'When you’re pushed into a corner, you HAVE to innovate' - Luke Hersheson on building a global brand

0:00I think hair has this ability, when it's good and it's behaving that day, it makes you feel great. And that's an enormous power. Don't sexy Lotharios often behave abominably towards women? Yes, but they don't always behead them or spit from the Catholic Church. History's Greatest Fails is the show where we find out why losers make history. Hosted by me, Dan Jones. And me, Elizabeth Day. We're old friends and fellow history graduates. And in this podcast, we're going to dig into failures of historical proportions. Listen to history's greatest fails on the This Is History podcast feed or watch on YouTube.

0:43Fabio Sementilli. Big heart, big voice, big laugh. A rock star hairstylist who drove a Porsche. He was like a wizard behind the chair. The killers came for Fabio in his own backyard. You can't rationalize it. You can't figure it out. There was rampant speculation about everything. But every wild theory was wrong. Because the truth was even more unbelievable. What? Is anyone hearing what I'm hearing? And even more heartbreaking. The uncertainty of not knowing is a form of agony. From Sony Music Entertainment and Novel, this is Cut, Color, Kill. I'm Jonathan Hirsch. Cut Color Kill is available now on The Binge.

1:28Search for it wherever you get your podcasts to start listening today. Subscribers to The Binge can listen to all episodes, all at once, ad-free.

1:54As you know, Joel and I are starting our own male skincare brand, so I'm going to continue to talk to some brilliant and impressive guests to get to know their journeys and get their take on what on earth we should be doing too. To catch up on everything that's happened so far, listen wherever you get your podcast and remember to subscribe. Of course, you can also watch us on the YouTube and subscribe there too. Today on the podcast, we have a leading British hairstylist, Luke Hersherson, who is the CEO of Hersherson's, the salon and hair care brand. Luke's father, Daniel, opened the first salon in the 90s.

2:27And since then, the pair have launched hair products, the concept of blow-dry bars, and their flagship salon in Fitzrovia. With his many celebrity clientele and thriving business, I'm super excited to get into this chat with Luke. Luke, thank you so much for joining me on The Businessman. Usually, Joel would be here. And I know he's absolutely obsessed with hair, particularly his own hair. So he's absolutely devastated. He's not here. It's great to have you with us, though, today. Thanks for having me. Fascinated to get your insight into the world that you work in, how you came to be there, the experiences that you've had of creating this fantastic brand of yours.

3:06Tell me when it was that you realised that you wanted to pursue hairdressing. Well, I kind of grew up in a salon. You know, my dad started it. My dad is a hairdresser. What year did he start? Oh, God. Probably early 70s, I think. Wow, okay. Yeah, around about. I was born in 79. He had his own salon by that point. He was 21 when he opened his first site. So that was pretty prolific, I suppose, at that time. But yeah, I was kind of, I grew up kind of in the back of a salon and I just loved the energy. I loved the people. I loved the vibe. And it always felt to me like that's where I wanted to be.

3:48I spent kind of every weekend there and summer holidays. and I kind of was, you know, shampooing and holding the dryer. And I just, I loved it. It was always like, for me, it was almost a given. And it was a real blessing, really, because I think to know what you want to do in life is huge, knowing people that don't know what they want to do and find that journey really hard. So, yeah, for me, it was like a no-brainer. It was a given. And I just loved all of it. I loved all elements of it. um you you it seems like professionally you blended the salon work with styling together at the young age yeah which was something that sort of meant that you were you were pushing in both directions at the same time yeah it's interesting because when i joined when i kind of joined my dad and um started working um salons in london were considered kind of or may i say kind of probably they had this um slightly naff connotation in my eyes they weren't considered kind of particularly cool or highly regarded by the kind of fashion crew and so i kind of set apart to say well i felt that the work my dad was doing the work that was kind of being churned out was was much more kind of fashion related than kind of this kind stream yeah it was it was just kind of cooler i suppose and i was like well how do you link those two together because when my dad started, this kind of fashion or session hairdresser, as we refer to now, didn't exist.

