For the last 5 years, Worldwide Salon Marketing has been helping hundreds of salon owners all over the world transform their failing businesses into money making machines.

Inner Circle member Mario Raia of Ethos Salon in Vancouver, WA, will be at the Scottsdale Road to Riches Seminar on November 9 to answer questions from other salon & spa owners

One of the most popular components to the WSM program is their Road to Riches Super salon marketing seminars.

In years past, these events have only been offered in Australia and recently in New Zealand.

But now, for the first time ever, the secrets and strategies of the Worldwide Salon Marketing program will be revealed in the first US Road to Riches seminar this November 9th in Scottsdale, AZ.

If your business is struggling, then WASTE NO TIME and call to reserve a ticket for yourself – 602-490-0637

Or visit us online at www.salonroadtoriches.com and you can book your own tickets so that you don’t miss out on this absolute MUST SEE conference.

You’ll be able to rub shoulders with some of our long-term Inner Circle members at this event, including Susan Vincent of Body & Sould Day Spa, who’s flying in from Staunton VA, and Mario Raia of Ethos Salon in Vancouver WA.

Susan Vincent's spa in Virginia has been growing at 20% - in the worst recession in 70 years

Mario joined the Inner Circle program only three months ago, and has already seen a huge increase in activity and sales at his salon. Susan has been in the program since 2007, and reports that during the worst recession in 70 years, her salon is still growing by 20% – a remarkable result given 99% of the US salon & spa industry is complaing that things are so tough.

Interesting – somehow, people like Mario and Susan must have miraculously removed themselves from the economy.

Call 602-490-0637 to get your tickets NOW.

If you really want to know how to do marketing in a recession that works, you need to be there to talk with these successful salon & spa owners.

From the Big End of town to the tiny end, there are plenty of reports indicating that the “recession” is patchy, uneven at best, certainly NOT a uniform slide into economic oblivion.

McDonald’s is reporting a massive 80% increase in net profit in 2008 over 2007. Spooked by the relentless reports of Armageddon on the TV news, it seems folks are hitting the fast food joints to save money on meals (and no doubt pile on some fat to carry them through the economic winter!)

Maccas made $4.3 billion in ’08, compared with $2.3 billion in ’07.

In our little world of entrepreneurial salon & spa owners, it’s a similar story, all over the world.

In Scottsdale, Arizona, Body Solutions Laser & Skin owners Dr Tim & Kanna Reilly report a staggering 500% increase in sales in 2008 over 2007, using a simple system of done-for-you direct response marketing tools and ‘sales thinking’ strategies they bought from Worldwide Salon Marketing in August 2007.

“It was a revelation,” says Dr Reilly, whose chiropractic clinic morphed into a skin care clinic over several years but had always bled them white. They were on the verge of giving up and closing their doors, until they ‘got it’ just in time and joined the WSM Inner Circle marketing & mentoring program.Â

IC member Rechelle Watt with her business award...a 40% increase in salon sales in 2008

Then there’s Inner Circle member Rechelle Watt, of Lamonde Hair Face & Body in New South Wales, Australia. While the majority of salon owners whine about how tough things are, Rechelle and hundreds of other Inner Circle members is going from strength to strength.

In ’08, a 40% increase in sales over ’07, according to an email from Rechelle this week.

“WOW!!!….. it’s AMAZING how my business has changed,” says Rechelle, echoing the sentiments of her fellow IC Members. Click here to read Rechelle’s full story.

(Members Only: want to copy what Rechelle’s done? Log into the Members Only section and navigate to ‘Getting New Clients – Hair’ and you’ll find the newspaper ads and the text messages Rechelle used to generate an extra $109,509 in sales in 2008)

And they do it using simple, hard-nosed, “ugly” copy-intensive emotional direct-response marketing, contained in the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit and the coaching they get as Inner Circle members – not the unaccountable, ‘imagey’ expensive branding-style-lets-hope-some-of-it-sticks marketing typically rolled out by big dumb companies using other people’s (eg shareholders’) money.

