This issue, Phil talks to hairdressing legend Beverly C MBE. As a female trailblazer and undisputed ‘queen’ of the UK hair industry, Beverly has won multiple awards and received recognition throughout the world. A huge inspiration to so many, she tells Phil about overcoming moments of self-doubt and why a solid plan is the secret to success.
THANKS SO MUCH FOR CHATTING TO ME TODAY BEV. I THINK PEOPLE’S PERCEPTION OF SOMEONE LIKE YOU IS THAT THEY’VE BEEN SUPER SUCCESSFUL ALL THEIR CAREER – AND MAYBE THEY LIVE ON A CARIBBEAN ISLAND NOW (LAUGHS)! BUT ACTUALLY, THEY’RE STILL GRAFTING REALLY HARD AND THE TRUTH IS, IT NEVER GETS EASIER. SO MY FIRST QUESTION TO YOU IS, WHAT HAS BEEN YOUR BIGGEST CAREER CHALLENGE OR ‘FAILURE’ SO FAR…IN OTHER WORDS, WHAT’S BEEN YOUR BIGGEST MISTAKE?
I mean, listen, businesses are full of mistakes and challenges, but without them, you don’t learn anything. So, a mistake for me is knowledge. I think if you start to look at a ‘mistake’ as being positive knowledge for you, then it becomes an easier lesson. So there’s that side of it. A failure, mistake, challenge (whatever you want to call it!) is there to guide you on the right path, not to try to shut you down.
There are also two sides to hairdressing – a business side and a creative side, and I’m the first to admit there’s been mistakes on both sides. One of the biggest mistakes we made was opening too many salons too soon. At one stage, we had the salon in Mayfair, which we had a long lease on, and then we opened up a small salon – big mistake – in the Marriott Hotel, and then we opened a salon in Kensington, not the one we have now, which was within a consortium called Hype DF. Plus, in the background of that, I was traveling like an absolute idiot – four countries a month and all this sort of stuff! I think the mistake is that you end up spreading yourself so thin and juggling too many balls, then everything is supporting the other and it becomes an absolute jumbled mess to be honest.
WHAT ARE THE BIGGEST LESSONS YOU LEARNT FROM THIS?
I’d been travelling around America for about 10 years by then, and there were these beautiful, big super-salons opening up with their own little spa area within them. One of the things we really wanted to do was to open a salon like that over here – that was the goal.
But instead, we started out with all these little salons, and it ran us so thin and we couldn’t concentrate on one thing properly. We realised we were overdoing it. So, the lesson we learned is that you have to pull it back and be able to control your business with a solid plan.
EVEN THOUGH YOU WERE PROBABLY SINKING A LITTLE BIT, YOU WERE STILL SUCH AN INSPIRATION TO ALL OF US BECAUSE YOU WERE DOING SOMETHING THAT WE ALL WANTED. IT WAS GREAT TO WITNESS.
Well, it made us remember the dream of that original salon vision we had, and we then spent four years trying to find the venue for it. We always knew we were going to shut down Mayfair once that lease was up; there was no passing trade and it was a really difficult salon.
It was a good salon, but nothing to make us grow into the level that we wanted to be. I think salon owners have a moral obligation to make sure the business is successful and earning enough profits to share with the rest of the staff. If you’re constantly working on a level at which you can’t reward the staff that are working their backsides off or you can’t allow them to grow financially, that’s a mistake.
So, we searched around and found this business which was shutting down, I think it used to be an old shoe shop or something, on Kensington High Street. After we started looking at the leasehold, I found out that the actual building was up for sale. The agent told us it was under offer, but I didn’t believe him, so I got the owner’s number, phoned them up and said I desperately wanted the building and I could complete in six weeks. We had a meeting and we sorted it out.
But getting the freehold was the most important part for us – we’d had enough of being held to ransom and having rent reviews every four or five years. The minute we worked out the bottom line of Kensington, it was far more beneficial to get the freehold. Now we’ve got the whole building with a penthouse flat at the top and offices, and we’ve never looked back to be honest. So, all those mistakes made us more determined to go for the freehold, which was what we really wanted to do all along.
IF YOU COULD START ALL OVER AGAIN, WHAT WOULD YOU DO DIFFERENTLY?
