Phorest FM Episode 329: Jennifer Jade Alvarez on Where AI & Automation Can Drive Impact in an Industry Built on Human Connection with Rich Cullen

Episode Transcript

Jennifer Jade Alvarez: [00:00:00] I definitely prayed about it and I said, I’m gonna open this business and I’m gonna do it full on faith without fear, because how is that gonna serve anyone? And so my motto really is that every problem is going to have a solution. We have to figure it out. And you can either have your, your people do it for you, or you can lean in and leverage technology to help you.

And the salons that are not adapting to ai. Are going to fall short, they’re gonna fall behind, and that is something that you should be scared about. 

PhorestFM Intro: We have an obligation to the industry that we serve in the right manner. Being a business owner ain’t for the weak. The expectations are just different.There’s always a way. When you’re born into something this fall, you can’t help but fight for it. 

Alex Bélisle-Springer: Ca Mcha, 100,000 welcomes to the PhorestFM Podcast. Brought to you by Phorest Software. I’m your resident host Alex Belisle-Springer. Joining the show today are Jennifer Jade Alvarez, founder of Refined Beauty in Illinois, and principal product designer at Phorest Rich Cullen.

Season 10 started with a whirlwind of episodes and we are now back on a regular schedule. Now our occasional co-hosted episodes are also back, and it goes without saying that Rich will be. This episode’s guest co-host Rich whose last appearance on the show dates back to August, 2021 when he spoke about staff performance and staff goals has been a pivotal player on the product team, both from a customer discovery and design point of view, and a beloved member of the wider Phorest family.

Not unfamiliar to the Phorest Summit’s main stage and always delivering incredibly insightful and engaging presentations. Today he’s joining me to explore the first episode of a new string of conversations on the podcast perspectives around ai. We, and when I say this, I give a massive shout out to the research product and development team at Phorest have been working on ways to incorporate AI into beauty and wellness businesses workflows to reduce time spent on mundane, repetitive admin tasks.

Giving service providers front desk and owners time back to do what they do best, deliver a first class guest experience. In short, and in case you missed it, AI is coming to Phorest. That said, not without it being shaped by survey responses from thousands of beauty and wellness business’ guests and hundreds of clinics and salon owners and teams on top of, of course, in-depth, one-on-one calls with Salon spa and med spa owners around the world.

In fact, on the. You can hear directly from director of product, Connor Cunningham. 

Connor Cunningham: One of the great things about Phorest is I think our proximity to our customers. So we’re really close to our customers and, and, and that as people in product and as people building software, it’s, that is the best place to be because we get to co-create with them.

We get to build with them. Um, and so we think about something like ai. There’s, there’s a lot of hype about ai, but we wanted to make sure we didn’t just dive in and kind of respond kind of in a knee-jerk sort of way, and that we were quite thoughtful about what we did, uh, as it relates to ai. So we kind of do what we always do and that’s work with our customers, talk to our customers, understand what those pain points are and how we can leverage a technology, um, and a, a change in technology like ai.

Um. In, in a way that makes sense for the business, in a way that makes sense for our, our, our customers’ businesses. It’s probably the best caliber of software development, the best caliber of the way we build product that I’ve ever seen, that I’ve ever been exposed to. 

Alex Bélisle-Springer: Senior Product manager, Ben Reinhart.

Ben Reinhardt: This industry is obviously built on personal connection and personal relationships, so. Looking at AI through a lens of like, how do you kind of impact those or how do you kind of enhance those, I think has been, yeah, a really interesting use case for us to work with it. We’re not here to create features that replace the jobs or any of that stuff.

We’re [00:04:00] here to actually like give people time back, let them focus on the human connection and give that like level of trust and security within these tools. 

Alex Bélisle-Springer: And Chief Product Officer, Paddy Monaghan. 

Paddy Monaghan: Hi folks. Paddy here, chief Product Officer with Phorest. We’ve just wrapped up our Phorest Salon owner Summit for 2026, and I thought I would take this as a moment just to discuss how we’re thinking about AI in Phorest.

It’s been a real theme here at our summit. You’re gonna see more of it coming from us this year, but I thought I would take a little bit of time to talk a little bit about how we’re thinking about it. So. The theme at the summit this year was the human experience powered by technology. And that’s a really apt way to think about how we think about ai.

It’s how we think about technology in general. We’ve always built tools that help you to empower the humans in the salon world. And we believe now with AI and the, the. The speedy advance of what this new technology can bring to the industry. We think we still need to anchor really on those humans, and our view is that those technology powered humans [00:05:00] should be amplified by ai, not replaced by it.

So we’ve been thinking about AI in three different ways. The first way is that it should be human centered. So as we’re developing these new technologies, we think about the human in the salon that we can help. So to begin with, we started with the service providers. The second piece then is that we believe the AI should be your AI and not our AI.

What that means is that you should be able to name it, you should be able to train it as if it was a staff member in your salon. And the third piece, which is actually in our view, the most important is what we call trust and control. So we know AI is new, but also we know the valuable relationships that you have with your customers.

You’re not just gonna take this new technology and kind of shove it straight in front of them and hope it works. You’re gonna have to build trust. And so to do that, we’ve developed a whole suite of features that surround the ai, allowing you to, for example, run in test mode where you can train it and decide if you’re happy or not.

