Hair loss is a global problem and people like William Gaunitz has found ways to correct and solve this issue. William is a certified trichologist who has been providing hair loss solutions since 2002 and is the Founder of Evolution Hair Loss Institute and Advanced Trichology. Explaining why people lose hair, he proves these reasons through the Gaunitz Trichology method. As William’s popularity grows, he also saw the need to grow his team by outsourcing tasks. He offers some insights on hiring a remote team and how it has helped him scale his clinic.
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My guest is William Gaunitz. William, how are you doing?
I’m good.
For those of you who don’t know, William is a certified Trichologist who has been in the hair loss industry since 2002. He is the Founder of Evolution Hair Loss Institute and Advance Trichology products. He’s worked with A-List celebrities, pro athletes and has treated thousands of men and women in his hair facilities with exceptional results. He is on the Board of the Trichologist Society and is the Founder and editor of Trichology.com. He has been a fixture in the Troy called you world for nearly two decades. He has a huge remote team which we are going to talk about. First, let’s take a step back. What were you like growing up? Were you a rebel, were you a straight-A student? Did you always know you wanted to be an entrepreneur or did you always know you wanted to go into hair?
I definitely did not know that I wanted to go into hair. I wanted to be an entrepreneur since I was probably three or four years old. I remember putting price tags on my toys and selling them to the neighbor kids, because why not? That was my thing when I was a kid. I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I was a straight-A student until I became a rebel. I circled back into a straight-A student again.
What was your first entrepreneurial endeavor?
A legitimate one was selling coupon books out of my footlocker at military school in Virginia. I was shut down by the Military academy that I was at. You weren’t able to operate a full business while being a student. I had ads out in newspapers in rural Virginia and was making sales.
How did you get into hair?
The window of opportunity from the time hair grows in its normal fullest potential until hair follicle death is typically five years.
I started losing my hair when I was eighteen. By 21 or 22, it was getting really bad. I wanted to stop the loss. No one was doing what was being done in other countries. I tried that because I had a lot of resources available to me. It worked for me. I brought it back to the US. I opened my first hair loss clinic in 2002.
Talk to me about hair. I am hair challenged so to speak. What should people like me know about the hair loss industry? In my mind, going into this is a lost cause. It is not something I’m going to spend time and energy on. You hear a lot about all these different scams and “get hair quick” schemes, I guess we’ll call them. What should I know about hair?
The general rule is you can’t go back in time. Anybody who is like, “I’ve been bald for twenty years and I want to grow my hair back.” That’s not going to happen. The window of opportunity from the time in which the hair was growing in its normal fullest potential until the death of the hair follicle is typically five years. In my line of work, what I do is figure out why the individual is losing hair. There are tons of different reasons. You dial those in, correct them, and use growth stimulants to get them back. There are many available options and a lot of them do have credibility. Applying them correctly to the right situation, that’s where people, even massive pharmaceutical companies, go wrong. They’re not treating the individual, they’re treating the masses. That’s why people don’t get results.
Can you give us some of the reasons? I’m going to guess the first one is stress and the other one is biological. What are some of the reasons?
I developed the Gaunitz Trichology method where, in this philosophy, there are only three reasons for hair loss. One is DHT, two is nutrition, and three is inflammation. Under each category, there are subsets of things that have to be checked. If you go through, list those categories out, and do a symptom checker on people, you can check the boxes of what’s not wrong or what is wrong and treat those individually. Somebody who is losing hair because of typical genetics, that’s DHT or dihydrotestosterone. There are different things you can do to block that. We have manufactured products that do exactly that. A lot of times, people will miss out on the fact that that’s only one piece of the puzzle. You have to have nutrition and inflammation dialed in. If you have a vitamin D or a ferritin deficiency, you have to treat that so that the DHT efforts will work. It’s a 360-degree treatment protocol that knocks out all conceivable aspects of hair loss.
What does a treatment program look like? Is it ongoing and the second you stop, you start losing hair again? Walk us through that.
There is only one reason for loss that requires ongoing treatment and that is DHT. DHT, it being a genetic predisposition to loss. You can’t change your genetics, or at least not yet, so you have to treat that DHT ongoing or you will digress. I have all these females in LA that come down to see me. They’ve seen every dermatologist and say, “No one can fix me.” They have a vitamin D and ferritin deficiency because they are eating like a mouse. They need to have a more robust diet. Traditional diets in the United States oftentimes are not what’s good for their bodies or hair. In inflammation, that can lead down a rabbit hole of all sorts of things. You treat inflammation and address the underlying reasons for that, which are a lot of times lifestyle factors. As long as you treat the nutritional deficiency and the lifestyle factors, once those are done, they’re done as long as they don’t reoccur.
Talk a little about this business that you built up. Some of my readers might be asking, “Why are you interviewing someone about hair?” You’re obviously a very successful business person. Walk us through what you have going on. I know you have the product line. What else?
