stuff is changing. So, the best thing any one of our dear videnders, and particularly people who work closely with us at N-Corpheer, some of the software companies, create a mirror that can be video everything I do on the guest, the entire visit, but cause the face of the person not to be seen. Because people don't want to be videoed. They must smudge out the face, it's available if the customer wants it. But then you can take that and condense it down to a 30-second free next visit review. And that type of technology is something that would be extremely useful in a hair salon. There's a lot of junk stuff that people are trying to get you to buy, bells and whistles and a lot of sugar rush stuff. That's all bullshit. Think pure play, human relationship about your salon. Think about the essence of the things you want and need in the salon. Not all the peripheral stuff that distract people. You know, the real customer experience. We talk about it. You watch it. You watch the people come in. What is she experiencing? What is he experiencing? And can I make that better with AI? probably not as often as you could just by working with the people but if you just use really touchy human emotions around making decisions about running an already world that can be a little bit drama driven you're really going to miss the boat because the science is there you just have to use the science to help drive the whole thing forward and you know yeah that's all i have no we're back back to where we started which is creating efficiencies in the business, right? And I think especially, and I don't know that this is true of your salon, but I think it's true of the majority of salons. We have about 70% fewer receptionists today than we did pre-COVID. I mean, the IRS record show that. But it's huge exodus of the receptionist position in salons, especially smaller salons, and had to do with economics. Well, what happened with all that work? It got spread around a lot of the team that's there. It's incremental again, And it's small things being done, but all those little tiny things over time take away from the quality time you get to spend as a human with another human. So if AI can bring you more efficiency so you can be more present with your customer, including things like videotaping, right, where you can be prepared and remember, you know, what you need to remember, that's huge. It's like the doctor taking the notes, you know? Yes. Now AI is the leading way the doctor takes notes. Yes. It's made so much better for the whole world of healthcare. And so we need to think the same way. What are all the things we can do to make the world of beauty care that much better and utilize an AI to do it a lot, a whole lot. I think it's super. Including all the service stuff, but also including, because of the kind of business we're in, remembering that Gordon's dog's name is Cody and his cat's name is Olivia and Cody's birthday is January 1st. I mean, these are the little things that to me, like separate the great hairdresser beyond the technical, right? That hairdresser who just has empathy and knows you. And I mean, so many of the people in this industry, you know, that is one of the things that makes them stand out in terms of the success that they've created. They just, they get people and people appreciate that. You know, I think you mentioned it earlier. We're still so incredibly early in this game. So anyone listening to this, don't feel like you're left behind or being left behind. You are not. And I'll say also, as I've said on many things, don't rush. You might want to hurry because there's what's called an arbitrage moment of time that gets you in there and gets you on a good solid. It's like entering the theater early enough to get the best seat, you know, the one you want. Or ended up in the theater, but you're sitting in the back of the balcony. But you're right there. And like I said, you're either sitting at the table or you're on the menu, and you need to make sure that you're understanding what it means to sit at the table. And it's such a beautiful industry. You know, it really is. I mean, I've had 55 years of just, I'm leaving. Like I tell you, I'm walking down the floor in a few minutes, you know, and I don't have to go. I don't have to go. I want to go. I'm going to enjoy three hours or so and make some stuff and do some stuff and then play with AI. I love it. I love it. And I love that as the world changes, we can bring this stuff in and it keeps us fresh and young and excited. I do want to tell the audience that one thing I'm not doing is facing the customer with AI-generated imagery. I've generated some websites and some things to create slideshows or before and afters all, which no one, hardly anyone has seen. I do that because I build a lot of apps. But I am personally not yet ready to use that. I can see using some AI-generated color swatches maybe, but they're still very difficult. So I'm not a big advocate of customer faith in imagery of a person's hair or anything. I want the real thing. I want to know that that color was done by, you know, Gian or Mimi or Victoria or whoever. Maybe I'm pardoning the people that work in our salon. You know, these people that are really touching and have their hands in their hair. that's what we want to have facing our guests yep i i love that okay we're gonna wrap up we keep we can keep going on we've gone long um you are a long long time member of intercofior um so i i do want to end on a little intercofior shout out um and and that is that you know i've seen you at these events for for decades you know um i know how important they are to you and to your career into your business and you know the feeling you know part of something so do take a moment and talk about intercofier from your perspective i think it's speaking to the audience what might be of interest to somebody who doesn't really know what intercofier is about well first off long intercofier is a long term play it's not you show up to one of the get together shows with people i could call them it's not that i about three years ago we were sitting in a board meetings and I said, let me just capsulize it. I didn't go to Harvard. I went into Corfu. And because of that, I've been able to build friendships and wealth and a joyful journey in my life as a hairdresser. I've seen people come and go a lot. People had entered Corfu. I had something happen. And you'll come there. You might come three or four times. You know, it's good. I got a little bit. I get to talk to my friends. That's always the best thing. stuff that happens in the back of the room, blah, blah, blah. Those are all great things. You meet people. Most people bounce around too much and they don't stick with something and really find the depth of that organization. Our organization is designed for salons that have employees. We're an employee-based salon organization. Not that we're not in, you know, suites and all that. Look, everybody who plays by the rules and makes sure the tax is paid, hey, I'm for it. You know I started off pretty much by myself. So that's what we really focus on, is how to really run that business extremely well with a large dollop of what's going on in the world of fashion and beauty. Lots of open conversations. You know, we have our regionals where you can go, like we just have one in Dallas, we're getting ready to have one in Atlanta. Those are free to members, up to about 35 or so people, so you don't pay extra for that. And Columbia is not meant to be an inexpensive, it's meant to really work for people that want to go to that next level and build their business. If you're doing, you know, a million or so a year in a salon, 800 or so, and you got six or seven people and you really want to go and get 18, 20, you double the business and all, you join in the coffee, you're able to go visit and listen to the watch and learn from people confidentially. So it really is a one of a kind organization with a lot of, it's a legacy brand that's pivoted right now, particularly, into a newfound future. And I just have loved it so much. I've learned so much. I just had something the other day that is worth tens of thousands of dollars of an idea I got from just one person that none of us said. While we were in it, we were sitting at a table eating. And she explained something she was doing to me. And so it could be that one thing. You think you're doing great because you do $800 a day behind the chair? you'll meet someone in the coffee room that's doing $5,500 a year behind the chair not exaggerating. You'll go holy shit. It's possible. There's so many possibilities. Anyway. All about the connections. Connections. It's a big theme for us right now and we've got our May 2nd through 3rd spring gathering coming up. Go to intercoffier.com to learn more about that. Sam Mercado, we're out of time. Got it. It's always a pleasure. love you to death man yes take care out there keep showing up and one more time a huge thank you to sam bricado for taking the time to share with us today so much good stuff and thanks to each of you for listening to the connector from intercofior remember to learn more about us go to intercofior.com lastly if you enjoyed today's conversation be sure to hit the like and subscribe buttons best of all consider sharing it with a colleague or friend in the industry. Pay it forward. I'm your host, Gordon Miller, General Manager of Intercoffee, and I can't wait to bring you another brilliant guest next time.