SPEAKER_02 0:00

My favorite part of my business travel is answering the phone call. Now what business do you have where the freaking CEO top do with five thousand active clients that wants to answer every phone call? It it's kind of weird, but it does set us apart because something I freaking hate is that you need some shit done and all you get is answering shit. So it's so frustrating. And and and having five kids, like trying to book appointments and waiting for people to call you back and all that, I've always hated that. And I love making people stay, as I mentioned earlier. So people are astonished when I pick up on the first ring. I mean, unless my wife's giving me that look, I'm picking up on the first ring. I gotta turn my phone off because I can't, I love it so much. This is Joey, how may I help you? All my kids know that. So now my kids, when they're in the car and I pick up on like silent on the set phone call, they'll say it with me simultaneously. They think it's hilarious because the clients often like, what did I just hear? Like three or four people go, thanks for calling here by Joey.

SPEAKER_01 1:02

In your business interview by Joey, right? That's right. Cool. All right, guys. Welcome back to another episode of Bretton O'Byond Business Podcast. Today we're a press back chapter, and we're gonna talk with Joey from Joe Joey Furon. Was that Joey Frone? Joey Frong uh from Hair by Joey. We're just gonna have a conversation today about his business, his life, his faith, and just dive into everything we can about this man, all right? So just give me uh a quick snippet of who you are, brought you to Crestfields and we've got arisen from here, um, and just a little bit of uh life story from here.

SPEAKER_02 1:33

You got it. So I was born and raised in Seattle, Washington. I was born in 1969, 56 now, great Catholic, and then uh discovered porn around 10 and kind of just got into porn and heavy metal during my teens and just kind of lived the worldly way. Turned out I could sing. I pulled the singer card off the deck of life at 16, which is just right around the quarterback card in terms of the awesome card you could pull off for life. And what I realized I didn't sing, and I was I was good. And so I immediately started putting bands together, and then I hit Seattle in my 20s, right when the whole 90s brunch thing was going, blown up, becoming everybody's music. And so it was Hetty Times. I cut some records and then I got I put together an 80s tribute act and played out every Friday and Saturday for about five years, made great money, had a ton of fun. And then around 31, that lifestyle just wasn't working great. I had married and I I I I landed a 22-year-old when I was just 17, which is a lot like uh my pastor used to joke. It's like when the if if the dog actually catches the fire engine it's chasing, I didn't know what the frick I was doing. Unfortunately, that marriage just struggled. I was addicted to porn a whole marriage. So we split up when I was 32. I was 30, I went bankrupt. I took a big swing at real estate, me and a buddy bought 13 houses in three months uh on real shady credit, and then the dot-com thing in the northwest flipped, and all of a sudden we couldn't find renters, and I went freaking bankrupt. So 31, I was bankrupt. My dad had died, my family kind of exploded when my dad died, and and then my I got divorced. My plan at that time I was staying with three bands and was just gonna go live a debauched lifestyle, essentially. I I managed to stay faithful, I live in the barn. But at tw at at at 32 I was really gonna get going for that. God put a really pretty Christian girl in front of me who invited me to church. But uh it was a small church at the time called Morris Hill, and nobody knew it would blow up to be one of the biggest churches uh in in the early 2000s. Um and so I I joked that Jesus put me in a headlock. So I met Amy in 2002, 2003, February, Carlisle had been praying for me forever. The one real serious Christian brother in the family, and I went over to his house and just said, dude, I think I'm in. And uh that was a crazy time in 2003, and she had brain tumors. So my whole walk with Christianity was a walk of growing out of being this egotistical rock star type person and growing into becoming a human service uh servant and a faithful follower of Jesus Christ with heartbreak after heartbreak, stability and all those things. But we went through about six brain surgeries over nine years. And the final one in in 2010, the tumor had begun to push on her brain in such a way that it was like 41st dates that like Drew Barrymore movie, where she just threw short-term surgery team, was like, this thing's just gonna keep going. It's unlikely that her memory problems are gonna get better. So I'll never forget one of the hugest moments of my life was back 2010, New Year's Eve. I had to make the call or just bring her home. And so uh I I decided to bring her home. She passed away that April, and that was just can you imagine that whole walk with Jesus was what C.S. Lewis or Tolkien calls the long defeat. So I fought the long defeat, and and then that was it. It was just quiet. We never had the kids, never, you know, and just so but God had a plan. He told me as that was finished, he said he told me the Holy Spirit came in our finish well, and you're not gonna believe what I have for you. And sure enough, he had an amazing girl. She was somebody that we'd known, that Amy and I had known through the church, a young gal who had moved out of state, came back to state. Anyways, long story short, we can talk about that later if you want. But Amy passed in April and Jessica and I got married in September. It's been a crazy frickin' ride since then. So we can touch on that stuff what you want. Basically, 2011 got married. By 2016, we knew we wanted to start family, and we knew it wasn't going to be in Seattle because we didn't like the weather, we didn't like the politics, we didn't like traffic, we didn't like the anti-Christian vibe. And that's when I called uh an acquaintance of mine, Grant Asado, who once found Father's in the town, and said, Tell me about Prescott. I'm thinking Flagstaff or Phoenix, but how far is that from your little town of Grant's life? Forget Flagstaff, forget Phoenix, come to Prescott. So he invited me here. He said, cut hair for a month, you keep all the money you make, just come here, check out town. Because we were thinking Bend, Oregon, we were thinking New Mexico, we were thinking Colorado. We were gonna do a tour. But he said, start here first. And he was driving to Phoenix that day. We talked for two hours, sent us some pictures and said, Hey, this looks really cool. She's like, I'm in. So we came down here in 10 years, it was February 2016. We rolled into town and uh bought a house three three months later, beautiful home here in Prescott action classes in 2016 and September. And um we began to foster a little boy in January of 2017. Interesting story with all that, and then our kids, our three kids, we adopted a sibling group. We got the call on June 28th, 2017. Hey, we got three kids down here in Phoenix. Can you come pick them up Monday? We said, those are our kids, we're on our way. Picked them up, a few little bags of clothes, and we said, We're gonna adopt you guys. And they have you go through a year to make sure it's a fit. Year later, 2017, adoption went through, and then 2018, January, we got pregnant with our first bio kid. Meanwhile, I'm building my business, doing my thing. Uh, and then 2019, Grant was going on to his next big thing. I'd worked with his shop for three years, and at that time we decided to shut down my Seattle operation to design a beautiful studio here in town. So it was just me and 150 clients to start with in 2019. And uh that's just grown into so five kids, and now I have a beautiful salon in two spaces. Uh, we've got about 5,000 active clients, 10 world-class hairstylists from New York, Austin, LA, Thoftsdale, and just a wonderful, wonderful environment. Here we are in 2026, and I feel like we're just starting in a lot of ways.

