Phorest FM: Live From The Salon Owners Summit 2023 With Jason Everett

Zoé Bélisle-Springer: How are you feeling? 

Rich Cullen: Nervous, but good. Good. Yeah. It’s going to be great. It’s going to be great. We’re starting. We’re starting.

Zoé Bélisle-Springer: Oh, yeah.

Jason Everett: Two people come together in business and life. You ready? Two people come together in business and life. The person with the highest energy generally wins. Just think about that for a second. Just put ‘highest energy wins’. So you have to write down your first official note of the day. Congratulations. But out of the next two days, what’s going to happen is the amount of information you take from this conference is directly related to the amount of effort you put into getting it.

Live From: The Salon Owners Summit 2023 [01:19]

Zoé Bélisle-Springer: Coming to you live from Dublin, Ireland, for the first time in three years and introducing a brand new concept on the show, I’m Zoé Bélisle-Springer, and I want to thank you for tuning in for this bonus “Live From…” episode brought to you by the PhorestFM podcast, powered by Phorest Salon Software.

On our “Live From” episodes, you can expect coverage from ​salon industry events we attend, where business owners like you can network with the best of the best and gain actionable insights. We’ll be sharing attendee vox pops & interviewing some of your favourite keynote speakers and industry professionals, getting to know them better and getting their takes on industry-related topics.

Subscribe to the PhorestFM newsletter to know where we’ll be next and when you can expect these bonus episodes. Go to phorest.com/fm and hit that subscribe button.

This month, we’re airing 5 PhorestFM “Live From…” bonus episodes with exclusive vox pops and interviews from The Salon Owners Summit: Ignite, 2023: The Global event for Growth Driven Salon Owners.

The Salon Owners Summit is Phorest’s very own two-day conference full of education, inspirational speakers, product updates and workshops. 

Born with the salon owner in mind, it’s been designed to give owners in attendance the tools to tackle the year ahead and offer plenty of networking opportunities.

Introducing Jason Everett [02:31]

Zoé Bélisle-Springer: So I’m with Jason Everett, inspirational speaker and founder of the High Performance Salon Academy. How are you doing?

Jason Everett: I’m good. Inspirational is exciting. All right, I’ll take that.

Zoé Bélisle-Springer: Yeah?

Jason Everett: Yeah, I’m doing good, doing awesome.

Zoé Bélisle-Springer: So listen, Jason, you delivered a highly energetic presentation on day one. You set the tone for the two-day conference.

Jason Everett: Yeah, it’s a big conference. It’s huge; it’s massive. You guys have almost 600 people. It’s blown up. And it’s first the first one since lockdowns and everything. So it’s exciting to bring the excitement to what you guys are already doing.

Zoé Bélisle-Springer: You released a book called Profitable Salon Owner: Rise Above The Chaos In Your Business And Reignite Your Passion And Profits.

Jason Everett: And you guys have the conference called Ignite.

Zoé Bélisle-Springer: I know! So was that you manifesting your appearance at the Summit?

Jason Everett: I called Ronan and said, “use that”! No, I’m just kidding. No, look, I’m actually a certified firewalking instructor. I love fire and passion and all that stuff, like my logo is a flame. So, igniting and all those things like that’s my jam every day. It worked out; you know what I mean? It’s my jam.

Zoé Bélisle-Springer: So listen, you said on Instagram that many amazing things have happened since you launched that book.

Jason Everett: Yeah, crazy stuff.

Zoé Bélisle-Springer: So what made the highlight reel of Jason Everett in 2022?

Jason Everett: You know what’s funny? So I did a post online, and I was like, “Hey, brag warning, I did some cool stuff last year,” and I posted all this stuff, and you know what’s really funny? I didn’t post that I wrote a book. And then somebody was like, “Didn’t you write a book?” And I’m like, “Oh, I did. Yes, I also wrote a book.”

And it’s really funny because there were so many great things that happened this last year that I almost forgot that I wrote a book last year. And I say it because it took me three years to write the book. And I told you just before the interview, somebody messaged me the day, and they said, “Hey, Jason, thanks so much for writing a great book. It took me like 3 hours to read it.” And I’m like — three years to write it, and it took you 3 hours to read it… Okay, cool.

But I’ve been telling people this a lot; I’ve severely underestimated the impact of what the book would do. Like, it’s one thing to shoot a video or do a podcast or do whatever and be like, “Oh, I listened to that, or I did that.” But people were tangibly getting takeaways from the book. And they’re like, “That changed my business.”

And the most important one that I got is this file on my phone, where I save screenshots in a folder that says, “Remember You Rock”. Because we all have crappy days, right? We all have bad days that we’re like, I don’t matter and the world sucks and we go inside ourselves.

So I have this one album called “Remember You Rock” on my phone. And every time somebody sends me a cool message, I screenshot it, circle it and save it. So whenever I have a really bad day, I go to that file, right? And I go and get myself right.

Zoé Bélisle-Springer: Great idea.