Also allows you to keep control of it so you can choose. When it turns on and when it doesn’t, you can even choose [00:06:00] which customers it should actually have conversations with, and we think that those three principles will help us in what we’re launching right now to help you to accelerate the industry.

Following on from this, we’re gonna start looking at the other humans in the salon, and the next one up is the marketer. 

Alex Bélisle-Springer: Now, from the tone of all three clips, you’ve just heard AI is a positive thing, a tool, a helper. That’s not to say it’s been easy to implement. Development hasn’t been rushed because we’ve had to ensure Phorest AI amplifies the human connection, building trust in an industry built on it.

We’ve been our own harshest critics. And the reality is, as with any new technology, people are bound to have strong feelings about it. And we believe that the Force FM podcast has matured enough to hold those two truths at once. And so with that, even though they weren’t created specifically for this conversation, in fact, they were created well before season.

10 even started as a guideline for [00:07:00] all the conversations that we’d have. I wanna spend a brief amount of time sharing the mutual agreements we now have with guests who come onto the show. And also by naming them, we’re hopeful that they can translate into digital discussion spaces that relate to the podcast specifically, and the conversations that we have on the show.

And these agreements are if it helps us think differently or do better, it belongs here. We practice generosity in our thinking and sharing. We move from a place of honesty and integrity. We take the time to acknowledge, name and celebrate the small steps in their compound effect. We can always change our mind.

We understand that language carries and holds weight. So we choose our words with intention and should they arise, present with strong emotions. And now let me introduce you to this week’s guest. Jennifer Jade Alvarez. Jennifer knows what it’s like to build something from nothing. A licensed cosmetologist since 2002.

She spent years behind the chair navigating the same doubt, burnout and uncertainty that so many owners know all too well before turning that struggle into a roadmap. Over the course of her career, she’s trained at the Red Ken Exchange in New York City and the ALSA Sunon Academy in London competed in and won national photo competitions, launched an award-winning six figure bridal brand, and even developed her own hair extension line all while continuing to invest in mentorship and business education at every stage of her growth.

Today, she’s the founder of Refined Beauty. A salon spa in Naperville, Illinois, and three times Salon today. 200 honoree. After retiring from behind the chair in 2023, Jennifer channeled everything she learned into helping other owners build smarter, more sustainable businesses. Through her Salon, CEO Method Coaching Program and the Beauty Business Game Changer podcast, she brings real world experience, a lifelong student’s humility, and an honest perspective on what it actually takes.

This episode is an exploratory one focused on AI and automation from both Jennifer and Rich’s personal experience and perspectives, and it serves as a first in a string of conversations around AI that will sprinkle throughout the season. If you’re coming into this episode thinking, my business is too human for all of this, all I ask is that you keep an open mind and join the conversation so we can shape what’s next together.

And you can do that by leaving a comment on Spotify if that’s where you’re listening. You can also leave comments on our posts on social media. You can always DM us or send an email at PhorestFM@phorest.pro. And without further ado, joining me on the show this week is Jennifer Jade Alvarez and Rich Colon, thank you so much for being here.

Jennifer Jade Alvarez: Thank you for having us. Thank you. Excited about this conversation. 

Rich Cullen: Yeah, me too. 

Alex Bélisle-Springer: Yeah, same here. Um. AI and automation and how this type of tech might be used in businesses that rely on trust and human connection. So much is going to be at the heart of this conversation, but to situate people listening before we dive in, could you maybe paint a quick picture, Jennifer, of refined beauty as well as, you know, whether or not you consider yourself an early adopter of, well, definitely tech driven, but maybe perhaps particularly AI solutions.

Jennifer Jade Alvarez: Yeah, I definitely would say that I have been an early adopter, more so because I have no choice. I was forced to need and lean into technology because I started my company in 2016 by myself in a solo suite and realize this is not for me. And I started to hire people right away and. Teach ’cause that’s what I really love to do, is show people how to earn a living behind the chair.

And I quickly realized how many hats and things that are involved with growing a business, I realized quickly it’s not just about doing good hair and having a good service. You have to have a complete business model, a complete eco, uh, system around your marketing. And the more I started to learn about marketing because.

You really are forced to because if you have a team, part of your obligation is helping them build a business, technical and professional. And so I quickly realized how much help I needed, and I also was on a shoestring budget as well. So I think the first way that I started to really delegate was through virtual assistants, because in 2016, I, I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t recall.

Hearing much about ai, I knew that technology was advancing, but I, I, I don’t think that we really learned about it until probably around what, 20 19, 20 20. Is when we started to have more of these conversations of what’s chat, GPT? Yeah. [00:12:00] So fast forward to today, I have eight employees and we do a lot when it comes to leveraging AI, virtual assistants, AI agents, virtual assistants in general.

Um, anything that we can use in technology to help us, uh, be able to have better systems, save money and save time and even earn more revenue? Is is everything that I have to invest in my time in doing as a salon owner 

Rich Cullen: at the very start. Jennifer, you mentioned about AI being around, I think you said 2016 and you’re totally right.

It’s, it’s actually been around for ages. Why is it now? And I think it’s to that point you just mentioned about making something easy to use. I remember the very start, AI was something I wasn’t interested in because it felt so technical. And I think the big change was the LLMs, that the language [00:13:00] models suddenly made this deeply technical tool human or feel human.

