NQC TAILORS EDUCATION TO LEADERS

After a hiatus the past few years, Neill Quality College (NQC) came back better than ever this summer with three days of education tailored to owners and managers.

Andi Eaton Allemen, founder of Oui, We, Melody Van Drunen from Davanti Salons, Ric Bowden from Avalon Salon, and Garrison Neill and Kevin Perryman of the Paris Parker salons team led owners through processes, benchmarks, strategies, leadership techniques and more during the NQC event in June.

3 POWERFUL DAYS

Day one was themed “Potential of the Passionate” and focused on leadership, culture and personal development. Day 2: “Thriving Teams” taught attendees to lead with a strong culture to drive results, and Day 3: “Empowered Entrepreneurship” was all about numbers and benchmarks.

Stevie Beech, head of education and recruitment at Natural Alternatives in Knoxville, Tennessee, brought one of her salon managers so they could learn and grow together.

“We needed to button up since Covid,” Beech says. “Our profitability has not been happening at the rate we want, so we needed to reverse back and retrain some of the people who joined us in the past couple years and didn’t know our foundation.”

Beech says the focus on culture on day two spoke to her role in the company.

“Garrison and Kevin allowed us to get a glimpse into how they are running Paris Parker,” she says. “I gained a lot of coaching strategies, which was really beneficial.”

Beech adds, “We’re a multi location business like Paris Parker, so their best practices inspired me to get our leadership on board to operate our locations more as a company than individual salons.”

Francie Cawiezell, owner of Hello Salon in Tulsa, Oklahoma, also brought a team member—Rob Stark, her operations manager/barber with her.

Francie Cawiezell and Rob Stark of Hello Salon
Source: Hello Salon

“He learned a lot—the event spoke to both of us pretty strongly,” Cawiezell says. “Some of it was out of his comfort zone, but he jumped right in and committed to it, and

it gave him a lot more confidence in his leadership role.”

TAKING ACTION

As a self proclaimed “numbers person,” Beech says the conversation around benchmarks and statistics was eye opening.

“To see how productive we are was really beneficial so we could have a deeper conversation with the staff,” she says. “For example,

if they are hitting 80 percent productivity, what can we do to move the needle? Do we need to make changes in the schedule? Allow chair shifting?”

Beech says they’ll also be adding the Neill service wheel into their toolbelt of coaching tools.

Cawiezell says her time at NQC made her look long and hard at her salon’s legacy.

“What I learned made me go back to the salon and revisit our vision, mission and legacy,” she says. “A lot has changed since I opened seven years ago and I wanted to make changes to my mission and vision with my current team.”

Considering her legacy and how people talk about her business in the future was a new exercise.

“I’m now thinking about what my business will look like in 15 years and which employees will still be with me in five years,” she says. “We’re a small business and I don’t have a business degree or background. 

Going to NQC gave me reassurance that we’re doing what we’re supposed to be doing.”

Source: Neill

Beech says she also left with confidence.

“We have people who have been with us for 20 plus years,” she says. “To get them to get uncomfortable is a challenge, and NQC gave me some great tips and strategies for that.”

She adds, “We’re also able to coach some of our new team members who are anxious into a different head space.”

“There was a gold nugget in every class,” Cawiezell says. “I was very impressed. We got a lot more out of it that I was expecting.”

Want to attend the next NQC? Learn more here.