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

I think hair has this ability when it's good and it's behaving that day. It makes you feel great and that's an enormous power. Fabio Semantilly. Big heart, big voice, big laugh. A rock star hair stylist who drove a Porsche. He was like a wizard behind the chair. The killers came for Fabio in his own backyard. You can't rationalize it. You can't figure it out. There was rampant speculation about everything. But every wild theory was wrong because the truth was even more unbelievable. What is anyone hearing what I'm hearing? And even more heartbreaking. The uncertainty of not knowing is a form of agony. From Sony Music Entertainment and novel, this is Cut Color Kill. I'm Jonathan Hirsch. Cut Color Kill is available now on the binge. Search for it wherever you get your podcast to start listening today. Subscribers to the binge can listen to all episodes. All at once. Add free. We continue to talk to some brilliant and impressive guests to get to know their journeys and get there taken on an earth we should be doing too. To catch up on everything that's happened so far, listen wherever you get your podcast and remember to subscribe. Of course, you can also watch us on the YouTube and subscribe there too. Today on the podcast, we have a leading British hair stylist, Luke Hirscheson, who is the CEO of Hirschesons, the Salon and Hair Care brand. Luke's father Daniel opened the first salon in the 90s. And since then, the pair have launched hair products, the concept of blow-dry bars and their flagship salon in Fitz Roblie. With his many celebrity, Cleon Tell and thriving business, I'm super excited to get into this chat with Luke. Luke, thank you so much for joining me on the businessmen. Usually Joel would be here. And I know he's absolutely obsessed with hair, particularly his own hair. So he's absolutely devastated he's not here. It's great to have you with us though today. I haven't been fascinated to get your insight into the world that you work in, how you came to be there, the experiences that you've had of creating this fantastic brand of yours. Tell me when it was that you realised that you wanted to pursue hairdressing? Well, I kind of grew up in a salon. You know, my dad started it. My dad is a hairdresser. What year did he start? Oh God, probably early 70s, I think. Wow, OK. Yeah, around about, I was born in '79. He had his own salon by that point. He was 21 when he opened his first site. So it was pretty prolific, I suppose, at that time. But yeah, I was kind of, I grew up kind of in the back of a salon. And I just love the energy. I love the people. I love the vibe. And it always felt to me like, that's where I wanted to be. I spent kind of every weekend there and some of my holidays. And I kind of was, you know, shampooing and holding the dryer. And I just, I loved it. It was always like, for me, it was almost a given. And it was a real blessing really, because I think to know what you want to do in life is huge, knowing people that don't know what they want to do. And that, that journey really hard. So yeah, for me, it was like a no-brainer. It was a given. And I just loved all of it. I loved all elements of it. And it seems like professionally you blended the salon work with styling together at the young age, which was something that sort of meant that you were pushing in both directions at the same time. Yeah, it's interesting because when I joined, when I kind of joined my dad and started working, salons in London were considered kind of, or may I say, kind of probably they had this slightly naff connotation in my eyes. They weren't considered kind of particularly cool or highly regarded by the kind of fashion crew. And so I kind of set apart, say, well, I felt that the work my dad was doing, the work that was kind of being churned out was much more kind of fashion related than kind of this kind of stream. Yeah, it was just kind of cooler, I suppose. And I was like, well, how do you link those two together? Because when my dad started, this kind of fashion or session hairdresser's we refer to now didn't exist. You know, if you wanted, if Vogue wanted a hairdresser for a shoot, they'd phone up a salon. Right. So nowadays that world exists completely differently where hairdresses have agents. They just do session work. And it's a it's a so by the time I arrived kind of in the salon, it was very two separate worlds. And I, I suppose my intention was to bring that together. And I felt by becoming a session hairdresser myself, so going to work for like all the magazines at that point, doing runway shows, brought that energy back together. And I think we started to shift the perception of the brand, even in those days, this kind of much more kind of linked to fashion. And interesting enough, I think the industry has done a full circle. You know, it's become, you know, every product brand on the sun, you know, from the early '90s was sponsoring fashion shows. And it became like, it's actually gone full circle again. Because I think there's a bit of a separation happening now, but you know, it's another story. Yeah. So do you was, was that was was that decision? A decision that you made for the business or decision that you made