And, you know, the, the, the, the way. It streams information like reading messages and, and, and in time sometimes it is actually a voice telling you things, but it feels so easy to use. And I think that’s the key and that’s the bit we were talking about last week about staff goals and things. But you know, anyone can technically go into an area to pull a report and do something, but it’s very difficult.

Whereas if you make something really easy to do, if you make something really easy. Bite-sized, quick, easy to follow, it suddenly becomes a completely different tool. I think that’s what’s happened with AI over the last maybe five or six years. 

Alex Bélisle-Springer: Hmm. Jennifer, you mentioned you were kind of forced to lean into tech and to adopt solutions before they became more common.

Can you speak maybe to your relationship to [00:14:00] fear and moving through unknowns? Like, you know, if you’re gonna adopt something before. The vast majority of people do. You’re gonna run into things that you don’t know, things that, um, aren’t working as well, and like I’m curious to know if you had any fears in regards to that, but yeah, maybe your relationship to fear in general when it comes to, you know, running a business.

Jennifer Jade Alvarez: Yeah, I would say from the very beginning I procrastinated about opening up a business. ’cause I had a lot of fears around failure, around losing money, losing people, not knowing what to do. And I definitely prayed about it and I said, I’m gonna open this business and I’m gonna do it full on faith. Without fear because how is that gonna serve anyone?

And so my motto really is that every problem is going to have a solution. We have to figure it out. It may not be easy, but there are costly mistakes in business. This is how we learn and. You know, you have to think, okay, if I don’t hire someone else to do this, which could be very costly, right? If you want to hire someone who does cold calling for you or helps out with the front desk, it is a costly expense and most people listening to this episode who are salon owners, understand that every dollar.

That’s coming in, is allocated into pennies, into every single bucket. And so I didn’t have a whole lot of pennies to put in certain buckets. So I said, what can we do instead? And you know, you have to think, let’s say for instance, in your marketing plan, you are looking to have more customers come into your business.

Who is going to be responsible for that job. And you can either have your, your people do it for you, or you can lean in and leverage technology to help you. There can be mistakes on both ends. Mm-hmm. And training still needs to go into both areas. Right. We still need to develop and prompt our. AI agents and voice agents to be able to carry out our brand, but the same is true for the front desk.

I mean, customer service is not easy and it needs to have. Uh, very detailed notes of exactly how you want your systems and structures to be. So there’s pros and cons to both sides. Are there mistakes with the agents? Yes. In fact, even today we’re dealing with some issues. It just happens and you have to be okay with it and not, not run your business from a state of fear, but to think about vision and the possibilities of growth, of, of leaning into what AI can do for your company.

Rich Cullen: Yeah, exactly. Um, I spend a lot of my time listening to business owners and, and, and hearing very similar things. One thing I’ll be really [00:17:00] curious to hear, Jennifer, is. If you have AI front and center for, you know, your front desk for that, um, assistance, how do you make sure that it’s working? How do you know that it’s helping your business?

What kind of things are you looking out for? 

Alex Bélisle-Springer: Or even honestly, just like where do you start? 

Jennifer Jade Alvarez: Yeah, I guess if you’re saying in regards of like, how, where do we get started with this? Yeah. Uh, I would say, you know, doing SMS. With an AI agent is a great start. I know that voice agents are still, um, people, consumers are getting more acclimated to it, even though they do want that human connection.

And it’s interesting too because we hear the voice AI being recorded. So I’ll listen to the messages and it’s interesting how people are interacting with your voice, ai, and they’re like. Well, thank you very much. Have a good day. Well, you too. Um, that’s [00:18:00] kind of, uh, funny about that, but just implementing SMS agents is great because we know that data shows that customers want to be connected within first five minutes of them reaching out to you.

And we have to be realistic in business . Well, I’m not at the phone all the time, I’m not on my messages all the time, or emails all the time. So how can we lean into having an AI agent being able to respond right away, thank you so much for reaching out to refined beauty. Are you looking for more information or are you looking for help?

Selecting an appointment and being able, and that could be an automation right there like that. When somebody submits a form or calls in, we can have an automation in place where the bot. Immediately connects with a customer and that gives them that dopamine validation of these people who want my business.

Hmm. If you don’t respond to customers right away, they are just gonna continue calling up every single business. That is that maybe chat GPT has recommended to them and they’re gonna select whoever answers first. That’s where they’re gonna spend their money. And I live in a really nice area, but we’ve got like 200 salons.

Competition’s tough. And you know, I’m helping my team grow my business. We can’t afford to lose business. You know, it’s hard enough. Mm-hmm. Keeping your retention percentage at, at, at a healthy benchmark. But when a new lead comes in, it, it, the ball’s in our court of whether or not we can win their business or we can quickly lose it.

And the salons that are not adopting AI are going to fall short. They’re gonna fall behind. And that is something that you should be scared about. 

Rich Cullen: And out of the, the, the conversations that are happening between AI and guests. What kind of numbers do you think we should be aiming for? Like, because obviously as you mentioned, AI sometimes hallucinates or can’t answer something, or sometimes guests say, I wanna speak to a person.

We see that ourselves. In those cases it has to hand off or do something different. But what would you kind of like to see as a benchmark saying, okay, once it hits that level, I think it’s, I think it’s strong enough. 

