Twelve Questions: Rodney Wayne

Rodney Wayne gets a kick out of valeting his own boat. Photo / Chris Gorman

Rodney Wayne was a butcher with two young children when he decided to retrain as a hairdresser. Now Australasia’s most successful hairdressing franchise holder, he says spending his hard-earned money has given him enormous pleasure.

1. Did you know you would end up with such a fine head of hair when you set out on your hairdressing career 45 years ago?

No, I never even thought about it but am very happy with my lot. My father had a good head of hair too and he had it until the day he died. I started going silver when I was 20 or 21.

2. Did you grow up in a business-oriented family?

My dad had fought in the war and was a logger and mum was the local dressmaker. They both grew strawberries too and all the kids had to work from a young age. I'm the eldest and my father was extremely strict on me. They gave me my work ethic. When I was 13 I had a contract with two different orchards to make apple boxes and I had a paper round. I always wanted to make money. I like what Johnny Depp says about whether money buys happiness: he said "no, but it does buy a big enough yacht to sail up very close to it". I'm much better at spending than saving.

3. Do you like boats too?

I've never believed in star signs but I'm a Cancer and I have to be by the sea. I love the taste and the feel of the salt on my skin. I've got fish ear now, though, which is driving me mad. I've been living under the water for so long that the bones inside my ear have grown over. The surgeon this week is operating and they have to cut the ear and lay it forward so they can put a bloody drill in there. All I've heard for the last six weeks is a wooshing sound.

4. You opened your first New Zealand salon in Auckland in the 1980s. What was the city like then?

It was really exciting. The restaurants and bars. I love a good party and I could go off to a long lunch and leave Club Mirage in the early hours of the morning and still get myself up for a 9am Saturday morning haircut, no matter how hungover I was. It's a discipline and a work ethic which I got from my childhood. I used to look at this beautiful house that mum and dad had and think if they'd only put that effort into their own business they could have had such success. I was always driven to succeed but I've never been a workaholic. I could always leave work at 5pm or whatever and go home and switch off.

5. Why didn't your parents work for themselves?

Mum wanted to - she was a very creative woman, a florist, had an amazing house and garden - but dad was a true blue-collar Labour man. Once he got a job that was it. That created wonderful debates between us and he was pretty good at it and very well read. He believed in unions, which you needed back then. He never got his head around it when I came home on a trip from Australia and I had two young children and told him I'd enrolled in hairdressing school.

6. You'd been a butcher before then, why did you give that up?

I thoroughly enjoyed it at first and I learned everything I knew about service from being a butcher. But I could see the supermarkets coming in and the whole industry totally changing. My then wife had been a hairdresser and we looked at that industry and thought there was opportunity. So I went to school by day and worked in a Melbourne restaurant at night. We had no money.

7. Did people believe hairdressing was only a career for gay men in those days?

I was at this huge school of between 700 and 1000 students and there were about 26 guys and I'd jokingly say about six of us were straight. I thrived in that environment. It was so creative. I'd just turned 20. I'm not sure that I did know any gay people before that. I must have, I guess. But I was a butcher from Motueka and suddenly I'm in the middle of Melbourne and hairdressing. It was a challenging time. Terrifying at the beginning.

8. Where did you first open your own salon?

It was in Portsea in Victoria. I used to swim there with (former Australian Prime Minister) Harold Holt. I knew him just to wave to and say hello to because he had a holiday house there. It was terrible when he went missing. It was a dangerous surf beach with very bad undertow. They never found his body, but a shark would have got him. There's a lot of bloody sharks down there. We were one of the first salons to open on a Sunday because I could see that all the wealthy ladies would come down to their beach houses on a Thursday night and Sunday morning was a good day for business.

9. Have you been a good dad?

I think I have been a great parent, offering a lot of support and very generous with my time. I raced motorbikes, which was very strange for a hairdresser, and I'd take my son riding with me a lot. We'd go boating and I always made time to do those things that were good to do with young kids.

10. How good is your life now?

It will be pretty perfect when I get my ear operated on. Life is good, though. I love boating and I look after my own boat. I study all the working parts and I'm probably the only person (at Westhaven) that valets their own boat. It gives me great pleasure. I call it patting the boat. My current wife Denise and I live in an apartment around the corner from it.

11. What do you know about love?

I'm a real lover. I'm a romantic to the end. Denise and I have been married for 15 years. I'd known her for a long time and I did her hair but we had nothing going on. Then I guess we were both in relationships that weren't all that good and we met at a friend's party and decided we should have lunch and that was it, I suppose. Oh no, she's not involved in the business. My first wife still is.

12. You're very social. Are you always extrovert?

I do far too much talking, I'm a chatterer. But in saying that I'm a loner also. I love going away for a couple of days on the boat by myself. I cook the most beautiful dinner and set the table and everything, as much as I would if guests were on board. Will I leave the business? I don't think so now. I like the big picture stuff. We've got a chief executive and I'm the managing director. Often in life I've wanted to do something else like open a hotel or beautiful restaurant but you should stick to your knitting. I've decided I'm better to be a damn good customer.