artistically? You just both really. I mean, partly I wanted to carve out, you know, kind of coming into that world as the son of someone who was kind of well known in the industry, you know, there was a bit of like, you know, this can be seen as like neptism and like, and oh, he got an easy break. So so for me, it was like, how do I carve something out where it's my own thing. I enjoyed it. And how do I climb a ladder that isn't, you know, just following exactly my dad's footsteps. When I first became a stylist or I was doing clients, I was, you know, convinced everyone was looking at me and, you know, and judging. And I think there was a fair amount of that, you know, it was, it was hard. I was like really young. I got a lot of like, weirdly press attention really early on. But I didn't really ask for it, just kind of happened. And that was quite uncomfortable. And like, and the same thing happened, you know, as I started to build that kind of session career, I got some really good big breaks into, you know, I started working with Kylie, you know, in the early New Zealand. It was really young. I was like 2021. I was doing, you know, album covers with her. And then I got a massive gig with two huge photographers and Jacelle, the supermodel for a campaign for Misoni. And I was so young, I was like, I probably didn't deserve it. You know, looking back, I was probably too young. I could kind of do the hair. I did do the hair. It all went well. You don't have that. You don't have that kind of like, you know, with, with experience, you build that kind of like chest of, of, of safety nets and confidence and wisdom. And you didn't have that when you were that young. So I was just walking in secure, you know, 21 year old. But that's so interesting. Because to do such massive campaigns or to do such a huge sort of personality and celebrity, you, I was going to say, was it because you were so young, you didn't have the fear, but it sounds like you did. You sounds like you were very tough internally. I was a mess externally. I think it probably red as probably slightly arrogant, which probably kind of a witty. And someone, I remember someone saying like, you need a bit of arrogance. And I think I probably had that sometime probably too much. So yeah. But then you, you kind of get through that. You work through it, right? Yeah. And all of those things build the armory that you sort of take forward as you get old though, experience and ages. Yeah. It's a, it's an important thing. So Herschens has become sort of a very modern experience driven salon. Hasn't it? What was the gap that you saw that others had missed? Well, I think there were a few. I think, I think early on that kind of linked to fashion was really important. That was probably when I, you know, first started. So it's a kind of late 90s early in the wild. It was bridging that gap between kind of, you know, fashion and salon. And I think we did that really successfully. I think the next, the next step was when we, we kind of rebranded and we opened our site in Fitzrovia about 2018. Yeah. 2018. And weirdly, we found this site. We had another site previously in Mayfair, which we were kind of forced out of because the rents were going up hugely. We couldn't afford to stay. We found this site and weirdly, it was, it was kind of too big for us. And, and weirdly, these problems kind of make you rethink the experience. So we were like, well, it's the space is too big, but it's an amazing space. What can we do with it? And, and I think when you're pushed into that situation, you have to kind of innovate and think, well, how do we, how do we change the experience? And what we did was we, we thought we'd had quite a lot of experience, kind of working in other people's stores. So we had, we had a salon and a half of vehicles, we had a space in top shop. So we were aware of kind of how you can exist in another place, in a, in a bigger place where you're part of that, a car in a wheel. And so we thought, well, actually, why don't we, why don't we become that kind of department store and fill it with lots of other things, other experts that do, do things well. So we found great skincare brands, great manicure brands, great eyebrow brands, great cafes. And we almost kind of created this new ecosystem that where we were kind of doing the hair really well. But and then we brought in other people that were doing other services really well. And I think weirdly being thrown into this position where you had a real problem. So you were forced to into like, what do we do now and how do we make it better? And sometimes those problems, out of those problems come great situations. Still a risk though. I mean, do you think it's completely different? - Yeah. - How did you feel about it? Did you have sleepless nights thinking, "God, we're making a huge mistake here. "People aren't ready for this." - I don't think I ever thought we were making a huge mistake. I think it is where the pivotal moment in my life because my wife was pregnant. We were expecting our first baby in March that year. We were due to open in June. And I remember, it was just full on stress. We were looking for, I think, five or six kind of different operators, different brands, filling that