Jennifer Jade Alvarez: Well, first you have to just turn it on and get it going and. When you do find the mistakes, it’s usually pretty obvious, whether they’re giving the wrong address, the wrong hours, booking with the wrong people.

That just means that there’s a gap in the way that you have developed your. Your AI agent, because oftentimes, the way that it’s functioning is not on it’s own thought process, but whatever information has been gathered. So this is why it’s just so crucial to have as much information as possible to relay to the AI agent so that it’s giving the correct information over to your customers,whether it’s voice or SMS type of dialogue.

Alex Bélisle-Springer: Well, you’ve mentioned, you know, to me and Rich, before that you had to go the route of a voice agent to answer the front desk because you didn’t have any physical space in the salon to even have a front desk. But I imagine this is like one area of the business that some owners would rather never pass off to ai.

Did you get any initial or even ongoing pushback from, you know, guests with the voice agent? How did it land with, you know, people coming into refined beauty? 

Jennifer Jade Alvarez: Yeah, we’ve had some customers complain, but you know, I think in the grand scheme of things, if I was to say what percentage of clients are complaining, if it’s, if it’s less than 10% and we’re able to help the other 90%, it’s a good decision.

You can’t please everyone. And I can’t operate my business of making sure, is everyone happy? I need to do what’s best for business. I need to make sure that you know, no caller is left behind and we still have the human touch in there. AI is not replacing the human touch, it’s assisting. It’s like your own personal assistant in helping you operate the business.

To the highest level that you possibly can for the guest experience and to help customers. It’s not going to replace, it’s there to help support how you want your business and your systems to operate. So, yeah, not everyone was happy about it. You know, some people will, you know, we’ve had, um, one customer, um, you know, get into a cursing fight with the bot, but.

Maybe she was just having a bad day. I don’t know. Okay. But that’s one out of like, you know, thousands of people. So you, you, you have to look at, you have to zoom out and look at your business of like, is this benefiting the company and helping, like, were we able to win more appointments? Was the bot able [00:23:00] to help upsell these appointments?

Were we able to quickly respond to them even if we had to make sure to transfer it to a human? 

Alex Bélisle-Springer: Mm-hmm. 

Jennifer Jade Alvarez: At least to acknowledge the customer. I think that’s really important to consumers in general with this instant gratification of, I need your attention immediately. Yeah. 

Rich Cullen: Couldn’t agree more. A salon owner said to me a couple of days ago that speed is service.

And I was like, oh, that’s so true. You know, if you, someone’s waiting, uh, or they’ve sent an SMS message or something to a business and they don’t hear back just immediately. That is the expectation. Now, if you can have a way of handling those things immediately, that is such a key part of success.

Um, something you said there, I’d be really interested to hear it. We hear a lot about, um, brand voice or, you know, um, handbooks like we answer the phone a certain way. We have these certain phrases we [00:24:00] use. Has that come up much with your AI tools and, you know, if, if, if so, how do you handle those questions?

Jennifer Jade Alvarez: What I did for my own business as far as how I train my agents is one, I have to make sure that we have as much information as possible. So you wanna prompt your ai, so whatever ai. Agent you’re currently using, uh, just in general for maybe brainstorming, creating systems or whatnot, have the bot act as a CMO to your business and have the AI agent ask you questions about your company, about your business, and the more questions that the AI agent.

Can prompt you as the visionary of your company, then the better it is for the bot to create a system step-by-step. This is how we introduce, this is our voice. This is what you do if somebody is upset and all scenarios are right, a step-by-step process. But you don’t have to do it yourself. Have, have chat, GPT or Claude Manus.

Lots of different agents out there that you can have it, create your, uh, prompts for you and that’s what you would, uh, plug into whatever, um, AI agent that you are using for SMS or voice as well. So we can follow exactly what you want it to do. 

Alex Bélisle-Springer: Hmm. And earlier you mentioned listening back to calls that guests have had with your AI voice agent.

Are there any other forms of human oversight or guardrails, like whether you do it on a monthly basis or whatever like that you haven’t a place for any parts of the business where AI or automations are at play? 

Jennifer Jade Alvarez: Yeah, so there are a few things. So having guardrails inside of. Your descriptions and your details for the bot is important to have, and there are agents out because there’s so many different platforms to choose from.

Yeah. That there are certain platforms that have a higher percentage of hallucination, and to all of the listeners basically means that your bot has gone rogue and it is saying information that’s not relevant to your business. Having guardrails up in the description of like, this is. If someone asks questions that do not pertain to our salon, redirect the conversation using this exact script.

Again, the more specific that we can be to our agents, the better it will be. But even still, there are certain platforms that are going to have a higher value of output, um, versus others. So. Um, there’s definitely a lot that goes into it, but if I could give one piece of advice, just when you think you have enough information that you’re giving to your AI agent, do a little bit more.

And one of my favorite ways is that I love using ai, so I use Claude the majority of the time. And I like to go back and forth. I never have a very vague do this for me. I go in deep. And the deeper that you can go into your, um, ideal client, the, the services that you offer, description details that you have, I mean, this is really great as well for your website and the majority of the websites that I’ve seen as well.

The information is lacking. There’s not enough information and to, to Google and to ai, it’s ex, it’s extremely important so that it starts to become almost like a resource library for large language models and Google to identify what is the right information. That builds authority to your business of why somebody would choose you as a business to spend their money with.

