[00:00:00] Antony Whitaker: Welcome to the Grow My Salon Business podcast, where we focus on the business side of hairdressing. I'm your host, Antony Whitaker, and I'll be talking to thought leaders in the hairdressing industry, discussing insightful, provocative, and inspiring ideas that matter. So get ready to learn, get ready to be challenged, get ready to be inspired, and most importantly, get ready to grow your salon business.
[00:00:31] Antony Whitaker: On today's podcast, I talk with Chris Nedza founder of ZeeZor, a hairdressing productivity and employee engagement app. It's been described as the Fitbit for your business. Now, although not a hairdresser, Chris is a serial entrepreneur and creative thinker, and he developed ZeeZor as a real time mobile reporting tool so that his wife could better manage her chain of
[00:00:55] Antony Whitaker: 43 salons. Although ZeeZor is currently only available in the U. S. the thinking behind the technology is very definitely universally applicable. So welcome to my guest today, Chris Nedza, CEO of ZeeZor. So welcome to the show, Chris. 
[00:01:12] Chris Nedza: Thanks Antony. Thanks for having me. I love talking to you, and I can't wait to get on with the conversation that we're going to have.
[00:01:18] Antony Whitaker: I love talking to you too, mate. You've got a great insight into the business and a really good take on numbers and data and how to drive productivity and employee engagement. So, I think our audience is going to find this a very valuable conversation. Um, before I get started, Chris, it's, it's always good to get my guests to do a little bit of a, an introduction of themselves, like, you know, who is Chris Nedza?
[00:01:41] Antony Whitaker: How did he end up in this industry? What's his background? So over to you, sir, the floor is yours. 
[00:01:47] Chris Nedza: Okay. Well, so first of all, I started as a poor college student. I graduated from the University of Georgia with an economics degree and started my first company because I couldn't find a job. The first company I started was a warehousing and distribution business.
[00:02:00] Chris Nedza: And so, we started with zero and poor and built it up to become one of the largest fulfillment distribution companies in the industry, which wasn't the beauty space. We were serving fortune 500 companies. Companies like UPS and Motorola, Goodyear, Coca Cola, Disney, and we were warehousing and distributing and producing communications materials for them.
[00:02:21] Chris Nedza: So if you can imagine we had about a half a million square feet of warehouse distribution production, and the challenge for me with that business was understanding whether I was making money or losing money, just like every other business. But we didn't have a point-of-sale system. We had a system that at the end of the month, we would get our financials, which were never at the end of the month.
[00:02:40] Chris Nedza: They were always a few weeks late. And then it was a forensic discovery of what happened with the business. Well, the business grew and I ended up selling it. My wife was a franchisee of Great Clips and at the time she had about 43 locations. So it was a lot of business that she was running. She couldn't cut your hair, but she could run a salon. 
[00:03:00] Chris Nedza: And I watched her and I was fascinated because every morning she was running, looking at spreadsheets that showed the data for the night before. And I thought, well, that's, that's fantastic because what took me weeks and weeks to get, she was getting the next morning. But at the same time, I was fascinated that her general manager spent a lot of time running reports and I hated reports.
[00:03:22] Chris Nedza: So I came up with the idea to extract the data from point-of-sale  system and put it on her phone or iPhone. That's how we got started. 
[00:03:31] Antony Whitaker: Okay. Now I've seen the ZeeZor app. That is so simple and so cool. So talk to us a little bit about that. 
[00:03:38] Chris Nedza: Well, as I said, I sold my company and when you sell your company, hopefully you have some money, which I did.
[00:03:42] Chris Nedza: And I invested in the stock market, which, you know, the stock market is interesting because you're always looking at how is your stock doing? Is it up or down? Is it green or red? And so, I took that concept and I applied that to ZeeZor in the hair salon business, because that's what I wanted to know. Am I doing better today than the same day as last year or worse?
[00:04:05] Chris Nedza: And I wanted to know that stuff. And what was interesting about that is we put this app out so that our staff could look at that as well. And it clicked. They didn't want to look at reports, they didn't want to discuss reports, they were stylists, and they were visual. But man, they understood red was bad, green was good, and now we had a common language.
[00:04:26] Antony Whitaker: Right, perfect. Red was bad, green was good, you could use that for any metric you were measuring. So, whether you were talking retail sales, rebooking totals, service turnover, you could use that tool, the red or green, for anything that you wanted to track and monitor. That's right. Yeah. So, was it a single salon usage or how was it something that you could expand out over 43 different salons in your case?
[00:04:53] Chris Nedza: Great question. So, the way we looked at it was we wanted our managers at the salon to beat two numbers. We wanted them to beat their own numbers. In other words, hey, if we're going to do, if we did 1, 000 the same day is last year. Let's do a thousand dollars and one penny. Let's just beat a day. But then the other number we wanted them to be, and it became obvious was that they got into it.
[00:05:15] Chris Nedza: They're like, you know what? I'm the top dog. So I've not only beat my own numbers. Now I've beat everybody else, our own salons. So they were beating each other and competing with each other at the salon level. And then, of course, we gave this to our staff. And then the staff started to do the same thing.
[00:05:31] Chris Nedza: So, it was competitive. And it set up natural human competition. And then what we took it from there is we started messaging and we started using the app to catch our people doing things good and saying, you know, like texting them right from within the app to say, hey man, you're killing it today. You're selling the living daylights out of retail.
[00:05:49] Chris Nedza: And it really started engaging our staff and our frontline stylists became addicted and absolutely loved it. Not only because of the numbers, but because we as owners we're looking at them and catching them doing the right things and just loving on them. 
[00:06:03] Antony Whitaker: Cool. Okay. So let me just summarize what it is.
[00:06:06] Antony Whitaker: It's not a point-of-sale system. It's an app that integrates into your existing point-of-sale  system. And it's on the whole idea of it is that it's on the iPhone. Is it on Android as well? 
[00:06:19] Chris Nedza: It is. 
[00:06:19] Antony Whitaker: It is right. So, so it's on your phone and. Every employee has access to that. So, you give them access to what their metrics are on their phone so they can see and it's in real time, isn't it?
[00:06:33] Chris Nedza: Well, it's near real time, right? There's a few minutes delay, but I want to make an important disclosure. Really the owner decides what they want the employee to see, and they decide whether they want the employer, the stylist to see each other's numbers or other's numbers, right? It's configurable so that you can decide what you want to show and what you want your people to focus on.