SPEAKER_01 8:45

That's an incredible story. It's cool. There's so many things throughout that story I can relate to. Uh, my business partner that first started my gyms with back in Chicago, he passed away at 34 from brain cancer. He had, you know, he was diagnosed with it, got him removed. They're like, hey, uh, you'll be fine. You know, obviously he was two years removed, they're like, hey, cancer-free. And then one day, back, you know, instantly back and and and passed away uh a couple months after that. And so here in that story, and then an adoption story, me and my wife, that's something we're gonna be going through here in the next few years as well. Um, but just cool story from like the thing that you without probably even realizing uh when you're younger, the entrepreneurship journey, but you went on what I call the entrepreneurship, which is the idea that like the entrepreneurship journey is the relentlessness of overcoming whatever keeps coming in your face. You can say that by any other journey to faith or whatever. I just think of that on the entrepreneurship side because you ended up there at the end, is the fact that like every situation that you went through, you just kept on being like you just bet on yourself, you bet on you and your family and your faith in God. It's such a cool story. I mean, for the whole podcast, that what I said right there is everything I need you to know uh about your life because it really uh you show like a younger age of talent that you have, right? Yeah, and that talent allows you to be able to create different things in life, but uh God continued along that path to show you like, hey, this is a great talent, but this is just a stepping stone of where we're going in your life. It's so cool to be like, well, I think about the when I was young, I was really good at uh at football, like that was my thing. Um, and then I had a major back issue in high school, or college, going to college football, major back issue that derailed that and put me on the path that like now had me go through all the different businesses I built. But if the path of the state football, I don't know if I would have ever gotten that path that's of a better journey than I could have school hearing your journey getting through that um with your wife and overcoming that. And the fact that God had that, like, even though you lost I mean, your first marriage obviously ended, but that's always stuff that's still part of the journey. I know I've talked to a lot of men that have gone through divorce but came off the other side saying, like, I'm I haven't given up on this, and I've probably become a better man along this journey to be. I wish I could have been a better man in the first state. You know, how could I have been a better man here? But now for my next wife, I can be that version of what I need to be. Um, and then obviously that ended uh when she passed away. But then God's like, hey, like I you've done you've you've been that faithful servant along this way, and now here's in a sense your reward of another great woman that you can lead, you know. Yeah, so that is really, really cool. And I mean you know all that stuff about you, and I'm just gonna go.

