Are you taking advantage of the situation and planning how to increase the average customer sale? Even when you are flat out there is an opportunity to let the back end of the business actually shine brighter that it has ever shone before. You can increase the average customer spend by doing small things that will get clients loading up their pockets with extra retail sales.

What are you doing for your clients to increase their average spend?

The tools that you use to increase the customer spend are not new and they are easy to implement, if you have the  right marketing tools and know how.

But first, we need to look at your sales process first, and see where you can improve.

When you go through the local “Golden Arches”, have you ever wondered how it is that a crew of hormone laden teenagers, who have the ability to focus for all of 2.74 seconds at a time, manage to build a burger, yet alone  an empire? Simple – they use a “system” that works, and they ask the question that no one else wants to ask: Do you want fries with that? (Up sell!) And they ask this question hundreds if not thousands of times a day.

Oh, and by the way, the results are worth it. It is worth $2 million dollars A DAY to them globally!

So back to your salon, and see where it is that you and the staff can ask the question. Look at how it is that you can improve the clients life by giving them a product or service that will give them great rewards far beyond what they originally came in for.

Your salon can also look at several other methods to increase the client spend, some of which are described below and other are found in the Essential Salon Owners Toolkit.

You can have products that are to be purchased at the point of sale. Places like fuel stations are experts at that. Milk, bread and chocolates are the real reason that fuel station exist. Petrol product sales are not that a bigger earner (1c per litre), so they use the petrol as a lead generation tool to get clients in, and then pitch to the paying client as many products of convenience that can be bought. The real profits for these places is the price that a client is willing to pay to purchase an item THEN AND THERE! It increases their profits hugely.

Or you can make the clients feel more at “home” by offering subscriptions to your salon.  Or you can have “in salon” promotions only, that they clients who come in will only have access too. The options are endless and the time is right for you to look at how it is that you can get more money from existing clients.

NOT yet a Member of the Inner Circle marketing & mentoring program? Don’t yet have the power of the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit? Click here to find out more and apply for a 90-day Money Back Guaranteed Test Drive of the entire system, including the Toolkit, one-on-one coaching (with our experienced coaches who are all salon & spa owners themselves) and access to the Members Only resources website.

Sales professionals also know that it is also what you DON’T say that can destroy any sale. My point was  highlighted by an event yesterday, where we were on the “customer” side of the sales process.

Is your Sales Prevention Department causing you to scream?

Our salon was looking to invest in some new technology so that we could be the first in WA to implement it into our salon ( and of course upgrades on other services). The “education” course was pay up front ( as all major purchases should be in your salon as well!) before you get there. Not a problem so far as the sales person on the phone was very good at making sure the whole process went smoothly and we were guided through their sales process ( if you do not have a sales process yet – GET ONE! ) with out any incidents.

And then the sales process went? DOWNHILL. And fast.

The address for the training that was given was incorrect to begin with. I am pretty sure that a trucking company will not be doing this tye of training. Not a huge problem as we had plenty of time to spare, and quickly found our way to the right location. Then the “sales prevention” department kicked in. The “salon” itself was in the front room of someone’s house. Not an issue as we started our business the same way, but the house was in the middle of the renovation! It was a building site with a “salon”at the front…

We walked in the front door and the stench of stale cigarette smoke attacked our senses straight away. The “salon” bed was a table that had to be cleaned down so that we could use it, and the toilet was a place that words truly cannot describe. ( As a side note: I have seen better toilets in Bolivia where they have NO plumbing to speak off.)

The “rep” looked as though it was all to much, walking around the salon with socks and pants, hair left as if it had not been done in the last week. And when she breathed on you, it was enough to strip paint off the walls. (Ever had the feeling of your own skin crawling?)

I wish that this was “creative writing” but it is not. It is the NON VERBAL CUES that ended the process. Just like that.

Then came the phone call to the office to find out what the idea was about having them do demonstrations in the front room of a house? They did not know that it was a home salon. ( Their shock was evident on the phone.) Never in my life have I seen such a great example of non verbal cues terminating a sales process.