[00:06:54] Antony Whitaker: Right. Okay. So, you could set it up so that the employee can only see their own numbers. Correct. That's right. Right. That's right. Or you can set it up so that they can see their numbers and the numbers of other people in the salon so that they can see where they stand against their colleagues. Yeah.
[00:07:12] Chris Nedza: That's right. And we have some clients absolutely love, you know, showing everything. In fact, you know, some of the best salons show every number. And then other salons are a little bit more, they're worried about walkouts and they're worried about, Oh my gosh, you know, if they see what we're making and stuff like that, and all of these are valid.
[00:07:27] Chris Nedza: So they only show a few numbers to the stylist, but it depends on the culture. 
[00:07:31] Antony Whitaker: Yeah, exactly. And so the same device is used, whether it's in a, a business unit of one. So you could be a salon suite owner. And be tracking these metrics, or you could be a single salon that employs 10 people and be using this app, or for the example of Cindy, your wife, you might have 43 different salons and it's all fed into the same network and you can allow different levels of access.
[00:07:58] Antony Whitaker: So the salon managers can be comparing themselves about the other salons in the group. Whereas within the salon, they're just comparing themselves to other employees within the salon. Is that correct? 
[00:08:11] Chris Nedza: That's exactly right. And I want to add one other thing to this, because it's really important. If you're, if you're a booth runner or you're a small salon with three people and you you're behind the chair, you think you're know your business.
[00:08:22] Chris Nedza: And it's true, but we also decided to aggregate the data and we can show how you stack up in the industry. That is a huge, huge deal. 
[00:08:31] Antony Whitaker: So you can be compared with the industry. So if I am a business unit of one, you know, one or two people working in a small suite, you can still be benchmarking your numbers against some industry reference points.
[00:08:46] Chris Nedza: That's right. Because how are you doing? If you're a salon owner, you go to work, or stylist, you go to work, and how are you doing? That's a question you should ask yourself. I want to, you want to do your best, right? Yeah. Well, if you have anything to benchmark against, then your [00:09:00] best is what you, I mean, you don't have any disability to that.
[00:09:03] Antony Whitaker: Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Where's the name from, Chris? ZeeZor. 
[00:09:07] Chris Nedza: Well, we were franchisees. Yeah. A franchisor. So he's a great clips, which is, was the franchisor. 
[00:09:14] Antony Whitaker: Oh, okay. Very clever. One of the things I find interesting is that I no longer have salons, but when I had my salons, it was at that point where the world was going mobile.
[00:09:24] Antony Whitaker: Everybody had a device in their pocket. This is pretty social media, even. I mean, people forget that, you know, Facebook's only, what, 14 years old or something. So it's not that long ago. So I suppose what I'm leading to is this, is that it wasn't that long ago that the salon owner would be saying to their staff, and this was definitely me, saying, you are not allowed to have your mobile or cell phone, depending on what country you're in, on you when you're in the salon.
[00:09:47] Antony Whitaker: You've got to keep it in your bag or in your locker or, you know, whatever. And fast forward to, you know, 2019 and we live in a very different world. So you know, everybody's got that device. It's now no longer just a cell phone. It is a smartphone and we live in this world with incredible social media. So now from a salon owner's perspective.
[00:10:07] Antony Whitaker: Whereas 15 years ago, I would have been saying to people, you're not allowed your phone on you. Now I'm encouraging them to have their phone on them. If I owned a salon because of using it for social media, et cetera. And that's a whole another discussion. But the point of what you're saying here is that.
[00:10:24] Antony Whitaker: If people are going to be on their phone anyway, why don't we use it as a tool? And that's the beauty of ZeeZor. So, you know, you go out in the staff room, all your team are on their phone. So great. Let's have them on their phone, but looking at their productivity, looking at how they're going. In a real time, basis, without having to go and stand up around the reception desk to look at the point-of-sale system and drive the receptionist mad, they've got their phone out and they're looking at their own facts and figures, and I think that's brilliant.
[00:10:55] Chris Nedza: You know, that's hilarious. I mean, a great observation. It's so funny, these, a lot of salon owners worry, oh my gosh, my staff, we don't want them to be on their phone. Honestly, have you ever walked into a salon and seen all the staff on their phones with the customer sitting in a chair, not getting their hair serviced?
[00:11:12] Chris Nedza: Honestly, I've never seen that, but they are on their phones when they go to the break room. Now the question is, are they on their phone doing Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter? Or are they on their phones checking out your business? And I would submit they're on their phone anyway, let's encourage them to look at your business and let them compete and do better and and how many salon owners are now teaching their staff how to do photography and take a picture of your customer and post it on social media.
[00:11:40] Chris Nedza: I mean, that's the way of the world. Right? 
[00:11:42] Antony Whitaker: Definitely. Just to clarify that, because I know how some salon owners think the information that they will get on ZeeZor is not client's name, address, phone number. It's not their contact details. None of that's on there, is it? 
[00:11:56] Chris Nedza: No.
[00:11:57] Antony Whitaker: It's just their performance numbers, yeah? 
[00:11:59] Chris Nedza: That's right. They're looking at their staff and it's a great way to coach the staff. And I'll tell you what, it's funny because every time, if I were to ask a stylist or a salon owner, who is your problem child? They all know instantly. I, you know, I hope, I wish your audience were like live, you know, like talking to us because if I said, Hey, give me the name of your problem child, I'm not really interested in their name, but instantly they have
[00:12:23] Chris Nedza: an image of that person who's the problem child. Do you know what, Antony? Every time I coach a salon owner and they tell me the name of that person. When I look at that person's data on ZeeZor, almost invariably it's the wrong person. In other words, their problem child may be up 40 percent in total sales for the year.
[00:12:42] Chris Nedza: Selling, you know, improved 80 percent in retail sales. And you're kind of like, what's wrong with that person? What would you do if everybody were up 40 percent in total sales? That's your star, you know? 
[00:12:52] Antony Whitaker: Yeah. Okay. So I've heard you talk and use a word, which I want you to sort of talk to me about now. And it's this word [00:13:00] gamification because it opens up a lot of areas, doesn't it?
[00:13:05] Antony Whitaker: There's whole gamification and, you know, millennials and generation Z or Zed, whatever you want to call it. Just talk to us about that. 