SPEAKER_02 11:16

It's a bit of for your process, right? Yeah, I do have quite a story.

SPEAKER_01 11:20

It's it's uh it chokes me up in certain ways because that's that uh journey I love hearing every entrepreneur that I talk to, none of them have had the easy path. Every single one has had the hard path in different ways. Everybody's running my path is harder than others, right? Every journey is different, but I've never had that. Uh every person I run into, their path is always like, man, I've had to overcome a lot of things. So it's cool when I do hear that. I'm like, yeah, you're you're a true entrepreneur because you found a home.

SPEAKER_02 11:45

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 11:45

That's what did you do? What got you into like hair sound? Like, why is that? Great questions.

SPEAKER_02 11:52

Uh it's 1992. I'm saying it for an awesome metal band. I'm working in daycare here in Ponytail. After a year at the daycare, they raised me from $6.35 to $6.85 an hour. And the drummer in my band owned hair salon. And he pulled me aside, said Joey, what what's your plan if you don't make it as rock stars? And I said, We're gonna totally be rock stars. What are you talking about? It's like, well, I know, but it the outside chance that we don't. I'm like, I don't, I don't know, honestly, maybe psychology. I don't know, I like people. He's like, Listen, 75% of hair is personality. You already have the personality piece, you're a freaking lead singer, a popular man. He said, Why don't you get your hair uh license and then you can get chicks from the shows to come out and get their hair done and get chicks who are getting their hair done to come out to the shows? I'm like, that's a pretty cool idea. So I thought about it for a whole year when they five. Then there was a a book you can check out of the library that would it it comes out each year and tells you about every career, what the pros and cons are, what the average income is, etc. So I got that, looked through it, found out about hairstyling, and my buddy's like, I'm writing these chicks checks, and they're it's good, buddy, man. And so I decided to in Dungeons and Dragons term multi-class. In Dungeons and Dragons, you're a fighter or you're with But sometimes you're a fighter wizard, bro. And so my initial business call was actually said rock star slash hairstylist. So I would cut hair during the week and I sucked. I did awful. I mean, cut a chick's ear, you know, hair coming off in the shampoo bowl because I overprocessed it, color dripping down a gal's face, buzzing a guy's hair way too high. Like, you know, I sucked. But I'm like, I'm going to do this, I'm going to figure it out. Oh, by the way, '95, right after I got married, most of the skin burned off my right arm in a terrible accident because I was doing construction part-time. Three weeks in the hospital, massive skin grafting off my right leg. This is months after I graduated Fuji School. Can you imagine? That's the enemy was unbelievable. And of course, the challenge, well, I just got married in August and I got burnt in in like September. Uh so that took me out for three, four months. But you always have to look for that little, like, what's the what's the help gonna be? Even back then, prior to being a Christian, you know, I I had that faith. I grew up in a real faith-based family. And uh the help there was the government said, Hey, uh, we can help you uh retrain. Do you want to retrain? And I was like, um, rather than retraining, can you just help supplement my income? I just trained as a hairstylist. And I'm I'm kind of a small government guy, but I gotta thank the Washington government on that because they supplemented my income for 12 months. So my first 12 months of doing hair, because I was injured, I got a I got a supplement, and that helped me get over the hump. 12 months later, I was able to pay the rent and make life happen. So that is uh that's how I got into hair. And then I was going along working for other folks, and then I took the big swing at real estate in 2000, felt flat on my face. I mean, I thought I was gonna go to prison. When I called a family lawyer, hey, what happens if you do calling for a friend? If you sign real estate loans and this and that, like bankruptcy takes care of that, right? She's like, oh no, tell your friend that that's loan fraud. If there's any government people talking, just telling for a friend. But the the long and short of it was that was really scary, terrible time. And again, like you said, if you have an entrepreneurial mindset, you just go, okay, what's the next thing I'm gonna do? What's the next thing I'm gonna do? And I knew early on, all the way back to being 10 or 11 or 12, I I get bored with other people leading the Dungeons and Dragons game. I'm a 45-year dungeon master because I can't have somebody else tell the story. I got to tell a good story. And I like to bring people on the adventure. I've never been competitive, I've never gotten into any sports. Well, when I discovered Dungeons and Dragons, that was my thing. Because even if you're the game master, the dungeon master, your whole point is to, yes, challenge some people, but to create an experience where everybody has a good time, everybody's elevated. So that was my first thing. And then likewise with the band, the coolest thing about being a semi-rock star in the 90s was having my friends and family who who didn't have the talent, but I did bring them along for the ride. So when I was able to open for national action, play massive shows, I love getting my friends on a guest list, get my family on the guest list. So it's always been for me about creating opportunities and loving on other people. I'm not saying that to be self-deprecating. It's almost a curse. My 18-year-old daughter's helped me figure this out about my personality. I'm one of those need-to-be-need people. So it's not like, oh, I'm just so, you know, I need that, but that's what drives me is creating experiences where everybody who comes in contact with me, my band, my D game, my business is gonna have a wonderful experience that that makes their life better.