Big companies in the beauty business are as guilty of pouring useless advertising dollars down the ‘branding’ toilet as anybody else at the top end of town.

Take the giant Regis Corporation, owner of such brands as Cost Cutters, Super Cuts and Hair Club for Men and Women, Regis spend gazillions last year in an up-market makeover of its newly-purchased 635-store Trade Secret chain of salons, attempting to ‘European-ize’ them as a means of selling more bottles of beauty glop.

It was clearly money down the drain. This week Regis folded its Trade Secrets tent, announcing it was ‘selling’ the brand to Premier Salons Beauty Inc.

The word ‘selling’ is a euphemism for actually giving it away. Regis will get precisely zero, nada, zilch for the ‘sale’, instead picking up some tax credits on all the money it’s flushed down the drain on its worthless branding exercise.

All of which just goes to show, dear salon owner, that the ‘geniuses’ running these billion dollar product suppliers and salon chain owners are certainly no brighter, and in many cases a lot dumber, than you the small independent salon owner.

So take heart. If hundreds of our small-time independent salon Inner Circle members can actually increase sales in this deep recession, so can you.

If, of course, you’re equipped with the same marketing & sales tools and coaching.

Which is why you need to apply right now, before you suffer any more hardship, for Inner Circle membership and get that Toolkit in your hands.

Note to US and Canadian salon owners: successful IC members Dr Tim & Kanna Reilly of Body Solutions in Scottsdale, AZ are Worldwide Salon Marketing’s first USA franchise, and are handling all coaching for new North American members as of January 2009.

First, some interesting news that belies all the gloom and doom. International research and survey firm Synovate reports that a poll of 11,500 people in over a dozen countries found 41% of people plan to spend the same amount on beauty products and services as they did before the downturn, while only 27% said they would cut down. (source: www.synovate.com)

And there are other signs (hard to find in the mainstream press) that the outlook is not ALL thunder and lightning for 2009. China? The most recent figures I can find indicate China’s growth will ‘only’ be around 7% this year. ONLY 7%?? In any other country, 7% growth would produce dancing in the streets and joyful public fornication.

There are other indicators that the world hasn’t actually stopped turning. Principally from our own Inner Circle members. I love it when I hear from members who are truly kicking some serious butt… despite the ‘recession’, without regard to any and all obstacles put before them, regardless of nay-saying friends, family and/or staff, while ignoring the self-fulfilling talk of gloom and doom.

Like Chicken Little, for some people the sky is always falling in. For a few (certainly most of our Members) what falls out of the sky is money.

Nadia Valerio of Valerio Hair in Doncaster, Victoria. A real 'action woman'.

Among them, Nadia Valerio of Valerio Hair in Doncaster, Victoria.

Most salons struggle to fill chairs/treatment rooms at this time of the year. Nadia and her staff of 11 are struggling to keep up with the sheer volume of clients, all brought in using simple ads, flyers and sales strategies from the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit™

Get this: In November last year Nadia took an ad from the Toolkit and ran it in the local paper. The salon was run off its feet, in just five weeks they took in no fewer than

165 NEW clients.

(INNER CIRCLE MEMBERS: Log into the Members Only ‘Sealed Section’ and you’ll find the ad that Nadia used under “Getting New Clients – Hair”)

That result was achieved despite what many would see as a massive handicap – located in a huge shopping mall with no fewer than EIGHT directly competing salons.

“Every client that came in the week after then received a $10 welcome letter/gift voucher to come back to the store and so far in 8 weeks of the first ad going to print 45 of those clients have come back, it has been the most amazing response, I could not have asked for anything more and this is just a start. We have put together a plan for the next 6 months and can’t wait to put it all in to play. Once again thank you WORLDWIDE SALON MARKETING you have taken my buisness to the next level,” writes Nadia.