[00:13:13] Chris Nedza: Yeah. So, you know, people come to work. For a paycheck. There's no doubt about that, but if you're a day in day out, how do you get them completely, you know, like engaged in your business and enthusiastic.
[00:13:25] Chris Nedza: We've decided to build some tools in ZeeZor that makes it easy. To run contests based on metrics and, and really that's what you're doing is you're gamifying, you know, you're making it fun. So we did a contest one time. If you look at your data, we had a group of salons that their busiest time of year is back to school.
[00:13:46] Chris Nedza: I mean, that makes sense. You know, it's great for the salon owner, not so great for the stylist. And if you think about it, your lobby is full. And you've got all these customers in and they want to be served and you're working like a dog as a stylist and man, you're tired, you're worn out. The next customer that walks in the door is not really your friend.
[00:14:05] Chris Nedza: I mean, you're just worn out. So how do you use the data to then inspire and turn it into fun so that the next person that walks in is not the enemy or, you know, but they're actually, Oh, good, that's an opportunity for me to win something. So that's what gamification is all about is using the data. to inspire and motivate and encourage.
[00:14:25] Antony Whitaker: So it's turning productivity and performance into fun. It's turning it into a game. It's turning the competition into, well, it's a competition. It's fun and people like to win competitions. I mean, when I had my salons. I would do what I used to refer to as target meetings on a monthly basis and they were good.
[00:14:44] Antony Whitaker: They were very effective. We're at the end of every month or beginning of every month, the first Friday of every month I would talk to people about, I'd sit them down on a one to one and it was a short sharp meeting. It was somewhere between five and 10 minutes and it was just simply to say, this is what you did last month, retail, prebooking service totals.
[00:15:03] Antony Whitaker: And then it was either a congratulations or what's going on. And then it would be, so what do you think you could do for the coming month? So, they would set their goals. So, it was a similar conceptually. It's the same idea. But basically, what I'm saying to you is that they would be engaged in that conversation for five to 10 minutes maximum a month.
[00:15:23] Antony Whitaker: And then it would be another month before they would then go back to. Hey, how did I go? Whereas these days in real time, I've got my phone on me. I've got the ZeeZor app on me. You're making them completely engaged on an ongoing basis as to what their performance is. They don't need the printout to be put on the notice board, they don't need to be huddled around the front desk, looking at the point-of-sale system.
[00:15:50] Antony Whitaker: They don't need the one-to-one target meeting with the owner. They're more engaged and therefore more, hopefully more accountable and hopefully more motivated with what their numbers are. Yeah? 
[00:16:03] Chris Nedza: No, you're totally right. And I would add one more thing. You know, you said you, you meet with them and you ask them, what do you think you could do?
[00:16:10] Chris Nedza: Yeah. That's sort of like how fast do you think you can run? You know, if you ran as fast as you thought you could run, you would get a time. But what if you knew that somebody ran a four-minute mile? Like if you're a hairstylist, and I've got a real story for this. What if you knew that people are actually doing $500,000 a year in service and retail sales?
[00:16:32] Chris Nedza: Now think about that for a second. That's unbelievable. That's a half a million dollars. If you're getting a commission and, and you're getting tips, those people are making what 200, 300, 000 a year as a hairstylist? 
[00:16:45] Antony Whitaker: Yeah. And that's quite possible. 
[00:16:46] Chris Nedza: It is totally possible. Instead of, you know, like people say, well, you know, instead of asking, what do you think you could do?
[00:16:52] Chris Nedza: People often ask me, what do you think my numbers should be? And I tell them through ZeeZor, I don't know what your numbers should be. I know what they could be. Because there are other people that are doing ridiculously good and well, and they're not superheroes. They're not, you know, you know, they don't fly.
[00:17:08] Chris Nedza: They don't do anything like that. What they do is they set their goals and they go after it. They go out. 
[00:17:14] Antony Whitaker: Exactly. So I often find that statistics in this industry are often unreliable because of the source they come from is often a very small pool of data. And often there's an ulterior motive behind quoting whatever those figures are.
[00:17:28] Antony Whitaker: I'm sort of the ultimate cynic sometimes about statistics. However, when I talk to someone like you. Or John Harms at Millennium, for example. I know that you both have incredible handle on statistics because you're seeing lots of real numbers that people are producing in real salons, in this case, all over the country.
[00:17:47] Antony Whitaker: So just give us an idea. What are the paradigms? So you just mentioned half a million dollars. Do you see people behind the chair as employees producing half a million dollars? Do you see people producing more than that? Is it a one off? Is it just these people that are charging 500 bucks for a haircut?
[00:18:04] Antony Whitaker: Or do you see people in middle America or wherever who are just incredibly productive at an average price, but they are really scoring, you know, some serious goals out there. 
[00:18:16] Chris Nedza: Man, that is such a good question. I got turned on to this whole concept a couple years ago when I ran into some, a lady named Denise Dearing and she's a stylist.
[00:18:25] Chris Nedza: She's not a business owner. She's a stylist in California in Palo Alto and she does about a half a million dollars a year. 
[00:18:32] Antony Whitaker: And she works for someone else? Yeah. Okay. So she's behind the chair, full time stylist. She's doing half a million bucks a year. Yeah. 
[00:18:40] Chris Nedza: And guess what? She doesn't even have an assistant.
[00:18:42] Chris Nedza: Yeah. Amazing. Like, that's insane. Yeah. So, you know, so when I, I ran into her and then I started really looking at numbers and I'm like, golly, that's, that's insane. And the first question that has other salon owners say to me as well, she's in Palo Alto, they've got a lot of money, her ticket is high and everything else.
[00:18:57] Chris Nedza: When I started, I ran into another lady named Jill Craven the other day. It was about in October of last year. She ran up to me and she said, Hey, I have to tell you something. I went to the Data Driven Salon Conference, which by the way, Data Driven Salon is a conference that everybody ought to attend. It is speaking strictly about this data and it's in Atlanta.
[00:19:15] Chris Nedza: Fantastic. But anyway, Jill walks up to me. She says, I was at Data Driven. I met Denise two years ago. I saw that she was doing 500, 000 a year and I decided I was going to try to do that. And you know what, Chris, I'm going to hit it this year. And she did, she hit it at the end. By the end of 2018, she broke $500, 000.