SPEAKER_01 17:00

I I love that because like I think the way you just said the need to be needed, that's the um superhero in us all, right? And so I think every entrepreneur has a superhero inside them that wants to lead in the thing that they're special at, right? I think about it with my uh business partners is we're all alphas, but I'm the alpha of the alphas. And the idea is like somebody's still gonna lead the group, no matter who how strong the group is. And I feel that same thing is like whenever they're weak, I want to pull them along. You might be too pulling you into those things. I love the way you said that you hold people along with you. My dad's built a big corporation, my siblings work for that, and I just took on a consulting role with them because I know my expertise in business over the last 15 years has grown so much that now I'm gonna help my siblings because I even want to move back to Iowa and run be the CEO of this major corporation. So instead, I'm gonna be a consultant because I want to bring my siblings along without having to move back to Iowa. So I I where they struggle, where I'm Sean, let me continue to pull people along with me. I love the way you said that. That's because my brain goes like whenever anybody's like, well, why you know you could cut these business partners, not have a business partner if you're there? It's like I like pulling the right humans along with me, right? I always think like these people are good people that need somebody to just keep pulling them along this journey. Yes.

unknown 18:09

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 18:10

What makes Hair by Joey like what makes you guys special compared to like other salons or okay?

SPEAKER_02 18:16

My favorite part of my business, Jarvis, is answering the phone. Now, what business do you have where the freaking CEO, Top Dude, with 5,000 active clients wants to answer every phone call? It's kind of weird, but it does set us apart because something I freaking hate is you need some shit done, and you all you get is answering sheets. That's so frustrating. And and and having five kids, like trying to book appointments and waiting for people to call you back, and all that, I've always hated that. And I love making people's day, as I mentioned earlier. So people are astonished when I pick up on the first ring. I mean, unless my wife's giving me that look, I'm picking up on the first ring. I gotta turn my phone off because I can't, I love it so much. Thanks for calling here by Joey. This is Joey, how may I help you? All my kids know that. So now my kids, when they're in the car and I pick up on like silent on the set phone call, they'll say it with me simultaneously. They think it's hilarious because the client's often like, what did I just hear? Like three or four people go, thanks for calling here by Joey. This is Joey, how may I help you? Anyways, so that's a very unique point. Another unique point is um, I am an aesthetics guy. So when I created this space, the first hair by Joey I created in my home, it was a home salon. My wife Amy had a sort of aesthetic design that she liked, and and I dug it. It was kind of an Asian's end thing. And we began to quarrel a little bit about how exactly this would play out. So she talked me into hiring a uh design person. 75 bucks an hour. It seemed insane to me. But we paid this guy for 10 hours and he came and he bought little templates, screels and things. And so, right from the get-go, because that's the one that was built in the front of our home, was a huge component of the hereby Joey Deal. So when I launched my thing here, I could have gone some little mini mall, and I get it. Some people, all they have is five or ten grand, they gotta do the best they can, and it's gonna look somewhat generic, and they can, you know, do some cool things. But I went in 40, 50 grand on that first space with me and 150 clients because I have that vision of what it could be. And then I probably did 70, 80 grand on our expansion, which kept similar things but a slightly different color palette. And people tease me that I'm too feminine and floppy and gay because I I'm not feminine, floppy and gay because I like aesthetics. Lots of people like aesthetics. Uh, and I think that's a huge thing. I've got themes like fountains, bamboo, bird of paradise. These become signature things that people connect with. In studio one, it's all brown, dark browns, copper, gold. In studio two, it's lighter sort of sandy colors, blues, and silvers. So I don't accept a silver copy cup from Studio Two being in Studio One. It's like that needs to be in Studio Two. I have very strong aesthetics, so people feel that way. I think another thing that sets me apart is how happy my people are, because I really don't give a shit about money. Beyond, I need to be able to take care of my family. If I can take care of my family and take a little bit of vacation, money's not what motivates me. What motivates me is people being busy and people loving what they do because I've been given this gift where I get to pick the music, I get to pick the vibe, I get to create the whole environment. I work three minutes from home. I want to give everybody who works for me as much of that as I can do. Just because I I love them. If I hire you, I love you. You're now part of my inner circle, and I want real life to be amazing. So a lot of places that where they're focused on money, you don't care about the people as much, I think you probably it's a different feeling. When you come to Hair by Joey, you're you're working. In with somebody who's well taken care of and uh who knows they're love. And the longer people work for me, the better it is for you to do. So that's pretty cool.