5:15You know, if Vogue wanted a hairdresser for a shoot, they'd phone up a salon, right? So nowadays, that world exists completely differently, where hairdressers have agents, they just do session work. So by the time I arrived in the salon, it was very two separate worlds. And I suppose my intention was to bring that together. And I felt by becoming a session hairdresser myself, so going to work for like all the magazines at that point, doing runway shows, brought that energy back together. And I think we started to shift the perception of the brand even in those days as kind of much more kind of linked to fashion.

5:53And interesting enough, I think the industry has done a full circle. You know, it's become, you know, every product brand on the sun, you know, from the early noughties was sponsoring fashion shows. And it became like, it's actually gone full circle again, because I think there's a bit more of a separation happening now. But, you know, it's another story. Yeah. So do you, was that decision a decision that you made for the business or decision that you made artistically? Both, really. I mean, partly I wanted to carve out, you know, kind of coming into that world as the son of someone who was kind of well known in the industry.

6:29you know there was a bit of like you know this can be seen as like nepotism and like and and oh he got an easy break so so so for me it was like how do i carve something out where it's my own thing um i enjoyed it um and how do i climb a ladder that isn't you know just following exactly in my dad's footsteps when i first became a stylist or i was doing clients i was you know convinced everyone was looking at me and you know and judging and i think there was a fair amount of that you know it was it was it was hard I was like really young I got a lot of like weirdly pressed attention really early on um but I didn't really ask for it just kind of happened and that was quite uncomfortable yeah and like and the same thing happened you know as I started to build that kind of session career I got some really good big breaks into you know I started working with Kylie you know in the early noughties like I was really young I was like 20 21 I was doing, you know, album covers with her.

7:23And then I got a massive gig with two huge photographers and Giselle, the supermodel for a campaign for Missoni. And I was so young. I was like, I probably didn't deserve it. You know, looking back, I was probably too young. I could kind of do the hair. I did do the hair. It all went well. You don't have that. You don't have that kind of like, you know, with, with experience, you build that kind of like chest of, safety nets and confidence and wisdom. And you don't have that when you're that young. So I was just a walking, insecure, you know, 21 year old. But that's so interesting because to do such massive campaigns or to do such a huge sort of personality and celebrity, I was going to say, was it because you were so young, you didn't have the fear, but it sounds like you did.

8:12It sounds like you were very conscious. Internally, I was a mess. externally I think it probably read as probably slightly arrogant which probably kind of I remember someone saying like you need a bit of arrogance and I think I probably had that sometimes probably too much um so yeah but then you you kind of get through that you work through it right yeah and all of those things build the armory yeah that you sort of take forward as you get older experience and age is a yeah it's a it's an important thing so Hershson's has become sort of a very modern experience driven salon hasn't it what was the gap that you saw that others had missed well I think there were a few I think I think early on that kind of link to fashion was really important that was probably when I you know first started so kind of late 90s early noughties it was bridging that gap between kind of you know fashion and salon and I think we did that really successfully I think the next the next step was when we we kind of rebranded and we opened our site in Fitzrovia.

9:13About 2018? Yeah, 2018. And weirdly, we found this site. We had another site previously in Mayfair, which we were kind of forced out of because the rents were going up hugely. We couldn't afford to stay. We found this site and weirdly, it was kind of too big for us. And weirdly, these problems kind of make you rethink the experience. So we were like, well, the space is too big, but it's an amazing space. What can we do with it and and i think when you're pushed into that situation you have to kind of innovate and think well how do we how do we change the experience and what we did was we we thought we'd had quite a lot of uh experience kind of working in other people's stores so we had we had a salon in harvey nichols we had a space in top shop um so we were we were aware of kind of how you can exist in another place uh in a bigger place where you're part of that cog in the wheel and so we thought well actually why don't we why don't we become that kind of department store and fill it with lots of other things other experts that do do things well so we found great skincare brands great manicure brands great um eyebrow brands great cafes and we almost kind of created this new ecosystem that where we were kind of doing the hair really well but and then we brought in other people that were doing other services really well and and i think weirdly being thrown into this position where you had a real problem so you were forced into like what do we do now and how How do we make it better?

