Last year I turned down a speaking engagement at IBS New York because I regrettably chose to work with the immoral team at America’s Beauty Show, ChicagoABS. If you’re inclined,  you can read about the shadiness here. And if you’re interested, no, Paul Dykstra never did make good on his offers of repayment,  with the final tally at $1100 CDN in fees and several frustrating hours dealing with the cancellations. If you are an independent artist and are tempted to work with ABS, I’d think twice. They seem to be fine with sponsored educators though. I’ve had incredible treatment by IBS and by ISSE and I feel they are definitely better options.

But enough negative.

I’m super excited to be back in New York in just a few weeks. I’m fine tuning my program as they have only given me 75 minutes and I always go long at 2 hours. I just can’t stop talking. A friend sat in on my seminar recently and he thought I should try to streamline it as I’m really doing 3 or 4 different seminars in this one session. I agree with him but it’s hard to remove content when I have so much new content regarding the challenges I face in my own current situation.

I’ve always been a full-disclosure kind of speaker  so you will get everything,  warts and all, from my sessions, just like you do here in my blogs. I believe that by sharing the realities of challenges salon owners face, people realize they are not alone. Too many speakers sugar-coat our business and that doesn’t help anyone.

I’ll be doing the same session each of the two days so I hope to make some new friends this year. Both my New York sessions were standing room only in 2015 and the sessions I did just a few months ago in Alberta were so ridiculously packed that people were sitting on the floor and standing in the hallway as well for 2 hours.

I’m just like you. I have my challenges, and sometimes I feel like these sessions are as much therapy for me as they are inspiring (hopefully) to you. I may not solve your problems and I may not give you exactly what you are looking for. But I guarantee you will leave my seminar with a few solid ideas that you can immediately implement in to your salon.