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In this episode Nathan Plumridge is joined by Hayley Jepson, a mental health coach for hairdressers, who works with individual hairdressers and salon owners. Previously she was a hairdresser who suffered from depression and, after her own therapy, became a therapist herself, which puts her in the perfect space to talk hairdressers through their mental health problems. In this episode the tow talk about noticing the signs of burnout and how you can combat it. 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• As a coach, you’re best to coach around what you know well, however, the difference between business coaching and what I do is it’s morally wrong to profess to talk about mental health with no real training. You could coach someone to run a successful salon, but it’s worrying to see people call themselves mental health workers and not really know enough.
• I believe that looking after people’s mental health in all areas will help you salon. If your staff are happy, resourced and well-functioning, they’re better hairdressers, their chat and banter is better, they won’t moan and get into mutual moaning. 
• Mental health is how you feel about yourself and a little bit about how you think about the world. When I’m having a bad day, I tend to think the world is against me, my luck is terrible, a pessimistic outlook. When your mental health isn’t going great, you’re not thriving as a human being.
• As a salon owner, you’re being looked at by your staff the same way a parent is by their children. They’re looking to see if you walk the walk and talk the talk. I talk to salon owners about really defining their culture, come up with golden rules, but in a fun way. When tough times happen you’ve got to show up. Though a lot of salon owners are really switched on around mental health, but there’s a real fine line between “it’s OK not to be OK” and still having a job to do, you can look after your staff as a boss, but you’re not their parent. The over-givers are the ones who struggle with this and get burned out.

BEST MOMENTS

‘The pandemic gave everyone some sort of mental health awareness.’

‘How you feel – you’re going to bring that to work.’

‘The opposite of depression is not happiness, it’s hopefulness. When I think about life and I’m hopeful for the future, I know I’m doing well.’

‘Joylessness and resentfulness are the big red flags for me for burnout. They signify that your boundaries are being pushed, or you have too much resting on you.’

ABOUT THE GUEST

Hayley Jepson started hairdressing at 17 at a salon while attending college one day a week. She quickly decided to be a colour technician and worked hard as an apprentice for two years… then Toni & Guy came to town.

Hayley jumped ship and worked her way up to Art Director. She worked for T&G for 10 years at branches in Manchester, Brighton and Belgium and taught in their training academies and on stage for them and even taught NVQ in their training schools.

For the next nine years she worked at an independent salon in Manchester’s Northern Quarter, working hard and playing hard, which eventually led to burnout.

She found it hard to manage the day to day pressures of busy salon life on top of her depression, so she went to therapy which she says changed her life.

After two years of therapy she became interested in it beyond what it was doing for her, which coincided with her getting disillusioned with the culture of hairdressing, so she decided to train to become a psychotherapist. 

After...