When you have clients coming into your salon you need to make sure that you have everything right to go. That the salon is clean and tidy and that you are able to help the client solve their problems.

This is all part of your “sales system” that should be organized, and functioning, in every salon. The biggest part of your sales system is the marketing that you do for the business. Using the right tools that are in the Essential Salon Owners Toolkit,to get the clients into the salon, is as important as making sure that the staff are not preventing sales from happening.

It made me take notice of how we should not be doing things in our salon.

NOT yet a Member of the Inner Circle marketing & mentoring program? Don’t yet have the power of the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit? Click here to find out more and apply for a 90-day Money Back Guaranteed Test Drive of the entire system, including the Toolkit, one-on-one coaching (with our experienced coaches who are all salon & spa owners themselves) and access to the Members Only resources website.

Get both of these elements right and you can charge what you want, when you want, and make PROFITS while other salons fall off the face of the earth!

The Experience will get your clients back in the door time and again.

You have to be able to deliver a service AND product that will provide the clients with the ultimate experience that they have never had before, or a service that you can deliver time and again to the most incredible levels so that clients WILL NOT WANT TO GO anywhere else. This will start from the very first phone call booking an appointment, through to how the receptionist says good bye to the client after they have taken the investment from the client and made the next appointment.

So the big question here is: How do I figure out what I can do to create this raving fan who never wants to go anywhere else? How do I create the ultimate client experience?

The answer: Reverse Engineering

For those of you who are not sure of what this means, it is about looking at the point of view that you as a client would have when you are client leaving the salon with a feeling of sheer delight , and then telling all your friends about it. Form there you will then start to map out the process that this “client” will follow so that they have the best experience every time, and that it is delivered consistently across all staff and all clients.

How do I create business consistency?

Consistency is created when policies and procedures are installed in to the business, and when you go through and actually use a lot of little marketing tools all at once, as part of a system. This may be an offer that you have created from our range of templates found in the Essential Salon Owners Toolkit, and that you have implemented into an email, SMS and Facebook campaign. You will advertise this offer in several media all at once so that you are creating the biggest splash possible, and letting your clients know that you have an offer so good that they will be mad to NOT take you up on the offer.

The major difference between you and your opposition is the marketing. The ability to get your message out to your clients and know that you are going to get a response from an ad, means that you need to focus your time on the marketing message that you are portraying to the clients. This message will have two parts and is about your salon as it physically presents, both in the paper and in the store front sense. But also consists of a lessor known form of marketing, that is just as important.

The lesser known message that salon owner’s miss  is the unwritten and overlooked “non verbal” cues that you DON’T say to your clients, that can undo ALL your marketing. I am talking about how you and your staff present to the clients. ( Ask Greg about the tradesman that tell you a time and then don’t show up! What sort of message does that tell clients?) Do your staff wear pants that have stains, or my personal favorite, pants that  have hems on the floor and are torn or frayed from being dragged across the ground. If you stop and think what this message presents to the clients, what would you do in that situation? I know that I would never go back. EVER!

Your opposition may not have figured this out yet, that clients are after an experience for their money,  but very soon they will figure “it” out. When that happens you will want to be in a position where you ALREADY KNOW what they have just figured out.  You want to be the front runner in the local area with the knowledge and experience so that you can use your marketing skills as a weapon.

We know that times are tough for some, and that there people out there who are in real trouble, but for the entrepreneurs amongst us we can’t allow this to slow us down.  We have to make sure the “who” that we have in our salons are the ones that are affected LAST when times are tough. You will want clients that have money to spend on looking great, and who don’t have to stretch their appointments out to 10 or 12 weeks.

Your sales process needs to make sure that you are getting the right “who” into the salon. The right “Who” will make a massive difference in how the bottom line of the business looks. If you don’t have  the right who, then CHANGE what you are doing and make it so that you start to go after the “Who” that have the money.

