0:00

The reason Facebook ads don't work or

0:02

any ads, mind everyone's, is

0:04

always because of the content. The content is the

0:06

variable of success. This portion is

0:08

like with me, so I think this is when you need to get

0:10

selfish. Like you need to ask your question.

0:13

["Firing Is Guessing"]

0:17

Hiring is guessing, firing is knowing.

0:19

Like you gotta go fast. That's how you get shit

0:21

done, that's how you figure stuff out. This

0:24

is the television. And

0:26

the television is the radio. So

0:30

40s, motherfuckers. Cool.

0:33

Naomi, why don't you get us started?

0:36

Yeah, certainly. So my name's Naomi. I'm

0:38

the marketing manager for the Verdi Salon

0:40

Group and the Evade Institute Winnipeg. I

0:43

take care of our top line marketing

0:45

strategy, all of our paid advertising, social

0:47

strategy, all of that good stuff. So

0:50

I also manage a small team of two

0:52

people in our marketing department, and

0:54

we pretty much take care of every digital aspect

0:56

of the business. And

0:59

fun fact that I learned today, Naomi is actually

1:02

at their company because of some advice that you

1:04

gave to Roberto back in 2019. So

1:06

I'm sure you have that as a talking point in

1:09

a little bit, but Colleen, why don't you get into

1:11

your background a little bit and what you do for

1:13

the company? Yeah, so I'm Colleen.

1:15

I'm the director of education and business development

1:17

for the Verdi Salon Group. I've

1:19

also educated at the Evade Institute before.

1:21

I've educated for other hair product lines

1:23

as well. And I helped Rob

1:25

kind of right from the beginning. He doesn't know

1:28

how to do hair. I think he went to hair

1:30

school for a few minutes. But so I've been there

1:32

to help him out with all the things that he

1:34

needs. And yeah, we've been a team throughout this. So. That's

1:37

awesome. And Roberto, why

1:39

don't you go ahead and take it away. Yeah,

1:42

scary. Thanks so much for your time today.

1:44

I know you're launching series two. I'm a

1:46

huge fan. I've got four V friends, one,

1:48

and I'm waiting for the drop. That stupid

1:50

game you just put out has just got

1:52

me locked in right now. I don't know,

1:54

paying attention to Jeff too much. But

1:57

it's a lot of fun. Thanks for taking this time today. So

2:01

opened up the business back in 2017 with

2:05

some help from Nick and a government grant that

2:07

we got, I was able to attend four

2:09

D's in 2019. Hired

2:12

Naomi right after that event and it changed

2:14

a lot for me. Really put a lot

2:16

of things in a different perspective for me,

2:18

opened my eyes to new opportunity. Couple tips

2:21

that you gave me before I

2:23

left, we implemented it and it's done a lot

2:25

for our business. And I just

2:27

wanted to have this opportunity right now to have Naomi

2:29

and Colleen experience that as well. We're becoming down

2:31

to New York in June and just

2:33

that whole experience too was really good for me.

2:36

So I'm really looking forward to them experiencing it

2:38

as well. We're at a place

2:40

now where we have expanded. So we

2:42

opened our second salon. This is something that we

2:44

talked about when I was at four D's. We

2:46

opened our second salon. We also acquired a hair

2:48

school and the two work really

2:50

close together. So the hair school feeds the hair

2:52

salons, gives us the opportunity to scale our businesses

2:54

and whatnot. We're kind of at a place now

2:56

where, you know, when I came back to four

2:58

D's back in 2019, we're

3:01

on the verge of just on that doorstep of taking

3:04

our next step to expand our business. And

3:06

we feel like we're back there again now. And

3:08

you know, there's this marketing piece is gonna be huge

3:10

for us. Joe and the

3:12

team and ourselves here talked about some of

3:14

the things that we're thinking of implementing. We're

3:16

gonna run some of those by you and

3:19

just get your take on it. I totally

3:21

understand. And I'm so happy to be here with you three.

3:24

Thank you, appreciate it. Yeah, so

3:26

one of the things that got me fired

3:29

up was not only that, you know, he's

3:31

a second time guest of ours, but the

3:33

team is interested in

3:36

building out a podcast. And we got

3:38

to talking a little bit about how

3:40

we use podcasts strategically or

3:42

episodic content strategically throughout the VaynerX

3:44

organization, whether it's marketing for the

3:46

now or your podcast experience

3:48

or what we're doing with building while flying,

3:50

where we really go out and we find

3:52

the guests that we wanna become our customers

3:54

or our next employees or something like that. So

3:58

Rob, why don't you go ahead and... a

4:00

little bit to kind of what you were thinking about

4:02

in terms of a podcast and maybe we can jam

4:04

a little bit on seeing if we can enhance it,

4:07

make it better, help you roll it out. Yeah,

4:10

I'll speak very top line then Naomi could speak further to

4:12

it. But the idea is,

4:14

you know, there's, I think there's two people that

4:16

we're marketing to and marketing to our guests that

4:18

come into the salon to get their hair done

4:20

and buy our product. But then there's also other

4:22

salons and our brand of VEDA that

4:25

we're a part of that we want to market

4:27

to to position ourselves as leaders within the industry.

