Dear Future Professionals,

Not long ago, I was in my school (Paul Mitchell The School – Atlanta), teaching Future Professionals to smooth-iron on dry hair. There were about 35 to 40 kids in the class. About 60 percent of them did great, 20 percent did okay, and the rest I’m not even talking about. After seeing their results, I went to the board and wrote two words: Finish and Respect. I asked the class, “What does finish mean to you? What about you as the finished product?” Nobody came up with an answer.

I was trying to give them two important messages. First, your work is a reflection of you. If you continue in your present manner, will you be happy with what you see? If you’re not happy with the finished product, it’s time to discuss and redirect. Second, you must respect yourself.

To succeed and soar, it’s important to love yourself before you can love anybody else. My mother taught me that and she never lies. But I took it one step further: You must love and respect yourself.

As a Paul Mitchell Future Professional, you’re in a wonderful educational institute, and it’s not about the hair. I thought it was for years, but then I realized that cutting and coloring hair are just the by-products. Paul Mitchell stands for one word: lifestyle. Enjoy the roses and sunshine wherever you are. No matter what, be in the present moment. Do everything in life with love and respect: your work, your relationships, the way you live. Then take that lifestyle and reflect it in the way you do hair.

At Paul Mitchell schools, we want you to walk away with the hope, thought, desire, ambition, and passion to succeed. You have twelve months of school before going into the real world ahead. Enjoy it, and stay humble.

LINDA YODICE

Linda Yodice is the co-artistic director for Paul Mitchell the color, a title she shares with her business partner Scott Cole. The pair also co-owns the Scott Cole Salon in Atlanta, Georgia, and ColorCutting USA, in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Linda’s groundbreaking creation of the Block Color method has revolutionized color and caused Modern Salon to name her one of the top 75 educators of all time. She also received the prestigious 2004 NAHA award for Master Hair Stylist of the Year. Her work has been featured in Modern Salon, American Salon, Salon News, Salon Today, and Estetica, and her hair designs and advice as a color expert have appeared in the pages of consumer magazines such as Elle, InStyle, Ladies’ Home Journal, and Redbook.

Linda’s trigger-sharp wit and uncanny ability to convey her technical experience into layman's terms make her a much sought after expert in the field of cut and color. In this month’s MASTERS interview, she reveals her successful approach for teaching hair cutters how to use and sell color services to salon guests.


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FUTURE PROFESSIONALS TAKE GATHERING BY STORM!

Paul Mitchell The School Future Professionals rocked the house at the annual Paul Mitchell Signature Gathering in Las Vegas, Nevada. Through competitions at their schools, ten Future Professionals earned coveted spots on the Design Team, giving them the opportunity to do hair and makeup for the “student segment” of the show. In addition, every model in the segment was a Future Professional, representing five different Paul Mitchell Schools.

2005 NAHA WINNERS

Want to be a NAHA winner? Check out “How to Do a Successful Photo Shoot and Win a NAHA” in the BTC Bookstore.

FALL BACK IN LOVE
Adapted from Be Nice (Or Else!) by Winn Claybaugh

Here’s a radical challenge: Make it a goal to fall back in love with yourself. Before you can offer the gifts of happiness, joy, purpose, and fulfillment to others, you first have to own them yourself. You can’t give what you don’t have.

I once had the honor of knowing a wonderful woman named Noel DeCaprio. The owner of the Noelle Spa for Beauty and Wellness, she was heralded by many as a mentor and leader within her industry. Noel had also experienced a 14-year battle with breast cancer, which eventually took her life in December 1998.

I interviewed Noel for an audiotape six months before her passing. She shared that after her double mastectomy and months of chemotherapy, she looked in the mirror and hated herself. As she beheld the massive scarring and her bald head, she felt embarrassed that cancer had shown up in her body, and she despised herself for it.

Noel was wise enough to know she had to find a way to fall back in love with herself, and she did it by making bathing a ritual. She focused on the bath salts, the candles, the oils and creams, and the aromas. She spent time visiting little boutiques that sold such items, and even though she was buying them for herself, she had the store gift wrap everything. She put so much time into something that she’d never before had the time for—something that seemed so selfish and narcissistic—that eventually one day she woke up and realized she was back in love with herself.

Once Noel fell back in love with herself, she told her family, friends, and staff, “Tell everyone I have cancer. I’m out of the closet, and I want everyone to know so I can help as many people as I can.” How Noel went on to raise money and awareness for cancer was unbelievable. But let me ask you: Could she have accomplished so much, and benefited so many people, had she not fallen back in love with herself?

To fall back in love with yourself, sometimes you might have to go through the motions of offering yourself gifts that you don’t believe you deserve. That’s okay. Eventually, actions become habits, and habits become part of your personality, which builds your character and turns you into the type of person you were always meant to be, filled with blissful happiness and purpose.