NOT yet a Member of the Inner Circle marketing & mentoring program? Don’t yet have the power of the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit? Click here to find out more and apply for a 90-day Money Back Guaranteed Test Drive of the entire system, including the Toolkit, one-on-one coaching (with our experienced coaches who are all salon & spa owners themselves) and access to the Members Only resources website.

Remember when a Motorola brick cost half a year's salary and you got a workout just lifting it up to your ear?

Yep, hard to believe, considering you can now pick up a TV that’s twice the size, ten times the clarity and half the weight for what amounts to chump change…a few hundred dollars.

What happened with the TV market is the same as happens with almost all products and services…sooner, rather than later, they become little more than a mere

commodity

Prices – and margins – fall through the floor. Readers older than 40 will remember when those early Motorola brick phones cost six months salary. Today you can buy a faster, better, smaller and smarter mobile phone for a hundred bucks.

Every business faces this same inexorable slide into commoditization.

And the more the business relies on the blunt instrument of price to compete, the faster the process of aging. Before you know it, you’re rotting away faster than Brad Pitt in Benjamin Button. It’s a cancer.

And it affects the hair & beauty industry as much as any other.

Yes, it’s true that at least in the foreseeable future, a haircut or a facial is not going to be something you can buy online at Amazon. People will always need hair & beauty treatments in person. Even Bill Gates hasn’t worked out how to administer a brazilian over the internet.

But that doesn’t mean you’re immune. By and large, as far as the general public is concerned, one hair salon is pretty much the same as the next. A facial is a facial is a facial.

So how can you tell when you’ve become a commodity? The warning signs are obvious, if more than a little frustrating, frightening and perplexing.

When phone inquiries start with “what’s the price of a X?”…

When your clients complain about the price.

When you phone a regular client you haven’t seen for three months, only to be told “Oh, I couldn’t get an appointment with you last time so I went to that place around the corner, and I kind of just kept going there….”

That’s when you know you and your salon have become a commodity. Invisible, interchangeable.

Now, before you rush off for a health check, there ARE ways to turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse. Here are three:

1) you can innovate. A new product/service, even a slightly up-graded one, can give you an edge over the competition.

2) you can bundle, or package. Garden variety service like a hair cut, juiced up with add-ons and/or ancillary services that increased perceived value.

3) you can slice and dice your client list and/or target market so that you can more carefully and precisely match your product/service offer or package with the buying preferences of that particular niche market.
(Any and all of which, of course, require a carefully crafted salon marketing message to support them)

Even that may not be enough to halt the slide. So what else can you do? Here’s where it gets trickier…and requires more brass balls.

a) you can put your prices UP. A lot. Proudly, with your head held high. And no, there is absolutely no value in telling your customers your prices are going up soon. Just put them up. One of two will raise an eyebrow. The rest will simply fall into line.

b) Choose which customers you want to do business with, and those you do not. And fire them. Nothing creates and fosters demand for your services like the perception of scarcity, of unavailability. You may lose a few customers. But those who remain will be more profitable.

c) pay bonuses based on profit margin, not merely turnover. Nothing focuses an employee like “Sure, go ahead and spend money on new chairs, after all, some of it’s your money…”

Sound all to complicated for you? Go on then, hang out the discount sign, sit by the silent phone, and sulk as the life is inevitably sucked out of your business. ‘Cos it WILL happen if you do nothing.

“It wasn’t raining when Noah built the Ark.”

On August 2 – less than two weeks from now – America, not so long ago the greatest economy in the world, is facing the prospect of defaulting on trillions of dollars in loans it can’t afford to pay.

The only way Obama can save the day is to borrow another 3 trillion dollars, and raise taxes. (US debt is already at a record $14 trillion.) And the Republicans are calling his bluff.

In Europe, the economies of Greece, Portugal, Spain, Ireland and Italy are basket cases, on the brink of bankruptcy. Greece owes 50% more than the entire country produces in a year. The credit ratings of Ireland and Portugal have just been downgraded to junk status.