[00:19:34] Chris Nedza: Now here's the cool part. Jill was already doing 300, 000 a year. I mean, that's insane itself, right? I mean, that's an fantastic number, but it, but it's not 500. So, most people would go, Oh my gosh, how does somebody do 300? Well, Jill is in Canton, Georgia. It's not, let me tell you something, man. It is not Palo Alto.
[00:19:55] Chris Nedza: It's not New York city. It is middle of nowheresville, Georgia. Then I have another stylist who I saw their numbers and she ran into me and we talked as well. She's in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Charlotte, North Carolina is not a metropolis. I mean, it's a nice area, but it's not New York City, L. A. The point is it can be done.
[00:20:18] Chris Nedza: So good question. Yes, that's a great number. We've got customers that I think of an important metric is the number of services that you provide. If you can provide two services or more per client, you're doing fantastic. 
[00:20:30] Antony Whitaker: So, haircut and the color, haircut and the treatment, that sort of thing, yeah. Yeah.
[00:20:35] Antony Whitaker: Okay. So there are your sort of peak numbers around the half a million mark or 600, 000 mark. Anyone doing more than that? 
[00:20:41] Chris Nedza: I've got somebody that's doing over 600, 000. They do a little over, this is a person down in, uh, Naples, Florida, which again, nice area, but it's not, you know, he does a little about $530, 000 in service sales.
[00:20:54] Antony Whitaker: Okay. That's someone standing behind the chair, the stylist, right? 
[00:20:58] Chris Nedza: And then he does another, I think about 120, 000 in retail sales and product sales. Now when you query the guy, he's a fantastic person. He's going to be speaking at data driven this year, by the way. And you ask him, some people look down their nose at him because he, he actually has boutiques.
[00:21:14] Chris Nedza: So, he's selling handbags and fashion items. So some people go, Oh, well, that's not really retail product. Well, he's selling another 60 or 70, 000 in retail product shampoos and that sort of thing. But yeah, he's decided he's got a niche and he’s, he's expanded and selling some boutique items. 
[00:21:30] Antony Whitaker: Okay. They're incredible numbers.
[00:21:32] Antony Whitaker: You touched on the retail or take-home figures. What would you say was an average that you're seeing out there? 
[00:21:38] Chris Nedza: In terms of a retail. Yeah. You know, with hair 
[00:21:41] Antony Whitaker: products, not the handbags, et cetera, just hair products. Would there be a benchmark that you'd say, do you know what, this is what I observe as being an average with all the people that are using these or apps.
[00:21:51] Chris Nedza: You know what, I don't really know what that average is. It is so widespread. Right. But what I see is I see people more importantly, they're defeated. In other words, they think that everybody's buying from Amazon, that they, their customers don't want to buy retail. And I see a lot of defeatism. On the other hand, I see a lot of people doing 50, 60, 70, 000 in retail in shampoos and products.
[00:22:18] Chris Nedza: So what's the difference? Why can't everybody do that? The answer is they can. It's just that you have to put it in your mind. So I ran into a salon owner who told me that they're in a rural area and just said, no, we again. We can't sell those kinds of numbers in retail where we are. Well, they have a great salon.
[00:22:39] Chris Nedza: They have lots of customers and their average ticket is about a hundred dollars, a hundred-dollar average ticket is in the top tier, by the way. So, if the average service ticket is a hundred dollars and they have a lot of customers, what that tells me is they have customers who are willing to spend money.
[00:22:55] Chris Nedza: The problem with them is they're not in, they're mentally defeated themselves and they don't even think about doing the consultation. And their real job is to make that customer feel great when they're there. And to teach them how to get that same look until the next visit and that's all gets dropped.
[00:23:13] Antony Whitaker: Definitely. Okay. So, I'm a salon owner and I'm listening to this and I'm thinking, okay, this sounds like an interesting tool. And I know you said to me before we even started this conversation off air that you didn't want it to come across like a sales pitch for ZeeZor. And I get that, you know, and I totally respect that, but as a tool, how can a salon owner use it?
[00:23:35] Antony Whitaker: As a coaching tool, what does it look like? I mean, you've got to remember a lot of people listening to this. I've never seen ZeeZor don't know what it looks like, but you know, they're engaged in this conversation and they're thinking, okay, how can I use that as a coaching tool? What does that look like?
[00:23:48] Chris Nedza: So, first of all, yeah, you're right. I don't want this to be an advertisement. My customers end up becoming really my friends and my heart breaks for a lot of them. Because they're not making any money and they're leaving a ton of money on the table. And honestly, some of them, you know, they're just struggling.
[00:24:05] Chris Nedza: A lot of them are struggling. Their answer is, I want to work harder. I need to do more haircuts. And you know, they themselves are behind the chair and trapped. The real answer is, is no, you have to, I would much rather, instead of you take on one more customer, I would much rather you teach your staff to take on one more customer each.
[00:24:24] Chris Nedza: Honestly, if you just, if you have ZeeZor, you sit down with your, your staff, you don't have to run any reports and you can just set their goals right within ZeeZor. They can see what's possible. And then your job as a salon owner is take one fewer customer and take 30 minutes and just look at ZeeZor and cheer your team on.
[00:24:44] Chris Nedza: And get them focused in driving the metrics that you want them to drive. And I'll tell you the other thing that's really key. Your staff can't do 20 things. Focus on one or two. Do them really, really well. And then go to the next one. 
[00:24:58] Antony Whitaker: Good point. Good point. Well said. I know there'll be people listening to this thinking, Well, I don't need that because my point-of-sale system already does this.
[00:25:07] Antony Whitaker: What's the difference between what ZeeZor does and what a point-of-sale system does? 
[00:25:16] Chris Nedza: Well, I mean, I love that question before I started Czor the first thing I wanted to figure out was, is this a viable product? My question was, why don't the point-of-sale systems have the same tool? I mean, I'm not, I'm not, I'm using their data.
[00:25:30] Chris Nedza: Yeah. And I ended up running a point-of-sale company in the restaurant hospitality industry, and I built two point-of-sale systems in different vertical markets prior to really launching ZeeZor full time and the answer is they have so much on their plate. They're worried about they've got to do e commerce.