10:34And sometimes those problems, out of those problems come great situations.

10:48Still a risk though. I mean, doing something completely different. How did you feel about it? Did you have sleepless nights thinking, God, we're making a huge mistake here. People aren't ready for this. I don't think I ever thought we were making a huge mistake. I think it's weird. It was a pivotal moment in my life because my wife was pregnant. We were expecting our first baby in March that year. We were due to open in June. And I remember it was just full on stress. You know, we were looking for kind of five or six kind of different operators, different brands. Filling that space was a challenge.

11:19Finding those people, getting them on board, running the project. you know people didn't quite understand the idea of it I don't know and finding kind of things we thought were going to be hard like finding skincare brands was pretty easy and so you know in the end we got it done but I just remember kind of pacing up and down the hospital in the morning like my wife gave birth like shouting at some contractor that couldn't connect the water from outside in time for us to open you know it was like it was really stressful It was probably the most stressful period I've gone through. But, you know, we got it done and we learned a lot.

11:58And, yeah, I'm here to tell the tale. Eight years down the line, you sort of look at it now and you kind of think, what were we worried about? Let's talk about hair. I grew up in Essex in the 80s and trying to get your hair cut right was absolutely fundamental to going to school and not being embarrassed or called out by your mates. But we never wanted to look like we'd made the effort back then. I think things have shifted significantly now. I've got teenage boys 19 and 21 and they're really open about what they're trying to do with their hairstyles, their haircuts and all those sorts of things.

12:29That feels like there's been a big shift in terms of, I'm talking from a boys and man's perspective. Yeah, for sure. I mean, it's interesting. I've got a nephew who's 11. It's interesting. Like, I think they have still, they all have the same haircuts. There's this kind of floppy thing. It's all in front of them. My son Jack, his forehead hasn't seen sunlight for about four years. I think that's their version of our curtains. It is. It must be. But I think what's interesting is that you're right. I think that it's become so much more acceptable to talk about it, be proud of it. You know, there was this, I remember like when I went to school, you didn't talk about like your hair or how you wanted it to be.

13:10It just was. Maybe you felt it, but you didn't talk about it. now I think boys men is is much more of a kind of accepted conversation um similarly with skincare I think as well which is fantastic to see I think in in in fashion as well like I think it's it's much more accepted I mean I used to get bullied and taking the piss out of like what I was wearing constantly then but I think now that individuality is slightly more celebrated than it than it used to than it used to be when we were growing up that's my sense yeah well i that having watched my teenage boys i think i find it quite um exciting at how well they take care of themselves um and their friends compared to what it was back then but what is it about hair do you think that means that we often change our hair at a moment of big upheaval i can remember going to university and shaving all my hair off.

14:11And I went to the pub to see my mates that evening. I was going to uni the next day and they were like, and I had pretty long curtains or whatever. In fact, I'd just come back from traveling. So my hair was really quite long. And I literally, it was number two over, all over. And my mates, what on earth have you done? You look like a thug. And I'm like, yeah, I just wanted a change. And I think it was a reaction to this big change in my life that I was about to have. Why do we do that, do you think, Luke? I don't know. Look, I think there's lots of psychological answers to it. You know, this kind of idea of breaking up and cutting your hair off and feels like you're letting go.