Alex Bélisle-Springer: What I’m hearing is that like, obviously it takes a lot of work beforehand to get these tools up and running successfully, and so my thinking kind of goes back to that initial question of like, where do we even start? What’s worth doing? Like what is worth. Acting on first, considering there’s like such a heavy load before it even actually gets you any return on investment or investment of time, if anything.

Rich Cullen: Yeah, uh, I, I can just real quickly say that the thing we’re looking at in Phorest is we look at where the biggest problems are because, you know, AI saving time is, is a key one. So one is reporting. We find that sometimes business owners struggle to find the numbers they’re looking for, and we think, you know, having a tool that will help it can ask it a question saying, Hey, who are my top 100 clients?

Um, which service provider has sold the most retail? That makes so much sense. So that’s definitely one avenue. And then we’re also looking at not just salon or spa owners, we’re looking at the service provider as well. So how can they deliver the best possible service? Because you know, if you could do that, then everyone in your team is performing better.

So this salon wins as well. So we’re looking at what we’re calling cheat sheets, which is a way to give. Ten second glance at a cheat sheet about a client, tell ’em everything they need. So the service provider walking up to the chair has all the information at their hand knowing that they have no future appointment booked in.

They’re low on retail, they haven’t bought a product recently, or those things, their booking pattern may be inconsistent. Or, you know what, they’re, um, they’ve got a wedding coming up. So they throw it into the conversation. Make sure that they know you’ve thought of them and you’ve remembered something they told you in the.

In the past. So they’re kind of the ways we’re looking at weaving in AI to help enhance everyone’s experience, uh, within a business. 

Jennifer Jade Alvarez: Hmm. Yeah, I really appreciate that Rich too, because as a salon owner, even though I delegate a lot, I still. And in the role of coaching and mentoring, and I am a Google spreadsheet type of gal, at the same time, I can read and digest that information.

But when we’re able to transform that type of data into infographics and bite sizes and even have AI strategists. To be able to give ideas around how we make improvements. You can take all of that data and put it into AI and ask for strategies of how do we improve our rebooking? What are some team competitions that we could do that would help increase retail or rebooking?

What is some? Uh, you know, how do we leverage Phorest, uh, in this, in this case, of creating some automation so that when a client leaves that we prompt them, please leave us a review. Let us know how we have done. If they haven’t rebooked with their appointment, we can have the automations of an always on campaign of, Hey, we noticed you haven’t rebooked your next appointment.

You’re just. The more touch points that you can have in your business through your, for your customers and with your team. The more people are aware of their, the, the team is aware of their efforts and how to light that fire underneath them, and then also just capturing the attention of your customers who are very distracted by all the other businesses around them.

So I always say. The squeaky wheel gets to the oil and you know, you know what you focus on grows. So we have to be able to constantly measure these, and I agree with you out of, um, as a salon owner who has been through 10. 10 salon softwares that it is difficult to find the data that you’re looking for, and it’s usually scattered throughout the software.

And so to simplify these numbers, especially the most important key metrics, and being able to display it in a way that seems fun and energizing versus like spreadsheet style to your team. This can really create a different type of culture and, and team growth together. 

Rich Cullen: Mm-hmm. Yeah, 

Jennifer Jade Alvarez: totally. 

Alex Bélisle-Springer: I mean, so far, you know, everything that’s been coming through sounds very positive.

Like it’s really made a difference for your business. And I don’t wanna diminish anyone’s feelings about AI that might be. More on the fearful side. Um, and so I wonder if you’ve had any ai aha moments to steal one of my colleagues’ expressions with regards to marketing or not. I just know you’re very passionate about it and how it might’ve helped you with that side of running your business, whatever that was.

Jennifer Jade Alvarez: Well, as far as maybe some ideas, for instance, the beginning of 2026, 1 of the things that I wanted to do. As like one who can be a little on the A DHD side of like, oh, not like lasered focus. I have this more like a dreamer mentality. I just needed to get laser focus. I had, we love a dreamer mentality 

Alex Bélisle-Springer: though also.

Jennifer Jade Alvarez: Yeah, it, it could be, it’s a strength and a weakness at the same time. Um, but I developed for 2026, a complete game plan for all the team competitions, every single marketing plan, even a sales forecast. Looking at what we have done in the past, that would’ve taken me probably all year, and I would’ve never finished it if I did it on my own.

But I was able to take all sorts of different data. From our, you know, extracting a CSV vial of like what has happened in the past. Because we have to know what has happened in the past and what I would like to do. Like what, what are our goals for the company? What is our target revenue that we would want to hit to maintain profitability or even start to expand?

And by giving all that data into ai, it can create a. A, a, an amazing game plan for you that you could use as a tool to follow. You could obviously change things up, but it, it, it definitely can help as like a roadmap. So that’s, that’s the way that I really love and think that would be a great way for a lot of salon owners to start voice ai, having the sms.

That might, maybe that’s a little bit too much for you and that’s okay. I think by just getting some momentum going and the comfortability of having deep discussions with ai, especially in your company, to help you with finances. I mean, it can spotlight areas where you’re overspending. It can, um, spotlight areas where you can make some.

New improvements in your company and so often we’re so close to our own business and we’re so emotional about it ’cause it’s all our blood, sweat, and tears that sometimes we don’t zoom out very well to look at maybe the obvious. And so leaning into your, your, your business structure using AI could be a really great way to start.

