This episode was brought to you by Salon Centric.
1:11 – All About Eric Taylor & The Hair Game
In mid-2017, the initial intent of the podcast was for Eric to scale the conversations he was having to share with stylists in the Salon Republic. Eric and his team made the commitment to release an episode every week, and figure it out from there.
This year, Eric was trying to think of how to keep the podcast from getting too stale, so he started something called “podloop” which is basically a way to give vendor’s products away to Salon Republic and The Hair Game listeners.
10:50 – All About Salon Republic
Salon Republic is a network of studio salons, mostly located in Southern California. There are 15 locations right now.
11:10 – Eric’s Story
Eric went to college in Malibu because he was a baseball player. They paid him to go play college baseball there. He stopped playing baseball because of an injury. Eric’s mom was an artist. She developed this ability to paint and became somewhat well-known.
Eric grew up with his mom’s art studio right down the hallway from his childhood bedroom. His dad was a small business entrepreneur. He grew up in an environment where both of his parents worked from home and watched them work and their income reflected the quality of their hard work.
Coming out of college, his mindset was “I need to find a way to make money”, not “I need to go get a job”. The salon industry was something very interesting to Eric, given his artistic and business background. He started walking into hair salons and asking to talk to the manager or owner. He saw the value of the salon industry because it is something that is something equally creative and necessary.
26:00 – The Threshold of Control
A threshold of control moment is when (as an entrepreneur) you are under a significant amount of stress. Eric had a moment like this soon after opening his second studio salon in Beverly Hills and nobody seemed interested.
In moments like this, you have a choice to either panic and succumb to fear, or to decide to focus on being productive and making changes that need to be made. When this was happening, Eric chose to change things around. He began making a return to what felt natural and authentic to him, and over the next eight months the salon grew to being completely full.
30:37 – The Truth Behind Success
Everyone you look up to has had to go through failure, learning moments, and blood sweat and tears to get what they want. They have persevered. And even though that isn’t crystal clear from their Instagram feed, the hard work is there.
31:15 – A Note About Adaptation
Eric says he’s been thinking a lot about how underrated being adaptable is. A lot of people’s focus nowadays goes towards being proud and individual, and staying that way. There is power in keeping your eyes open and adapting to the changing world around you.
Adapting to the good change that happens around us is a crucial element to living a happy life and having a good career.
Eric says that in order to adapt, you can’t be afraid of change – within yourself, or in the world. He encourages people to try new things out, especially when it is uncomfortable. Let go of your fear, let go of your pride – and you might learn something new that will help make you happier.
44:10 – The Hot Seat
Eric says his biggest struggle with being a father/husband and entrepreneur has been finding the balance of time and mental focus between everything. He says that kids engross all of your attention. It takes so much out of you. Growing a business also takes a tremendous amount of time and energy.
Luckily, Eric made some decisions early on that are benefiting him now. He went through the hardest parts of entrepreneurship while he was in his early twenties without a kids or wife. When it came time to get married and have kids, he had a pretty good foundation set up. Finding the balance is still hard, though.
56:40 – Check Your Priorities
If you are growing your business as a one person team, it is all about priorities. If you aren’t conscious about where you are spending your time or resources, you are going to fail. Don’t use the smaller things as an excuse to procrastinate the more important things that will have a greater impact on your business.
Elizabeth said when she was at ground zero, she would opt out of Netflix in exchange for reading a book that would help her grow her knowledge long-term. Instead of paying for a house cleaner, she worked out a trade with her cleaner by doing her hair instead of paying out-of-pocket.
1:00:45 – Better Choices = Happier Life
Quality of life is just an aggregation of all of our choices. Something Eric likes to think about is: “What would the person I want to be, do right now?”
We all face those little decisions every day. If you really want to advance yourself and get better, you have a bunch of opportunities to make those choices every day. All of those little decisions will change the trajectory of your life.
The little things matter. The magic is in those hundreds of little decisions everyday, not the one big decision that comes around every few months. Those hundreds of choices are more powerful than the bigger, less frequent decisions.
1:05:30 – Let’s Wrap it Up
1. Adaptation is underrated.
2. Prioritize the highest-impact things.
3. Focus on the little choices.
4. We are all capable of every good thing we want, we just have to choose them.
Follow Eric Taylor on Instagram here.
Huge thank you to Salon Centric for making this episode possible!