[00:25:49] Chris Nedza: They've got to do online check in that there's so many development things that they have to do. And we are focused solely on every day, day in and day out about engaging the staff. We're researching the data. We're coming up with new tools. You can run contests. You can set goals. You can, you know, there's a community that is, we are so deep in our skill set, our knowledge of employee engagement that there's no way that the point-of-sale s system just can't catch up.
[00:26:17] Chris Nedza: Now they like to copy what we do and I'm flattered. We're we're partners with them. They, they like to say they do the same thing they don't, and we are completely focused on teaching you and teaching that salon owner, how to engage that staff. We're sort of a Fitbit for your business. 
[00:26:33] Antony Whitaker: Exactly. So it's sort of like a, I'm thinking the analogy as you're talking about it, it's the difference between a doctor and a specialist.
[00:26:39] Antony Whitaker: You know, the point-of-sale system is the doctor, but you specialize in this specific little area. You know, let's say orthopedics or whatever. So, you know, the doctor can offer a lot of information and a lot of resources, but ultimately when you're trying to focus on a specific area, you're better to go to a specialist.
[00:26:57] Antony Whitaker: And that's sort of what the ZeeZor app is like. 
[00:26:59] Chris Nedza: Yeah. That's right. And I would say that, that if I were to give advice to an owner, I would say, get ZeeZor and get a world class coach. 
[00:27:06] Antony Whitaker: Yeah, definitely. 
[00:27:07] Chris Nedza: Any professional athlete, any professional athlete, they know what they're doing. They're professionals, right?
[00:27:13] Chris Nedza: Every single one of them has a coach. Every one of them has a coach. I mean, I wish they could fix his game a little better, but he has a coach. Every top golfer in the world has a coach. And ZeeZor can provide that coach with the instantaneous feedback to see, is the coaching working? So I would say, man, just owners engage ZeeZor and engage a coach.
[00:27:37] Antony Whitaker: Yeah. A lot of my audience are going to be U. S. based or Canadian based, but then there's probably going to be the same amount again that are UK, European, Australian, New Zealand based. Is ZeeZor available to them?
[00:27:49] Chris Nedza: It's not, we're looking and we're considering it and we're in discussions with distributors, ZeeZor is not just give them the app and go, you know, we rely heavily on teaching them how to use the app and the platform to drive the numbers.
[00:28:04] Chris Nedza: So, you know, with time changes, currency changes. Unfortunately, we're not available overseas, but we get enough requests, we'll be over there. 
[00:28:12] Antony Whitaker: Yeah. Okay. All right. So as a salon owner that uses ZeeZor, what changes would I expect to see, if any, in my business? Like having integrated this into lots of different salons, what's the feedback you get straight away from them?
[00:28:26] Chris Nedza: Well, if the owner is engaging, they will see immediate revenue bump. And when I say immediate revenue bump, it's not uncommon to see double digit increases immediately, literally, you know, overnight, but it's because we teach them to focus on a metric, launch it to your team. And launch a contest and then every day just look for a few minutes and find three people in your salon or two people and send them a message through the app and catch them doing the right things.
[00:28:55] Chris Nedza: It gets them focused, it reinforces the behavior that you want to reinforce and you will get results. 
[00:29:02] Antony Whitaker: What do salons see as, uh, or stylists, what do they see and you see as the biggest challenge integrating it? When you're not used to using something like that and all of a sudden, you've got this new thing, what's the biggest challenge?
[00:29:13] Chris Nedza: I think lethargy really, if they will follow what we teach them, it's awesome. It's fantastic. If they don't, um, you know, it's sort of like, why do people put where in their Fitbit, you know, it's not because the Fitbit isn't working. It's because they're fat and they still fire the Fitbit. It's not hard.
[00:29:32] Chris Nedza: It's really, honestly, it's just doing it and being consistent. We make it as easy as you can possibly make it. But if somebody is not willing to take a look at their numbers and they own their salon. And we make it so that it's in a, like, takes no more than two minutes. I make the bed every day for my wife.
[00:29:49] Chris Nedza: Yeah. She loves that. 
[00:29:50] Antony Whitaker: Hey, I do that too. Isn't that a great thing? Aren't we two new age guys? 
[00:29:56] Chris Nedza: Well, you know what it is? Is that we have wives that know how to train us, right?
[00:30:00] Antony Whitaker: Yeah, I think it's something like that. 
[00:30:02] Chris Nedza: But honestly, it only takes two minutes for me to do it. And you know what? This is the same thing with a salon owner.
[00:30:07] Chris Nedza: It only takes two minutes for you to recognize your people. 
[00:30:09] Antony Whitaker: Yeah, exactly. It doesn't take long. That's the whole thing. And that's also the genius about this tool is that I know that, you know, you can be anywhere on your phone and you can be looking at people's productivity and you can go, hey, you know, you can send them a, you can, as you said, you've got a messaging app within the app where you can send someone a
[00:30:26] Antony Whitaker: an instant message. You can be looking at someone's, as a salon owner, you can be looking at their data on Zeezor and you can see that they've just killed it this week. They've had the best week in retail or the best, you know, rebooking week or whatever. And you can instantly send them no matter where you are in the world, an emoji or a quick message saying.
[00:30:46] Antony Whitaker: You know, Chris, you've had a fantastic week. This is your, your record and retail, or this is the best you've ever done and re-bookings or whatever. Congratulations. And it's that reinforcement, which is encouraging. 
[00:30:58] Chris Nedza: And I'll tell you, this is a, this is a, of an emotional industry, right? There's nothing more important to another person than to say, I noticed you, I see you, I appreciate you.
[00:31:09] Chris Nedza: Yeah, exactly. Nothing more important. If you want to motivate someone, then figure out what they're doing and recognize them and just say, I see you, I notice you. 
[00:31:20] Antony Whitaker: I want to dig back into something that we touched on, and that was that sometimes the numbers within a point-of-sale system, you can produce different reports within a point-of-sale system, and the numbers are different.
[00:31:35] Antony Whitaker: And as you said, how does that happen? But that is the reality sometimes. So, when you bring in a third-party thing, like ZeeZor as an app, And the numbers are different. Again, talk to me about that. That sounds like it's got nightmare written all over it in terms of trying to run a business and staff seeing what their figures really are, because everyone wants consistency.
[00:31:55] Antony Whitaker: Everyone wants to trust that everyone wants to know these numbers are right. And if they're getting two different sets of numbers, one from the point-of-sale system and another one from ZeeZor, how do they handle that? 