space with a challenge, finding those people, getting them on board, running the projects. People didn't quite understand. The idea of it. I don't know, finding things we thought were going to be hard, finding skin care brands was really easy. And so, in the end, we got it done. But I just remember kind of pacing up and down in the hospital morning, my wife gave birth, like shouting at some contractor that couldn't connect the water from outside in time for us to open. It was really stressful. It was probably the most stressful period I've gone through. - Yeah. But, you know, we got it done and we learned a lot. And yeah, I'm here to tell the saying. - Eight years down the line. You sort of look at it now and you kind of think, "What were we worried about?" Let's talk about hair. I grew up in Essex in the '80s and trying to get your hair cut right was absolutely fundamental to going to school and not being in barrest or call that by your mates. But we never wanted to look like we'd made a effort back then. I think things have shifted significantly now. I've got teenage boys 19 and 21 and they're really open about what they're trying to do with their hair styles, their haircuts and all those sorts of things. That feels like there's been a big shift in terms of, I'm talking from a boy's and man's perspective. - Yeah, for sure. I mean, it's interesting. I've got an FU's and Levin. It's interesting. I think they have still, they're all have the same haircuts as this kind of floppy thing. - They are. - It's all in front of them. - My son, Jack, he's forehead hasn't seen sunlight for about four years. - I think that's their version of our curtains. - It is, it must be. But I think what's interesting is that you're right. I think that it's become so much more acceptable to talk about it, be proud of it. There was this, I remember when I went to school, you didn't talk about your hair or how you wanted it to be. It just was. Maybe you felt it, but you didn't talk about it. Now, I think boys, men is much more of a kind of accepted conversation. - Similarly with skincare, I think, as well, which is fantastic to see. - I think in fashion as well, like I think it's much more accepted. I mean, I used to get bullied and take the piss out of like what I was wearing constantly then. But I think now that individuality is slightly more celebrated than it used to be when we were growing up. I mean, that's my sense. - Yeah, well, I've been watching my teenage boy and I feel quite exciting at how well they take care of themselves and their friends compared to what it was back then. But what is it about hair, do you think, that means that we often change our hair at a moment of big up evil? I can remember going to university and shaving all my hair off. And I went to the pub to see my mates that evening. I was going to the union next day. And they were like, and I had pretty long curtains or whatever. In fact, I just come back from traveling. So my hair was really quite long. And I literally, it was number two over, all over. And my mates, what an earth if you done. You look like a thug. And I'm like, yeah, I just wanted to change. And I think it was a reaction to this big change in my life that was about to happen. Why do we do that, do you think? - I don't know. I think there's lots of psychological answers to it. This kind of idea of breaking up and cutting it off and feels like you're letting go. And there's all this kind of psychological stuff that's associated with chopping your hair off and starting afresh. My experience is that it's probably never a great idea to change your hair when you're going through some, or you've just been through some kind of trauma. Because you're looking for your hair to solve or fill that gap. And I think that is never going to work, right? It's never going to fill the gap. It's never going to change how you feel. I think that when people come in and want changes, you've really got to make sure that like the intention of why they're doing it is sound. Because otherwise you're probably walking into a disaster because you can't fix that. - Yeah, once it's gone. You can't stick it back on. - You can't stick it back on. And also if people are looking for, you know, especially after a relationship breakups, if they're looking for it to kind of fill a void, it doesn't fill that void. So you've really, I think the motivation of like having that change is important. Like why are you doing it? - What do you think is the biggest misconception about people who've got great hair? - That it comes to them easily. And that it's just happened on its own. 