10 things your stylist wishes you knew.

Ok guys, here it is, a tell all from an insider perspective on all the things your stylist wishes they could tell you! We love you, we wouldn't be here without you, and we want to deliver the best result possible to you, but we need to get on the same page. Read on for our top 10 list, and know it was written with love :)

1) A lot, if not most of the inspiration pictures you find on Pinterest or Instagram have been photoshopped, or heavily filtered. If there is one thing that is rampant on social media, it's only showing 'the highlight reel' and a lot of the time, that means doctored images. Whether completely photoshopped or just excessively filtered, these pictures DO NOT always represent what is possible for the hair. Please keep this in mind when you show your stylist something that may not be realistic, not just for you, but for anyone.

2) Timing is everything in this industry! Color is time sensitive, and we schedule our days in very specific ways to ensure that every single client has enough time to achieve exactly what they want out of every appointment. When you arrive late, even by 5 minutes, the timing is thrown off. If there's one thing we as stylists can do, it's make it work, but it is so important for you to be on time to your appointment so that you, and all the clients following you, won't have to wait for us to catch up with all the collected "I'll just be 5 minutes late" of the day.

3) Purchase your products in the salon! All of our retail sales go directly to our education fund, so when you purchase your products here, you are essentially ensuring better services for yourself in the future! We know you can buy things on Amazon, but you don't know exactly where those products are coming from, or if they are even the product it's promising! Don't believe us? Google it. Plenty of high end product scams happen every day not only on the internet, but in grocery and big box stores. Suppliers replacing the product with inexpensive shampoo and conditioner, but charging you for the brand name. So when you buy products here, not only are you helping us in our careers towards becoming the best stylists we can be, but we can also guarantee the authenticity and performance of each and every product in the salon!

4) Not all hair is the same. This seems like common knowledge, right? Unfortunately, that's not always the case. Trust us, we want to give you the hair of your dreams in one visit...I mean we would LOVE that. But the sad truth is, that is not always the reality, and some things are flat out impossible for certain hair types, or may take a long journey to achieve. You cannot go, under ANY circumstances, from blue black to platinum blonde in one day. "But the Kardashians do it!" W-I-G-S honey. Those are all wigs. We will always chose the integrity of your hair and it's health, and if something isn't possible for your hair at the time of your appointment, we aren't saying no just to dampen your day. It's because we love you! And we love your hair! And more than anything, we don't want it to break clean off and leave you in a complete mess.

5) The prices reflect not only the service and product used, but our individual knowledge, years of continued education and experience, and skill. Hair can be an expensive service, there is no denying that. But you get what you pay for! Our prices are what they are, because we have dedicated our lives to bettering ourselves at our craft, learning the science and technology of what we do so we can use only the best products, and the skill set that we have acquired over many years. Also, more is more. The more intricate the service, the higher the price is going to be.

6) Trust the desk! They are there for a reason, and they have been trained to make your appointments. When you interrupt your stylist, just to make an appointment, you are not only throwing the timing of the day off for something that can be handled by reception, but also imagine yourself as the client in the chair. You want your one on one time with your stylist, and here they are being pulled away to do something that you did either online or with the appropriate member of staff. We want you to get in just as much as you do, and we will do everything we can to make sure that happens. But 99% of the time, if the desk tells you there isn't any availability to be squeezed in, your stylist will tell you the same. We aren't saying no just to say it, again we love you and want you to be happy. But sometimes, the timing doesn't line up. You can avoid this by pre-booking your appointment! (which should be #7, but we're gonna piggyback off #6) We recommend that you pre book your appointments for a reason, and that is because we fill up quickly. The time and date you want may not be available, but may have been if you had pre booked! Take that into consideration

7) Understand that office hours - just as they exist in the salon- exist for us individually. Our home time is our home time. We would encourage you to call the salon, or create an online profile so you can make, reschedule, cancel, or check appointments at your convenience. We spend 5 days a week in the salon- and we love it! But we want our 2 days off to be just that, days off! If it is an emergency of course you can always reach out. Otherwise, our online system is an awesome and convenient app that allows you to do everything you need to do from the comfort of your home!

8) Know your service! All services require different timing, so when you call to make your appointments, its important that you include all the details of what you would like. For example, if you ask for a color and a cut, we assume that means a retouch. This service takes 1.5 hours total, and that is what is set aside. If you come in and then tell the stylist, "when I said color, I meant all over root color and all over highlights and I need a conditioning treatment", you are asking to fit a 3.5 hour service into a 1.5 hour slot. Don't know exactly what you need? Don't worry! Just be up front when booking the appointment, for example "I definitely need a root touch up and I think I'm going to need something else color-wise like maybe highlights or something like that" and trust me, that information is enough for us to allot the proper amount of time for you!

9) If your stylist isn't here, or not available, we would rather you stay in the salon with the staff and products we know, love, and trust, then go somewhere else for one appointment. We work together, and we love working together. We bounce ideas off each other, help each other, praise each other's work, learn and grown from each other. We are a family and a team and if one of us isn't available for you, we would love for you to see another one of us. We take a lot of pride in our salon home and what we offer, and all of us stand 100% behind each other's work. If you go somewhere else, that uses different products and different techniques, you are taking a risk. One that A) you will be very dissatisfied with the result and B) the next time you are here, your appointment may have to turn into a lengthy and expensive color correction. Have a specific style of cutting you like? Ask us who cuts most like we do! We won't sugar coat it or be vague, we will tell you! We want you to remain happy always, and when you stay here with the team and products we know and trust, we can guarantee that you will.

10) We are human, just like you. We have bad days, sad days, the whole 9. We are always striving to be on our 1000% A game every single day, but sometimes that doesn't happen. Emergencies come up, sickness takes over, life throws us things out of left field. We want to be here everyday, but sometimes it isn't possible. Please understand that if we have to reschedule you, or move things around, it is because it is our only option. We know it may not be convenient to you, it isn't for us either. But we will do every single thing in our power to make sure you are happy and taken care of. Kindness can be in short supply in the world at times, and we want our salon to always be a place of refuge from a high stress, often un-kind world. If we all work together to keep it this way, it always will be!

and a # 11 just for fun:

We appreciate you so much. Really, we do. We wouldn't get to be here doing what we love every day without you so thank you for trusting us, not only with your hair, but a lot of times, details of your lives. We respect being invited in as trusted confidants, and we cherish the bond we have with you. So thank you, from all of us in the LMS family, to you.