Andrew barton wows the crowd at poland's colour trophy

After enjoying a lovely evening at the L'Oreal Professionnel Colour Trophy at London's Earls Court, I headed off to Warsaw, to do a show at the L'Oreal Professionnel Colour Trophy in Poland.

Without our third wheel, Alison, who is away on maternity leave, Tracey Gallagher and I put together a concept where we worked live on stage for a full 40 minutes.

The idea was to really wow the crowd with a transformation show and it certainly achieved our aim: we got a standing ovation from the 2,000 hairdressers at the National Opera House.

The way the show worked we had some distinct themes including curl and expanded exagerated shapes. We brought our models on to the stage looking like they already had a striking finished hairstyle and then transformed them into a new and completely different look in front of the audience's eyes.

These weren't minor transformations I am talking about. Some of the models came onto the stage with short hair when they actually had waist-length hair and others appeared to have long hair when our unveiled look turned out to be short, we even batiqued one model's hair to create a peacock.

This wasn't about creating salon hair, this was about wowing the crowd with effects and we pulled out all the stops, with everything from poodles to fire-eaters joining us on the stage. It took a hell of a lot of a preparaion but it was well worth it because the result really was quite spectacular!

As for the competition, I thought the standard was very high. In terms of Eastern European hairdressing, the Poles are quite skilled and they look to the UK for ideas and techniques, which made it tough for me as a judge.

Whenever I am on a judging panel I always look for great colour that fits the brief. In Poland that brief was stars and celebrities so most of the entries were quite Hollywood inspired, which is actually what a lot of Eastern Europen looks are based on.

After three days of relentless work, I was really happy to head home to relax in my own bed and swap my creative hat for my business one in an all-day meeting with some prospective Saks franchisees.

We have a big push on finding new franchisees at the moment and it was great to see so many new people with new energy. There was an interesting mix of people who already in franchises and want a change and people who have their own businesses and want to step up.

Franchising is a great option for senior hairdressers because it is really difficult to be a business person - especially if your forte is being creative with hair.

When you become part of a large organisation you are able to tap into their very different business resources, such as marketing and PR and it helps to add more strings to your bow.

Personally speaking, I have worked in large organisations for most of my career and as a result I have learned so much more about how to run a successful business.