Accurate Thinking – a Salon Owner’s Story

by Greg Milner on Wednesday, April 9th, 2008 at 7:47 pm

How to ’Start Your Business with the End in Mind’

The 80/20 rule applies in all things. Eighty percent of the income is made by 20% of the people. Only 20% of all assets are held by 80% of the people. Eighty percent of the work is done by 20% of the people…. and in the beauty and hair industry, I reckon the real ratio is 95/5.

Only 5% of people in the beauty and hair industry who find themselves owning and running a salon actually started the thing as a business right from the get-go. Most appear to have found themselves in business almost by default…they’ve ‘bought themselves a job’, thought that ‘wouldn’t it be nice to have my own business’, hung out their shingle and bingo. Without doing a jot of research, not a line of reading, barely an hour of study about what’s required to get customers, keep them, manage the ‘back office’ – and worse, spend years struggling to get past ‘Go’, wondering why it is that nothing ever seems to improve, never bothering to find out why it is that you can’t solve a problem with the same level of thinking that created it in the first place.

Inner Circle member Rebecca Skehan is not one of those. In fact, she’s most definitely in the top 5% – thanks to what I call ‘Accurate Thinking’ backed up by study (about what works, and what doesn’t) and by being a constant student. Oh, and the most important thing – speed of implementation, tinged with impatience.

(Hear this: in business, patience and tolerance are vastly over-rated)

Here is Rebecca’s story. As you read it, take notes.

“Just thought I’d let you know that we are 200% sold on Inner Circle membership and the Toolkit! We opened our salon from scratch with no existing clientele. We ran a flyer, dropped in letterboxes in the area over the weekend, and we started getting calls overnight! We had 15 bookings of the package today alone! I have never, in my 11 years of hairdressing, seen that kind of response so quickly. We also dropped some flyers off at our local bank (whom we bank with), and we had two bookings from them only 5 mins or so after my staff member got back into the salon!
Very impressed!

We have a lot of your systems and strategies in place, and my staff take pride in creating the ‘wow’ factor for our clients. Our business is slowly building – and we get loads of comments on our little finishing touches that we do (namely the client personalised reserved signs we place at their station).
The quiet times we have are purely our own fault for letting our marketing lapse (and not getting it out soon enough). So to combat this I now take Wednesdays ‘off the tools’ and focus on our marketing strategies. In only a few Wednesdays I’ve managed to organise a Client Christmas letter, Newsletter, New Flyer, Gift Voucher Package Menu (to send out with our client christmas letter), and more – and Im really excited to think what I will be able to achieve now that Im making it a permanent thing.

Working ‘ON’ the business, not IN it

I’ts amazing how small minded people can be when it comes to business though. Most people I talk to seem to have it in their head that in order to create a great successful business I need to be ‘on the tools’ taking as many appointments I can (for me and my staff), and that one day when we are fully
booked out consistently, our clientele base is full – only then should I be taking time ‘off the tools’. I disagree with this – and I’m sick of trying to explain my reasons to people. I believe that I should set the precedent now of what I want our business to be – and how I believe it should be run (regardless of how long we have been running).

For example…

* I have set written systems and procedures in place (in a Gaia Hair Salon Manual) for everything from how to greet a customer to how to clean the salon. They are very detailed, and all staff know what is expected of them. I expect my staff to follow them completely, and if someone has a problem
with them I will not employ that person.

Results of Accurate Thinking

* My staff are trained to book themselves out with appointments before taking any for me. I only do clients that specifically ask for me, or others if the girls are too busy. My appointments get stretched right out in our computer so that I have time for business tasks in between clients. I block myself out entirely on Wednesdays now to do business tasks.

My plan is to open more Gaia Hair salons in the future, so I run the salon now the way that it would run if we had many salons. We often get asked by people how many Gaia Hair’s there is – and they cant believe that there is only one (so far!) because it is so organised. I guess was lucky to have
trained with a big franchise salon so I saw a lot of it first hand.

My gut instinct tells me Im doing the right thing.We learnt this the hard way with my husbands business. He has worked very hard on the tools for many years trying to establish his business. He has been trying to get off the tools for a few years now but struggles tremendously (he’s short-staffed) – and his business partner is very not business minded, he is stuck in employment mentality. So Mark has pushed me to think of the bigger picture when running the business.

I dont want to be stuck working in the business not on the business. And I need to find a happy balance because I have two small children (aged 1yr and 3yrs).

I look forward to your newsletters and new marketing ideas, as we are consistently running flyers (the most cost effective marketing we’ve found) – and it always gets my brain working!!

Cheers,
Rebecca Skehan, Gaia Hair, Queensland

NOTE: If you want to get the benefit of being a Member of the same Inner Circle marketing & mentoring group that Rebecca belongs to, you may qualify for a 90-day Test Drive of the Inner Circle system. We receive over 100 applications per month, and award only 10 90-day ‘Test Drives’.

A post by Greg Milner

The odd idea, a bit of prodding, a nudge here and there, a little fun, and the occasional dose of brutal reality. Greg is co-founder and CEO of Worldwide Salon Marketing, a writer, direct response marketing consultant, specialist marketing systems adviser and coach.