14:47And there's all this kind of psychological stuff that's associated with kind of chopping your hair off and starting afresh. my experience is that it's probably never a great idea to change your hair when you're going through some or you've just been through some kind of trauma um because you're looking for your hair to solve or fill that gap and and i think that that isn't it's never going to work right it's never going to fill the gap it's never going to change how you feel i think that when people come in and want changes you've really got to make sure that like the intention of why they're doing it is sound because otherwise you're probably walking into a disaster because you can't fix that yeah once it's gone yeah you can't stick it back on you can't stick it back on and also if people are looking for you know especially after relationship breakups um if they're looking for it to kind of fill a void it doesn't it doesn't fill that void so you've really i think the motivation of like having that change is is important like why are you why are you doing it what do you think is the biggest misconception about people who've got great hair uh that it comes to them easily and that it's just happened on its own yeah because nine times out of ten it hasn't and i spend my life making people look like i haven't been there because actually great hair is someone that just looks great and effortless and if you look like you've you've been sat in a hairdresser's or in a makeup chair for too long the effortlessness doesn't exist and so therefore I mean I'm not drawn to that type of beauty like for me it has to feel like it's happened it has to feel like it belongs to that person so to me great hair is is about you know things that you know that saying of like a you know someone has to wear the dress not the dress wear them it's the same with hair and makeup I think it has to feel like very much part of them.

16:44That's what, you know, represents great hair is when there's like a sense of effortlessness around it. Yeah, there is, unquestionably, there's a sort of a sense that if you're feeling like your hair is looking great or you're feeling strong with your hair, then you get the confidence to go back. I think that's huge. And weirdly, my daughter's first day at school back today, and she was desperate for me to kind of tong her hair, which is like ridiculous. She's eight years old. But actually, like the change in her aura was crazy. And I think because it did it and she doesn't find school easy. It's hard for her.

17:22And so anything, I think hair has this ability when it's good and it's behaving that day, it makes you feel great. And that's an enormous power. But it also works the other way because it can have a negative effect. If your hair is not great, it can also do the opposite. So this is why hair is so tangible and it has such a hold over how, you know, that whole idea of having a great hair day or a bad hair day. It can kind of totally change your get up in the morning, you know. Do you have bad, I can't imagine you have a bad hair day because if your hair is misbehaving, you know what to do. So I kind of blow dry my hair a bit.

18:00And if I go away and I haven't got hair dry, like, I mean, if I'm not in a hot country, I feel undone. I feel like undressed. and so I don't feel myself. And I think everyone probably has that in some which way, whether you're kind of super into fashion or not. Everyone has. It's a bit like clothing, right? Like there's clothes that make you feel a certain way. There was that really good line in Devil Wears Prada, the original one. The first one, yeah. The first one, where Meryl Streep turns around to Anne Hathaway and I think it's before she's kind of got all glamorized or she hasn't been vogue yet.

18:38and she talks to her about this like blue jumper that she's wearing and I think everyone has a reason why they pick a jumper pick a bag pick what they're wearing whether you're like super into fashion or not the choice of what hair you wear the choice of your makeup the choice of your clothes represents something about who you are so I think hair has the ability just like clothes do fashion conscious or not to have a huge impact in the character you put out to the world let's talk products because you have brought an array of things behind me I feel like I'm in the salon it's brilliant you launched this is extraordinary I didn't know this you launched the first straightening irons in the UK that we'd had in 1999 is that right?

19:22yeah it feels like straightening irons have been around for decades and decades and decades but 1999 well that was decades ago well I know yeah I know 1999 only feels like last week. I know it's not. No, no, no, totally. Well, it's interesting. So I was probably 19, 20. I was an assistant at that point. I went out to assist lots of different hairdressers. And I was assisting a guy on a Vogue shoot. And he brought out these really kind of clumpy, heavy brick looking straightening irons. And he told me to use them on one of the models and straighten a hair. and it was at a time where kind of poker straight ironed hair was a kind of thing um you know it was probably pre like uh all saints the band it was like spice girls it was probably around about that time so mid to late 90s yeah and it was about like there was a lot of people walking around with this kind of like poker straight hair like it was almost it looked ironed i mean blatantly was ironed right but actually salons right only really had a blow dryer and a brush so you could never get anything that looked that ironed right and the next thing was kind of like you'd look in an argos catalog right and it'd be like these 20 pounds rubbish straightening eyes that never heated up they didn't get your hair straight and so i i saw this i was like wow i've never seen anything like this right you know there were no there were no brands out there that just sold straightening eyes it just didn't exist and so i was like i've got to find the supplier of this we've got to we've got to we've got to sell this we've got to bring it to the uk yeah yeah um but it wasn't just the uk like it was like i think they were available for certain types of like very textured hair at that point but it wasn't a even in salons they weren't even like out in salons so we found the manufacturer we branded them this was before the internet even existed and we were just selling bucket loads of them.

