Surface Unscripted
Honest & authentic beauty industry conversations where innovation, inspiration, & education rise to the surface.
A Surface Hair podcast hosted by Global Ambassador Sean Carlson & Salon Growth Manager Shawna Shelton.
Learn more about Surface at Surfacehair.com
Surface Unscripted
'WHY' Surface: Story Series, Part 1
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Surface Founder Wayne Grund shares 'WHY' Surface Hair. A deep dive into how the brand came to be & our commitment to respecting personal health & the earth. Watch with video on our tube channel at https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=channel_header&redir_token=QUZZTVljSEF2SC1lY1hlU2lDdVBxei1jMVltbXxBTl9pYzRmT1ktUlAtUHM3RERpc2hWbXcwTWVVLUN6VWRzU19pNlFlZmR0eGtvSkhsMmRaTEtEQUNqU0hodUctWk9UbWFuaDN0RHppTGktTEhXMmVRamppQ0Q5TnEwT2s2TFVo&q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.surfacehair.com
Friends, welcome to Surface Unscripted. I'm your co-host, Sean Carlson, your global ambassador, and I am here with Miss Shauna Shelton, your other co-host. Shauna, how are you today? I'm good. I am so excited today. Well, we have the special guest, uh, very special guest for us today. You know, there are people who transform industries, Shauna, and there are people who transform others' lives. And there are some people who can do both extremely effectively. And today we have the honor of having a wonderful conversation with multiple-time Canadian hairdresser nominee, salon of the year nominee, fifth generation hairdresser, chief inspirational officer and founder of Surface Hair, Mr. Wayne Grund. Thank you, sir, for joining us today. Absolutely my pleasure, my friends. Here it is, Shauna. We're getting right into it. Uh, we have some unbelievable topics to discuss. So, there he was, Shauna. Wayne, you are getting ready for semi-retirement. Instead, you decide to go all in with surface hair. Why?
SPEAKER_00Well, before the why, um, it was 2008, and I wasn't 50 years old, I was 50 years young.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And um the industry had been so great to myself and my family. Uh, as I'll share a little bit more in depth on it, but I had traveled the world presenting on all five continents, racking up over four million miles in education. Um, our salon was thriving. Uh, my daughter had entered the the industry as the next generation. I had first grandchildren, and the grandchildren gave us a divine ahave. You know, it was time to put away the suitcase a little bit and really enjoy life. So as we were contemplating semi-retirement and appreciating uh life, I started studying personal health. Like, what a time to get healthy. You're half a century young, and you decide you're going to get healthy. And it was a sense of urgency that hit like this that we started thinking about what was to become surface, was we discovered the potential toxins in our industry. And at that time, I'd been behind the chair already for 37 years. But I thought about the future generations that were coming into that. So without thinking about starting a company, I talked to Deborah and I said, you know, my wife, as many of you know, is, you know, I'd like to know more about this. So we invested in meeting with organic chemists. And immediately alarm bells went off as they asked me questions. One question I was asked, the one chemist said, How many stylists do you know with respiratory issues? And I was like, Oh my goodness, there's a lot. And I kind of laughed because his next question was, How many blow dries have you ever done? A couple hundred thousand over that many years. And he said, You do realize that you've inhaled everything that's evaporated in front of you. The next question that he asked was, How many people do you know that have been driven from their profession because of contact dermatitis, allergic reactions? How many hairdressers do you know that struggle with chronic fatigue? Yeah, my thought was as well, you know, it's just contact overload because we're with people all the time. And I found that a lot of chemists don't have a real sense of humor and they they didn't like my approach to it. And they said, you know, Wayne, if you want the answer for this, you really need to be serious with it. And he said, one of the things that people don't realize in chronic fatigue is the primary protein that you use in all your products is wheat, isn't it? I said, yes, it is. It's an effective protein for rebuilding the hair, and it's an effective protein that you can manipulate to create a polymer with other great ingredients. And he says, but do you realize there's a very high level of gluten intolerance out there? I said, Well, I'm not going to drink my shampoo. He goes, Yeah, there's some of your your humor again, and it's not funny because it's cross-contamination. It's the developments and styling products when you come to inhaling that evaporate in front of you. It's cross-contamination for any time that you're touching and such. So my next statement to him was, you know, there are organic products that are I'm aware of that are out there. And I've researched some of the ingredients as they shared, but they just don't perform. And the answer that I got across the board was, well, first of all, the majority of these weren't developed driven by a hairdresser. The second thing was, and and this was not in the this was 2008, remember, is advances over the last eight years have come so far from where they've been in the decades prior when the people first started to put their toe in the water with that. Anyway, my thought was somebody's got to do something about this. I can't wait until somebody does something about this. And I got in the car and I was driving back to the airport to drop the rented car off and come back home again. And as corny as this sounds, the song came on the radio, The Man in the Mirror. And it hit me that everybody is somebody. And to take the short story and condense it, my wife and I invested everything we had. We mortgaged our home, we