PhorestFM Episode 308: Terra Harvell On The Mindset Shifts And Lessons That Build Wealth And Drive Salon Success With Ronan Perceval

Episode Transcript

Alex Bélisle-Springer

Tara, Ronan, thank you so much for joining me on Phorest FM. It’s such a pleasure to have you both, Ronan. You’re a bit used to it at this point, but it has been a while, tara. This is your first time at Phorest FM. Thank you so much to both of you.

Terra Harvell

Thank you guys for having me. Ronan said this was his first podcast in a while, so I am honored to be here and just to talk to both of you guys.

Ronan Perceval

Yeah, thanks for having me back on Alex

Alex Bélisle-Springer

We’re really looking forward to the chat. Tara, you’re an eight figure entrepreneur with a seven figure real estate portfolio. You’re a business mentor to thousands of stylists across the world. Creighton Ellis, the creative director at Harper Ellis Hair Co. Describes you as someone who became successful the moment you decided to be. What are your thoughts on that?

Terra Harvell

I love that. Yeah, and just again, thank you guys for having me. I love Phorest, I love the phorest.promunity. We use Phorest in my salon and a lot of my clients use it, so just excited to be here. But, yeah, I do feel like success is just a mindset and I tell people that all the time. You know, success isn’t something that just comes to you and it’s not something that you really can wish for or hope for. It truly is something that you have to work for, and so I’m excited to tell you guys a little bit more about my journey and hopefully it helps somebody that’s listening to this. You know, kind of understand what it takes to be successful and what it takes to do all the things that you dream about. So thank you guys.

Ronan Perceval

We’ve been looking forward to this for a while. I know you’ve been a Phorest client of ours nearly two years now, which is great. We feel honored that you’ve chosen us and Given that such an amazing business you have. We’d love to hear, and I’d really love to hear as well, just going right back to the beginning, you know, even to when you were a child. I don’t know if it started then, but how did you, how did you get into this industry, like, what drew you in and when did those feelings or thoughts start? I’d love to hear that yeah, I, I love that.

Terra Harvell

And a little bit back to you know, Creighton, and how he asked me or how he said. You know I was successful whenever I decided to be. It goes a lot back to my childhood and I think a lot of people can relate to this. I didn’t grow up, you know, I guess, with a lot of money, my parents weren’t wealthy, they were very much just middle class, if not lower class.

My mom was a and she still is actually a public school teacher. I think it’s the hardest job in the world and the most underpaid job in the world. So it’s another podcast for another day. My dad we just had different jobs. They were both, you know, divorced at a young age and I just kind of had. That, unfortunately, is a lot of the normal life for a child and it’s not that I ever necessarily went without, but my family just didn’t have what I wanted to have.

When it comes to imagining my dream life and this is actually what I didn’t realize when I was a child, this would be the absolute foundation of my success was just imagining up what my dream life is and then just going after it. And I truly believe that anyone has the power to imagine the life that they want to live, and then you can just create it out of thin air, you know, kind of going back to my childhood, you know, and growing up wanting to be a hairstylist, I just school wasn’t my thing and honestly, you know, I went to public school and they led me to believe that I was not that smart. You know I wasn’t the top 10%, I didn’t graduate with all of these honors and, to be honest with you guys, I took remedial math and when I took my ACT for college I, you know, bombed that and so they put me in a category and put me in a box and you know, I just, I don’t know. My brother is always like, sister, you just have a lot of street smarts and that’s how it’s got you as far as you are and I’m okay with that.

A little common sense can take someone a long way and I’ve learned that through building, you know now a $10 million business. I’ve learned that. You know, a lot of times it is just logical thinking. But kind of, going back to my story, I’m right out of hair school.

Ronan Perceval

Yeah, tell us why you like what. Where did the hair school idea come from?

Terra Harvell

How did you come across that? Yeah, so I, to be honest. I think a lot of people can relate to this. I just wanted to move away from the town that I was living in, that I live in currently. I’m back.

Alex Bélisle-Springer

That tends to happen, right Boomerang back.

Terra Harvell

Exactly, and I love the town that I lived in now, but when I was younger I didn’t, and I wanted to work on celebrity hair and I wanted to live in LA and I wanted to do all the things that I think a lot of young, especially women, you know dream about is. We want, you know, access to bigger and better and, honestly, that was the only reason why it’s not this big fancy story of like, I just love doing hair, I love to make people feel good, of course, you know we all love that. But, um, and another thing is I grew up, you know, my first jobs were all being a waitress and I felt like hairstyling was kind of compatible with that. I could go to work, make a quick you know few thousand dollars and go home and live my dream life, and so there’s a lot more to that story. As far as you know what I believe in building wealth, now I’ve taken from and my favorite line is just being a hairstylist. I am just a hairstylist and it’s my favorite thing to say, because now I own a $10 million business and a seven figure real estate.

