Jack Morton: I have been fortunate in my time as FAME Team Creative Director to be surrounded by exceptional mentors from across the globe, all who had surprisingly consistent and simple advice: “be yourself, and remember who you are.” 

At the same time, I kept hearing the same questions being asked of successful creatives: “where do you get your ideas from, and where do you start?” 

There was a clear block to releasing creativity and translating it into hair. How do we begin to remember who we are if we don’t know who that person is in the first place?  

Around that period, I was also looking closely at a different issue: why people were leaving our industry. Recruitment and retention were becoming serious concerns, and still persist. I reflected on my own 23-year career, why I stayed and how I have remained fulfilled. The answer was not money, status or social media recognition.  

It was growth, creativity and authentic connection. However, the skills to uncover this knowledge aren’t formally taught within hairdressing, and I wanted to help change this.  

We enter hairdressing because it’s creative. We stay because it’s human, and we fall in love with working with people. 

The modern industry presents new challenges.  We live in an age of relentless comparison, consume the details of everyone else’s lives and are sold solutions to problems we did not know we had. We scroll through aesthetics that subtly shape our taste, before we have had time to develop our own.  

What is often missing is the space to ask, what do I really think, feel and want to say creatively? Without asking these questions, creativity becomes imitation. In an AI-driven world, authenticity is no longer optional – it’s an advantage, and as technology becomes more intelligent, we must become more human. 

When we explore our internal world, we strengthen our external expression. When we make something original, we bring unseen parts of ourselves to the surface. That process alone builds confidence, and directly impacts the health of our industry. 

Hairdressers who dedicate the time to understanding themselves experience a whole host of professional upsides including greater job satisfaction, stronger client relationships and standing out through originality. 

In short? They stay, they’re happier, and they’re more productive. Recruitment improves when the industry feels inspiring. Retention improves when individuals feel growth. 

If creativity is the beating heart of hairdressing, emotional intelligence is the nervous system. One cannot function optimally without the other. If there was ever a time to deepen our creative practice, it’s now. Not to produce more content, but to build inner substance. 

Authenticity is magnetic. Depth is sustainable. Self-knowledge protects against burnout. When we understand ourselves, we are less easily influenced by what we think we should be doing. We can discern between inspiration and distraction. We can innovate instead of replicate. And when we are emotionally evolved, our empathy deepens.  

We hold better conversations, build stronger teams and create cultures people want to belong to.  

This is how we drive the industry forward. 

PRACTICAL WAYS TO NURTURE CREATIVE DEPTH 

1.  Our brains have a greater capacity for creative thinking when we are calm 
2. Audit your influences. Who shapes your taste? Why? 
3. Study art, architecture, film or design outside of hair on a regular basis 
4. Journal your creative frustrations before trying to fix them 
5. Define your core values and assess whether your work reflects them 
6. Create one piece of work per quarter purely for expression, not approval 
7. Ask trusted peers for feedback on your strengths, not just your areas for growth 
8. Practice active listening daily with clients and colleagues 
9. Develop a simple wellbeing routine to stabilise your nervous system 
10. Remind yourself of and practice the foundations to help strengthen your core