mortgaged our lake house, and the surface journey began. Is my wife Deborah, our son Nathan, his wife Becca, our daughter Jackie, her husband Clay. We brought Surface to life in 2008 by putting everything we had on the line financially. We were high performance, green and clean before green and clean were even cool. Truly, a Surface is a hairdresser-driven company, by hairdressers for hairdressers. And the most amazing thing is through that journey, and I'll share a little bit more about the why and the how as we get together. But we're here where we are today because Sean and Shauna, people like yourself, our immediate family somehow attracted others in the industry who would share our belief in developing products that completely respected personal health and the earth, and would also share a commitment and the belief that hairdressers and beauty professionals deserved to earn an above-average income. And while they did that, every product they would use would completely respect their personal health and the earth. And it was our complete core team, our education team, who believed in us and believed in our vision, which brought it to reality. And our belief is that nature provides the best ingredients for hair care, hair color, and skincare. And we are committed to providing the products, education, and business support necessary for professionals to thrive with continuous keyword continuous growth in serving salon guests with service and hair care products, ultimately growing salon service and retail sales. And one of the words that I ended there with is sales. To be able to coach stylus in salons, the importance of really what selling is about is to be about educating, educating people how they can be healthier, how can they be more beautiful, how can they feel better? And that education is selling the belief process behind it. One of the real advantages that I believe, and I will pause for questions in just a second with this, is we were very fortunate for my foundation. And my foundation went way back to 1975 in my dad's barbershop. Um that I grew to become a salon owner from that, a stylist from that. Our salon visions has been in the top 10 in Canada three times in a row. We've been retail salon of the year by modern salon. Um I became the industry leader in education, as I shared right down already. But that led me to being a consultant for a major manufacturer. And at that time, I consulted on their sales development, I consulted on education programs, and I consulted on innovation and product development. One of the reasons that they loved me is because how I would push the chemist. Because I didn't know what couldn't be done, I know what wanted to be done. And many of the chemists would go back, can't be done. And I went, well, that's not the answer I'm looking for. So when I brought that history with me and those relationships with me, when I met with our chemists, I knew what we needed to be able to do that. So right from my dad's barber shop, but it was before 1975, that's when I did my first haircut. But you know, I was cleaning the ashtrays, that tells you how long ago it was in the early 70s in his salon when they still had ashtrays, cleaning the mirror, sweeping the hair, and I saw my dad's commitment to excellence at that point. And the story of the man in the mirror by Michael Jackson reflects black back today because I remember one of the things that my dad always did is after he did every single haircut. And back then, we would have three sets of clippers because the clippers would get so hot, because you did six haircuts an hour, man. It was so easy to do those fades and the flat tops. Awesome. Loved it. Is every haircut, six times in an hour, my dad would pick up his mirror, he'd mist it with water, he'd polish it, and he'd show his client, guests, as you'll hear, and we interact and call that look. That was part of his habit. And I learned from that it was the little things, and little things don't mean a lot, they mean everything. You know, my dad would wear a white smock, as the barbers did, which was totally pressed before he went to work. Every single cape, when it was washed at home and came back to the barber shop, was pressed before that. And I believe that both of you remember pressing the table drapes that we put on tables at educational events.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we talk about culture. What culture is is a word unless you have the actions to provide it. Um I I do want to go into the importance of the why and the how in development of product, but I'll do a little bit of a timeout here in case you might have any questions off or comments off the top of your head.
SPEAKER_01Shauna, take it away.
SPEAKER_03I don't have a question, but I just have to say one of the things that I've learned about you, Wayne, is you're so intentional with everything that you do. So I just want to say thank you. I'm excited to hear more about the what once you got into development. But hearing your story is so inspirational because you didn't start from ground zero. When you went all in, you already had years and decades of experience. But that commitment to excellence started in that barbershop when you were how old?
SPEAKER_00Well, when I first started waxing, and this is tell you generations, is that you used to have to strip the wax off of a floor and then rewax it. It didn't come finish with you now. I was seven when I was doing that in my dad's barbershop.
SPEAKER_03Wow, seven.
SPEAKER_00And after school, I would be there, and you know, that was when I would clean the asterisk and sweep the hair. And when I was 13 is when I did my first haircut, and my dad was my first client because he was tired of how the other guy in town was cutting his hair. I think very small, a very small town, which I appreciate so much. And you what you learn in life is what you're ready to learn. So, yes, everybody starts somewhere. And when I left high school at 17 to come to Saskatoon, I had $80 in an eight-track stereo.
SPEAKER_02Wow.