Jason Everett: It’s cool. So anyway, I say that because somebody was reading the book and they said, “My dad has been a barber for about 40 years, and he has never been willing to take on any of the recommendations that I have or any suggestions I have. And I read your book, and the very first thing you said changed everything for me. And your story about your dad and all this other stuff that meant the world to me.” And I was like, man, that was profound to have somebody say, “You helped me have a better conversation with my dad, and you just changed the way we talk to each other.”

People don’t watch a random Instagram video and say, “That profoundly changed my life.” They’re like, “thumbs up,” you know what I mean? It’s just not the same. I don’t know what it is about the impact of a book, or maybe it’s just that people connect with it differently because they hear it in their own voice, in their head, instead of hearing your voice.

But that was really powerful, and that’s just one small example. And every day, somebody sends me a message of something that was helpful for them or a picture of them reading it or whatever, and it’s been really cool.

Zoé Bélisle-Springer: That’s dope.

Jason Everett: Yeah, I think it’s been dope too. I’m stoked about it.

Zoé Bélisle-Springer: Congrats on the launch.

Jason Everett: Thank you. I appreciate it. Yeah. Cool.

Overcoming internal struggles to write a book [06:06]

Zoé Bélisle-Springer: Your book title speaks about rising above the chaos.

Jason Everett: Yeah.

Zoé Bélisle-Springer: Typically, when we write books or we write things we’re talking about, we’re coming at it from a “lessons learned” perspective. So what chaos did you have to rise above?

Jason Everett: I mean, it’s kind of weird. I have a weird memory. I forget bad things and try to remember only good things. I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but I say that because I didn’t grow up without a leg or in some horrible household or whatever. I came from a pretty good home with a pretty cool family, and good stuff happened in my life.

So I don’t have this terrible trainwreck story that rose from being a drug addict on the street. I don’t have that story. So I apologize to everybody who has that story. That’s just not my jam.

But what I will say is I struggle with a lot of internal battles. I think a lot of people do. You go to do something, beat yourself up about it, or think you’re cool, but you’re not that cool. And I deal with a lot of internal struggles.

So one of the biggest things, at least for me, even writing a book, is, like, I got D’s and F’s in school for English, and, like, I think my English teacher would have a heart attack if they knew I wrote a book? Because they’d be like, there’s no way that this idiot who didn’t ever want to write more than a half-a-page book report could ever write an entire book, right?

And the thing that’s interesting about this book is that I tried to have somebody ghostwrite it. Like, I tried to have somebody ghostwrite, like, a book three different times. And every time, it was terrible. And I hated it. But every single time somebody gave me something back, I was like, that’s garbage. I would never put that out.

It pissed me off so much that I just said, and then I’m just going to write the book. And I literally sat on my phone and with my thumbs and busted out the whole book on my phone with my thumbs? It’s all in my notes.

Zoé Bélisle-Springer: No wonder it took you three years.

Jason Everett: Well, yeah, but I type faster with my thumbs than my fingers anyways. But it literally, and this is funny, but I had to get so pissed off about it. And there are actually two piss-offs.

One was I kept getting crappy people to write for me, which wasn’t working. It never sounded like me. And I was like, “What are you going to do?” And somebody finally said to me — an editor came to me, and they were like, “Listen, you write it, I’ll edit it, and clean up all the garbage and the typos and spelling errors because there’s a lot of those.” You’ll probably still find some in the book; good luck! They’re Easter eggs for you.

The power of (healthy) competition [08:15]

Jason Everett: But I had to overcome that to write it. But in business and life, it’s the same thing. You have to overcome so many different things in life to be successful as a business owner or be successful as a podcast or as an influencer or whatever. It’s like… there are so many things in your way that say don’t do it. Watch Netflix and chill at home. Like, whatever. Do something else because everything else is easier.

Zoé Bélisle-Springer: It is!

Jason Everett: You have to overcome that to be successful. And I’ll tell you one other piss-off that got me to write the book if I’m really honest. Is it okay?

Zoé Bélisle-Springer: Go for it.

Jason Everett: So somebody else wrote a book, and it was for the salon and spa industry. Somebody else wrote it. And all of my clients and all my clients and customers were talking about it, like, “Oh, it’s such a great book. It’s so awesome. It’s so valuable.” And I was like, “No.” I refused to stand for that.

And so it made me so mad. Honestly, that was the last 30 days of me writing the book. It was like, I’d been dragging my feet, dragging my feet. And then I finally said no more. I’m done. And I busted out the book. In the next 30 days, I finished it.

Zoé Bélisle-Springer: Wow.

Jason Everett: I know it sounds weird, and maybe, I’m broken for saying that, but I need to be pissed off sometimes to take action. And I don’t know about people, but.

Zoé Bélisle-Springer: I feel like a lot of people do that.

Jason Everett: Somebody says you can’t do it, or somebody does it, and you’re like, “Damn it.” There’s got to be something that motivates you. And we talked about motivation, that was part of what I talked about. I think people misunderstand how much competition can actually motivate you.