From a business perspective, I wouldn’t do anything differently – I think we learned a lot of lessons from there. But on the creative side, I would probably travel less than I used to. It’s the one thing I look back on – I literally lived out of a suitcase for 30 years – and it was a mistake not to say no. It was tough on me, but also trying to juggle the family as well. I mean, it was amazing, and I’ve had some incredible opportunities, but I do remember getting to a point where I overdid it. In hindsight it was too much. Way too much.
WHAT CHARACTER TRAITS HAVE HARD TIMES TAUGHT YOU?
It’s taught me to be resilient. It’s also taught me to make sure that whatever I’m doing, I have the time to prepare for it and get it right. I’ve learnt that anyone can do anything. When I look back now, I sometimes think, how did I get through that? But when you go through those experiences, it makes you a stronger person. It makes you realise that you can do those things you’ve always wanted to do.
HOW DO YOU THINK SOMEONE CREATES SUCCESS IN THEIR CAREER?FOR INSTANCE, WITH YOUR DAUGHTER – WHO IS DOING SO WELL, AND WHAT A LOVELY GIRL –WHAT ADVICE HAVE YOU GIVEN HER?
Oh, Jordanna’s amazing. She’s an absolute credit, I’m so proud. But when she decided to go into the business, we had a big family meeting about it and I said to her, if you want to go into the business and eventually take over the salon, you’re going to have to be amazing at what you do. I said I was happy to take two years out to teach her everything one-to-one, which is far quicker than learning in another way.
She was lucky in that respect. You can teach somebody as much as you like, but they still need to have the right character, passion and dedication, and an eye for it as well. I spent two years doing that and then encouraged her to experience other education, like Sassoon and different barber and colour courses, which would then help her to create her own unique brand. One other thing I said to her is if you want to educate in this day and age, you need to be absolutely incredible at colour. You’ve got to be good at everything, but you’ve got to be amazing at colour to work with the big colour houses on a global level. So she put her mind to that and has excelled.
EXACTLY. WHEN PEOPLE ASK HOW DO I MAKE IT, WHAT CAN I DO? I SAY: YOU’RE ENTITLED TO NOTHING. EARN EVERYTHING. GO ASK QUESTION AFTER QUESTION AND DON’T EXPECT IT TO COME TO YOU.
You’ve got to have self-belief, but you have to make the right decisions. On a creative level, you cannot get enough knowledge. You have to constantly strive for more and more education. Don’t be thinking you can do it by yourself, because you can’t.
IS THERE ANY ELEMENT OF THE SUCCESS YOU’VE ENJOYED THAT’S DOWN TO BEING IN THE RIGHT PLACE AT THE RIGHT TIME?
I think there’s a bit of luck with everything that you do, but I think you also make your own luck to be honest. It’s about making the right decisions at the right time; it’s about hard work and having a proper business plan. You can be as creative as you like, but you also need to have people behind you. I think if you’re trying to run a business as the creative person and you lack those business skills, you need to have somebody in your business that fills that gap. Bring people in that underpin your weaknesses; you can’t be good at everything.
I KNOW LOTS OF HAIRDRESSERS ARE AFRAID TO ASK FOR HELP BECAUSE THAT’S AN ADMISSION OF FAILURE. WELL, YOU NEED TO GET OVER THAT EGO.
I’ve always asked for help wherever it’s needed. I’d say that’s one of the reasons Jordanna’s doing so well too, she will ask for help wherever. She’s like a sponge, she will take advice and bring it in wherever she can. That’s really key for any business to be honest.
WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU DOUBTED YOURSELF? HOW DO YOU OVERCOME THOSE FEELINGS?
I took a break from Cobella for a couple of years for personal reasons, and during that time Toni and Sacha at TONI&GUY asked me to work for the Essensuals group for two years. They basically said, “Here, have Essensuals – go and do something with it.” Now that was a real challenge for me – suddenly I’m in charge of 54 salons across the UK and trying to create a brand identity for them.
It was way out of my comfort zone. To work for a company that has franchise groups is totally different. I thought to myself, you know, you can have self-doubt and impostor syndrome and all that sort of stuff, but I just knew I’d be able to do it because I was excited about it and because I knew the people around me would help me through that process – and I loved it!It was an amazing learning curve to see the business side of things and learn how every franchisee is a customer of the business.