All the things that you said, and I appreciate you saying all that, but I’m just a normal person that just created opportunity out of thin air, and a lot of that comes from just not having it as a young child, and so the story about me wanting to just be a hairstylist isn’t that fancy. It’s just. I felt like it was a good career, that we could make a lot of money in a short amount of time, and that’s why I’ve really fallen in love with it, and I’ve loved to teach hairstylists how to do the same thing. Um, because we can. Truly. There’s no ceiling. We can make more money than lawyers and doctors, and it’s magic. I love this industry, yeah.

Ronan Perceval

When you thought about it at first, like what age were you then? Were you like 17, 18 or something, or were you older, younger?

Terra Harvell

Yeah, I was right out of high school and I went.

I think I went like two semesters or really a semester and a half to college until I, you know, told my parents I’m like this is a waste of everybody’s money. And so I went like a semester and a half to college and then I was. So I was right at 18 years old and I went to hair school and right out of hair school I found a mentor and his name was Kelly Cardenas. He’s in the Paul Mitchell world and I wanted to go and do you guys know Kelly?

Not personally, I’ve heard of him, yeah, I don’t know.

Yeah, so he was just such a rock star Um, you know he’s out of the industry now. Um, he said it was such a rock star. He owned several salons, um, and he had an assistant program. And back then you know, you guys, this was 15 years ago Assistants weren’t cool 15 years ago. You know, that wasn’t like a thing that people went and done. So, um, kind of back to mentioning what you said at the beginning of this podcast. Um, I got a job at his salon. After begging him, I was like I will clean your toilets, buddy, like, just give me a job, whatever that looks like.

And, um, I basically packed my bags in the back of my Mitsubishi Eclipse that I had at the time.

I don’t even know how this thing made it from Oklahoma, which is where I’m from, all the way to Las Vegas, nevada, but I moved across the country. I knew no one and, um, I actually found a roommate on Craigslist and because it’s what I could afford, you know, I couldn’t go out and buy, you know, get a brand new apartment. I found a, you know, a room that I can rent for like $300 a month. I was making minimum wages and assistant and I just made it work. And so, within a couple of years, I became a stylist in a salon and I, you know, was able to support myself and find a better apartment that I like to live in. But I did. I had to start from scratch. My mom bought me a mattress off of her credit card. It just wasn’t that glamorous and I think that, you know, that’s the best part of the story is, I just started from the bottom, and now we’re living a very different life.

Alex Bélisle-Springer

So yeah, I’m really curious and I find it really fascinating when you said, like you know, you already had a vision that, like you, could make a lot of money and have a great career and great lifestyle through hairdressing, when so many people’s parents, for example, when they’re expressing like I want to go to the cosmetology, cosmetology school or beauty school, like they’re just like, oh well, it’s not like a great career path and maybe you shouldn’t do that, and like you should, you know, be a doctor or this or that, like there’s so many like more I don’t know. There’s still like so much stigma, I guess, around that. I’m assuming your parents were pretty supportive if you had such a positive kind of outlook on that kind of career path.

Terra Harvell

Yeah, well, um, I think my parents loved me I don’t know if I would call it supportive but when they found out I was going to hair school, they were pretty pissed, because I come from an entire family with college degrees and, um, you know, that just wasn’t the route that they thought. And they did think it was the easy, easy way out. And here’s the thing I’m a hairstylist and I can say this it is the easy way out for a lot of people. Um, you know, they go to hair school and they think, oh, this is going to be such a fun job and that’s why, you know, 97% of hairstylists within 10 years aren’t doing hair anymore. Because, guess what, it takes a lot of grit, resilience, and you know, you got to show up. Now we have this whole nother world of social media. We have to be influencers in order to grow our, you know, clientele and all the things, and so, um, it took a lot of resilience to do, you know, to where I’m at now, but I think, just to get started and kind of back to what you said, um, you know, hairstylists can make a lot of money.

It’s just simple math and we teach this thing inside of our programs. It’s called the dream income formula. People are like whoa, this is so amazing, like it’s just simple math. You take, you know you want to make $200,000 a year. How many weeks in the year are you working? How many hours in the day in the week are you working? And you know, divide that and that’s how much money you should be producing in that hour. It’s not that you have to charge hourly or whatever your style is, just does your prices match that and do your services match how much money you want to make? It’s just simple math. And so I think that hairstylists because we’re creatives most of the time we just overcomplicate this game of success. And so what I love about this industry is you just can create exactly what you want to Behind the chair, at my peak, you know and this was through lots of struggle I make this sound so simple, but I was able to do a little over $750,000 in revenue behind the chair, working four days a week, and it was just simple math.

I’m in small town America. I fell in love with hair extensions because, guess what, I can charge $3,000 a service. No wonder I loved it right, of course I loved it. I feel good. I do not look like this without these hair extensions. Um. So there’s a lot of aspects that we love about hair extensions, but it’s the money. I love the high ticket price and all the things, and so I think hairstylists what I’m set out to do is help them kind of gravitate towards how can you set up your dream life, and a lot of times it does revolve around money, um, and you know, making the amount of money that you want to make.