And that was just the beginning. As Nadia describes in this short interview extract, revenue, client numbers and profits have been nothing short of amazing since she a) began to educate herself about what works, and b) put the tools, strategies and advice as an Inner Circle member into action.

Special Group Coaching Call for Inner Circle Members – Monday, February 2

Nadia has agreed to be my special guest interview for our next Inner Circle Members Only Group Coaching Call. In this call she’ll detail exactly what she did to not only generate massive new business before Christmas, but avoid the post-Christmas lull that most salon owners suffer from.

Members will receive direct email notification of the dial-in number and PIN code for this call, but here are the date and times:

Date of Group Coaching Call: MONDAY, February 2.

(For North American Members, this will be SUNDAY afternoon/evening, February 1. If you miss the call, don’t say you got ‘confused’ by the time difference.)

Time of Group Coaching Call

In Australia:

Perth: 10am
Adelaide: 11.30am
Melbourne/Sydney: Noon
Brisbane: 11am

In New Zealand: 2pm

In NORTH AMERICA:

Sunday, February 1

Pacific: 5pm
Mountain: 6pm
Eastern: 8pm

Me in the middle with the US Inner Circle members Steven & Susan Woodbury of Village Image salon in Belmont, NH, and Kanna & Dr Tim Reilly of Body Solutions Laser & Skin Care in Scottsdale, Arizona.

The occasion was the Your Beauty Network annual Business Retreat. With me is Your Beauty Network founder & CEO Bert Carder, at the Retreat’s opening-night party. Bert is about to put me to the sword.

It’s 10pm Monday night in California, and on CNN in my hotel room, Larry King and every other talking head in America is forecasting the end of the world as we know it after the biggest one-day fall on Wall Street in the known history of the universe. Anderson Cooper rubbed it in. “If you’ve got retirement savings in stocks or managed funds, here’s what you’ve lost:

$1,200,000,000,000!“

Apparently, the sky is falling in.

Well, I beg to differ. And so do a bunch of our US Inner Circle members. In a packed conference room this morning at the La Costa Resort & Spa in Carlsbad, several got to their feet and told the room how

business has never been better!

Tamara Schultz-Snyder, who owns a salon in the little town of Tehachapi, north of Los Angeles, says she’s picked up TWO HUNDRED new clients since she started marketing the smart way – with the tools in the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit. And that was only in June.

Susan Woodbury and her husband Steven flew clear across America from Belmont, New Hampshire just to meet me. Susan joined in January. Her sales are already up $45,000 this year, she’s gone from working 6 days a week to just two days a week on the floor.

And of course I was delighted to meet Tim & Kanna Reilly, from Scottsdale, Arizona. Their Body Solutions Laser & Skin Care has gone from the verge of bankruptcy to a $700,000 a year cash generator – and will be doing a million dollars by the end of this year – thanks to one thing: the willingness to

TAKE ACTION!

I told the room that ‘if you don’t mind, I and hundreds of our Inner Circle members around the world choose to opt out of the recession’. That we welcome the media-led ‘recession’ because it leaves more of the market open to us marketers – those of us who ‘get it’ that when the masses run for cover, pull down the shutters, stick their heads under the blanket and wait for things to get better, it leaves more of the market there for the taking.

By those who know how to market themselves. Not with ‘brand’ marketing, but with hard-nosed, in-your-face, take-no-prisoners direct response marketing, the kind that actually gets customers, not just warm-’n-fuzzy compliments from friends and family.

Clearly, many of those in the room ‘got it’ too. We welcomed a bunch of new members, including Margaret Lewzcuk of Salon 675 in Deerfield, Illinois, Alison Hilton of Compliments in Phoenix, Arizona, Dawn Ellinwood of Ubuntuhairstudio in Solana Beach in California, Brigette Solus of Salon Sola in Chicago, Karin Mortellaru of The Art of Change in Sierra madre CA, and Cindy Tran of Delight Hair Salon in Campbell, CA.