21:21I mean, it just blew up. It was like, it was my first experience at kind of selling a product. And, you know, it was pre-internet who were taking them all to the post office, you know, sackfuls of them every day. And it was because it gave people the power to give themselves this straight hair at home, which they, it was like, it was a completely new development. It was a new experience. It was a new like way of wearing your hair and people could do it at home. It was easy. It was super easy. And it was amazing. It was, you know, it went on for kind of two or three years. It went on for longer than we thought.

21:56I kept thinking, well, it's going to be a season and then we'll disappear. It's going to dry out, yeah. And it kept going and it going and going. And then, unfortunately, we kind of got booted to the side a bit with the kind of innovation of ceramic technology, which just kind of launched around, you know, probably 2000, 2001. And then we were kind of, you know, trying to find a supplier to to to give us a ceramic version the ceramic version started heating up in 30 you know 30 seconds or so ours took probably three or four minutes right um just the immediate of it in the speed yeah and and and you know it had gone from coming it was quite heavy to something quite small and so yeah it was big learning for me yeah age kind of like 19 20 but it goes back to what you're saying about staying ahead of what's happening around you do you know i mean trying to always be at the forefront of innovation yeah we um i think we lost that one yeah and that was kind of a huge learning of like you know i was super young but it was a great success and then we kind of got you know someone else came in and took the glory but you know it was it was great it was it was a great experience so early on in in my career yeah and in terms of the products that you've launched because you've gone on launching products and creating products have you got one that you're most proud of yeah so we've we've um we've done all our product ourself you know we we don't have any outside funding um so we've all been very boot strapped when we've done product and and one of the things that we wanted to do is to make sure that we didn't have you know um loads and loads of products you know i'd seen so many ranges with like 20 30 40 products in them and i always found half of them you don't need you know half of them would be you know on a shelf one minute off a shelf another minute you know discontinued and and and people and product companies were kind of releasing products for the sake of newness as opposed to actually the fact that people needed products and it was it really drove me mad i mean i'm not a huge like product person in the sense of i don't use like five or six products and not into huge routines i hated this whole idea of you know this whole way of selling that that the industry had become and so what we decided to do in 2018 or i think we launched 2019 was we launched one cream with seven uses, which was our Almost Everything Cream, which has been our best seller in our styling range ever since.

24:10But even since 2019, we've done three styling products. We've done a Zuzh Foam, which gives you a bit of Zuzh, our cream and an air dry spray. So we're really tight on what we put out. It's not like you've got to have millions of products, millions of routine so that was kind of how do you i love the idea of a zh cream how do you spell zh by the way zh double o sh did you have a lot of fun we had a lot we had a lot of meetings that went on a long time of whether we should call it that how we should spell it the dictionary spells it like zh double o sh but lots of people use it with a j yeah it went on and on and on but in the end i was like you know that was the other thing like i wanted products that do what they say on the tin i cannot bear when you pick up a product it's got a really complicated name you don't understand what it's for who it's for how you're meant to use it it drives you mad it should literally do what it says on the tin and it should deliver um and and that's kind of i think what we're standing against i just want to to make it easy for people to to do great hair because i think we've been told by the industry that you know getting great hair is difficult you need hundreds of products you need lots of routines you need lots of time and ultimately it's a lot of marketing bs and so we kind of want to strip that away a lot and i hope you know product by product we're we're getting there but i think there's so many um similarities between what's driving you and your philosophy on this that that me and joel is like we want to simplify skincare for men because men want it to be simple effective fun and perform well yeah that's all you want and i get overwhelmed with the complication of some of the ingredients and directions on and i'm not interested i like i can't i can't we've got attention spans it's not very long yeah yeah trying to trying to trying to sort of make it really simple make sure it works make sure it's innovative what do you think is the have you have you ever created or innovated or made or brought a product to market that was a bit ahead of its time and and the industry wasn't quite ready for it i think the eye i think the iron was that you know in the early 90s i mean it was definitely ready for it um i think you know as i said i think our our failing on it was that we weren't able to kind of stay ahead we you know we were we were too small we didn't have the experience at that point um you know we launched a hairdryer um a few years ago um which was super light it was as heavy as my iphone but super powerful so i think that's been really interesting but you know taking on a lot of the it's a bit david and goliath going on there you know there's a lot of big players so we had lots of nasty letters from you know the competition don't like new new players on the market but um how do you deal with that uh that's a good question um we thought about whether we should publish the letters or not and uh in the end we decided we just should kind of ignore it implicate it and make it go away but you know there's a lot of talk about whether we should you know gain the sympathy of our community by you know calling calling them out but in the end you thought, you know, let's just stick to what we do.

