Hard Lessons Learned

Greg Thomas was, in his own words, a “screw-up” as a kid. He got kicked out of high school. He even got booted from Sunday school. When he was 40, he found himself making water deliveries for a small company in metro Atlanta. He worked hard until the boss insulted him and other employees by calling them morons.

One day, when he decided to slack off, he steered his water delivery truck into a Great Clips. He walked in for a haircut and noticed the salon’s shabby condition. When the stylist was finished, he told her, “This is a good haircut, but this place is a mess. The lights are burned out. The air conditioner isn’t working, and it's filthy.”

Her response changed his life. “Well, it's for sale if you want to buy it," he recalls.

As broke as he was, Thomas still wanted it. He secured an SBA loan, but kept his job delivering water. Every day, he went to the Great Clips before his shift started and concentrated on driving business into the salon. He printed and distributed $5-off coupons all over town.

Two decades later, Thomas owns more than 70 Great Clips salons, four Smoothie Kings, and is an area developer in Atlanta for Salty Dawg Pet Salon + Bakery.

It’s important to know Thomas’ backstory (the “screw-up” who clawed his way to the top) to understand how things went sideways when he tried to bring his two sons into his business. He wanted to give them the leg up he’d never had. So, he bought them a Salty Dawg salon to run. It was a move he’d soon regret.

Thomas never evaluated whether the salon and his sons, both in their mid-20s, were a good match. He didn’t analyze their skills for running such a business.

“Things happen so quickly,” he says. “This was a store where the owner died, and for six months while I'm debating and trying to learn about the business, there was no management at the store. It was an absolute shipwreck.”

His sons put in hours at the salon, he says, but didn’t seem to understand the time commitment required to make the business a success.

On top of that, Thomas determined, the salon had the wrong configuration. Most of the store’s square footage was dedicated to retail, even though 99% of the business came from pet grooming. There were just four cutting tables. They shut the salon down at Christmas in 2024, and Thomas spent $100,000 to remodel it.

“Instead of having a giant retail area, we condensed it,” he says. “Instead of having a small cutting room, we enlarged it. Instead of having two baths, now we have three.”

But the shutdown cost the Salty Dawg its employees, who worked on commission and weren’t willing to wait. Remodeling, he says, was the right decision, but the business struggled to recover from losing its staff. Thomas invested heavily in advertising.

Meanwhile, his sons tried to become competent franchisees. Both were smart and accomplished, but their Salty Dawg was losing money.

“Did they have business experience? The answer is yes. Did they have management and ownership experience? The answer is no,” Thomas says.

When an employee became problematic, Thomas coached one of his sons on how to fire him. “He did it. It scared the hell out of him, but it was a good learning experience,” he says.

As the pet grooming salon floundered, Thomas confronted his youngest son. “What the hell are you doing? The store is absolutely crashing,” he told him. “He says, ‘What do you mean? I'm working six days a week.' I stopped, and I was like, you worked 23-and-a-half hours last week. That's four hours a day.”

The stress didn’t go away at the end of the workday. It crept into their family time, Thomas says. At Thanksgiving, one of his sons brought up the business. Thomas nearly exploded: “I say, ‘I can’t deal with this. Thanksgiving is supposed to be the greatest family day, and I'm sitting here stressed because you're telling me about business problems. I don't want to hear it. I'm so sick of it.’”

His sons had their own thoughts about the salon. One of them said, “I don't even like the business,” to which Thomas responded, “We're not making any money, and you don’t like the business." It was a wake-up moment.

In January, Thomas took over the salon. His P&Ls have improved dramatically. And his sons have the freedom to pursue their own interests. One is working a job that he likes, and the other is looking forward to joining the Coast Guard.

What made Thomas think that his sons would be happy and successful at running that particular business?

“Because they're my kids. All of us think our kids are great. and they are in a lot of different ways,” he says, adding that it was a mistake to bring new franchisees into a new concept. “If you’re going to get your kids into a business, it needs to be an established brand.”

Thomas has mentored young entrepreneurs for years and is proud of their success. “That’s what I wanted for my kids,” he says.

More than that, he wants them to be content. And now they are. He does not doubt that one day, when they are ready, they will join him again. At the very least, there will be spots for them on his board of directors.

“When I turn 85, or whatever age, what do I do with the business?” he says. “I could sell it and hand the kids cash. But is that a good way to raise your kids? I think a better thing is, you give your kids opportunity, not money. And that's really what I want to do. I want to give them an opportunity.”