KIM HUNTER, CLASS OF 2006
Pulse Beauty Academy – A Paul Mitchell Partner School


In 1988, Kim Hunter was 450 hours shy of a cosmetology school graduation. Then she found out she was pregnant. She left school and gave birth to a beautiful son, Paul. Two other sons soon followed.

A few days after his 17th birthday, Kim and Paul were discussing his future. “I want you to finish your education,” Kim said. “You have to promise me that.” Paul agreed, but added, “I know you dropped out of beauty school to be my mom. You have to promise you’ll go back someday.” They shook hands and made a deal. “He was so happy,” Kim recalled, “that all six-foot one-inch of him hopped on my lap and licked my cheek!”

Two months later, the unthinkable happened: Paul drowned in a swimming accident. “I was in a deep hole, feeling as though I would never get out,” Kim recalls. “I was on medication to help me sleep, be awake, prevent panic attacks, and for post traumatic stress disorder.” But she kept her promise to her son and enrolled at Pulse Beauty Academy – A Paul Mitchell Partner School.

“As soon as I walked in, I knew that’s where I belonged. Everybody’s so kind. My first day at Pulse, I was so tired I forgot to take my medicine. Then I kept forgetting. A month into school I realized I didn’t need the medication, so I flushed it.”

One year after her son’s tragic death, Kim is in the Honors Program and nearly done with school. She works part-time at Salon DiDomani in Exton, Pennsylvania, and plans to start a business after graduation with Pulse Beauty Academy Core Learning Leader Jacquie Holland. Utilizing Be Nice (Or Else!) concepts such as hiring people who want to play, they plan to become part-time salon coordinators for new salon owners.

Kim credits the Paul Mitchell culture with helping her through that terrible time and giving her an exciting future. “The Paul Mitchell culture shows us as human beings to pay it forward. There is a sense of caring professionalism that no other school can offer. I go in early every day, start the coffee for the school, set up my things, and say good morning to everyone I see. I smile a lot! Most of all I hold my head up and ask what I can do to make someone else’s day better. There are so many ways you could go through such a tragedy. I chose to make it a positive way, because that’s the way my son would want it.”

“Kim is a shining example of how we have the ability every day to choose how we respond to the circumstances life deals us. We can choose to be miserable or we can choose to be nice. Kim chooses nice every day and in doing so improves the lives of those around her.” — Heather Sahagian Co-owner, Pulse Beauty Academy – A Paul Mitchell Partner School

MELODY FLORY & MANDI FORRAI, CLASS OF 2005
KRISTI TSCHANTZ, CLASS OF 2006
The Ohio Academy – A Paul Mitchell Partner School


What do Kristi Tschantz, Melody Flory, and Mandi Forrai have in common? The three alumni from Ohio Academy – A Paul Mitchell Partner School all work as stylists at HairMax Focus Salons, owned by Dolly Hanreck. They’re joined by co-worker Heather Hardesty, a part-time receptionist and Ohio Academy Future Professional who will graduate in 2007.

Since May 2006, three of Hanreck’s five salons have “gone Focus,” and a fourth will make the transition on October 1. “This has been a great decision for our company,” Hanreck says. “We have embraced the Paul Mitchell culture at all of our salons and are very excited about our future growth. Since turning Focus, our three salons have increased our color clients by 40%, and we have increased our Take Home sales by 18%.”

When asked which came first—hiring Paul Mitchell grads or deciding to “go Focus”—Hanreck says it was a simultaneous decision. “Having the graduates on staff solidified my commitment because I knew their culture is what our culture is. I felt like we were on the same page.”

Mandi Forrai joined her HairMax salon before it became a Focus Salon. “They were using Paul Mitchell products but another color line,” Mandi says, “so I would go to the distributor store and buy Paul Mitchell color. I just loved it. It makes your hair shiny, it’s more dependable, and there are so many different ways to get to what you’re trying to do. As the salon got to know more about the culture, they turned into Focus and we got the color.”

Kristi Tschantz applied at HairMax after a newspaper ad announced their upcoming transition to Focus Salons. “The first week I started, I was a little nervous because they weren’t Paul Mitchell yet. I wasn’t too happy with the other color line; it didn’t get the results I was used to seeing. Since they’ve become a Focus Salon, I’ve noticed people getting excited again. Sometimes when you do the same old–same old, it gets a little boring.”

Working in a salon that featured the Paul Mitchell culture and products was important to Melody Flory. After earning her basic license at Paul Mitchell The School, Costa Mesa and her manager’s license at the Ohio Academy, she was a Learning Leader before joining HairMax. “I saw a flyer in the paper saying that they just became a Focus Salon,” she recalls. “Paul Mitchell is home to me. I didn’t want to go outside and learn another color line or any other products.”

Heather Hardesty echoes her classmates, adding, “The culture we learned at school, we’re using at the salon, which makes a great working environment. It’s great to be at a place where they want you to better yourself and help others at the same time.”