unknown 22:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:10

I mean, one of the teachers one of those part because I think you said, I mean, they're amazing things. The first one is unique to entrepreneurship because I think most entrepreneurs, their first thing is to get out of sales. They instantly want to do it, even though the business coach in me would say you should stay in sales as long as possible, right? That's like that's your money maybe. That's the thing that got rolls. What's the thing that moves the needle the most? Sales. If you can have a low marketing budget, if you sell at a high percentage, you're gonna outdo that in low marketing budget all the time. You can increase your marketing budget because you outsell it. But most entrepreneurs naturally want to get out of that because they're like, I want to be more of the team instead of the sales person. So I love that because I encourage people to usually be like, hey, this is a role you need to take over more. I even in my business, I answer all the emails and stuff that are from clients. I don't answer only one specific from clients because I want to give them that personal touch that I'm gonna be able to like, this is I'm gonna go yon. Yeah, I'm a little button when I we had somebody that had a software issue, and the software issue wasn't our fault. It was the software itself's fault. But I re-reimbursed him three months. I didn't even ask for reimbursement. I just gave three months worth of research hair.

SPEAKER_02 23:13

I had a gal call me uh a year, uh two years after her service and said, I was in there, I heard you talking in the back room about how trash my hair was, it really made me upset. I didn't like it, my hair broke off, all that. And I just said, What's your address? How much did you spend with us? And I sent her a check. Because my late wife, Amy, she was a very fancy kind of gal. She worked for Starbucks Corporate and she shopped at Nordstrom. She said, Joey, if we're gonna do this, we're gonna do Nordstrom level. I'm like, What's Nordstrom level? She's like, I could buy a dress at Nordstrom and go back five years later and return it, and they would not care. The customer always right is taking it way up to here. And she says, Trust me, every bad review, every every complaint, every issue, if you just push 100% for how can I make this better for this person from that deep heart? I still remember that gal's name, it's swindle hearse. I mean, two years, but still it's a little thing. Okay, you feel like you deserve to uh, you know, this because it, you know, trash your hair or whatever, I'm gonna take care of you. And that's huge.

SPEAKER_01 24:17

Well, in the world of more and more businesses out there and bigger and bigger businesses, the one thing that separates every single business is true customer service. And the larger companies get, the the worse customer service gets, right? And so these young these small entrepreneurs of small towns need to realize this is where I can win because I get one customer that loves me, and then they tell 10 other custom people, and then the first question for you that has a recurring clientele, it's like, hey, I'm keeping these guys forever because every single time something we give them a great service, but also if something goes wrong, I'm gonna take care of that for another 10 years. I can be there for the rest of the life. So and then 100%, I mean, go back to the sales side of it, they answering the phone calls out of it, is like that's part of like your guys' personality, too. I'm setting the tone from the second they book their appointment that we're gonna give you special attention.

SPEAKER_02 25:03

I've talked to my marketing friends and they said, You see, Joey, the only thing is you if you are the brand, it can only grow so big. And honestly, I don't care. I'm not trying to be a multimillionaire. God's less my business way beyond what I thought I'd be, anyways. So it's all winning from here. You know, I heard a great thing the other day, you're either winning or learning. Man, that is true. I I don't think I would I would in five years make more than I've ever made in Seattle. We doubled my Seattle best year last year.

SPEAKER_01 25:33

Five years too many, too many gurus go for scalability. I think scalability is a bullshit excuse for not doing work. And so what I mean by that is like most people are like, how about I scale this faster? It means how do I get myself out and doing the work? Right. And I'm the opposite of like I'm also some type of person where money means nothing to me. Where it's like, I'm gonna do what's the best possible situation that I can make this it this business into, money will come along the way.

