The beginning is the most important part of the work.

If things start off badly, there’s little hope of a good final result, and in my opinion the worst place to start is a vague brief. “Just a trim.” “Something different.” “Do whatever you think.” And then, three minutes in while I’m in the middle of forming my cutting pattern, the “but” arrives, and the whole process spirals into constant renegotiation.

“You’re the professional, I completely trust you” is the same family of red flag, just dressed up nicer.

I’ve found a way around it. Two questions, asked early, that get me to a brief that’s about 85% clear. I don’t need 100% clarity, that’d be unreasonable, in fact I reckon impossible to achieve. But anything under 85% just doesn’t cut the mustard. So I ask:

• What do you love about your hair?
• What do you hate about your hair?

That’s it. That’s what my consultations boil down to. Two deliberately poignant and polarising questions.

If I can get 85% clarity on those two answers, I have everything I need to start. I know what to protect and what to address. I know where the energy is and where the resistance is. I know what the client values and what they’ve been carrying around, sometimes for years, without anyone asking.

I can sometimes spend 20 minutes, rarely more, just in consultation mode, especially if it’s a first visit. Almost every new client says the same thing: “I’ve never had anyone spend so long looking at my hair.” I even had one person nickname me Follicule Poirot. Admittedly my moustache was particularly twirly that day.

I also tell new clients about the three-visit rule. If we haven’t got to something in the region of 95% satisfaction by the third visit, there’s no point flogging a dead horse… it’s time to find another hairdresser. That’s part of the consultation philosophy too: an honest framework for what success looks like, and what to do if we’re not getting there.

What surprises me is how often these questions catch people off guard. They’ve come in for a haircut. They were expecting to be asked about length, or whether they want long or short layers, or how they want the back treated. They weren’t expecting to be asked what they love and hate.

But the questions work because they bypass the technical vocabulary entirely. You don’t need to know the difference between a graduated bob and a blownout-low-taper-bixie, or what point cutting means, or whether you want texture or weight. You just need to know how you feel about the hair on your head. Everyone has an answer to that, even if they’ve never been asked.

I usually start with the hate question and end with the love question. The hate question takes longer. There’s often a pause. Sometimes a laugh. Sometimes a sigh that tells me they’ve been waiting for permission to say it out loud. “I hate this cowlick.” “I hate how flat it goes on day three.” “I hate that my fringe never sits right.” That’s often the core of the brief; the problem I’m being hired to solve.

The love question is the easier one, so I nudge it to the end. People light up. “I love how it curls at the back.” “I love that it’s thick.” “I love the colour when the sun hits it.” That’s gold. That’s the part I’m going to protect, frame, build around. And it’s nice to end the conversation on a positive note.

When the talking is done, the consultation moves into a quieter mode. I might even say, “Okeydokey… talking time is over” or something like that. I shift into analysis mode. I look at the growth pattern, the hairline, which ways the follicles are pointing, the density, the shape of the curl pattern, where along the hair shaft the condition substantially drops off, all sorts of things. I don’t actively try to remember any of it. I just let it sink in like I’m reading a complicated philosophy book. I trust the intel is going in somewhere.

There’s a later stage, too, where I open the questions wider. Not as a fallback, but as a natural deepening. What do you love and hate about coming to the salon? What do you love and hate about your home maintenance routine? Those wider questions almost always unlock something even deeper. Because hair isn’t just about the cut. It’s about the whole experience of having hair. Washing it, styling it, living with it, catching a glimpse of your own reflection. These questions get at the parts that the first two basic questions sometimes miss.

By the end of all this, I’ll have a brief that’s about 85% clear. The remaining 15% stays open. I don’t try to close it during the consultation. Instead, I’ll ask towards the end of the cut, or when I can see the line of the bob coming around their neck: “Does that look about right?” That’s where the 15% gets resolved. That’s collaboration. That’s normal.

It also protects against the “do whatever you think” trap. Because once someone has told me what they love and what they hate, they’ve given me a real brief. I’m not guessing, I’m working from what they’ve told me.

My perspective is that design is a process, whereas art is more of a one-and-done thing. So I encourage my clients to take photos in the first few days after the cut as reference material for the next visit. It’s iterative. It’s a relationship that develops over time, not a single transaction.

What I notice is that this approach changes the dynamic of the chair. The client isn’t being asked to specify something they don’t have the vocabulary for. They’re being asked about their relationship with their own hair. That’s a conversation they can have. And once they’ve had it, they trust me more, because they feel heard before I’ve made a single cut.

This is what thirty years of consultations have taught me. The technical skills came with time and repetition. The questions came from realising that most hairdressing problems aren’t technical problems; they’re communication problems. And the right two questions, asked early enough, solve most of them long before the scissors come out.

There’s a Plato line I came across a good few years ago: the beginning is the most important part of the work. I’ve been following that principle for years, not only in my life as a hairdresser. It just became obvious that cuts which went well started with conversations which went well. And those conversations almost always started with those two questions.

• What do you love about your hair?
• What do you hate?

Try answering them honestly the next time you’re in the chair. You might surprise yourself with what you say. And the hairdresser, if they’re paying attention, will know exactly what to do with it.