For years, I had a brick and mortar medical facility where I did licensing and franchising. We wholesale products through other medical facilities. Trying to scale that was very challenging. I’ve never been an excellent manager because I like to give people a task and let them go. Unfortunately, with the W-2 world, that’s not how it works. At one point, I had eight or ten contractors working directly under me in the medical facilities. It was a tough time with multiple locations. I realized that it wasn’t my strong suit. I rebranded the products that I had developed in the medical facility. I rebranded them to advance Trichology, a more generic, more medical tone and brand. It was the same products but rebranded. I decided that I was going to push them through other means like Amazon, wholesaling, or opening up my own Shopify store and pushing them online.
Right around 2015-2016, I realized that the brand online was selling more than we were selling in the clinic. I was spending 80% of my time in the clinic and not focusing on the brand. I ended up selling the clinic and throwing caution to the wind, going, “I see the future. I don’t know what I’m doing in this outsource world but I’m going to do my best to figure it out.” I tried running everything on my own for six months and it stressed me out. The inflammation was making my hair temporarily fall out, which I obviously corrected. I found you guys and other outsource banks of people. I was able to find my assistant. She’s based out of the Philippines. She runs my business from the Philippines on American time. I eventually outsourced all my social media, graphic design, web development, Google shopping set-up, and Amazon follow-up and email system. We’re in the UK, going all the rest of Europe. We’re going to Japan and India. Our Amazon business in the US is massive.
What tips do you have? What have you learned about hiring and managing a remote team? It’s obviously different walking in a clinic every day.
The beautiful thing when I think about managing a remote team is the individual who you’re outsourcing is running their own business. I’ve been good dealing with other entrepreneurs. The whole contractor-employer relationship, I was never good at. In this scenario, I am able to work with other entrepreneurs and be like, “This is what I need. Can you help me?” I will start the same project with two different people. I’ve selected them through how many candidates responded to my ad. Whether it be graphic design or social media and I’ll start with, “Make me a campaign.” I’ll select the best of the two. Outsourcing is usually a fraction of the cost of a domestic contractor. You can be less committal at first and everybody is on board. It’s a win-win. If you’ve got a project, focus on finding the right person for that project. Select two people and narrow it down. Make sure that one project is with the right person and then move on to the next one. Once that section of your time where the piece of the business pie has been consumed by a really good candidate, you can check on them once a week. Make sure it’s going well and have systems in place where you can check on it. You should be good to move forward with another outsourced individual.
What mistakes have you made along the way when hiring them up?
Not doing it fast enough. I waited because I didn’t know. I thought it was going to be really hard to find my assistant. My assistant is key. I didn’t know how to set up a remote incoming system that would allow real-time someone to be speaking to my assistant in the Philippines but also feel like they were calling someone in the US. Also, “How am I going to link these different emails together so I have access to the email, but we’re still corresponding to the same individual in real-time?” It was easy. It took a couple of days to set up with Skype, G Suite, and another app called HubSpot. It links seamlessly. Don’t be afraid of it. Worst case scenario is losing time, but you’re probably losing time anyway. You might as well get it over with.
Outsourcing is usually a fraction of the cost of a domestic contractor. You can be less committal at first and everybody is on board.
How do you decide on what to hire for next? That’s a common question I get asked. I can get to flip it back on you.
I have had such good success with outsourcing that whatever I am focused on, I’m going, “I don’t have time for this.” I retarget my efforts towards a particular genre. I’m able to say, “My recent hire was for social media. I’ve got five Instagram accounts. They all need fresh social media and updated graphic design. I need to find someone specific for that.” I find whatever hole is the most all-consuming at the moment and fill that with an outsourced individual.
What’s next? What are you most excited about going forward? Where can people find out more about you?
Because I’ve outsourced a YouTube consultant, I’m doing a hair loss video series. It’s blasted out through Trichology.com, AdvancedTrichology.com, and through all my social media platforms, which is William Gaunitz Trichologist on both Facebook and IG. That is going to be free. It’s going to be teaching people about the Gaunitz Trichology Method about why it’s simple. Solving hair loss problems, as long as it is not too late, is simple now. You have all the resources to do it at home. That’s my most exciting. I found YouTube consultants and hired two of them. One to do the video and two is to set up all the SCL on YouTube.
Thank you so much for joining us. Check him out. If you’re losing your hair, he is the guy to go to. We really appreciate you coming on.
It’s good to see you. Thank you so much.
Thanks for joining us for another amazing episode of the Outsourcing and Scaling Show. Be sure to subscribe to us. Leave us a review on iTunes and follow us on social media. In return, we’ll continue to bring you amazing guests and great content.
William Gaunitz WTS is a certified Trichologist who has to his been in the hair loss industry since 2002. He’s the founder of Evolution Hair Loss Institute and Advanced Trichology products. He has worked with A list celebrities, pro athletes, and has treated thousands of men and women in his hair facilities with exceptional results. He additionally is on the board of the World Trichology Society and is the founder and editor of trichology.com. Needless to say he has been a fixture in the Troy called you world for nearly 2 decades.
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