Ronan Perceval

So, yeah, and so how did you like which came first? That’s interesting, you know. Obviously hair extension is a big part of your business now, but it is. Did it take a while before you came across that opportunity for yourself, or how did that come about?

Terra Harvell

Yeah, um, you know, I moved off to Las Vegas and out there there are lots of women and this is back before extensions were cool. Also because, you know, extensions used to be a taboo thing, Like we didn’t. Now it’s kind of like a status thing. Women are like oh, I have a full head of hair extensions. It’s just like a thing. Back then it wasn’t, but there, luckily, in Las Vegas, there were lots of women wearing extensions and so I kind of dove in on extensions before they became super popular and I was just doing extensions all day long because I was going out meeting women that wanted extensions, passing out business cards. I always say this in class. I’m like there are these things back in the day, they were square, they’re cardboard.

Ronan Perceval

We would pass them out to people and they had our information.

Terra Harvell

You would have to contact us, and that’s how you found us to book an appointment. People were like, whoa, that is insane. But yeah, that’s what I did. And when I wasn’t behind the chair, I went and I was constantly networking and finding the idea client and I would ask myself, where do my dream client hang out? And I would go down to the win, which is one of the higher end hotels in Vegas, and that’s where my dream clients were, you know, hanging out and that’s where they would have brunch on Sunday.

And so, um, I think it was just a lot of years of thinking is this ever going to pay off? And so I, immediately out of the gate, dove into extensions because I love the ticket price. And now that doesn’t mean that I could pick and choose what I put in my books, because there was a day that I had to do all the perms. Even that I didn’t want to do because my books weren’t full. But over time, through marketing and networking, I filled my books with the exact service that I wanted, and that was extensions.

Ronan Perceval

So I did that and at this point, when? Were you out in your own at this point, or were you still working in?

Terra Harvell

Yeah in the original salon business.

Yeah, this was, um, let’s see, now it’s about 17 years ago, um, and I was in Vegas. So, yeah, no, Harper Ellis, which is my hair extension company now, it did not exist, and so I was working with a bunch of different companies with different methods and stuff like that. I’ve run into a lot of great companies. Harper Ellis actually didn’t come about until only five years ago, when the world of hand-tied extensions dove in and just took over the industry and I had around and I know this exact number because I know the stats but I had 72 extension clients at this time and all the quality of the hair went terrible and I had to replace around $30,000 worth of bad extension hair for my client list in one month.

Um, and I was like this is, I’m a, I can’t do this anymore. But I had to do it because it’s all my clientele was just extensions, and so I went back through some connections, actually flew across the world and met with a manufacturer that would listen to hairstylists on how to create extensions, and so now we have a patent technology. But that was the problem with so for many years with quality extensions was they were just over there making extensions versus listening to hairstylists who work with hair every single day, and so now we have a patent technology that we use with our extensions. But, yeah, I, for so many years, I worked with many other companies and you know there’s lots of great companies out there, and so, um, I’ve always loved it from day one.

Ronan Perceval

So, and you, you so, you like. Originally, you obviously went out to Vegas and you worked with your mentor, um, and then did you go, like you, did you discover hair extensions when you were with him, or did you discover hair extensions later?

Terra Harvell

Yeah.

Ronan Perceval

Like back then. How did that come about?

Terra Harvell

Yeah, I discovered them when I was in Vegas working with him. He and his wife, brooklyn, and some of their employees at the salon were doing a lot of extensions at the time, and so I and honestly, my first like thought of extensions this is way too tedious, I will never buy this. Women would go to the front desk and they would, you know, swipe their credit cards for $3,000. And I’m like, maybe I do like, I do like that, and I think that you know the reason why I keep going back to the monetary part is because we have gotten to this place in this industry where we don’t focus on that. You know, it’s like become taboo. We don’t want to, you know, say that we can make a lot of money. We don’t want to talk about our prices. We don’t even want to raise our prices sometimes and I’m like, no, no, guys, it doesn’t have to be that fancy, we don’t have to be.

Oh, I just like to change people lives. I like to make them feel good about their hair. Of course you do, that’s what’s so fun about our job. But it’s really, really nice when someone checks out for $3,000 at the front desk and you know you make more than our you know lawyer friends, our doctor friends and so, and then you get to go live your dream life and impact other people outside of work. So yeah, I started early on in Vegas with extensions and then I just kind of carried it. Um, I only worked in Vegas for a couple of years and then I actually moved back home, did something that I said I would never do.

Ronan Perceval

Yeah yeah, tell us about that, like what made you do that?

It sounded like Vegas was amazing. You obviously discovered all this stuff that you’re still doing today. So, yeah, what brought you home?