All will shortly be receiving their Toolkits, and if they simply follow the system, all will be putting extra cash in their bank accounts within 14 days – or less.
They at least have a better-than-even chance of not only weathering the economic storm – real or imagined – but prospering in it.
Shocking fact: revealed at the Your Beauty Network Business Retreat – in America alone, no fewer than EIGHTY salons and spas are closing their doors every day.

Why salon & spa businesses should be embracing the recession, not fearing it.
The first question I asked at the seminar was “Who’s feeling the effects of the ‘recession’?”

Almost every hand in the room went up, a vivid demonstration of the self-perpetuating fear that seems to grip America right now.  It is as if the country has buried its head in the sand in a desperate effort to hide, hoping it will all just go away. Trouble is, when your eyes are full of grit, you can’t see the opportunity either.

And there is opportunity everywhere.
During a half-hour chat with one of our members right after my presentation, I gave her just one ‘marketing-to-the-affluent’  strategy which she agreed would add tens of thousands of dollars to her sales in the coming months.

Recession or not, America is still awash with money. That cash is in the hands of those who are last and least affected by any economic downturn – the filthy rich.

The day after the retreat, I was collected at the resort by a business contact and taken on a drive through some of the most expensive real estate in southern California.

There was Janet Jackson’s house. A dozen doors away, one of Bette Midler’s homes. And between them, a big-name NBA star was spending $30 million building a mansion overlooking Rancho Sante Fe. And there are hundreds of thousands of no-name but equally-wealthy multi-millionaires who despite what the media says, are still spending money on themselves.

This acquaintance should know. He took me to his girlfriend’s house, a $12 million spread on 3 acres of hilltop paradise in the same gated community. She’s 43, a cardiologist who helped invent a simple but crucial medical device now used in heart operations around the world. She leased the patent to Johnson & Johnson for $600 MILLION…plus $25 million a year.
These are the kind of people who are affected least and last by any recession.

Your job, as the marketer of your salon, is to devise offers and products which are attractive to them…and then actively seek them out, through your marketing efforts.

Why doctors are no smarter than the average hair salon owner.
It will come as no surprise to anyone who’s been reading this newsletter for even a few months that I have little regard for ‘image-y’, brand-style marketing. It’s expensive, in most cases can’t be measured, and usually does little more than stroke the ego of the business owner.

Which perhaps explains why doctors who own medspas are easily-seduced ‘advertising victims’, if the example shown here is anything to go by.

A lazy, wasteful 'image' style medspa ad. About its only saving grace, the coupons at the top. The rest is a criminal waste of expensive advertising space sacrificed for the sake of actually having to come up with compelling copy. If you own and manage a medspa and want to know how to do it properly, be at the 'Recession-Buster' Medspa Marketing Intensive at the Sheraton Mission Bay in San Diego on Tuesday, October 28.

And yes, before they found that success, they had to put aside their ‘professional’ egos too. But then, not everybody wants to be proud and broke.)

You might be wondering ‘how can a little salon like mine ever be a successful business….when I know nothing about business!?’

Well, take heart. About the only thing you can hear on Wall Street this week is the sound of wrists being slashed and breasts being beaten, as yet more of America’s ‘institutions’ collapse in a very untidy heap, and the rest of the country shakes in fear of the economic ‘disaster’ ahead. Lehmann Brothers…dead and buried. Merrill Lynch sold for a pittance. Now the country’s biggest insurance company, AIG, bailed out by the taxpayer for $80-odd BILLION.

So you think YOU don’t know anything about business? The guys running these huge corporations are supposed to be Titans of Industry, the so-called Masters of the Universe. Yet it seems they’re not so smart after all.

How dumb was it to lend money to people who never had a hope of paying it back?

The emperors really don’t have any clothes.