'Cause nine times out of 10,000. And I spend my life making people look like I haven't been there. (laughing) Because actually great hair is someone that just looks great and effortless. And if you look like you've been sat in a hairdresser's or in a makeup chair for too long, the effortlessness doesn't exist. And so therefore, I mean, I'm not drawn to that type of beauty. Like for me, it has to feel like it's happened. It has to feel like it belongs to that person. So to me, great hair is about, you know, things that, you know, that saying of like someone has to wear the dress, not the dress wear again. It's the same with hair and makeup. I think it has to feel like very much part of them. That's what, you know, represents great hair. It's when there's like a sense of effortlessness around it. - Yeah. There is, I'm questioning, there's a sort of a sense that, if you're feeling like your hair's looking great, or you're feeling strong with your hair, then you get the confidence to go about. One of the, I think that's huge. And weirdly, my daughter's first day at school about to stay, and she was desperate for me to kind of tone her hair, which is like ridiculous, she's eight years old. (laughing) But actually, like the change in her aura was crazy. And I think, because she did it. Because it did it, and she doesn't find it's called easy, it's hard for her. And so anything, I think hair has this ability when it's good and it's behaving that day, it makes you feel great. And that's an enormous power. But it also works the other way because it can have a negative affection. If your hair's not great, it can also do the opposite. So this is why hair is so tangible, and it has such a hold over how, you know that whole idea of a great hair day, or a bad hair day, it can kind of totally change your get up in the morning, you know? - Do you have, I can't imagine you have a bad hair day, because if your hair's misbehaving, you know what to do. - So I kind of blow dry my hair. And if I go away and I haven't got hair dry, I mean, if I'm not in a hot country, I feel undressed. I feel like undressed. And so I don't feel myself. And I think everyone probably has that in some which way, whether you're kind of super into fashion or not, everyone has, it's a bit like clothing, right? Like there's clothes that make you feel a certain way. There was that really good line in Devilwears Prada. - The original one. - The first one, yeah. - Where Merrill Streep turns around to Anne Hathaway, and I think it's before she's kind of got all glamorized or she hasn't been vogue yet. And she talks to her about this like blue jumper that she's wearing. And I think everyone has a reason why they pick a jumper, pick a bag, pick what they're wearing, whether you're like super into fashion or not, the choice of what hair you wear, the choice of your makeup, the choice of your clothes, represents something about who you are. So I think hair has the ability just like clothes do, fashion, conscious or not, to have a huge impact in the character you put out to the world. Let's talk products because you have brought an array of things behind me. I feel like I'm in the salon, it's brilliant. You launched, this is extraordinary. I didn't know this. You launched the first straightening iron in the UK that we'd had in 1999, is that right? - Yeah. - I mean, I've, I've, I've, I've, it feels like straightening iron's have been around for decades and decades and decades, but 1999 with the first. - No, that was decades ago. - Well, I know, yeah, I know. I know. I know, I know. - 1999 only feels like last week. - Yeah, I know. - I know, I know. No, no, no, totally. Well, it's interesting. So I was probably 1920. I was an assistant at that point. I went out to assist lots of different hairdressers. And I, I was assisting a guy on a, on a vogue shoot. And he brought out these really kind of clumpy, heavy brick-looking straightening irons. And he told me to use them on, on one of the models and straighten her hair. And it was at a time where kind of, poker straight iron hair was a kind of thing. You know, it was probably pre, like, all saints, the band. It was pretty like spice girls. It would be around about that time. - So it's late 1990s. - Yeah. And it was about like, there was a lot of people walk around with this kind of like, poker straight hair. Like it was all, it looked ironed. I mean, blatantly was ironed, right? But actually, a salon's, right? Only really had a blow dryer and a brush. So you could, You could never get anything that looked that ironed, right? And the next thing was kind of like, you're looking an argos catalogue, right? And it would be like these 20 pounds rubbish straightening eyes. It never heated out. They didn't get your hair straight. And so I saw this, I was like, wow, I've never seen anything like this, right? You know, there were no brands out there that just sold straightening eyes. It just didn't exist. And so I was like, I've got to find the supplier of this. We've got to sell this. We've got to brand it. Yeah. But it wasn't just the UK, like it was like, I think they were available for certain types of like very textured hair at that point, but it wasn't even in salons. They weren't even like out in salons. So we found the manufacturer, we branded them, it was just before the internet even existed. And we were just selling bucket loads of them. I mean, it just blew up. It was like, it was my first experience at kind of selling a product. And it was pre-intinate who were taking them all to the post office, you know, sack falls of them every day. And it was because it gave people the power to give themselves this straight hair at home, which they, it was like, it was a completely new development. It was a new experience. It was a new way of wearing your hair. And people could do it at home. It was easy. It was super easy. And it was