Terra Harvell

Vegas was amazing and I loved the experience and you know I’ll tell you um, I have to make this point before moving on because it’s something we massively talk about inside of our education with Harper Ellis. You know, something that I did right was I got in the room with people that I wanted to be like, and I think that’s where a lot of stylists go completely wrong is they go work at a salon and it’s not a growth mindset salon where other people around them are high performers and people are making the amount of money that they want to make, and so they never have people that they can learn to be like because they’re not in an environment and it’s just like. That’s what I did right was I worked in Vegas. Around you know hairstylists who were making multiple six figures and living their absolute dream lives and all the things, and so, yeah, you know, when the story changes a little bit, I’m like why did I move back home? But I had this sense of you know, I loved what I was doing and I had so much opportunity, but I am such a family person and I told myself this 12 years ago. I said when I move home, I still can create my dream life, living wherever I want, and I think that stylists can do that.

I live in a small town. I think people, when my clients that work with us with Harper Ellis, they travel to our headquarters, they’re like what is this? This is the armpit of America. If Tara can do it here, I can do it where I’m at, and so I love that. People see that I’ve created opportunity out of thin air in the middle of nowhere, because I think a lot of hairstylists are like, well, I live in a small town. Well, yeah, you might, but there’s people with money everywhere. You had just, you’ve just not made yourself good enough or you haven’t marketed yourself to be that person that people can come, go and go to, and so, um, you know, with that I moved back home and to be with my family and and I will never regret that decision because I’m I love to create success all day long and I get to go home to my family at night.

Ronan Perceval

So, yeah, yeah, it’s awesome that you’ve done that. Yeah, from there, that’s really great. We have the same feeling, sometimes in Phorest, because you know it. Obviously it started here in Ireland, not, you know, a fairly small place really compared to anywhere in the States, but you really can do it from anywhere if you really want to right.

Terra Harvell

So that’s it. You absolutely can.

Alex Bélisle-Springer

Well, this is something you’ll both relate to. Right, as a CEO of a company, you kind of become the keeper of the vision and the strategy, and then, if you’re the founder too, you also add on like being the keeper of the culture. What was one of the biggest learning experiences? And actually I’ll ask this to both of you. I’m curious, like what was the biggest learning experiences in in the thick of like growing your businesses? You know Phorest and then Harper Ellis.

Terra Harvell

I think you know mine. I was going to say that mine’s pretty short and sweet, but it’s really not. I think you know, as the CEO, my number one job is to paint the vision for the people around me, and that’s my teams, that’s anyone that does business with us, that’s my teams, that’s anyone that does business with us. And I think you know this is where salons especially, they really screw this up, because you open a salon just to, in hopes that you don’t have to stand behind the chair anymore. Or you open a salon because you don’t like the toxic, you know salon that you came from, or whatever the reason is, you want to be self-employed. You think you’re going to make a trillion dollars being self-employed. And then you open it and you’re like oh wow, I make no profit. This is insane. I don’t know why I did this, because now I have this adult daycare and I make no money. It’s insane.

And so what I’ve learned through growing Harper Ellis because I am a salon owner as well is the reason why turnover happens, the reason why money is not being made, the reason why the business is kind of on that hamster wheel, is because the vision isn’t big enough. And about five, six years ago, this whole thing hit me in the face. I was like, okay, no wonder no one wants to be a part of what I’m doing because I’m not clearly communicating what this massive vision is. Now Harper Ellis is on the road. Within 10 years, we’re going to hit 130 million, we’re going to open 400 salon franchises with our client list and we’re creating massive opportunity.

Of course, people want to be a part of massive opportunity and so if you want a big team people that are great you have to have a massive vision in order for people to want to get on board, and that vision can’t have just you in mind. That vision needs to have everybody in mind. So that’s my take on vision, because it is my number one job, ronan, do you relate to that?

Ronan Perceval

I really relate to it. Yeah, it’s so true, I think. Yeah, sometimes we’ve been doing Phorest now 22, 22 years in total, so it seems like forever. But uh, just, you know, the vision has changed a bit during that time. Obviously it’s changed a lot, uh, from time to time, um, and I think one thing that’s happened to me and to Phorest is the ambition has got, has got bigger, as just the way you’ve talked about that that sometimes when you start, you kind of have some dreams but you don’t know if it could happen, so you just try to do something smaller and when you achieve that, you get this confidence of like, oh wow, we can actually achieve that.

Like when we started wanted, um, we just wanted salons in Ireland. To you, we just wanted to help salons in Ireland, um, and then, after you know, after a couple of years, when we were the the biggest provider of sound software to irish salons, then it was like, okay, actually you know what, why don’t we go a bit further? And then you know it’s to the uk and I went and lived there for four years and then I thought we’d never crack that market. And then five, six years in, you’re like, oh wow, this is going really well. And I always thought, like the States, I was always afraid of going to the States. I always thought like, oh, that’s too big, it’s. You know when we obviously did launch in the us. But by the time we came we had learned a lot, like you know we were. We were much better at what we did. Our craft had got better like building software, understanding your customers, all those kind of things, building teams. So we were kind of ready to go for it.