If only these fools had half the smarts of some of our Inner Circle members, who clearly know more about how to make a profit than most of the Wall St wizards who’ve got America and much of the rest of the world into so much trouble.

Below are four reports just in this week, from salons and spas in America and Australia…from salon owners who ohave thumbed their noses at the ’recession’, are making more money than they’ve ever made in their lives, at a time when most salon & spa owners are shutting their eyes, slamming the door, hiding under the table and hoping that when they eventually do come out into the light again, things will have miraculously got better, all by themselves.

For here is the Great Recession Lesson: the more people do just that – bunker down, stop marketing…the greater is the opportunity for those few of us remaining to capture their market, make more money, not less, and come out the other side in better shape than we’ve ever been.

EXAMPLE #1: First to one of our more prominent Inner Circle members, Body Solutions Laser & Skin Care in Scottsdale, Arizona. From owners Dr Tim & Kanna Reilly, an email just in today, complete with the ad they used to achieve some spectacular results this past month:

Hi Greg,
I know you like to share some ideas with other Inner Circle Members so I thought I’d open up this one.  The attached ad (sse below) ran in our local paper (black and white, quarter page ad) from August 11to September 13.  The results:

87 New Clients @ $99 per facial = $8613
53 bought products totaling approx $4000
60 already rebooked for another next month.  Total from one monthly promotion was over $12,000,  money spent on ad was $1040 for the month ( the ad ran 3x per week for 4 weeks)

Thanks as always for all your help, ideas and encouragement!  If we keep this up well be looking for even more space.  Take care, Kanna Reilly, Body Solutions LASER & SKIN, Scottsdale, AZ, USA.

Inner Circle members: log into the Members only ‘sealed section’ www.worldwidesalonmarketing.com/members and navigate to the “Getting New Clients – Beauty” category to download the exact ad that Tim & Kanna used to get these results.

The In-Spa promotions that brought this Member retail sales of $25,000 a month.

EXAMPLE #2: From right here in my home town, Perth, Michael Curtis of Blush Day Spa has sent in a series of tiered-price in-salon retail promotions that have been going gangbusters.

Says Michael:

“Thort I’d share some great templates for inhouse product sales we use at Blush… We are consistently doing $25k a month in retail sales and these packages have really improved our performance… Enjoy!”

Inner Circle members: log into the Members only ‘sealed section’ www.worldwidesalonmarketing.com/members and navigate to the “Retail Product Promotions” category to download the exact ad that Tim & Kanna used to get these results.

EXAMPLE #3: Sydney salon owner Lesley Morgan-Wesson took two years to decide to join the Inner Circle program and get her marketing & sales Toolkit. By the sound of Lesley’s latest email to us, sounds like it’s been a worthwhile investment!

“We shall achieve our $1,000,000 goal by the end of this year…”

“Hi Greg, I read your newsletter – immediately I get it, no matter what else I’m doing – and it made me think you’d probably like to read some of my highlights…

I was working on reception in the salon yesterday… (because we’re 2 staff down at the moment: 1 on holiday and 1 I let go) and I was staggered at how busy we are!! I don’t work in the salon and rarely go in so I mean… it was really a surprise!

Let me explain…

Some of our staff are booked up til January of next year! We’re generally booked up until the end of September.

We’re doubling our turnover each month over the same period last year. We’re getting 15-20 enquiries from our website per day and most are converting… and they’re good quality clients as well.

Client feedback is very positive… one of our long term clients popped in yesterday because she saw me in the salon and we were generally updating each other. She praised the business, the staff, the marketing, the atmosphere, the decor, in fact the whole business… and me. This is a lady whose professional life revolves around the big end of town and has worked closely with all the big fashion houses in Paris. So you can imagine I was thrilled by her praise.

And perhaps the biggest coup for me was a few weeks ago I was approached by a local up-market shopping centre to open a spa there (on the basis of our website, our look and our reputation). I had a meeting last week with centre management and I’m working on a feasibility study and financial projection for them and for me… it’s looking very positive.