[00:32:06] Chris Nedza: Yeah, great question. I'll tell you what, when most salon owners, they look at the buttons and the features when they're being sold the point-of-sale system, but what I would ask them and they kind of take for granted that these reports are right.
[00:32:18] Chris Nedza: It's, you know, like, hey, my pre booking, you know, the sales rep for the POS company will say, hey, yeah, we can show you pre booking. Let me show you that report. I'll bet you there's not one salon owner that ever asked them. Can you tell me the formula that you use for pre booking? Okay. Okay. You know, and in fact, I'd be willing to bet that most of the point-of-sale s systems can't even tell you what the formula is.
[00:32:41] Chris Nedza: Now they may tell you, yeah, our formula is X, Y, and Z. But if you look at the data, that doesn't mean that that formula actually works. Yeah. So what we do, and this is one of the things that we're really working hard in our industry, is we've got some really good advisors and we're putting forth a set of standards through the industry.
[00:32:59] Chris Nedza: Uh, these are the metrics and the calculations, and we built it inside the StackUp app, which is part of ZeeZor. So, you will see, we match the point-of-sale reports as close as we can. But we are, we disclose our figures, our formulas, and they're very consistent over and over and over again. And then we're putting forth, here are the metrics for the industry.
[00:33:24] Chris Nedza: And we believe that the point-of-sale systems will actually adopt our metrics and our calculations. So that we do as an industry have a set standard and we know that pre book in Millennium is the same as pre book in, in a Booker or pre book in Salon biz or pre book and none of them are calculated the same, zero, none of them.
[00:33:45] Antony Whitaker: Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, a lot of it is just. It all comes down to we need to all be speaking the same language and having the same terminology because the phrase pre booking or re booking, I've been using those two words and this is me, a business coach, you know, presenter, former salon owner, et cetera.
[00:34:03] Antony Whitaker: The rest of the world pretty much don't use the term pre booking. Now, there'll be people that are exceptions to that, but the rest of the world pretty much will use the term rebooking. And what they will mean by rebooking is that that client has made their next appointment before they've walked out the door as a generalization.
[00:34:20] Antony Whitaker: And that is always the definition that I've used for rebooking. That rebooking means that a client's made their next appointment before they've walked out the door. And that prebooking was pretty much the same thing. It was just a case of, you know, you use whatever word you want to describe the same thing.
[00:34:36] Antony Whitaker: However, fast forward to now. And what I'm finding is that they are two very different words that do and can, and maybe should have a different definition around them. And so, the definition around them that I know that I have some people using is that rebooking is that a client comes back to you pre booking is that they pre-booked that appointment before they walked out the door.
[00:35:01] Antony Whitaker: So a client who rebooks hasn't necessarily made that appointment before they walked out the door, but they do rebook to come back with you. Does that make sense? 
[00:35:11] Chris Nedza: Yeah, that's exactly right. 
[00:35:12] Antony Whitaker: And so we've all got to be as an industry and different point-of-sale system providers, et cetera. If we all adopt the same definitions of terminology, then it makes that transference of data from a POS to Aziz or at, for example, it makes it seamless, doesn't it?
[00:35:30] Antony Whitaker: Because we're all in using the same terms to describe the same result. Yeah? 
[00:35:36] Chris Nedza: Yeah, you're correct. And, you know, I would just submit that. Some people just get into the weeds too much, you know, like prebook, rebook, you know, retention, new retention, existing retention, you know, the people get into the weeds too much.
[00:35:49] Chris Nedza: Yeah, I would say, ask yourself, what behavior am I trying to encourage my staff to do? And the truth of the matter is you're trying to get your staff to do a full consultation and a full experience from the minute the client walks into the minute the client walks out. And part of that is, recommending when they come back and make sure they book that appointment.
[00:36:12] Chris Nedza: That's what you're trying to do. You want to know that you're because so many staff, so many stylists do not do that. They don't recommend, hey, your hair is growing at this. What we're trying to do is we're trying to build a full look and, or we're making it shorter or making it longer, whatever we're trying to do.
[00:36:27] Chris Nedza: And we really need to get you in. Four weeks from now or five weeks from now or six weeks from now, let's take a look at that. Let's get that book appointment booked. Yeah, that's the behavior that the salon owner wants. 
[00:36:37] Antony Whitaker: Yeah, and you can guarantee those people that are doing 000 a year that that's exactly the sort of behaviors that they do.
[00:36:45] Antony Whitaker: And they don't just do them once, they do them all day, every day consistently with a smile on their face. 
[00:36:49] Chris Nedza: Yeah, it's great. I mean, that's exactly what we're trying to do is we're trying to. put forth. These are the calculations. These are the behaviors that everybody agrees that we're trying to get done.
[00:36:57] Chris Nedza: And we need the industry to embrace it. And the point-of-sale systems, frankly, some of them are run by megalomaniacs and they don't want to hear it. And they think they know better. And the important thing is, is what are we trying to focus and drive the industry? And can we get them to also adopt these formulas and calculations?
[00:37:16] Chris Nedza: And I think they will. I think it's extremely exciting. And now we can have these conferences where we actually are talking about the same thing. 
[00:37:24] Antony Whitaker: Yeah, definitely. Definitely. I'm just reflecting back on what you said a minute ago about some people get into the weeds too much. And I agree with that. And I'm certainly guilty of that at sometimes as well, because it also fits back in with what you said a minute ago about, you know, Stylists should focus on two or three things.
[00:37:40] Antony Whitaker: Just keep it as simple as possible, which again is what I like about ZeeZor. It's simple, it's easy, it's clean, it's very visual, it's fun, without over complicating things. Because if you over complicate things too much, and you give people too much data, and too many sorts of analytics, and too many reports, it all becomes too hard.
[00:37:58] Antony Whitaker: So, that's obviously, Your ethos with a lot of this is keep it simple. Keep it simple. Keep it simple. Focus on two or three metrics that are really important and get them across to people in a fun, engaging way. 
[00:38:11] Chris Nedza: Yeah, that's it. And let them know that you noticed 
[00:38:13] Antony Whitaker: that. Yeah. I know you can't, uh, you know, audience can't see this obviously, but I know that you have recently, I don't know if you call it ZeeZor 2.