amazing. It was, you know, it went on for kind of two or three years. It went on for longer than we thought. I kept thinking it was just a few years and then we'll disappear. It's going to drive you. And it kept going and it going and going. And then unfortunately, we kind of got booted to the side a bit with the kind of ad with the kind of innovation of ceramic technology, which just kind of launched around, you know, probably 2000, 2001. Right. And then we were kind of, you know, trying to find a supplier to give us a ceramic version. Ceramic version started heating up in 30 seconds or so. And then the cars took probably three or four minutes. Right. And the immediacy of it in the speed. Yeah. And, you know, it had gone from coming. It was quite heavy to, so quite small. And so, you know, it was big learning for me. Yeah. Age kind of like 1920. But it goes back to what you were saying about staying ahead of what's happening around you. Do you know what I mean? And trying to always be at the forefront of innovation. Yeah. We, I think we lost that one. Yeah. And that was kind of a huge learning of like, you know, I was super young. But it was a great success. And then we kind of got, you know, someone else came and took the glory. But, you know, it was, it was great. It was a great experience so early on in my career. Yeah. And in terms of the products that you've launched, because you've gone on launching products and creating products, you've got one that you're most proud of. Yeah. So we've done all our product ourselves. You know, we don't have any outside funding. So we've all been very bootstrapped when we've done product. And one of the things that we want us to do is to make sure that we didn't have, you know, loads and loads of products. You know, I'd seen so many ranges with like 20, 30, 40 products in them. And I always found half of them you don't need, you know, half of them would be, you know, on a shelf, one minute, off a shelf, another minute, you know, discontinued. And, and people and product companies were kind of releasing products for the sake of newness as opposed to actually the fact that people needed products. Yeah. And it was, it really drove me mad. I mean, I'm not a huge like product person in sense of I don't use like five or six products and not into huge routines. I hated this whole idea of, you know, this whole way of selling that the industry had become. And so what we decided to do in 2018, what I think we launched 2019 was we launched one cream with seven uses, which was almost everything cream, which was, it's been, you know, our best seller in our styling range ever ever since. But even since 2019, we've done three styling products. We've done a juge phone, which gives you a bit of juge, our cream and an air dry spray. So we're really tight on what we put out. It's not a, it's not like you've got to have millions of products. Sure. Millions of routines. So that was kind of, how do you, I love the idea of a juge cream. How do you spell juge by the way? ZH 00, S H. I did. Did you have a lot of fun? We had a lot. We had a lot of meetings that went a long time over whether we should call it that, how we should spell it. Addictionary spells it like ZH 00, S H. But lots of people use it with a J. Yeah, went on and on and on. But in the end, I was like, you know, that was the other thing. Like I wanted products that do what they say on the tin. Yeah. I cannot bear when you pick up a product. It's got a really complicated name. You don't understand what it's for, who it's for, how you meant to use it. It drives you mad. It should literally do what it says on the tin and it should deliver. And that's kind of, I think what we're standing against. I just want to make it easy for people to do great hair because I think we've been told by the industry that, you know, getting great hair is difficult. You need hundreds of products. You need lots of routines. You need lots of time. And ultimately, it's a lot of marketing BS. And so we kind of want to strip that away a lot. And I hope, you know, product by product where we're getting there. But I think there's so many similarities between what's driving you and your philosophy on this that me and Joel is like, we want to simplify skincare for men. Because men want it to be simple, effective, fun and perform well. That's all you want. Absolutely. And I get overwhelmed with the complication of some of the ingredients and directions on, and I'm not interested. I like that. I can't. We've got attention spans. Not very long. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Try to sort of make it really simple. Make sure it works. Make sure it's innovative. What do you think is the, have you ever created or innovated or made or brought a product or market that was a bit ahead of its time? And the industry wasn't quite ready for it. I think the iron was that in the early '90s. I mean, it was definitely ready for it. I think, you know, as I said, I think our failing on it was that we weren't able to kind of stay ahead. We were too small. We didn't have the experience at that point. We launched a hairdryer a few years ago, which was super light. It was as heavy as my iPhone, but super powerful. So I think that's been really interesting. But, you know, taking on a lot of the, it's a bit of David and Goliath going on there. You know, there's a lot of players and all those things. Yeah. So we had lots of nasty letters from, you know, the competitions, and like new players on the market. Yeah. But how do you deal with that? That's a good question. We thought about whether we should publish the letters or not. And in the end, we decided we just should kind of ignore it and placate it and make it go away. And there was a lot of talk about whether we should, you know, gain the sympathy of our community by, you know, calling, calling them out. But in the end, you thought, you know, let's just stick to what we do. Let's just try and be the best at what we do. Let them, there's a place for everyone at Thinkum. We're trying to do something quite specific. Can you talk to me a little bit about your experience of working with very high profile clients? I know that you've already mentioned Kylie, Chizelle, Kiran Knight, Victoria Beckham. I mean, you have a sort of a huge range of very well known personalities. What's the approach when you're working with someone like that? And does it differ? Yeah, I think it differs depending on who you're working with and what project you're working on. I mean, everyone's different. I think the one thing that kind of, for me, I'm not hugely kind of flamboyant hairdresser. I'm not, I'm quite reserved. So I think the people that I end up working with probably appreciate that. You know, I don't do, I'm not hugely gushy and so I probably, I, but some people love that and that's probably, so I think it's a lot about connection and, you know, of course it's about the hair you do, but I think it's also about how you are within, you know, when you go into those environments, it's about how you are, you know, with the, because it's not, a lot of the time, it's not just you and them. It's kind of, you know, there's, there's lots of people around and so it's about learning how to be in that space, kind of how loud, how not loud, when to step forward, when to step back. I think that's as much a skill as it is about the hair that you're doing. So I think, yeah, just learning how to be within that space. That's experience, isn't it? I think so. I mean, when I first started, I was just really nervous and I think I think it's interesting you get to like years in and you, you, you've built that experience, your comfort, you, like confidence is, is so important and it doesn't come quickly enough. I remember, I remember what was really famous for talking for once and he was like, he was really hard on me. He was like, he used to shout and scream a lot, but then he used to say at the end of the instance, you know, confidence is really important. You need to keep your confidence up and right. Yeah, well, that's great. You've just been screaming far, far from out. Absolutely disseminating me with your shout. Yeah. Have you ever made any mistakes with very famous people's hair? I hope not. Have you ever gone, oh man, I'm not sure if that's worked. It's been too, I hope not. I mean, I think you're always, I mean, I'm the biggest critique of, yeah, of my work. And so you're always kind of struggling for more, you're always want things to be better. And I think you probably, or I look at my work under a microscope, there are probably other people don't. I mean, we shoot even for the salon, we shoot content the whole time for our social channels and I'm being in content left, right, and centre because, you know, I think you're your own biggest critic, right? And question, but I think there's a sort of that drive now to give the community that's support you that follow you. Interesting bits of what your work is, is really important, isn't it? Do you find that tiring? Do you enjoy that part of it? I do actually, I think kind of making great content is, is something to step back and and and feel proud of. Yeah, I do enjoy it, but I've changed how I work, so I'm not kind of behind the chair as much anymore. I think I've been able, as I've got older, to be more considered about how I spend my time, what my value is, where I can put myself that's bringing the most value. So if I decide to kind of have an afternoon of creating content, I can take my time over it. We can plan it well and hopefully you can build something that you're actually really proud of. Did you make it? Have you made any mistakes along the way that you think that could have been fatal? But actually, because we learn from our mistakes, obviously, but I'm sort of trying to dig into, because we have lots of listeners that are setting up their own businesses and love hearing from experienced business owners and creators that have gone, if I could do this again, I would do it like this. I think that my probably biggest learning, I'm not sure we've necessarily had anything that I thought should be fatal, but I think my biggest learning is, so now I've got to a point where I'm hiring people to take on roles so that I can be super focused on the things that I want to grow on. I wish I'd known that or been able to afford to do that for a few years ago. And I think that would help us drive growth quicker and just not try and do too many things too