And it’s one way that I’ve been able to leverage to help me save time and make me more money as well. 

Rich Cullen: Hmm. I love that. What we’ve heard mostly, there’s a few things. The first one is, um, the fear of maybe jobs being lost. And actually that’s something we speak about in Phorest for ourselves, you know, ’cause there’s, there’s AI design tools out there that, you know, I look at that’s pretty good.

Um, but what we found is that the key is not a replacement for ai. The way we’re looking at it in Phorest is like superpower in the team. Can your stylists become more creative? Because some of those tedious, time consuming tasks are taken care of. Same with the front desk. Uh, the phrase Ronan, our CEO is using.

Is love the one you’re with? Meaning if there’s a client standing in front of you and you’re trying to build a connection, it’s their second time visiting your business and you want to make sure they are having a great time. They feel heard, they get to know you a little bit. You do not want a distraction of two phone calls and eight missed messages.

So can we do something to help? Remove those distractions to give you time with the person who, let’s be honest, you can only deal with one person at a time. Make sure it’s the person in front of you. So I do think there’s really good avenues there. So that’s definitely one area that we’ve been looking at.

The other one is sustainability. Comes up on calls a lot. We have a lot of salons and spas who are really careful with products and software they use to make sure they’re sustainable. So we’re looking at ways to first understand the impact of the AI tools. So, uh, even today actually, I was looking at, um, how to work out what the usage is, so we have a, you know.

However, many salons are using our AI tools at the moment, and when we add them all up, what is the power that’s needed to, to, to, to use those tools? So let’s say it’s 0.12 of a kilowatt hour, that means nothing to almost anyone, right? So we are looking at ways to maybe explain that. So for example, that could be the same as, so in a week you use this much power that’s the same as charging your iPhone six times, or that’s the same as running a hairdryer for an hour.

So you have a bit of an idea of the cost to the environment for using these tools. Is it worth it, is it not? So it’s just being transparent about it. So that’s the second part. And the last one is just a kind of security. Um, we hear time and again, just, you know, are the AI tools, getting access to sensitive data.

So, you know, we have to make sure that anything we build is within FARs, within our secure environment, and therefore we build building the AI tools within there, not passing it externally so everything’s secure and safe. So they’re the kind of things that we’ve heard and we’re really aware of. 

Alex Bélisle-Springer: Yeah.

Jennifer, you used the expression, the squeaky wheel gets the oil earlier. Um, what’s a squeaky wheel in your business right now? Something you’re maybe thinking about solving with AI or automation, but you haven’t quite cracked yet? 

Jennifer Jade Alvarez: Yeah, I would say that it’s always been a particular pain point of my business.

Generating leads, new clients into the company and keeping clients. So the location of my salon is on a busy street with zero walk-ins. So marketing to me is extremely important because. One, one, yes, we have to have a great service, but we have to get as known as possible. Again, we’re competing with several salons in our area, and you have to constantly have that cycle of flow of new guests coming in and keeping guests.

You have to also think about what’s. Very obvious in our industry, which is, uh, team members leaving and taking, let’s say 60% of those, those customers with them. And of course we want to give the customers the option to stay, but that’s why it’s just so important that you’re constantly focusing on marketing on both ends, which is why last year I started to work with some coaches around.

What is marketing all about? Because sending out emails is just one portion of a bigger scope of what needs to be in place. So the more I started to lean into how do I nurture and build trust with customers before they actually book a uh, appointment? And what I found in our data is that a customer will.

Opt into some type of lead magnet. Um, you know, for instance, we use Join Maya. We have different forms on our website as well, or pre-consultation forms. Yeah. And so we have gathered the customer’s information. We have a higher percentage of customers, about 75% of them. We’ll not book until about three months later, so that means I have about three months of a runway that I have to constantly, you know, we have our virtual assistant who physically calls Yeah.

But we have SMS going out, so we’ve got automation. Automation basically is that instant trigger of like as if someone does this, fills out a form. It triggers a message to the customer, it triggers an email to the customer. Then from there, we have to have a sequence of offers that you have to test, and it’s just so amazing how.

Much of a rabbit hole. I’ve been going down to understand this is so important to me because if we don’t do any marketing, I’m reliant on just the team’s talent, and it’s not the talent that’s gonna build the business. It’s how visible you are. The most visible business is going to win, even if you’ve got a group of super talented uh, people.

And I know that might be debatable. It definitely helps by having super professional, friendly, talented staff for sure. And I definitely could say that I have that, but it’s still not enough to complete the circle and it’s never ending. It’s just a constant. So, you know, leveraging the AI with. Having the voice, ai, having an SMS ai, having the automations in place of workflows of these emails that go out, we have to nurture them because, can you imagine they filled out a form and we were like crickets.

They would forget that they have filled out a form. 

Alex Bélisle-Springer: Yeah. 

Jennifer Jade Alvarez: I mean, we have people who fill out forms at 1:00 AM, 2:00 AM, 3:00 AM ’cause they’re awake just thinking about these things and by morning time they’ve already forgotten how many forms and new, uh. Newsletters they’ve signed up for, uh, after that, that early morning.