SPEAKER_01Everything you needed, Wayne.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. You know, it it really is. And I think that's so important. And one of the messages that I did another podcast a while ago, and one of the mentions was, you know, living within your means. And, you know, when we developed Surface, we went way beyond our means. We put a lot of risk on it, but I was never scared. Because I knew that it was going to be successful because it was something that the industry needed and they would appreciate it. They just had to become aware of it.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01You know, Wayne, I I was hoping you could uh just briefly expand. Um you know, when you when you think about that moment when you were in that vehicle and that song came on and you're you realize, okay, everybody is somebody, and I'm somebody and something needs to be done. Can you just kind of reflect back a little bit on you know that feeling that you got? What did it prompt you to do? And so I would ask within the the first 24 hours of that experience, what do you feel was a very important step you took in, you know, the next steps of surface?
SPEAKER_00Uh two steps, Sean. Um the very first one was speaking with Deborah and sharing with her what that vision was, and she's always supported me in everything that we've done. And alongside of that, talking to all of our family members if they wanted it. But within that exact same time, I knew there was so much I didn't know.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00And so what I had to know was what I didn't know. Does that make sense?
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00And and as I had worked as a consultant and an advisor in development, I'd never been at the core of it. So I knew some people that I needed to speak to, so I identified them, and that was the core part of the chemistry. And the chemistry then led us on to the actual development part of it. And that part of it came from building the philosophy to it. So those are the immediate things, is and that's I think that's important in life in general, is to know that there's things that you don't know. So that makes you want to find out, right? But build a foundation. And with the foundation, uh, we sat around our table, my my family and I, we said, well, there's three words, and I'm believers that I'm a firm believer in three points or five, because you can remember that. And as you see, our our logo today is the same as it was back day one. It's surface, and the three words underneath it are hair, health, and art. So what we would bring to life would be high performance, continuous innovation as the world changed around us. We would be inclusive of all hair and scalp needs. With health, we would continue to respect personal health in the earth, but take it one step farther: a commitment to be hypoallergenic and also a healthy business. So, our belief that if salons were going to believe in us, our vision, our product, our support for them needed to be free, marketing support to a degree. You've got some education that you pay for, but on a continuous basis to provide the business support programs. And the word art is education programs between the cutting, the color, the texture, the finish, and ultimately business. You know, our daymaker program, a process of training people how to engage with a guest from the moment they walk into the door, all of the key touch points, which we have term as this five steps to financial success, right to rebooking that individual. That's it. So it's combining the, and those are soft skills that we talk about. Our day maker program, our five keys of success, we're going to drive the product. So if we could be the resource for salon success, they would trust in us and become our committed focus partner for their future success. So it's completely a synergistic team. And our 360-degree full circle philosophy is innovation of hair care products, salon education, salon business and support, and a rewards program giving back to the world around us, right back to innovation. So it's a continuous circle. And the surface tree really encompasses that. You know, quite often I'm asked is you know, where does that the tree come from with that one? And the tree is that same table we sat around with my family, is the tree really represents the belief that everything strong and lasting in life comes from a strong surface of foundation. And from that surface, life grows as does a tree. And the tree needs nutrients, it needs water, which is the education, to ultimately continue to produce the beauty of it, which for us is the product.
SPEAKER_01You know, it it can start off really strong and have great, you know, great roots and great foundation. But if we don't continue to, you know, feed that soil and you know, remove the weeds that tend to want to kind of, you know, take over, uh you know, we run into troubles with our garden, so to speak. And what I love is your intentionality uh within the surface family as our CIO chief inspirational officer is to continue to help us look for opportunities to of how we just do that. We you know fertilize our um our soil and we make sure that the roots are stronger and stronger and we uh we take care of the people within the organization, right? And um and create that firm foundation to grow from. So uh as Shauna said earlier, uh, you know, there's a lot of gratitude that we have um for your uh commitment to that over the years. And so, you know, I'm really excited to hear from you a little bit, you know, of why why Surface originated as you shared, and then, you know, as you transition now into a little bit more of, you know, how um that really came to life over, you know, over since 2008. Um, yeah, how can you how can you share that with us now?