[00:38:22] Antony Whitaker: 0 or whatever, but I'm going to call it that. It's different now to what it was when I last saw it. I mean, you showed it to me yesterday when I was blown away with the involvement of the app. And I particularly like the competition component that you've integrated into it. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?
[00:38:38] Antony Whitaker: I mean, I know it's so much easier when people can see it for you to talk about that, but I found that fascinating. 
[00:38:43] Chris Nedza: Well, hey, I appreciate that. We actually call it ZeeZor Green. And it's because it looks green. Um, the whole thing is a green theme. So yeah, we built something called, um, we put targets, goals, and contests.
[00:38:57] Chris Nedza: And essentially, we built in there, the ability for a salon owner, a group of salons, or even the manufacturers to run a contest through ZeeZor. And there's different ways to run a contest. It's a real pain to manage a contest for people, you know, and most people know when they run, let's say they want to run a product contest and we're going to do a contest for a month to see who can sell the most retail because nobody, you know, stylists don't think they can sell retail and they don't like to be retail salespeople.
[00:39:24] Chris Nedza: So a lot of people do retail sales contests. Well, the problem with most contests, you've got to keep track of what's going on and doing it with whoever sells the most wins. That's one way of doing it. But we built in there a lottery ticket system so that for every day you hit a certain metric or set of metrics, you get a lottery ticket and then the system will actually at the end of the contest period, draw the lottery ticket and tell you who won that way.
[00:39:51] Chris Nedza: Every day, every stylist has a chance to win the more times you do the thing that you're trying to do, the better your chances are winning. 
[00:39:59] Antony Whitaker: Yeah. So it's not just the person who does the most. It's always going to win it because that's always the same person in the salon. So it motivates them, but it demotivates actually other people.
[00:40:08] Antony Whitaker: So this way with that lottery system, everyone's got a chance of winning it. 
[00:40:11] Chris Nedza: That's right. And they see how many tickets they have and all that kind of stuff. And, and more importantly for me. The owner or the management every day has an opportunity to recognize someone and say, hey, you know what? You got a lottery ticket.
[00:40:23] Chris Nedza: No, maybe the only one, one lottery ticket for the whole contest period, but it's an opportunity to, to encourage them and to reinforce, hey, I trained you on what to do. You follow the process. By gosh, you did it. And you got a lottery ticket way to go. You know, it just, it reinforces the whole culture of catching them, doing things well, and it's automated.
[00:40:43] Chris Nedza: I mean, it takes maybe a few minutes to set up a customer, a contest, and then it's, you don't have to worry about posting the numbers. You don't have to worry about putting out a poster in the back room. It's all done automatically. 
[00:40:52] Antony Whitaker: If, if for example, when you talked about automation, if for example, I have just had my best week ever for retail.
[00:41:01] Antony Whitaker: Is the system automated to tell me that? Do you know what I mean? Does it does an icon come up? There's a badge come up the balloons float up on my iPhone or something saying best week ever. Does that happen? Or does that have to be instigated by the salon manager or whoever it is? It's looking at the productivity of those people on the team.
[00:41:21] Chris Nedza: Great question. We actually have some customers that they want to see their record weeks and that sort of thing. And, uh, it is not widespread through ZeeZor, but we have some surprises coming in the next couple of months. It is, that's the exact kind of stuff that we're looking at. Who's had a record, you know, broke their all-time record, had the greatest week, sold the most product, you know, that sort of thing.
[00:41:44] Chris Nedza: Yeah. I mean, so that's, that's exactly where we're going. And that question is exactly why. What we do is not only important, but it's why the point-of-sale systems, they're not able to do this stuff. They don't have the staff focused on thinking of these things. And those are ideas that we get from our customers.
[00:42:01] Chris Nedza: And man, it is all about the staff, all about the employee. 
[00:42:04] Antony Whitaker: Yeah. Well, another one that I used to focus on with that was again, because what we just said, that if you're just rewarding the person who does the most retail every week, it's always going to be the same person. So sometimes you need to do that, but then other times you need to mix it up.
[00:42:17] Antony Whitaker: So, you know, one of the things I used to do was. We'd run competitions, but it would be the person who's had the highest percentage increase on their retail. So, you know, you would say, Chris, your average was this figure and you've had a a hundred percent increase. Now the figure that you might've been producing in retail may not have
[00:42:36] Antony Whitaker: been the highest dollar value in retail sales, but it was the highest percentage increase. So it's important to recognize those people as well. Not just the ones that are necessarily the King hitters, but the people that are putting in the graph to make sure that they are growing, even though they might be coming from a low base.
[00:42:54] Chris Nedza: No, that's a really good point. In fact, if I ask a salon owner who their best employee is, they can always name their best, their best person, but I will show them in three minutes that there is no best one. One of their people is selling the highest retail per client. One of them is doing the highest total sales.
[00:43:11] Chris Nedza: One of them has had the highest increase in performance increase. One of them has the highest average ticket. It's never the same person in every category. Yeah, yeah. So, try to run reports to do that. These are in three seconds can tell you that and the goal, the job of the owner and the management is to catch those people just like you said, and let them know again
[00:43:32] Chris Nedza: I noticed you, you're really good at this. Good job. And it also set makes the opportunity to set up a mentor program. You know, you can coach the staff on what to do. But, you know, how about somebody in the trenches that's actually really good at retail sales. I want to know what are you doing? Like, how are you doing it?
[00:43:51] Antony Whitaker: Yeah, exactly. So one last thing you did mention earlier on when you were talking about these or you said how, you know, we were talking about the red green thing and you said how it was set up so that you were comparing yourself with the same day last year. And that so as long as you, you might be in red, well, you'd be in red at nine o'clock in the morning.
[00:44:12] Antony Whitaker: But the idea is, is that by the end of the day, day for day, you'd be in green comparing yourself to last year, you'd be saying I've done better. The, I know that now you've added another level to that. So now you can also put in a goal. So, it's not a, it's not that you're comparing yourself to what I did last year.
[00:44:30] Antony Whitaker: It's that you're comparing yourself to, well, this is my goal for the week. Talk to us about that for a little bit. 
[00:44:36] Chris Nedza: Yeah. So we built something called targets actually. And that's exactly what it's for is let's say you have standards in the salon and your standard. And oftentimes when you have a new stylist, they haven't been there for last year or a year, right?
