Pamela Cooley

I really think it's hard work. You have to go into your day thinking, what do you want to achieve today, and how am I going to get there? I think that you have to have pivotal people in your life that see what you want to do. I had territory leaders when I was just starting out that saw that I was a good leader and a good manager, and nominated me for the territory leader role when it came about. In order for you to be successful, you always have to talk about what goals you want in your career, and then you have to make a plan to make that happen. I always put in my leader's ear what I wanted - whether it was managing higher volume stores or becoming a territory leader myself. I would ask, what do I need to do to get there? I always found those goals to get to the next step. I had to be driven, and I had to set my goals, where do I want to see my next step, and how do I get there? Every time I was in a position and my team was successful, the stylists were successful, the managers were successful, it gave me that drive to keep going. I found I am good at helping people be successful and reaching their career goals so I kept asking myself, how can I do that on a larger scale? How can I empower more people to take this career another step?

The best career advice I've ever received would probably be to always follow your gut and your heart. Do everything that makes your heart happy, and you'll always find yourself successful and to lead by example.

Honestly, developing younger women or younger stylists in this industry is probably the hardest thing. I think that work ethic has changed a lot. Developing people to understand that you have to work for your clientele is challenging. It's not an industry where you just sit in your chair and people just come in. You have to market yourself, you have to build your online platform, you have to take pictures of your work, you have to put yourself out there, you have to be vocal. Unfortunately, COVID did some horrible things where people lost that ability to communicate and talk to each other. I think we come into that challenge where we've lost a lot of the communication skills and being able to put yourself out there and talk to people and build that communication piece. There's just so many different competitors out there, and then there's just that communication barrier, and that learning that you have to build it, you have to put yourself out there, you have to ask for recommendations, you have to ask for referrals and you have to build that clientele. I think that's honestly the hardest thing.

Honestly, it's integrity. That's the biggest thing. I think that you cannot get in a leadership career without integrity and honesty. You have to build a team that respects you and believes in what you're saying every day, to get behind you. You have to have integrity into what you're telling your team, and they have to believe in you. Those are the values that I take every day with me.