SPEAKER_00What I saw in my first 50 years, I'm probably not the first 15, but after that, is so many people would talk about a mission statement and write all these fancy words and write their statements, but there was no action to support it. So what we needed was a solid action plan. The other thing I started to see happening even back then, and it's even more so now, and it saddens me, is people tell you what their product isn't, what it's free of, rather than tell you what it is. So we wrote our commitment as to what we would be free of, but we also committed ourselves to educate the salons what we were then. And that education program, and I'll share a little more on it after the new beginnings, which many of you have been to them, is in our first uh uh 10 years with it, we did 111 of them. We had 10,000 hairdressers sit in chairs with us for three days in the majority of those programs, and really engage and learn. Um, what did that happen? They wowed their guests, their service sales went through the roof, their retail sales went through the roof. The reason was they developed a belief and an understanding in the product. You know, we shared them with them where we had a natural preservative system led by rose ether and natural minerals that would replace any parabens. And ultimately, they needed to know that parabens had been found in the tissue of over 80% of breast cancer patients. So read the ingredients of it. We would work with natural cleansers that would always leave the hair at a pH of 4.5 to 5.5. But we debunked some of the theories that that product actually would perform best at that pH. Because if your shampoo was 4.5, your cleansers needed to be too aggressive to cleanse it through. People were unaware that the water you drink in your city is an average pH of 8.5. And what's the last thing you rinse through your hair? Water then. So the only way that you can maintain 4.5 to 5.5 is the cationic bonding of protein that had would stabilize the hair back to 4.5 to 5.5. Okay, I don't want to get too geeky on you. We identified that we would work all with vegan proteins that would be gluten-free. Our styling products would all be based with sugars, corn, vegetable starches. Our key oils would be babasu, palm, flaxseed, argon. We'd work with natural aromas, natural color, essential microminerals, and botanical extracts. The next one is yes, we would be free of parabens, free of sulfate, free of gluten, free of animal protein, free of PVPVA plastics, which most people don't talk about because they've not been able to manufacture styling products based totally on sugars and starches. Free of phthalates. Um PETA came to us to see if we would sponsor and connect with them so that now we could have that little logo would be cruelty-free and vegan. Our packaging is designed for complete protection of the organic ingredients, to provide UV and oxidization barriers, to be ergonomically correct, to be held in the average hairdresser's hand rather than trying to hold this odd-shaped rectangle with that. To be have a soft touch to it so it doesn't slip from your hand when it's wet. To have each of the categories color-coded as a you can walk in and see what you're meeting for the specific need. They would be environmentally fable stable plastics that were fully recyclable. What did that lead us to? Our products for the last 15 years have been recognized by readers' choice as their top choice in the various categories, as well as editor's choice. The ingredients that started it all to get a little geeky on you, every product has two categories, a driver and an active. The drivers take it in. We work with babasu oil as the driver. It's an organic penetrating oil that melts at body temperature. It also provides weightless moisture and it's antioxidant rich. So anytime that you see a product, the stuff that does the work on it gets carried in by babasu oil. What we replaced all wheat with to be gluten-free is amaranth protein. The Natural Academy of Sciences named it as the top protein, and it also is a gluten-free, flexible protein. So you can never over-proteinize the hair. It doesn't layer on and over-harden the hair. It has an atomic weight of 200, 750, and 2000, so it works at all areas of damage within the hair. And we've also been able to form it as a cationic bond builder. I think one of the most underlooked products, as you'll see we chock with Trinity in just a bit, is the bond builder. It is absolutely amazing to it. Okay, 30 seconds on cleansers. Not all sulfate-free shampoos are created equal. At one time, sulfate-free was a buzzword. Our cleansers are derived from babasu, coconut, and palm oil, all sustainably harvested and registered by the WWF and BASF as being sustainably harvested on organically derived. All of the products, and I'll take the bottle again and look at the back, you'll see a little symbol that says the Color Vita complex. They provide a ceramide NP ultraviolet shield and antioxidants. So you are getting color protection in every product. TrinityWes have the most of it, but it's across the board. I think it's about time we meet the family, but I'll do a quick pause in case you've got any question on all the geek stuff I just threw at you.
SPEAKER_01Wayne, I had one uh just looking for you to sh kind of share your vision there a little bit more. You made a point about um you know amaranth protein and it's a it's its choice of gluten-free support in our industry. And I just want to just kind of pause for a minute because that's such a major achievement that I think can kind of get overlooked a little bit. So can you can you just give us a couple more hot tips on you know your thoughts? And this is an absolute must for the surface family, and here's a couple of reasons why.
SPEAKER_00Well, a couple of musts for amaranth. Number one is also its ultimate ability to provide UV protection. One of the things that's known as is the never fading flower. And if you ever go to Epcot Center, you'll still see, and so well, that one research thing you get to drive through the gardens of is they study amaranth because it has a natural resistance to UV. The other thing is amaranth is a flexible protein that you can never over-kerotinize the hair with. And the majority of studies with it really came through the food industry. And then when we took it and we worked with it in hydrolyzing it into hair care, um, it was a major breakthrough. Because the other part of it is how it could be driven in by the melting of Babasu oil as a driver. So hopefully I answered your question that way. But you're right, people don't appreciate that science breakthrough enough with it, and realize the importance of, okay, if you feel really whipped at the end of the day Friday, what can you do in choosing the products you use to help reduce that?
SPEAKER_01Little things don't mean a lot. They mean everything. You're absolutely right, Wayne. Thanks for joining us for part one of this four part series, The Story of Surface. The next episode, Wayne dives into the Surface families and why each specific family was brought to life.