So that’s why I say the squeaky wheel gets the oil because we’ll have a hundred, 200, 300 leads come through in one month, but that doesn’t mean that a hundred percent of them are coming through. I mean, you’re lucky to, you wanna aim to get to about 40%, but if you don’t have any infrastructure into your marketing, you could be losing a high percentage.

If you’re not focused enough on organic, if you don’t have organic in place, you’re wasting money on paid ads. Mm-hmm. You have to have the organic in place first, and once that’s set and you’ve got. A well-oiled machine there. Now you can start putting some money back behind that machine with meta ads, maybe some Google ads, and, and going all in with SEO on your website.

That’s going to, that’s gonna complete that loop, and that’s gonna help to generate more revenue into your company. So long story short, that was, that’s been the rabbit hole I’ve been, uh, going down really, really obsessing about and just geeking out about it. But I understand the importance of it because yeah, you know, we’ve got these new talents coming outta beauty school.

Some of them are holding the shears correctly or a comb correctly, and they are not even sure how to market themselves. A lot of them don’t want to, they don’t wanna market themselves. They wanna be a hundred percent reliant on a salon owner to help them in every possible way. It is a lot of pressure.

Alex Bélisle-Springer: Yeah, definitely. Most definitely. 

Rich Cullen: Yeah. The business reputation comes up a lot in our calls too, like you mentioned. Um. And replacing SEO is like, you know, using AI to search, say, Hey, what’s the best sell on spa in, you know, 50 miles from me? And we’re, we’re seeing that more and more that, you know, having a really good online reputation, a really good presence will just help you surface more and more in those.

The question I had was, once you get them in. Which is that, that is a big ask. That, that, that’s a long road. Once you get them in, how do you keep them? Do you see any room there for automation or AI? If they, they, they, they’re a client wants and maybe they don’t, they don’t have a future booking. Are there things you can do there to help?

Jennifer Jade Alvarez: Oh, absolutely. I mean that’s, this is the beginning of a relationship. 

Rich Cullen: Yeah. 

Jennifer Jade Alvarez: So again, you have to constantly nurture this person. You know, the client might come in, let’s say for a haircut, you would think it’d be obvious that they know the other services available, but they don’t. So how do we get front and center and say, oh, have you tried our head spa?

Have you tried our hair extensions? Why don’t you come back in for your next visit? Here’s this percentage off here is $10 to use towards any retail product. You have to constantly be nurturing that relationship. I mean. Think about your friendships or your spouse. I mean, you have to constantly be in communication with them.

Mm-hmm. How do you go above and beyond? It’s definitely something that we’re always exploring, and this is why we have a promotion every single month. We try to make it fun for the team and our competitions, but also to keep things fresh and exciting for our customers. You know, what new, what new products can we release?

How, how do we just make the experience? Stand out. Yeah. Above every other experience. It’s something that you always have to focus on and, [00:46:00]and data shows too that when we can improve our retention, that it automatically is going to increase 25 to even 95% of our overall revenue. So even though I have a strong focus on how to increase my conversions using AI and automation through lead generation, I also have to think about the same thing.

Uh, we know that 70% of all those customers that we worked so hard for don’t come back. And that’s, it’s a really sad, um, benchmark that is in our industry overall, but that’s why we have to have other things in place. People forget they, for, they, um, outta sight out of mind. And that’s why you have to have these extra campaigns on and.

Even with, you know, Phorest and, um, you have to lean into your CRM to help you and create targeted segments of who hasn’t tried hair color, who hasn’t tried our spa, who hasn’t tried, uh, hair extensions, and constantly be thinking about what offers can sweeten the deal to just get them in the door to try it and turn them into loyal raving fans of your business.

Rich Cullen: It’s true. Like we’re, we’re, we’re trying to work on tools to help with that. Like, and I think, I think there’s so much in that. The best story I heard about that was there’s a salon owner in Ireland and he has an unbelievable retention rate for new clients turning him into loyal guests. And we, we visited him and we said, what are you doing that’s so different?

Alex Bélisle-Springer: What kind of retention percentage was he having? 

Rich Cullen: Oh, it was like maybe like 85, 90% retention rate for new clients. It’s ridiculous. And he said, anyone who has visited once and hasn’t got a future booking, I call them within three days, and I, it’s not a, not a force, you need to come back. It’s just more like, how’s your hair?

Um, how, how did you feel the experience went and he wouldn’t have done their hair at all. He was, he was simply the owner and he said, curious. Would you be up for coming back? And if they said no, he is like, I’d love to know why. And, he said, there’s times where someone is visiting for a wedding and they’re not from the area, so they’re never gonna be a loyal client.

He said, I love to know that because I know that we haven’t missed an opportunity. But he would never let a client not come back. And he said, often people are like, actually, you know what? I will. And again, he was very seasoned. He had a really good script that he worked off. And it was, it was really impressive to see how that.

Manual tasks that he did over and over again had such a big impact. And like we’re looking at ways that you could, in some ways perhaps automate it or perhaps you don’t pay. Perhaps that’s the thing you don’t automate and everything else is the thing you automate to free up time to spend the half an hour a week doing that task if it’s worth that much to your business.

And that’s the bit I’m really curious about. What do you automate? What do you think? Is actually a really good use of someone’s time. That should be that personal connection. I think that’s the key to finding the AI link. 

Alex Bélisle-Springer: Yeah.

Jennifer Jade Alvarez: Well when, when you talk about that, you know, my mind always goes to. Well, how do we leverage AI to help us?