Um, but I did notice that you, to get really good people to join you, if you don’t have a vision, that’s like motivating, um, they, they just won’t even notice you, like it’s almost like you’re just background noise or something. So you have to have that big vision and, um, you get, yeah, like as as anything. I don’t know if you found that terrible. As I’ve gone through my career, I think I’ve got better at telling the vision and sharing the vision, particularly internally with our team. I think we get better at it over time. But yeah, so that’s kind of my thoughts around the concept of a vision and how it would work.

Terra Harvell

Yeah, I love that. I think, um, and you may relate with this, ronan, but you know, I think a lot of us start businesses and I was just telling this to my um, our salon owners class, the other day you know, like a lot of us start businesses for us, um, because we need to change our reality, and I think that’s okay. I think that we get caught up in this whole um, you know, oh, let’s impact the world. And you know, now our vision is to impact the world.

But it was for me at first. It was because I was broke and I wanted to make money, and I wanted to make, you know, more passive income. That wasn’t just me behind the chair all the time. I think anybody that’s supposed to build wealth or wants to build wealth should be thinking that way. But now I’m sure, Ronan, you know, as you guys have grown and I would love to actually hear this from you. Now your vision probably has everything to do with all the people that are part of your team. And how can it be so large that everyone’s, you know, positively impacted and their lives can change and all their goals can come to life? And so have you seen your vision kind of change over time because of that and because of the people that have helped you?

Ronan Perceval

Yeah, like it’s funny because we have two things in Phorest and I don’t know.

We have a mission and we have our vision, and you know our values and things like that. But if we just take our mission and like our mission or our purpose, let’s say, and then our vision, so our mission or purpose has actually almost been the same for 20 years. It’s to we write it a little bit better now than what we used to, but it was always like we want to help salons grow their business, like that was the purpose and that purpose came from. I worked as front of house in a salon for a year. That’s how I got into the industry, so it wasn’t a hairdresser.

But I was. You know, I was working on the business side of a salon from a very young age, and so that’s why we wanted to help them grow their business. And then what we found? But the vision for that was like smaller, you know, it’s just in Ireland or whatever it was. But like, as you get as you experience, that was like smaller, you know, it’s just in Ireland or whatever it was. But like, as you get, as you uh, experience more about the industry, you can see more what you can achieve. Then you, you want to. You know, you get excited by that yourself and at the start, like you, I, I just wanted to have my own business.

I didn’t, you know, I wanted to do my own thing. I, I was, I wasn’t very good at taking orders from other people, so I, I, unfortunately, I have to have my own business. I didn’t have any other choice. Um, so, luckily, luckily, it’s worked out. But, um, so I, yeah, like I, I, I yeah, and there’s other things as well. So the vision can get bigger.

And the vision probably does need to change or whatever, because sometimes, you know, I remember someone, you know it’s not in our industry, but like, let’s say Microsoft, for example you know one of the most famous software companies. They had a vision that they would be on every desktop, office desktop in the world. And then they achieved that vision. You know, like it came to pass like 20 years ago, like a long time ago, and so that vision was achieved and they’d succeeded it, even though it was a colossal vision. So they had to go and come up with a new one, you know, to stay, to stay motivated, so, um, so I think I think the vision can change, but the mission, or they’re like, the purpose, probably in our case anyway, it doesn’t change that much. And a lot of the time when we’re hiring people, like a lot of people have been with us for a long time, there’s people there 20 years now for us. Yeah, a lot of people there 10 years, Alex and Noah.

Alex Bélisle-Springer

Nine in a month, yeah, yeah yeah, you’re coming up to 10, so so like you know, and people, I think people so like they kind of they’re they need to connect with the mission or like why, why you’re doing something and then, and then they get really excited by the vision, if that makes sense.

Terra Harvell

So they, the two, kind of go together but um the mission has always been there, from the very very start yeah, I always, uh, relate vision and I always tell salon owners this, because vision is you know, whenever you get in the car and you’re going on vacation and you type in your address, well, the the maps will take you there, and that’s what the vision is. And if people don’t have a very clear destination as to where their business is going, it’s probably never going to make it there because you don’t even know where you’re going. And so that’s the number one. The number one thing I help salon owners do is figure out what is the target, how many locations are, what’s the revenue of each stylist, how many stylists? Who’s in, what are you doing? So that way they can reverse, engineer their path and make that come to life. So, yeah, yeah.

Alex Bélisle-Springer

You mentioned. You know, one of the big things that you’re working towards now is franchising and 400 locations you mentioned just there. No, yeah, How’d you land on that number?

