Building Community and Connection in Business with Vanessa Yakobson

**SPEAKER_1** (0:03)
The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection, and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

**Stephen** (0:17)
Now, the reason I asked Vanessa was yesterday, we just finished our podcast with a guest in studio, and it was like an hour and a half long interview. And then afterward, he's like, where's the tequila? And I was like unprepared. So, I think I need to ask guests beforehand if there's a particular adult beverage they enjoy. So, I'm prepared to the podcast next time. Hey, everyone, welcome back to the show. I'm Stephen the Cache joined by Mike Lusky, and I just cut you off, Vanessa, but it's all right, we'll get the show rolling here. Today, we're diving into the critical role of communication and connection in business.
Strong businesses are built on trust, shared values, and creating real connections, not just with customers, but with their teams and communities. Mike, tell us a bit more about our guest today.

**Mike Lusky** (1:07)
Yeah, I'm super excited, Stephen, thank you for that. So, our guest today is Vanessa Yakobson. She is the founder and CEO of Blo Blow Dry Bar. That's North America's original Blo Dry Bar, and the world's leading Blo Dry Bar franchise. So, we're going to talk a lot about franchises today and learn a little bit about their culture. And as well, Vanessa has been instrumental in scaling the Blo Blow Dry Bar brand, leading a network of over 140 franchise locations across two countries. Beyond business success, you'll want to note this, Vanessa is passionate about creating a vibrant community within her franchise network, empowering teams and also fostering authentic connections with clients, which we know is super important to our followers. And we talk a lot about that on the show. So, Vanessa, we are so happy to have you here with us today. Welcome to the show.

**Vanessa Yakobson** (2:04)
Thank you so much. I'm excited to be here. This is such an interesting topic.

**Mike Lusky** (2:09)
We love it.
Can never talk enough about it. So maybe to kick us off, Vanessa, can you share what inspired your journey with Blo Blow Dry Bar? And how community plays a role in your leadership approach?

**Vanessa Yakobson** (2:24)
Sure. So first of all, I have to give credit where credit is due. I didn't start our company, nor did I start Blo Blow Dry Bar. So our company actually started back in 2001, when my husband and I took our oldest son for his first haircut at the time. And we went to a place that was supposed to be the cool place in Toronto. It was yucky. My husband said, we can do better. And the next thing I knew, he had started a kid's hair salon chain. Our business partner, Paul Spindler, came in to help run that day to day. And this continued on for several years. And then in 2007, Blo Blow Dry Bar was founded by a mother daughter team in Vancouver, Canada. We discovered it two years later in 2009 We acquired the company and turned it into a franchise.
I only joined our team at Blo 10 years ago. So prior to that, I was working in the nonprofit sector for about 11 years. Prior to that, had done my early career years in marketing. So I've had a little bit of a different journey, but I'm so thrilled to have been able to come into our company 10 years ago and really had a vision of how it could grow and what we needed to do. And it's been a fun journey so far. And there's lots more ahead for us.

**Stephen** (3:44)
Yeah, let's talk about that a little bit. So you've got locations across multiple regions and countries. How do you foster that sense of community and connection among your franchisees, especially?

**Vanessa Yakobson** (3:58)
Yeah.

**Stephen** (3:59)
Such a, you start at that small level and expanding, you've got to expand that connection and community. How do you guys go about that?

**Vanessa Yakobson** (4:09)
It's a big focus on how we operate and what we try to achieve with our franchisees. You know, some franchise systems like a restaurant franchise, for example, might have geographic clusters because that's operationally what makes sense. We really grew very organically. We reacted to where leads came from. And so we have geographic spread across the US and across Canada.
We work very collaboratively with our franchisees. We know that our system has evolved, it's grown, the brand has stayed true to its roots, but evolved because of the contributions that our franchisees have made and the way they collaborate with the corporate team and with one another. And so we've really tried to foster that. I must say that the technology has made a big difference. Having Zoom, having the ability to have roundtables virtually, meetings where I'll come on an update about what some of the results are over the prior quarter, etc. So having those sorts of things has really facilitated that. One of the advantages of being in a franchise system is that you do have that community to rely on. So for our franchisees, they've got the corporate team and they've got one another. So we facilitate that by creating roundtables virtually where they can come together, share best practices, ask questions of one another. We come together every year at an annual conference where they meet one another. They bring their teams, the staff working in their bars, the salons that we refer to as bars. So really looking for those opportunities to bring people together, to learn from one another, to grow together, and form that sense of community, that peer support, those networks that help propel everyone forward.