27:11Let's just try and be the best at what we do. There's a place for everyone. And I think we're trying to do something quite specific. Can you talk to me a little bit about your experience of working with very high profile clients? I know that you've already mentioned Kylie, Giselle, Keira Knightley, Victoria Beckham. I mean, you have a sort of a huge range of very well-known personalities. What's the approach when you're working with with someone like that and does it differ yeah I think it differs depending on on who you're who you're working with and and and what project you're working on um I mean everyone's different I think um I think the one thing that kind of for me I'm not hugely kind of flamboyant hairdresser I'm not um I'm quite reserved so I think the people that I end up working with probably appreciate that um you know i don't do i'm not hugely gushy and um and so i probably but you know some people love that and that's probably so so i think it's a lot about connection and and you know of course it's about the hair you do but i think it's also about how you are within you know when you go into those environments it's about how you are you know with the because it's not a lot of the time it's not just you and them it's kind of you know there's there's there's lots of people around and so it's about learning how to be in that space um kind of how loud how not loud when to step forward when to step back i think that's as much a skill as it is about the hair that you're doing um so i think yeah it's just learning how to be within that space that's experience isn't it i think so i mean when i first started i was just really nervous and i think i think it's interesting you get to like years in and you you you've built that experience your comfort you like confidence is is so important and it doesn't come quickly enough i remember i remember i was really famous photographer once and he was like he was really hard on me he was like he used to shout and scream a lot but then he used to say at the end of the sentence you know confidence is really important you need to keep your confidence up i'm like yeah well that's great you've just been screaming absolutely disseminating me with your shouting yeah yeah

29:30have you ever made any mistakes with very famous people's hair i hope not have you ever gone oh man i'm not sure if that's worked it's been too i hope not i mean i think you're always i mean i'm the biggest critique of yeah of of my work and so you're always kind of struggling for more you always want things to be better and i think you you probably or i look at my work under a microscope that probably other people don't. I mean, we shoot, even for the salon, we shoot content the whole time for our social channels. And I'm binning content left, right and centre because, you know, I think you're your own biggest critic, right?

30:08I think there's a sort of a, that drive now to give the community that support you, that follow you, interesting bits of your work is really important, isn't it? Do you find that tiring? um do you enjoy that part of it i do actually i think kind of making great content is is something to like step back and and and feel proud of um yeah i do enjoy it but i've changed how i work so i'm not kind of behind the chair as much anymore i think i've been able as i've got older to be you know more considered about how i spend my time what my value is where i can put myself that's bringing the most value so if i decide to kind of have an afternoon of creating content i can take my time over it we can you know plan it well and hopefully you can you know build something that you're actually really proud of did you make it have you made any mistakes along the way that that you think that could have been fatal but actually because we learn from our mistakes obviously but i'm sort of trying to dig into because we have lots of listeners that are setting up their own businesses and love hearing from experienced business owners and creators that have gone this if i could do this again i would do it like this i think that i think um my probably biggest learning i'm not sure we've necessarily had any things that i thought should be fatal but i think my biggest learning is um so so now i've got to a point where i'm hiring people to take on roles so that i can be super focused on the things that i want to grow on i wish i'd known that or been able to afford to do that five years ago um and i think um i think that would help would have helped us drive growth quicker and and just not try and do too many things too quickly so not try and do too many products not try and do too many retail channels or you know like i think sticking to dc has been really helpful for us but um there's lots of things come along the way that are tempting that you think oh won't we do this i want to do that and then we spend a lot of time pondering it and actually all you've done is just distract from what you should have been focusing on so I think that kind of hyper focus is really important.