Yeah, so we understand our metrics. Who have we called? Who haven’t we called? What was their reasoning of why they didn’t rebook, or why they didn’t purchase, or why they chose not to come back? Collecting as much data as possible is how we can re-export that information to AI to say, what am I missing?

What am I missing? Instead of just saying we don’t, we don’t know why we have such a low retention. Now we’re able to gather that data and we can also nurture a customer. Um, who’s new that would also help to retain the client just because that onboarding experience was so thoughtful and there was a lot of attention and, and care leading up to the very first visit.

Like, you’re already so excited about it versus like, oh, I’ve booked here. I don’t know. No, nobody, nobody has said anything versus like, welcome to Refined beauty. We can’t wait to have you, like, just even small things like that I think would make a huge improvement. And to have the connection of both your AI and the human connection, whether it’s your sales desk or a virtual assistant or a sales assistant, having both of those touch points.

Is really how we’re gonna see improvements to those metrics. 

Alex Bélisle-Springer: Yeah. And I’m going to intentionally have us pause here for a second because though I hate to say I’m, I’m about to bring us to a close, but before I do, maybe I ask you both this one question. Um, you know, knowing what you know about. What makes this industry so special?

What’s one thing you would never automate? Because the human connection matters too much. And you know, Jennifer, you can answer from a business owner perspective and rich from a product development point of view. 

Rich Cullen: Yeah, I, I can give it a go first. Well, the obvious one to me is the skills of the stylist, the skills of the nail technician, the skill, those skills, the reason those people come into your business.

You. I think the key that I’m seeing is whatever, whatever time they can dedicate to do that, to do that to the best of their ability. AI should handle the rest, the automation, making things seamless, giving them the information about who’s coming in next, someone’s running late, all those, all that noise we could call it if they can get back to the art and the connection of the person in the chair.

Then we’re winning. That’s, that’s the way I see it. 

Alex Bélisle-Springer: What about yourself, Jennifer? What would you not handle with AI or automation? 

Jennifer Jade Alvarez: I, I agree with you, rich. My mind immediately went to customer complaints. Yeah. I mean, of course, I never want to have to, uh. You know, hear about an issue, but I always think that if a client is willing to address their concerns, then that’s our opportunity to make it right.

And I would rather people tell us where we have fallen short of our promises or their expectations. We hear them out, we listen to them and I think that, and we could, could some AI be in touch with them? Definitely to be able to train the bot to say, let’s pass this off to your manager or to the owner to give you a call.

That is really appreciated. I think for people I know as a consumer myself, I don’t wanna buy, if I am angry or upset for whatever reason, like. You’re gonna just put the icing on the cake on me if, if, uh, you, if there’s a bot, uh, intervening with my, my issue. So I definitely would make sure that, um, having that human touch so we can have empathy and lead with love loving on our, our customers is, is extremely important.

Alex Bélisle-Springer: I love both of your answers so much. Listen, thank you so much for being on, for sharing. So openly, you know, what, what has been working for you as well, you know, in the business. Um, Jennifer, you’re the proud owner of Refined Beauty. You’re also very passionate about teaching. So where can people find you online if they wanna reach out, maybe, you know, get more insights or open up a conversation with you?

Jennifer Jade Alvarez: Yeah, I live on Instagram, so you can find me at Jennifer Jade Alvarez. I’ve got some fun content that I like to share and keep things entertaining. Um, and I’d love for you guys to check out my top 50 tips and tools that I use in my business. To help me save time and money as well. Um, so make sure to grab that and see even if you just do one thing on that list, it’s gonna build momentum.

And anytime that you’re able to start to compound what saving time and success is like, the better that you will be as a salon owner in my opinion. Because then you start to fall in love with your business again ’cause it’s not taking up all of your time. 

Alex Bélisle-Springer: Yeah. Yeah. You work back to that work-life balance.

Rich, do you have any final words to close us off? 

Rich Cullen: No, I think it’s really enlightening. I’m glad we’re starting to, uh, have conversations about AI and the podcast. I actually think there’s, as you mentioned, Alex, there’s loads more opportunity and like we’re all learning. I think it’s just a case of jumping in and seeing where this goes and trying.

Testing your, dipping your toes in and learning. ’cause like, I mean, I’m no expert in ai but I’m finding it interesting and, um, there’s definite value there, um, that we’re, we’re seeing. So yeah, thanks for having me on as well, Alex. I really appreciate it. Lovely to meet you, Jennifer. 

Jennifer Jade Alvarez: Yeah, as well.

Alex Bélisle-Springer: Thank you so much for choosing to tune in once again this week. And before we officially say until next time, I wanna remind you that the best way to let us know what you specifically enjoy about PhorestFM is. Is by rating and reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts. If you know as a company and a partner, then you know just how much sourcing feedback is in the fabric of everything we do.

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We have a goal of reaching 350 reviews this year, and I trust that we will get there. It’s ambitious. We are currently at 108 ratings and 49 reviews, but with your help, we can absolutely do it. The reason why we have this ambitious goal is because it really does make a difference in getting the show in front of new people who might also.

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Alex Bélisle-Springer: This episode was edited and mixed by Audio Z Montreal’s Cutting edge post-production studio for creative minds. Looking to have their vision professionally produced and mixed.

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