Tough Love

By Jon Gonzales

Hello my name is Jon Gonzales President and founder of Hairdresser Career Development Systems. I do hope you and your Family are safe and well.

Thank you for visiting to my education only web site.

I want to share my 43 years as former owner of 3 of the top salons in southern California and 10 years as an educator, business consultant, author, blogger, and mentor offering personal development guide lines to young talent who have chosen hairdressing as a career, and yes it is a career.

As I have traveled throughout the U. S. and Canada presenting my Business Management and Personal Development presentations to thousands of salon owners, hairdressers and beauty professionals at all major hair shows, this has allowed me to speak to thousands of hairdressers, salon owners, educators about the many of the changes and challenges we are facing today.

If there are 4 words that best describes our profession today, they are change uncertainty, fear of the unknown and now the deadly Corona Virus.

Sadly salon owners, hairdressers, and beauty professionals who work daily in the trenches trying to survive this epidemic and make a good living for themselves and their families is causing great hardships to many of our friends and colleagues.

I think most of you will agree owning a hair salon or building a hairdressing career is getting more and more difficult.
Now with the Corona Virus, many of our colleague’s challenges is causing many of our salons to fail and hurting many of our hairdressers and all beauty professionals in the beauty profession.
This need not happen to you. Well managed salons will be in great demand, when this Virus ends.

I can tell you what you want to hear by offering glitter and hype, of course we all know that this type of motivation will only last a couple of weeks; or I can tell you what you need to hear by offering you my tough love opinions.
I’m sure everything that has happened to you has happened to me in my 43 years as a working hairdresser/salon owner.

I will probably step yes on a few toes including my own. These are only my opinions based on my 43 years as a hairdresser/salon owner, and as a mentor and business consultant.

We have all made mistakes along the way, don’t take this criticism personally.

Before we can find solutions to our challenges and reopen our salons we need to address the dark side of our profession and ask the question why?

Our challenges were many, long before the coronavirus hit us. If we are to overcome these challenges, we must have the courage to identify the dark side of our profession, then work to find solutions to our challenges and look at the bright side of our profession and yes I see a coming boom for well managed salons.

I formed Hairdresser Career Development Systems to address and overcome these challenges.

The purpose of this message is to separate glitter and hype from reality.
I know you want straight talk about finding solutions.

Because I am retired and beholden to no special interest groups, I can offer straight talk opinions and focus on the educational needs of salon owners, hairdressers and beauty professionals trying to make a very good living.

After 43 years as a salon owner I was able to retire financially independent debt free as well as setting a trust fund for my children. I am not saying this to brag, I have no ego, I’m saying if I can succeed so can you. I know many of you are smarter than me. We can agree to disagree by offering different opinions.

I started my business with no money, acquiring a S.B.A loan, when everyone told me it could not be done, well I did it by going to the library and learning how to write my business plan.  I learned to think like an entrepreneur thinking outside the box, investing my profits in real estate and the stock market.

I received most of my artistic and haircutting training in Europe.

I’m sharing this information to give you hope and make your journey easier than mine.

Learning by trial and error in today’s competitive and changing business climate is just too costly, especially those of you who are able to survive the Virus and the shutdown of our economy.

When I owned my salons, like you I worked long hours behind the chair and was forced to combat the growing challenges of owning a successful and profitable business. I was fortunate that my family encouraged me along the way.

After I retired, I had time to explore all these challenges and find solutions; in fact I wrote 4 books on business and a book on personal growth and development. My newest Book A Woman’s Guide to Success and Happiness is now published.

Our profession will never be the same, salon owners will need to adapt to change and become astute business men and women. Hopefully this shut down will be over by then.
Due to the virus, I had to postpone my planned two day Business Management seminar that was rescheduled for November 15-16, 2021 in Las Vegas
When it is safe I will I will keep you informed.

If you want glitter and hype, my strictly business two day seminars will not be for you.
But if you want to rebuild your business and learn how to be an astute business men or woman, don’t miss this informative business seminar.
Looking forward to meeting you  soon in Las Vegas, God willing.
Stay safe and healthy, we will meet and overcome these difficulty times.
Adversity always will present opportunities.