SPEAKER_02 25:57

I'm just like, oh my gosh. I just fumble along. But here's what Travis, I love people. That's something that you just you know, anybody watching this, if you don't love people, it's gonna be harder to be a successful entrepreneur. If if if what you're doing genuinely stems from love, my experience has been now you have to have some talent and you have to I read tons of books and coaching and this sort of thing. But it's that heart of love for first my staff, then my clients. And you don't get that wrong too, you know, because it if if you're gonna have that attitude of uh you know, kind of maybe some businesses are successful treating staff um you know with with less care, but for me that's been a huge thing.

SPEAKER_01 26:47

Well, it's the idea that the client's always right, and we don't I don't believe in that. My staff is always like I'm gonna talk to my staff first. They're the ones that must protect. That's right. And then I'm gonna do my best for my client, but I gotta protect my staff first and make sure because if I have this trust, they're the ones that are doing running my business for me.

SPEAKER_02 27:04

And if both people are kind of right, I just take the hit. Yeah. What do I care about 150 bucks that I gotta refund with somebody? Yeah, I don't take that out of my person's pay, go quat back. You know, I call them, I say what happened, and unless it's man, I was really off that day. Because it's usually not that, it's there was some misunderstanding. And I say, okay, don't worry about it. I just want to hear what happened.

SPEAKER_01 27:27

No, that's that's you're writing a business rate on that side. And the aesthetic side, I want to dive in a lot too, because I would say a lot of businesses mess up that component, maybe not to the level that you're going to, but when you walk into a space, any business you walk into, it's the impression of what the expectation is as soon as I walk in. I I always think about this every business I walk into, like how plugged it is. I'm a very detail-oriented person naturally. And when I walk into a place, I'm like even the founding fathers of your real, everything's in place. I got everything on points. And I like I love that as a person. This is when I walk in the door, it's the experience I'm gonna have from this point on, they're gonna pay attention to the details. And if now they're servicing me, take care of me, the idea is like there's details. So I love that you're on a point with that stuff, and like it made I'm a big brain person, uh my marketing background. And so everything, like you said, color-wise, like when I do my brotherhood brand, everything's always in these colors, or when I'm doing our gym brand, everything in our our gym matches that kind of stuff, or my marketing brand, all those different things. It's so cool when you walk into someplace and it's got on a step. Yeah, it has a per it has a personality, and that's where that brick and mortar side of things can take on a life of its own, too. Where I'm not amazing, I've I own brick and mortar um businesses, the gyms that I've owned. I never want to do brick and mortar again after owning them because like it just for me, my perspective is uh I wanted to be able to have a little bit more scalability, more flexibility, really mortar scalability. Um that the our gym didn't provide me that that level. Um, I still own those gyms, but is the idea of like the brick and mortar target and create its own personality, whereas my marketing business, the personality is is only needed because otherwise it's a website. You know, it's kind of my personality. So when the when the space itself can have this personality, it's another draw that pulls people.

SPEAKER_02 29:11

That's right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:12

And the third component that you talked about was the customer service side. I'm not sorry, Pastor. The taking care of your staff side.

SPEAKER_02 29:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:20

I don't think anybody that has staff can overplay how important that is. It's like you talked about like the level of pay that you're getting them is probably better than most places around here.

SPEAKER_02 29:30

My people make two to three times what the average style of estimates are.

SPEAKER_01 29:34

And that's why you're bringing you getting people.

SPEAKER_02 29:36

Well taken care of. Yeah, you know, it's just that our deal is here's our deal. I'm gonna hustle and and do my end and feed you the clients, and you're gonna kick buck with them, and you're gonna get busy fast, and you're gonna be as busy as you want to be for as long as you want to do hair. It's a pretty good deal.

SPEAKER_01 29:53

Yeah, it's one of those things where I think sometimes the owner, the owner gap to the employee gap sometimes I found is too big sometimes. When you look at people's businesses, is the percentage that the owner's taking home for the amount of business being done is almost too big a percentage. I know all most entrepreneurs have enough hate that concept, but that's what I look at when you have a staff. Your ability to increase the amount of staff and make more money, you can always add more staff members. They can't increase their pay without you making a choice to give them more.

