If you’ve come in to be pampered by one of our master stylists, you might have noticed a few of them have a helping hand. You know them as the master stylists’ assistants – the smiling faces who help wash and style your hair and enhance your overall experience with good conversation and lots of love. You also might have noticed how much easier it is to schedule an appointment with your stylist and how having these assistants around allow your stylist to provide the highest quality service with more attention on you, the client.
So what is the assistant program, exactly? Our focus is always on the client, and to do this, we know we have to put time, energy, and commitment into our stylists. The assistant program is a win-win-win for the client, stylist, and the assistant who is new to the industry or wanting to refine their skills. Basically, the program pairs an assistant with a master stylist for a whole year. Once the year is completed, the assistant is ready to go on their own. It’s not quite that cut and dry, though — this year of mentorship is packed with individualized teaching that focuses on what the assistant needs to work on to feel confident behind the chair as well as honing in on their specialty, whether that be pixie cuts, color theory, or barbering. The assistant helps the master stylist a few days a week and gets one full day behind the chair to put the skills they’ve learned into action and eventually feel more comfortable styling full-time.
When our associate stylist Abby first applied, the assistant program hadn’t taken off yet. Our founder Kati explained that this program was something that had been in the works for a while but the timing had never been quite right. There were a few trial and error approaches early on with our former stylist Amanda, but soon after she went on maternity leave, and things at the salon were too hectic to really allow the program to flourish. Fast forward to 2018 when we opened our new location and the time was finally right! Master stylist Anna was booked out for weeks and ready to take that next step in her career. So, when Kati met Abby, she knew it was a perfect fit. Anna and Abby were both highly analytical, accurate, goal-driven, and ambitious. Abby was looking for a place where she could grow and build a long-term career, but she was nervous about being so new to the industry. When she expressed to Kati that she wanted more education and an in-depth training program, Kati knew it was time to launch the assistant program.
Abby describes the program as taking it day-by-day, and eventually becoming exactly what she needed because her and Anna got to design it together. “The whole point of the assistant program is to personalize it to our needs,” Abby explained. “Anna had created a guideline before I started, but we didn’t use it much. Our weekly education days were based off a list we created together, what I wanted help with and what she thought would be most beneficial.” Her job was to help wash and style hair and observe technical skills when she was working beside Anna, but she found that learning how to communicate and show love to our guests was a huge part of the experience. “Anna let me openly ask questions – that’s huge, because then her guests would listen to her explain. This benefited Anna, too. Most things are so second nature, but asking questions allowed her to stop and think about why she did certain things.” Abby noted that the clients became actively engaged with her journey, and applauded Anna for her mentorship. Abby was very clearly excelling at a high rate after just a few months on the program. By the end of her year this past August, she was more than ready to go out on her own in the salon with full books and a regular clientele that already knew and loved her.
Knowing what to look for when pairing an assistant with a master is the key to this program’s success. “You don’t have to have it all together. Beginner’s level is okay. In our program, you get grace and patience to grow,” said Kati about the ideal assistant candidate. This was evident in each of our assistants when hired on – their experience was newer, but they were ready to show up and put in the work. “Anna’s new assistant, Jordan, values accuracy and has the technical skill, but what drew us to him was that he was so emotive, and he brings that out in Anna, too. Jordan wants to love people, he has heart, and while he may have differences from Anna, they have the same fundamental values and that’s what we look for in pairing our assistants and masters.” In short, it doesn’t matter where you come from, where your skill level is at, or what you look like! “Do you want to serve and love others? If you do that, you’re going to be successful and have everything you want in your career,” Kati noted.
What’s great about this program, Abby pointed out, is that she had her go-to person from the start in an otherwise new and challenging environment. Eventually, it became a team effort where she felt comfortable enough going to other stylists to learn about their expertise. For the master stylist, they are given ownership in a whole new way, and an opportunity to think about what they’re doing, why they’re doing it, and then pass on their knowledge to the next great stylist. For the client, they get to be a part of a blooming new connection and can benefit by their stylist’s more open availability, but most importantly, they get to be a part of the learning experience, too. They get a better understanding of how in-depth and technical this craft is and can fully appreciate their stylist in a new light. This industry is all about human connection! While learning by observation is helpful, the assistant gets to be fully immersed in the industry – doing, and not just watching – and immediately start connecting with others while learning technical skills at their own pace.