We shall achieve our $1,000,000 goal by the end of this year… no mean feat when you think a few months ago a Thai massage centre opened right next door to us and another massage centre opened across the road PLUS we already had 28 competitors in the area! Well, I’m happy to announce about 7 businesses have already closed and we rarely see anyone in the massage centre.

Why am I sharing this with you? Well, our salon has always done well… but this year it’s growing exponentially and really taking off!

I believe the reason is several-fold… I’m implementing all the Inner Circle theory (not just slavishly copying the templates) you speak and write about and yes, it requires tweaking at times… but when you get it right… BOOM!! I also have formulae, templates, notes, mentors and coaches to guide and support me and I feel so confident about the path I’m on… it’s great.

(Last year I was seriously considering giving up… too hard for the little return… I was so close to over it!)

So thank you very much… I enjoy being part of the Inner Circle because you and Jill have an impeccable work ethic and it is also evident in the staff you employ.

Kind regards (and raving fan),

Lesley Morgan-Wesson, Owner, LADY AT BAY, Sydney.

EXAMPLE #4: And here’s another one, this time from Lisa Conway of Marinelli’s Hair in Victoria:

Sales Increase by Over $2,000 a Week – in Just 9 weeks

“Well you won’t believe what happened this week. Before (we joined the Inner Circle program) at the July ‘Road to Riches Salon Marketing Super Conference’ (only 9 weeks ago) the salon took between $5,000 and $6,000 a week.

Things have been on the up each week and we were very close to $8,000 last week when the senior did a ‘no show’ on the Saturday. So we finished the week with $7,333. Then on the Monday I lost the other senior – she resigned over the phone, said she could not work with my manager. (She was below the line in so many ways).  So now I have 1 fantastic senior left and a very very competent  second year and a first year who had this week off on annual leave so now I have 2 staff instead of 5. So I jump back in and the 2 still standing rise to the challenge, the first-year offers to come in when she hears the news, we said ‘no we can do it, have your break’ - it was her 18th birthday this week.

We took no less than $8,123 for the week! WOO HOO!

Things happen for a reason and this is proof.

Lisa Conway, Marinelli’s Hair Studio, Gisborne, Victoria.

Recession? Nuts to that!

But the truth is, these ARE the good old days. We’re in them NOW. Despite the media’s insistence that the world economy is either already in, or rapidly descending into depression, there has never, in the history of the human race, been more opportunities to make money. Despite the doomsayers, our own Inner Circle members are proving, day after day, that making money is NOT rocket science, it’s no more and no less than doing what already works for other salons to bring customers in the door, and keep doing it over and over again.

This week, I spent hours on the phone, talking to salon & spa owners all over America. (And thanks to technology, I did it while sitting at my office computer, using Skype, for two cents a minute. Back in the ‘good old days’ it would have cost me a small fortune.)

(Free Resource for Inner Circle Members: to find out how to use Skype – and slash your phone bills to near-zero – we’ve put together a tutorial video in the Members Only ‘sealed section’.)

One minute I was chatting with a salon owner in San Francisco…(and looking at a street scene outside his salon as we spoke! You can do this yourself – go to Google Maps here and type in just about any street address – or zoom in – in any major American city, and it’ll give you a panoramic street scene, right there at the address you chose.)

Half an hour later I was talking with another salon owner, in Snellville, Georgia…then another, in St Louis. And all seemed spooked by the gloom talk, until I took them through some of the key ‘customer-attracting’ strategies we use, and they began to see the wood for the trees. (Two of these three, by the way, were admitted into the Inner Circle marketing & mentoring program)

And just to show you that this isn’t mere idle talk on my part, here are a couple of videos of Inner Circle members, talking about how their sales are booming – in an industry awash with salon & spa owners complaining about how ‘tough’ it is to make money….

This is Michael Curtis of Blush Spa, who joined the Inner Circle program in December last year…