SPEAKER_02 30:20

So you actually be giving that, in my opinion, the salons in the industry start new people at about 28%. And then it scales up to maybe 50%. I just start them at 50 and keep them at 50. I'm like, if 50 ain't gonna work for you, this ain't gonna be a great fit. Because that's just my deal. But I'm gonna start you at 50. And not only that, I'm not gonna expect you to wander around here polishing shampoo bottles for no money. If you're work if you can come to work for me, you will be busy within six months, and you will have life-changing money within a year. You'll be able to make a living in this thing.

SPEAKER_01 30:53

And the point that you're doing different from most businesses is you're supplying the clients. That's right. There's a lot of businesses you get paid this month, but then you've got to go find the clientele to then me make money off of your clientele. That's yes.

SPEAKER_02 31:03

I take that responsibility. You know, I spent probably 35,000 in marketing last year. And it was a lot for a little small and so on, but the results speak for themselves.

SPEAKER_01 31:14

I love the perspective that you brought in because a lot of people would have gone into we do something special in our service, and your thing was I don't do anything special like we are the best technician in the world. Right. Your thing was like we take care of our people really, really well. Yeah, versus being like, hey, I'm really good at this technician, then you're not really that important.

SPEAKER_02 31:31

You know, let's be honest, it's I think I have incredible people, the best people, as Donald Trump would say. He's so good with the supernova superlatives. But there's a lot of salots with great, if we're being honest. So what sets us apart is how loved our people are. And people know when they work for me that that's what I expect to push onto the comments, and that's what's different.

SPEAKER_01 31:54

I want to dive in next into your journey with with the Lord, right? Like your journey into faith. Kind of tell me, because you you found that church Marshall.

SPEAKER_02 32:02

Mars Hill.

SPEAKER_01 32:02

Mars Hill. Found that church, like from give me a little bit of that journey, what's kept you along that path, and then also moving to Prescate, how that journey's continuing.

SPEAKER_02 32:11

So um Amy and I started dating, and I would go in, and on Sunday, she was in church, you know. Uh so I would go in and I would look at the sermon notes and say, that's bullshit, that's bullshit, I don't really believe that. But this firebrand preacher, Marsh Driscoll, who shout out to Mark, uh, Trinity Church in Phoenix is where he is now. He's still dying away. And what's interesting about Mark, people love him or hate him. He's a controversial character for sure. He's always treated me with love and respect. He and his wife showed up when Amy was dying, and he had a church of 10,000 people and he spent time with me. He's a good man, but he's very controversial. But Mark, he's preaching the exact same stuff today, with a couple, you know, he's a little more Holy Spirit these days, hands in the air touch stuff, but it's the same message. Mark's always had a heart for families, particularly, man. And so that was huge for me because my dad was very passive. He was a good man, stayed married to my mom's whole life. But he was what is called in red pill parliaments, a beta. I didn't even realize there was such a thing until about 21. Buddy red pilled me, and I'm like, oh shit, okay. Um, you know, having that uh kind of church and and somebody preaching me about truth and and just no equivocating, you know, heaven, hell, the whole thing, the Bible being true. Uh, and I began to meet Christians who were interested in cool things because it was a very cool church. I'm interested in art and culture, music. My idea of Christianity was this stupid idea, the caricature of Christians that I've been sold on Saturday night with TV and all of the movies my entire life. Everything in our friggin' life since I've since 1969, at least when I was born, has has made an effort to lampoon Christianity and make it the church lady. You know, just that they're out-of-touch people, you know, don't understand or embrace art, culture, music, cinema, etc. And and one of the really cool things about Marshall is that they were up for all of them. So we would really have great debates, and they were into reading all sorts of authors and everything, but alongside an absolute rock solid sense of the truth. Um, by the time Amy uh passed away in 2011, Marcel was beginning to have problems, and um the troops blew up. Um and Mark decided to move to Arizona, and it was really like one thing Mark had always said is it's it's not about me, it's about Jesus. So if this whole thing blows up, just look to where Jesus is and follow that. But to be honest, Amy and I struggled to f I mean Jessica, who's my my wife now, we struggled to find a church after Marcel because Mark was such a rock star guy, and we were accustomed to that kind of preaching and teaching where it's just line by line, going through the Bible, expositional, preaching through the through books of the Bible, essentially, with some topical stuff. Uh so we came here to Prescott and uh we tried a number of churches. We were with a house church for a while, but nothing quite clicked. And then my friend Ty Friedman invited me to the Orthodox Church, which is like right out of Lord of the Rings, man. It's crazy. It's the smells and bells and incense and uh it's there's no instruments, you know. I thought this is weird. Two-hour services. The Easter service starts at 11 p.m. and goes for three and a half hours. It's crazy. So I don't know, is it like dating a gal who's really different from your last girlfriend, but you keep wanting to hang out with her, and then eventually you sort of fall in love, and so we did fall in love with Orthodoxy. So we go to St. George Orthodox Church in town, but community in that church is unbelievable, and certainly no diss to the Catholics or the Protestants, but the Orthodox Church um is really special, and that's we got all our kids baptized there, but we kind of hung around the fringes for a while. But now my wife and I uh teach Sunday school in class and I sing in the choir. It's a wonderful church. That's awesome, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:22