quickly. So not try and do too many products, not try and do too many retail channels, or, you know, like, I think sticking to D to C's been really helpful for us, but there's lots of things come along the way that attempting that you think, oh, won't we do this? I won't do that. And then we spend a lot of time pondering it and actually all you've done is just distract from what you should have been focusing on. So I think that kind of hyper focus is really important. I have a team of very talented women who are very excited to have you here today, because they've all got hair appointments coming up. I've got a lot of listeners who will be keen to get your advice. What do you think of the key things for people to think about if they're when it comes to sort of having their hair done or thinking about a change? Do research. Like, I think it's great when people come in with pictures. I would. Like, I love it when people come in and show me like a Pinterest board. I think that is so helpful. Like, if you think back, like, 20, 30 years ago, right? You know, none of that existed. No. And people would often bring like a scrap of a magazine scrap, right? And you would be able to kind of half the time would be like a celebrity. And then you put your finger over the person's face and go still like the haircut. And most of the time they'd say no. Right? And so now you have this like a mate, you know, social media, we've got like Pinterest and Instagram, like just like screenshots, many pictures is possible because that helps you create a conversation. And so, you know, your head just can go, what do you like about that as opposed to that one? And because I think you should spend as much time as in a concentration as you should do in a haircut because disseminating what it is you love, what it is you hate is so important in making that hair appointment a success. And so many people don't like take full advantage of that. I think it's really important. So look, what's next for the brand? What's next for the business? So we've got, we've got a new launch coming up any minute with our new straightening iron. So after 30 hits is launching in the beginning of May. What will these new straightening iron do? So I think when we first launched straightening iron, they were very much, you know, as I said before, it was very much about like a certain look. I think straightening iron's now aren't just called straightening iron's that we've called as the great iron. In that it's a, it's a styler. It can produce curls, it can produce waves, it can produce straight hair. You can use it just for, for pieces of your hair and not all your hair. So I suppose it's become a really reliant styler, just like a great hairdryer is. And so the ability to do lots of different things with one tool. I mean, I love our products to be multitasking. And so for me, the great iron is a great way of using it for lots of different ways to create lots of different things. I mean, the iron's got kind of beveled edges on them. So they're really good for kind of creating, movement in the hair as opposed to just making your hair straight. And they're, you know, dual-voltage, they work all over the world and they're a great travel accessory. So excited about that. That's the big one. And if you were to suggest, like I mean, you've got fantastic skin, you work in that world. What I thought from this, from my perspective, from Joel and my perspective, or lots of people listening that maybe are setting up businesses, what do you think of the key things that everyone should be thinking about if they are trying to launch their own business and their own brand? I think your point of difference. I mean, I think it's interesting because when we started making product, I think we were very clear around what we didn't want to do. Like so, and I think that's a good starting point. Our idea that we make hair, great hair easy for people is something that's come out of the work we have done over the past few years. We necessarily start with that line, but it was deeply embedded somewhere in our subconscious. So I think start with a list of things that you don't want to be, because actually that will lead to the things that you do want, that you do want to be. I think trying to create that point of difference, why are you different from other people, and not just joining a bandwagon is ultimately the thing that will give you the biggest chance of survival and success. I love that. Start with the things you don't want to be, and then work back from there. Brilliant. Thank you so much for joining us, Luke. Thanks for having me. It's been absolutely fascinating. Do head over to our Patreon for more from Luke. He's going to be giving his advice for your next hair cut. There, make sure you go to patreon.com/thebusinessmen to sign up. It's completely free to subscribe. There's loads of videos and extra insight from all the amazing guests that we've had on the show. And do remember to subscribe on YouTube. You can see how amazing Luke's hair is. Wherever you get your podcast, I'm going to be on my own again, flying solo, because Joel is still off enjoying his new baby. But I look forward to joining you then, when we talk to more amazing guests on The Businessmen.