4:29

That'll do very well for us with the VEDA

4:31

down the road as eventually I want to get

4:33

to the point where we're going to be distributing

4:35

a VEDA for Canada. And

4:37

further to that, being able to position ourselves as

4:39

professionals or leaders in the industry

4:42

to salons so that we can attract some of

4:44

their senior talents as well to come work with

4:46

us. Something that really is

4:48

going to help the wheel continue to move. And

4:51

I think, you know, the idea of

4:53

being able to interview people and really highlight who

4:56

they are and then as well show

4:58

our expertise would work really well but I'll let Naomi maybe

5:00

get a little bit further into that. Yeah,

5:02

absolutely. One thing that's really interesting about the VEDA

5:04

industry is that there's a lot of kind of

5:07

like old school thought. Like there's a lot of

5:09

salon owners who are just getting to the point

5:11

where they realize that they have to post on

5:13

Instagram consistently. So a

5:15

lot of the marketing in the beauty

5:17

industry is very old school because a

5:19

lot of salon owners are hair stylists.

5:21

They don't necessarily have a business background

5:23

or a marketing background. So I think

5:25

that establishing our brand and really establishing

5:27

ourselves within the broader salon network will

5:29

do us a lot of good as

5:31

Rob just mentioned. And I

5:34

think that diving a little bit deeper

5:36

more so into like the business side

5:38

of beauty as far as

5:40

operations goes, as far as marketing goes,

5:42

as far as, you know, the takeaways

5:45

and learning we've done through scale in our

5:47

business, opening a second location. I

5:49

think we have a lot of knowledge

5:51

and a lot of expertise that we can

5:53

potentially share with others in the industry. And

5:56

I think that that would be probably my

5:58

main focus in putting together a podcast. If

16:00

you're in college, you can make side money, you can take

16:02

talks, forget about it. That's awesome.

16:04

That didn't exist when I was in college. And

16:07

even better the year before college or

16:09

the year after, even more interesting, like

16:11

different option psychology that

16:14

I like a lot. For sure. Are

16:19

you talking Verde at home? Yeah,

16:23

sorry, Verde at home, so our direct to consumer.

16:25

So this is something that we developed over the

16:27

past. I apologize, because I want to get

16:29

this down in my head. Verde is a brand

16:31

that's owned by them, right? No,

16:34

so Verde is our brand. Aveda is

16:36

the brand that's- Oh, Aveda, right. I'm

16:38

sorry. I'm sorry. Thank you. So, it's

16:40

like sick enough that I got confused.

16:43

So we sell it, it's our school's innovative

16:45

school. So we have like, it's not a

16:47

franchise, but we're allowed to be innovative school,

16:49

contractually. And our brand is Verde, which is

16:51

the salon. And then we sell Aveda in

16:53

the salon and use their hair color. So

16:56

over the pandemic- It's exclusively

16:59

hip-hop. And is that kind of the

17:01

punchline to be a school? Yeah. And

17:04

that's because they're feeding, the brand is

17:06

strong enough and they're helping feed or the

17:08

brand is helping close. And that's why you

17:10

make that deal. Big time. No

17:12

different than for Aveda. I understand. Big point

17:14

of difference for us. And as of June,

17:16

we'll be the only Aveda Institute in Canada.

17:19

So we'll be able to market ourselves as

17:21

Avedans to Canada. And for emerging hairstylists or

17:23

even current ones, if that brand carries that

17:25

level of weight. It

17:28

does. Yeah, it does. And now Verde is

17:30

your product, your private label product. That's

17:32

right. And is that Aveda inside

17:34

or something else? Well,

17:38

we carry Aveda products inside. We sell

17:40

exclusive Aveda products. Inside the Verde juice,

17:42

the formula. The DTC product. You

17:45

guys have more? It's Aveda, yes. It's Aveda. Yep.

17:49

Right? So- Has anyone

17:51

ever done a good job enough with

17:53

building a private label in their ecosystem

17:55

that they got upset about it?