Terra Harvell

So I love that you asked this question because it has everything to do with the vision. There’s two sides of this answer. I think both of you will find this very intriguing. But number one you know I always have said, Harper Ellis, I want it to be a $130 million business. Well, my salon spends around $20,000 a month. My salon as it is spends around $20,000 a month in COGS. So cost of goods, whether that’s the software or whether that’s extensions, a lot of that is extensions, but it’s color retail, all the things. And so $20,000 a month times $400 is $100 million, and so I just reverse engineered the target. And so how are these? Um, the reason why we really are about the franchise is because we’ve created something inside of our own salon that is the Harper Ellis salon and, by the way, I need to say this and um, I think stats are so important. I talk about numbers constantly, but my salon does around $1.5 million and around 850 square feet and that’s with six full-time stylists and we’re at around 20% to 22% profitability and what we’ve done.

And another thing that we’ve kind of beat and I say that you know, people come and go salons. There’s nothing wrong with when your employees quit and move on, but it’s like how can you recruit great people to be a part of your team? And so we’ve created this massive maturity model, which salons have not ever heard of. Maturity models because this is something that happens all the time in the corporate world. You guys probably know this, your employees can visually see how they can do XYZ and do more and make more and have more opportunity. And so we’ve built this maturity model we actually teach this inside of our programs as well where stylists can come in and go from assistant all the way down or all the way up to partner and then along the way, even when they train another employee, a training assistant, they make five percent of their revenue and then they go up to profit sharing and then they go up to being a partner, maybe expanding through their own location. And so we’ve created this really robust maturity model where people are wanting to come back to this commission world.

And I’m all about commissioned salons. Now, I’m all about commissioned salons when they’re ran correctly. They are not always ran correctly, but I believe that people should have a team. No one singular person on their own will ever be successful. Have you ever I’ve never met anyone that’s successful by themselves, and so having a team to help you get to where you want to go is key, especially inside this industry, and so we’ve created these processes inside salons that are helping them meet the stats, just like what I told you my own salon is doing, and so that’s why we’re franchising, because we’re basically giving you know our entire plate of operate on a silver platter of operations, and then, you know, building through opportunity.

A lot of those stylists want to be educators and they want to help other stylists be successful, and so we’re creating this massive network of salon owners and stylists who are just helping each other grow. Those salons, in the next 10 years, will reach a little over a billion dollars in services, and so I’m so excited to put that to life. And you guys just watch me roll and we’re taking Phorest. By the way, every salon will have Phorest inside of them, and so, along with all of our clients that are inside of our program, so we’re taking Phorest with us. By the way, on that vision, so you guys don’t know that you’re a big part of the vision, but you are well, it’s got us excited.

Ronan Perceval

That was the whole point of the vision as well, so it’s got us excited too, tara so you mentioned you know, no, no one person can make it on their own.

Alex Bélisle-Springer

You need a team, like when you think about your circle of trust. Who comes to mind first, I guess, and why?

Terra Harvell

Um, yeah, I mean my, my, my team, I, um, I have the best team. I think a lot of people say this. Ronan, you probably said the same thing um, I have the best team in the entire world, but it wasn’t always like that because.

I had to learn how to be a really good leader. I had a failed partnership. Through this journey, I’ve had people come and go and that will continue to happen, of course, but over the last three years especially, I’ve really focused on how do I make people’s success easy around me? To me, any good leader that’s what your job is. You should make everybody’s success around you extremely easy, and I’ve had people disagree with me on that statement. I’m like no, that’s what leaders do. They help other people reach their goals and their targets. And so my team is everything.

I get the glory a lot and Ronan, you probably know, you, you can relate to this but people are like, oh, tara, look what you’ve built. And I’m like, no, no, no, no, I did, I built I. This was my idea, for sure. But the team and I’m looking out my window right now because I have my marketing team, my ops team you know they’re all sitting out here because they come to work every day and they’re excited about this massive vision that we’re headed towards. But that’s my circle and you know it’s. It’s easy to say that because they’ve helped me get to where I am.

Ronan Perceval

So yeah, you’re nothing unless you’re standing on the shoulders of giants. So the person who gets to stand at the top, gets all the gets all the light but no shoulders to stand on. You’re not going to be very high. Exactly, exactly.

Terra Harvell

That’s so true, and I want more stylists to understand this, and I know I have so many clients that work in suites by themselves and work alone, and I’m not against that. If that’s your goal, great. But I would highly doubt that if we really crack down on your personal, professional and financial goals, that the end result would come from you working alone by yourself with no one around you, and so I’m very, very much of like build a team, get people around you, because other people are going to help you go to the finish line.

Ronan Perceval

And Tara tell us a bit about the Legacy event as well, because that was the first time you’d kind of done that kind of thing, was it? Or had you been trying different things like that?