32:16I have a team of very talented women who are very excited to have you here today Luke because they've all got hair appointments coming up and have lots of listeners who will be keen to get your advice what do you think are the key things for people to think about if they're when it comes to sort of having their hair done or thinking about a change? Do research like I think it's great when people come in with pictures like I love it when people come in and show me like a Pinterest board I think that is so helpful like if you think back like 20 30 years ago right um you know none of that existed no and people would often bring like a scrap of um of like a magazine scrap right and you would be able to kind of half the time it'd be like a celebrity and then you'd put your finger over the over the person's face and go still like the haircut and most of the time they'd say no right and so now you have this like a make you know social media we've got like pinterest and instagram like just like screenshot as many pictures as possible because that that helps you create a conversation and so you know your hairdresser can go what do you like about that as opposed to that one and because i think you should spend as much time as in a consultation as you should do in a haircut because disseminating what it is you love what it is you hate is so important in making that hair appointment a success um and so many people don't like take full advantage of that i think it's really important so look what's next for the brand what's next for the business so we've got um we've got a new launch coming up um any minute with um our our new straightening irons after after 30 years is um is launching in the beginning of may what what will these new straightening irons do um so i think when we first launched straightening irons they were very much you know as i said before it was very much about like a certain look i think straightening irons now aren't just called straightening irons that we've called ours the great iron in that it's a it's a styler it can produce curls it can produce waves it can produce straight hair you can use it just for for pieces of your hair not all your hair so that i suppose it's become a um a really reliant styler just like a great hairdryer is um and so the ability to do lots of different things with one tool i mean i love our products to be multitasking and so for me the great iron is a great way of using it for lots of different ways to create lots of different things i mean irons have got kind of beveled edges on them so they're really good for kind of creating um you know movement in the hair as opposed to just making your hair straight um and they're you know dual voltage they work all over the world and they're a great travel accessory so excited about that that's the big one um and if you were to suggest like i mean you've got fantastic skin you work in that world what i thought from this from our perspective from joel and my perspective or lots of people listening that maybe are setting up businesses what do you think are the key things that everyone should be thinking about if they are trying to launch their own business their own brand i think your point of difference i mean i i think it's interesting because when we started making product I think we were very clear around what we didn't want to do.

35:30Like so, and I think that's a good starting point. Our idea that we make hair, great hair easy for people is something that's come out of the work we have done over the past few years. We necessarily start with that line, but it was deeply embedded somewhere in our subconscious. So I think start with a list of things that you don't want to be, because actually that will lead to the things that you do want to be. I think trying to create that point of difference, why are you different from other people and not just joining a bandwagon is ultimately the thing that will give you the biggest chance of survival and success.

36:08I love that. Start with the things you don't want to be and then work back from there. Brilliant. Thank you so much for joining us, Luke. Thank you for having me. It's been absolutely fascinating. Do head over to our Patreon for more from Luke. He's going to be giving his advice for your next haircut. There, make sure you go to patreon.com slash thebusinessmen to sign up. It's completely free to subscribe. There's loads of videos and extra insight from all the amazing guests that we've had on the show. And do remember to subscribe on YouTube. You can see how amazing Luke's hair is wherever you get your podcasts.

36:40I'm going to be on my own again flying solo because Joel is still off enjoying his new baby. I look forward to joining you then when we talk to more amazing guests on The Businessman.