WHAT HAS BEEN YOUR MOST SUCCESSFUL MOMENT RECENTLY? I THINK I COULD ANSWER THIS FOR YOU! WHEN MY LITTLE LAD WON HIS BHA IT OVERTOOK ANYTHING I’VE EVER DONE MYSELF BY 100 PER CENT. NOTHING BUT EMOTION – SO PROUD.
Absolutely! I mean, when I saw Jordanna win London at the BHAs for the first time and then she won it again this year, I just thought wow, you know, history repeating itself. I won it twice in a row and now she’s done the same thing. I know how I felt when I went up for my award, but you feel even better than that. When you watch them do it, you know, it’s just amazing.
ARE YOU A PERSON WHO TAKES RISKS?
Absolutely. There’s always a risk in everything you do. It just has to be the right risk and you have to have the confidence to go forth with it. Without risk, your business can’t grow, to be honest. I think it’s important when you run your business to make the staff feel a sense of belonging, and that they’re making those decisions with you. I think working for you is just not enough, you have to involve your staff. They need a sense of belonging; they need to feel very much part of the business.
I COULDN’T AGREE MORE. WHEN YOU INVOLVE YOUR TEAM, YOU GET SO MUCH MORE BACK.
A sense of belonging is so important to any member of staff, it doesn’t matter if it’s a salon or any business. I think it’s important to include the junior members of staff as well. One thing that I learned was when people come into your business very young – they’re like 16 – you have to think of yourself as another parent.
You have to sort of bring them up for about three or four years, and you have to allow them to make mistakes on the way because it’s part of their growing up process. You have to allow all your members of staff to make mistakes to be honest with you, but especially the juniors. Get them to a level where they start to realise that this is actually a career for them – they’re our future generation.
YEAH, ABSOLUTELY – JUNIORS ARE 100% THE FUTURE IF OUR INDUSTRY IS TO SURVIVE WITH ANY KIND OF RECOGNITION.
Yes, you have to invest in training your staff. Don’t rely on your local college and educators that are affiliated with your NVQs to teach them, you have to teach them yourself. I’ve always been in education, it’s my main thing, and I learned something many years ago: knowledge is a gift and you have to share that gift with other people. You’ve got to stop putting the blinkers on and start educating the people around you. This is what keeps UK hairdressing the best in the world.
WHO IS A SUCCESSFUL PERSON YOU ADMIRE?
I’ve met a lot of people along the way, but I’ve always admired Anthony Mascolo. I’ve known him for many, many years and he was always there giving advice (without even knowing he was giving it!). He was very open, and it was always like nothing was a big deal. I also truly admired Peter Belcher. He really helped me in my career when I worked within Schwarzkopf and outside, he was always there, giving me the affirmation that I was on the right path. He just believed in me.
I’M SO GLAD YOU MENTIONED PETER. I AGREE – ONE OF LIFE’S MOST GENUINE PEOPLE. DO YOU HAVE A PARTICULAR MINDSET THAT YOU THINK MAKES YOU SUCCESSFUL?
I think I’ve always been positive – there’s always a positive side of things. I’ve never been a negative person, and I don’t look at things as a hurdle to stop you doing something. I think that has helped me a lot. You have to understand that life is full of problems and learn how to deal with them. I don’t look at problems as anything else but knowledge. In fact, I don’t like the word ‘problem’. I don’t like the word ‘failure’. For me, there’s only one way to fail and that is by not trying.
WHAT THREE PIECES OF ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO ANYONE AT THE START OF THEIR CAREER?
YES, TOTALLY. I REMEMBER TONI MASCOLO SAYING TO ME, “DON’T BE IN TOO MUCH OF A RUSH TO GET THERE. IT’S NOT ABOUT THE DESTINATION, IT’S ABOUT THE JOURNEY.” EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US HAS DIFFERENT GOALS IN LIFE BUT YOU NEED TO HAVE YOUR OWN PLAN. BEVERLY, IT’S BEEN BRILLIANT TALKING TO YOU. THANK YOU SO MUCH, I’LL SPEAK TO YOU AGAIN SOON.
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