Yeah, it's uh everybody's journey to faith. So you have some people that they were raised, like their parents raised them along the faith. My parents raised me in terms of we had we were Lutheran growing up, then like attended church on the day, the high holidays, right? But it wasn't like a big part of our life. Um but we lived Christian values, what I would consider Christian values. My parents are like old school in that way, and then it took me to go to college and and meet uh went to a Christian college and private college, and then gotten more into to uh Bible then, and then one of the went back, uh lived overseas multiple times, got away from it, came back to it. Uh this is my journey back and forth so many times. My wife, she's Jewish, and so um we like their family's practice up. Um me and her kind of uh we went to a big uh like understanding of of uh what my my faith and Jesus kind of looked at that and she converted to Christianity, and that's been our path together, we get dive deep into our religious religious beliefs and our faith and that kind of stuff since then. It's then God would continue to like it's one of those things that's like when I think about faith, is God's always always pulling on our heart. It's just our ability not to listen. You know what I mean? And that was for me, for me that's like I'd get down and make oh, this is exactly where I want to be, and then I'd get the world, things would come back, business would come back, I'd be like, I won't travel so much, Sundays I watch football, like all these things would keep coming back into my life, where I'd always be like, man, I gotta get the team to get these worldly things out and put my faith into that. And it's just any any entrepreneur that's uh you know Christian that's like, I mean, I I I I believe I'd be Christian, but I just don't practice hard enough. It's like you're not alone. Most people struggle with that. The practice comes over time.

SPEAKER_02 37:55

Yeah, don't go for that. I just finished chapter seven and seven happy to highly affect the people, snarkling the saw, and get your freaking butt in a good tears. I don't care if it's hard. You know, just starting with marriage, the the divorce rate for nominal Christians is identical to the secular divorce rate. The divorce rate of practicing serious Protestants and Catholics so drops it from about 52% down to about 18 to 20%. And not to brag, but Orthodox is about nine percent. So it's just it's not because there's magic here. It's when you're it's it's when you're involved in a body of people that hold you to a higher standard. Uh because marriages are struggling out here. And when I talk to a guy who's not engaged in a church, it's not like church makes it perfect, because just going to church ain't gonna do it. You gotta be connected, you gotta be connected with other guys because uh the enemy is out with knives for marriage right now in a big way. I don't know if it's always been this bad, but I know seven people, good Christian guys, are all just things are in in a tough spot. And if you're not part of a Christian community, you're hitting that 52%. You know, those those are shit numbers.

SPEAKER_01 39:09

Yeah, and I just go too political, but on the American side, they're not presenting in the sense that uh marriage is good, right? Like it's like the there are Christians are being attacked, married couples have been attacked for many years now, right? Yeah, it's like, but just because you're being attacked, that means that's the time to stand up as a man, to lead your family as a male as a leader.

SPEAKER_02 39:31

The whole culture's against it.

SPEAKER_01 39:32

Which makes no sense because like you spend literally probably until the 1970s, it was just like this is the family that we're building, right? And then in 1970, or maybe a little before that, all of a sudden it started that shift happened, and that's not us moving away from Christianity, that's the world coming, that's Satan teaching us his levels of control. Well, I'm gonna kind of wrap up on that for the day. I appreciate the conversation. I could talk for hours and we're gonna talk more and more over time. Um, but I really appreciate you telling us your story, talking about it. I think all the things you're doing are the right things, and I told you about that John Julius book. I think that's gonna be like listening to you talk, you're doing 95% of what we are talking about without even reading his stuff. Um, but the idea is like you're on a great path. I love that the the journey you have. I'm gonna be dating your tick uh picking your brain specifically about some of the adoption stuff and just like your story over time. So I really appreciate your time, Jay. Hit subscribe, turn on notifications, and stay locked in. Brotherhood is more than business. It's about leading from the front, leveling up in every domain, and becoming the CEO of your own life. Step up, execute, and we'll see you in the next one.