Terra Harvell

Before. Sure, we have, um, anywhere from 20 to 25 events a year, but there are smaller uh workshops here at Harborless headquarters, um, and then we have last year we hosted our, our big, you know, our first big event. I would say, um, it was around 250 people and, um, we had never done that and that was a challenge in itself. I think you guys know, you guys are the pros to have in these awesome events. I think you just came off of your big event, um, which I am looking forward to attending next year.

I will be there, I will not be missing that event, um, but yeah, we, you know, there’s so many challenges in having an event like selling the tickets, getting people to show up, um, you know, making the value there for people to want to come back for more and more, um, there’s just so many things that go into an event I think that people don’t realize, and also how expensive it is to have a great event.

You know, we’re knocking on a million dollars back door and I think if someone would have told me that a few years ago you’re gonna have, you know, close to a million dollar event. I’ve been like I will not be doing that. That is insane. I learned a lot through this process, but we did. We had an event and it was more focused towards salon owners and it was the launch of our new programs where we are teaching salon owners how to implement extension services through all of their employees so they can reach their personal, professional and financial goals, but also teaching salon owners how to implement this robust maturity model where you can take someone from an assistant all the way to your partner through competencies and hitting their metrics.

Ronan Perceval

And so that was the kind of the idea behind the.

Terra Harvell

The event itself was to showcase, that is, that the yeah, we call it the legacy event and the legacy summit. Um, and that’s because that’s kind of our thing. We teach stylists and salon owners how to build the way, the legacy that they want behind their chair or through their salons, and, um, that’s kind of what we went on over wealth building. We had, um, you know, our partners, which I think you guys partner with true profit salons they’re a bookkeeping firm. They were there. We were just bringing in a lot of resources for salon owners to really, um, be able to, you know, help their stylist be more successful.

Ronan Perceval

So that’s what we do we focus on the stylist I just loved, I love the idea of it being called even the legacy event. It was just, it sounded different. Like there’s so many events as you know. You know there’s hundreds of events, but that was like a different take on it and I just immediately I just got like, but even when I heard the name it was kind of stopped me for a second.

Terra Harvell

So, I really like that, thank you. I think that that’s what’s a huge missing aspect inside this industry is just that, and I want stylists and salon owners to understand what it takes to build an actual legacy. And I think that we take that name because it’s thrown around a lot, or that you know that word is thrown around a lot. It’s like what does your legacy actually mean?

You know, I’ve thought a lot about, a lot about I’ll leave you guys with this inside of my own career. You know, I have a three-year-old son and you know he’s not going to give a damn about this big business that I build. What he’s going to believe and what he’s going to want is for me to set him up for success in his own life and for him to go create what he wants to create and live his dream life. And so I’m trying to help more salon owners and stylists understand that, like, your legacy doesn’t have to be to create this massive business and this brand and all the things although all those things are important but it’s legacy of like, what are you leaving behind for the people that you love? And, honestly, with this, this industry, we can create anything we want to. We can create all the opportunity we want. We can create all the revenue, all the income, all the things that we want to create, and that’s why I love this industry so much. So it’s the legacy.

Alex Bélisle-Springer

I have. I guess I have like one, one or two last questions. I’m really curious to know what makes you so gritty, because, because I think that, like, sometimes it’s like, you know, a product of, like our own environment and how we were brought up and all that, but I think that also, sometimes it’s just like driven by that passion to like achieve a vision. I’m curious where that comes from for you and how and if you do try to transmit that over to other people, like, what, like, how do you do that?

Terra Harvell

Yeah, I, you know. Number one I think that and I see this inside of our industry constantly is stylists tend to make fear-based decisions all the time. We’re so scared of raising our prices, we’re so scared of niching down. We’re so scared of learning something new or changing the way you book, or moving to a salon that you know is going to help you be successful or whatever that is. And that’s just the world I know in general. But today we’re talking about the hair industry and you know, I think that the number one conversation I have with the people I work with are what are you scared of? You know, I think about that all the time. What’s the worst that could happen? All of this goes away. I have to file bankruptcy and I can promise you I’m just going to start again and I’m going to do it again. And I think that we make up things in our head a lot of like what is the worst thing that could happen? And it’s not even real. It’s not even real, it’s not even true. And so the other side of that the answer to that is success has become a game to me.

Terra Harvell

I live my absolute dream life that I never thought was going to be accessible to me. I’m just this small town girl from Oklahoma. I’m not supposed to be in the life that I’m living, and you know. But I do have my dream life because I work on all aspects. I’m not just working on the business all the time. I have my dream marriage because I’ve invested so much time into, you know, our relationship, my, my child. He’s a dream because, you know, maybe not always he’s three, but, uh, he’s great, he’s amazing.

But I have my dream business and I drive my dream vehicles and I drive and it’s not about the monetary things all the time, but I get to give back to the dream, you know, foundations that I want to work with and I get to help the people that I want to help inside of my life. And truly, if I was, you know, 10 years ago, you would have asked me if nothing was stopping you, tara, and you could write down the exact life you want to live. It would be the life that I’m living now. And, um, I think everyone has that power, and so I think that’s why I’m I’m so gritty about it, because now I’ve I’ve gained that momentum and something that I want people to understand is, when you go to the gym, you don’t, you aren’t motivated before you go, like I never, I went this morning and I was like, oh, I hated myself even halfway through my workout.