It’s like when somebody you went to school with is doing slightly better than you, and they would do something, and you’re like, “Damn it, I’m going to do it now!” I’m a big fan of taking action based on seeing others take action because it’s inspiration or aggravation, and sometimes they can be mashed together.

The difference between internal and external motivation [09:51]

Zoé Bélisle-Springer: Speaking about motivation, what’s the most important or powerful teaching you would have to teach salon owners about motivation?

Jason Everett: People used to ask if I’m a motivational speaker, and I hated that term because I was like, I hate motivation in this way: I hate motivation because motivation by nature implies that somebody else is doing it for you. And I was always like, “I don’t want to be that guy who, like, you need me to motivate you?” I hated that idea.

It’s like, “Okay, Jason, say something…” Like comedians always get asked, “Say something funny. Yeah, I don’t know. Here’s chicken jokes.” Like, what are you going to do? But people are like, motivate me. And I just always hated that idea until I learned this one thing.

And this one thing that I learned was there’s a difference between internal motivation and external motivation. And I realized I hate external motivation, meaning somebody else has to micromanage and babysit you. So even as a coach, you never want to have a client that’s like, okay, I didn’t want to do anything, but tell me something to inspire me to take action, like that’s codependency.

So I was like, “Okay, if there’s internal and external motivation, can I use external motivation, meaning to motivate somebody from the outside to make them permanently internally motivated, or at least for four months or six months or a year?” And that’s what I really like. That’s when I was like, “Okay, now we can talk motivation,” because I don’t ever want it to be an external only idea. It’s external until you can be internally motivated. I think in salons, people use only external motivation to motivate their team.

Like, let me show up and tell you what to do and all that stuff. But they forget that if they ask their staff the right questions, they can motivate them internally. Right?

So if you’re a staff member and I say, “Hey, so what is it you really want this year for your life? What do you want the next three to five years?” And you’re like, “Man, I really want to buy this car. I want to buy this house. I want to get married. I want to do whatever. I want to have five kids or 100 kids,” or whatever it is. I don’t know who has 100 kids. But you get what I’m saying?

And so the idea is that when you get in that mode where I can find out your goals, I go, “Hey, would you be okay if I helped you achieve those goals by supporting you and encouraging you externally, motivating you? If I helped you do that, would you be okay with that?” And we’re going to go in partnership together.

I know you want goals, and if you were left to your own devices, you’d probably go wandering on a bunny trail. But if I ask you every couple of months, “How are you doing?” and “Can I help you? and “How can I increase your income to get to the goals you want? Would that be okay?” So now, we have an agreement. Because I’m not micromanaging you and telling you what to do and doing all these things, we’re in partnership to help you create the future you want.

That’s what a healthy business should do: the employee and the business owner partner together to create the lifestyle that that person is asking for. That’s what I look at. The old style of leadership is you do a lot of telling versus doing lots of asking and revealing, right? That’s not what leadership is about, right? Leadership is about, “Hey, we’ve agreed to do this, and, as the leader, I’m just taking the risk. I’m going to take the arrows first. Like, that’s what I’m here to do. I‘m going to do it. If it all goes to crap, it’s probably my fault. I’ll take the blame. I’ll take the responsibility. I’ll take the burden.” And that’s what leadership is. Not just like, I have a bunch of minions to do stuff for me. Does that make sense?

Zoé Bélisle-Springer: Absolutely.

Jason Everett: Has this been alright?

Zoé Bélisle-Springer: Yeah. This has been fantastic. Thanks so much. I hope you have a fantastic rest of the conference. There’s still lots to get through, obviously.

Jason Everett: Thanks for having me on. I know it takes a lot of work to do this, and I know you do a lot of work behind the scenes, so thanks for making it happen and putting this together because without it, people wouldn’t have access to all these special moments. So thank you for doing it.

Zoé Bélisle-Springer: Well, thank you!

Jason Everett: Oh yeah, I appreciate it. 

Vox pops from the Salon Owners Summit 2023 [13:23]

Greg Clarke: My name is Greg Clarke from Amica Eco Hairdressing in Dublin, Ireland.

It’s just amazing to think that this city has come on so much and that Phorest has grown as a seed out of this city to become one of the world leaders in tech. And I love telling guests in the salon the story of Ronan and Phorest because I take great pride in a company that still has its roots where it started, and that’s Dublin, Ireland.

Final words and ways to support the podcast [13:49]

Zoé Bélisle-Springer: Thanks for listening to this bonus “Live From…” episode brought to you by PhorestFM, powered by Phorest Salon Software. If you enjoyed it and you’d like to help support the podcast, please share it with others, post about it on social media, or leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Together, We Grow.

Visit the show notes and or phorest.com/fm for the links and resources mentioned throughout the episode, and send us your feedback on the show at phorestfm@phorest.com.

Related links

Get your Salon Owners Summit 2024 tickets now!

Learn more about Jason & the High Performance Salon Academy

Follow Jason on Instagram @highperformancesalon

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