[00:44:49] Chris Nedza: They're new. But you should have standards, a level one, a level two, level three, whatever. There's a certain amount of retail we expect you to sell. There's a certain amount of pre booking numbers. There's a certain amount of service guests we expect to be purchasing retail. So you can set those kind of targets within ZeeZor.
[00:45:06] Chris Nedza: And so your staff can not only see how they did against last year, but they can also see how they're doing against their goals or their personal goals or their targets that you've established. So it's, it's super-duper cool to see how am I doing against myself and how am I doing against the targets and the goals that I've set?
[00:45:22] Antony Whitaker: Definitely. Okay. Well, just to wrap this up, I always think it's important that people walk away from, you know, any learning or a podcast, whatever, that they can walk away with, you know, two or three things that they go, this is what I've got from listening to this podcast, these two or three things, this is what I should be doing.
[00:45:42] Antony Whitaker: So what would you say the top three things? Either a stylist or an owner should be doing, obviously we're talking about numbers, we're talking about productivity and stuff. We're not necessarily talking about ZeeZor, but what would you say the top three things are that people should be focusing on in terms of driving the productivity in their business?
[00:46:02] Chris Nedza: You know what, Antony? Um, I love that question, but I'm going to flip it on you, uh, because we can, well, you know, you're one of the smartest guys I know, and you really understand this. I want to fire that back at you. What do you think? 
[00:46:17] Antony Whitaker: What do I think? Okay. The most important thing is, is that people need to understand.
[00:46:23] Antony Whitaker: Everyone wants to earn more money, right? I've never met anyone who said, no, I've got enough. I want to give some back. You know, everyone wants more money. So that's fine. I don't have a problem with that. In our industry, though we're very much a productivity driven business. So it's not a case of just leaning on the boss to say, I want a higher percentage of what I do or whatever.
[00:46:45] Antony Whitaker: It's about what you will earn is always going to be relative to what your productivity is. So if you want to earn more, you have to look at ways to be more productive. And I think it was Peter Drucker, you know, management guru, author, et cetera, who has this great quote. He says, like, it's something like if you can't measure it, you can't manage it.
[00:47:09] Antony Whitaker: You know, meaning that, you know, data numbers of facts, they're not feelings and we're very much a, a feeling driven business. We're very much an emotional driven business, but so many hairdressers salon owners or stylists have no idea of their numbers. So I'll often when I'm doing the seminar, I'll say to people, okay, let's say we're talking about productivity, whatever we might be talking about retail or whatever.
[00:47:33] Antony Whitaker: If I say to people, okay, what percentage of your clients currently rebook? Well, most of them look at me like I've got three heads. Most people do not know those numbers. Or if I say, let's talk about retail for a minute. How much would you average in a week? Whether it's percentage of clients that have bought or dollar value or number of units, most of them look at me like I've got three heads.
[00:47:55] Antony Whitaker: So again, it's about getting people to understand that ultimately, they are responsible for how much they earn because they're ultimately responsible for how productive they are and numbers are the result. Everything has a result and if we can have tools that give us that information, give it to us in real time, give it to us in a way that is visual and simple and easy to digest the numbers of your friend and they will help you set goals.
[00:48:30] Antony Whitaker: They'll help you to be able to, you know, monitor your performance or help you to be more productive. And therefore, ultimately, they're going to help you to earn more money. And bottom line is that's what we're all trying to do here. 
[00:48:42] Chris Nedza: Yeah, you know, I love that Van Council is owner of Van Michael Salons and arguably one of the best, most well-run salons.
[00:48:51] Chris Nedza: They do crazy numbers. He's a ZeeZor fanatic. He's also a world class biker, mountain biker. Yeah, and he calls [00:49:00] ZeeZor his little gauge, you know, just like he has on his mountain bike. I would say that if you're a salon owner or stylist, ask yourself this question. Do I want to be average or the best in the business?
[00:49:13] Chris Nedza: If you want to be the best in the business, and you're really serious about your trade, you can make a fantastic living. So invest in learning how to be the best in the business. And I'm not just talking about technical. You do not have to be Edward scissors, hands with scissors and shears. You know, you don't have to be the most creative person in the world to do fantastic members and support your family.
[00:49:34] Chris Nedza: But what you do have to do is be brutally honest with yourself. Do I want to be the best of the best? And then if you do, then you need a tool and you need some know how. And if you gather that stuff, I, Antony, I, you know, like they should call you, they should get a coach and use the tool and set your path and stay focused on it.
[00:49:54] Chris Nedza: Most people know what to do. They just don't do it. 
[00:49:56] Antony Whitaker: Yeah, exactly. So just to wrap up then, where can people find you, Chris? Where can they find you personally? Where can they find more about ZeeZor, you know, website information, social media, et cetera? 
[00:50:07] Chris Nedza: Yeah, so gozeezor.com. And ZeeZor is spelled Z E E Z O R. 
[00:50:14] Antony Whitaker: So it's not ZeeZor. com
[00:50:16] Antony Whitaker: it's gozeezor.com. 
[00:50:19] Chris Nedza: There's some guy that's a squatter that stole the zeezor.com name. You know, he's sitting on it. And he wants like a million dollars for it. I'm like, yeah, forget that. So yeah. Gozeezor.com. And, you know, just hit contact us. I'm always available. I love talking to clients. I write articles in salon today.
[00:50:37] Chris Nedza: You can, you know, hit me up over there. It's easy to find me cnedza, N E D Z A at gozeezor.com. That's my email. Hit me up. I'm willing to help in any way I can. Our team is phenomenal. Yeah. So that's how you find us. 
[00:50:52] Antony Whitaker: Fantastic. All right, Chris, I just want to thank you so much for today. You're an absolute mine of information.
[00:50:57] Antony Whitaker: And as always, it's been an absolute pleasure talking to you again, and hopefully we can connect again further down the line. 
[00:51:04] Chris Nedza: Absolutely. Love you, man. 
[00:51:05] Antony Whitaker: Cheers. You too, buddy. Take care. Bye now.
[00:51:11] Antony Whitaker: Thank you for listening to today's podcast. If you'd like to connect with us, you'll find us at GrowMySalonBusiness.com or on Facebook and Instagram at Grow My Salon Business. And if you enjoyed tuning into our podcast, make sure that you subscribe, like, and share it with your friends. Until next time, this is Antony Whitaker wishing you continued success.