Working with a full tool box
In order to maximize your success and leverage all of the opportunities that come your way in the beauty industry you need to be working with a full tool box. Actually you have two of them. Both must be fully outfitted.
The first tool box I refer to is your styling station drawer. You need to own all the necessary tools of the trade. Clippers, scissors, razors, assorted combs and brushes, sectioning clips and styling capes, there is a lot to have. The list is a big one. Your student kit will get you off on the right foot. Over time you will learn about options and upgrades to the tools you start out with. You will develop preferences and favorites, too.
The other tool box is the more important one. This is a box of tools located between your ears, your mental tool box. This one will never truly be full. The job at hand is to continue to try to load more into this box, trying to fill it. I like to think as these two tool boxes filled with hardware and software. The drawer of your station is filled with hardware. These are the tools of our trade. When you look at a client and look at an image of a haircut your software begins to make decisions about the hardware needed to deliver the desired look. Do you reach for a scissors? Do you reach for the razor instead, or is that ideally a clipper cut? Your mental tools will tell you what is needed to create the desired look form what the client has provided in the way of hair texture, density, etc.
Once you have made a good decision, it is time to reach into that other tool box and make the magic happen. If either tool box is less than well stocked you will be hard pressed to make hair happen in a consistent, deliberate and meaningful way. Load your mental tool box first. Since it will never truly be full you might want to get a head start on trying to fill it. The more you have in your mental tool box, the better able you will be to make good decisions about what you load into the hardware box. You will even be able to do more with less. If you are going to cut back on tool inventory, cut back on the hardware, not the software. Many haircutters believe they will be a better haircutter if they could just own a better pair of scissors. I have done great haircuts with bad scissors. There was a time when I did not-so-great haircuts with ANY scissors. Over time I did not purchase better scissors. I just got better and wielding the scissors. Lesser quality hardware can always deliver better results with a simple software upgrade. Focus on loading more software and the hardware will deliver even better results.
The exact same haircut will look totally different on the same head of hair when cut with different tools. The texture created as a byproduct of the effect of different tools yields amazing differences in the look and feel of a cut. I will share more on this idea in my next technical posting.