But after I was done with that workout, I was like, yeah, let’s go take over the world. I went and got ready. I got ready for this podcast, and so that’s what people have to start understanding. Like you get the momentum after you get started. It’s like, stop being scared and thinking of all these things, that the reason why you’re not going, no, just get going and the momentum will get you and it will become a game as well, and you will get gritty, because it’s fun to reach more and create more. And so it has become addicting and and I love, I love that addiction I could be addicted to much things I absolutely love that idea.

Ronan Perceval

It’s so true about. I fucking hate it the whole way everything until literally you’re in the shower and then suddenly you’re like yeah I gotta do that. I need to do that every morning, and it’s so true that once you it’s, it’s the momentum that’s almost like once the ball is rolling, you’re, you’re running on top of the ball. You can’t.

Terra Harvell

You just got to keep going then, and it’s much easier yeah, disciplined over motivation right, and a lot of people expect that ball to roll on its own, it doesn’t?

Alex Bélisle-Springer

You gotta go push it for a little bit, and then that’s when you’re like okay, now we can jump on top, yeah so we’re coming on to the end of this podcast, but I want to open the floor to to both of you, like tariff, if, if there’s something that you wished we had asked, to be able to bring that up. And Ronan, if you have another last question or so, and then we’ll go from there.

Terra Harvell

Yeah, I’ll just leave everyone with this. I had a mentor several years back. Tell me you don’t know what you don’t know and what you don’t know about your business and growing your business is where scaling happens and where opportunity and change happens. And so I just want to inspire everyone that’s listening to this to go out and find the information about your business, whether it’s tracking metrics, your financials, the operations, part of it. You know, we’re not just hairstylists. It’s my favorite thing to say, because I’m like I’m just over here with the cosmetology license over here making millions of dollars, and so you guys can all do the same thing that are listening to this and just go be open to learning. The things that you suck at and that is what I get is what’s going to get you to the success that you want, and so that’s what I want to leave everybody with thanks, that’s very cool, tara, I I.

Ronan Perceval

I’ve one more question for you. Yeah, just for so um being really excited to hear your vision for the next 10 years. Do you have a? Is there any kind of specific goals for 2025? That you can share with us um, yeah, I’d love to thank you for thank you for asking that.

Terra Harvell

Um, you know, this was one of my goals actually to connect with people like you guys through my favorite companies that we work with. But, yeah, the goals that Harper Ellis has this year is our revenue target is $15 million. We’re going to expand through our education platform. We have an education platform and that’s where we teach salon owners how to build out the maturity model and certify everyone in extensions and increase their revenue through high ticket price services, and so our goal this year is to work with 250 new salons that’s not already in the program, along with our normal client base that we have now, but also to expand our team. We’ve hired 10 more people in our team in the last like two months, which has been a crazy whirlwind.

Alex Bélisle-Springer

I can imagine.

Terra Harvell

But that’s what it takes in order to get to the finish line, and so my goal this year is to just completely build out our education platform to where we can help salon owners make money because every salon owner deserves to do that and to learn how to work with amazing businesses like Phorest, with um, so they can run their businesses, um, in the way that they should.

Ronan Perceval

So, yeah, I love that we’ll. We’ll lock that goal in for us as well, for you guys.

Alex Bélisle-Springer

So 250 new salons, that’s brilliant, excellent, thank you, let’s go last, last, last question where can people find you online if they want to reach out to you, learn more about your education offerings? Any, any and all of the links, and I’ll add everything in the show notes as well all the things.

Terra Harvell

Um, my personal instagram is the tara harville, so t-h-e and my name is t-e-r-r-a, um, and then harville h-a-r-v-e-l-l, and then, um, we are harper ellis hair co on instagram as well. That’s the hair company. Um, we work with only licensed stylists, um, and then we work with all the salon owners that want to implement extensions inside of their inside their business and grow their salon and grow their salon, and so you can find all the information on our website, which is in the link in the bio and all the things. So I hope to connect with you guys and excited to work with, hopefully, some of you.

Alex Bélisle-Springer

Thank you so much for your time today. It was really really nice to connect.

Terra Harvell

Well, thank you, guys, and this won’t be the last you’re seeing of me. I will be popping up, for sure, at the next summit in Ireland. Hey, my goal is because you have to tell everybody your goals. I want to speak on stage at the summit and um help your audience, on how they can make more money inside their salons as well. So I’m excited to be at the summit. Regardless, I will show up next year so I can connect with all of you guys. So thank you for having me. I’m honored and hopefully we’ll talk soon. Thank you so much, Tara all right, thank you guys.