Even in Australia – the envy of the world for sailing almost unscathed through the GFC thanks to China buying our iron ore as fast as we can dig it out of the ground – almost every other sector of the economy has fallen off a cliff. Retail spending in the last few weeks alone has tanked. Up-market department store chain David Jones calls it the ‘perfect storm’.

In the meantime, the Australian government is fiddling while Rome burns. Rather than preparing for the coming storm triggered by economic collapse in Europe and North America, our government is focussed on saddling the country with a new tax.

I am not reporting this simply for the sake of being alarmist. You only need to watch television or read the serious newspapers to get the same picture.

But as the owner of a business, just as you are, I am alarmed. Because it’s becoming increasingly obvious that only those prepared for the oncoming storm will survive and prosper.

And as always, the 80/20 rule applies. Only 20% will survive.

How do you get ‘prepared’?

I’ve been traveling a LOT this past month, criss-crossing the country to speak at our Salon & Spa Bootcamps. (The last is in Perth on Monday, July 25. Book here if you have not already done so.)

As I talked to hundreds of salon & spa owners during these events, a clear picture began to emerge: the ‘armed’,  and the ‘dangerous’.

The difference is night and day.

At each seminar, the majority spoke of how ‘tough’ things are. How ‘difficult’ it was to get/train/keep good staff. How it seemed impossible to get ‘off the tools’ to work on the business instead of ‘in’ it. How ‘the economy’, the onslaught of daily deal websites, or the inside of Paris Hilton’s head was blocking their long-deserved success.

And yet, having been shown the readily-available tools, training, education and support that would almost certainly ensure their success, most of them left the events empty-handed.

And that was after they’d listened intently while nodding vigorously as the ‘armed’ told repeatedly how they’d created success in spite of all obstacles, family background, competing interests, ‘the economy’ and whether Jenifer Aniston still missed Brad.

At the Brisbane event yesterday, I spoke with many of the ‘armed’, like Emma MacDonald, owner of Indulgence Hair & Beauty in Hervey Bay, Queensland. Listen carefully as Emma describes how her business haS expanded rapidly over the past YEAR, while others have closed their doors.

Emma’s is not an isolated case. Nor is her story peculiar to Australia. There is overwhelming evidence of this on this very website. Dotted all over the world are hundreds of salons and spas who are prepared, not only to withstand the coming meltdown, but to prosper from it.

Prosper? Yep, because here’s the good news:

The vast majority will not educate themselves, will not seek out mentors, will not embrace proven tools, techniques and strategies. Instead, ostrich-like, they’ll bury their heads, keep on doing things the same way they’ve always done them. And when times get even tougher than they are now – as they surely will – the ostriches will be culled from the market.

That’s the upside of a downturn. Like a savvy investor buying good property when everybody else is dumping it, the armed and prepared will be there to clean up and own the market. 

It’s nature’s way. Predators attack the weak, the old and the unprepared, those lagging at the back of the herd.

If you want to be prepared, if you want to arm yourself with proven tools instead of going into this battle with one arm tied behind your back, blindfolded and gagged, then those tools are available to you.

Emma and hundreds of others use the tools, advertising templates and strategies, and the coaching support contained within the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit® and the Inner Circle marketing & mentoring program.

Whether you take advantage of those tools, whether you survive the impending storm or get washed away like so much flotsam, will make zero difference to my life. But it will make an enormous difference to yours.

Here’s where you go to apply for one of the 30 places we make available in the program each month. And frankly, you have nothing to lose by saying ‘okay, I’ll give it my best shot’. You’re covered by a 90-day Money Back Guarantee. The real risk for you is NOT doing anything.

Footnote: Is it any wonder the US finds itself so deep in manure? On the flight to Brisbane on Sunday, I watched a documentary on my iPad, “Inside Job”, the story behind the Global Financial Crisis. And it struck me that the very people who had caused the crisis in the first place – the squillionaire merchant bankers who’d persuaded Clinton & Bush it was a good idea to relax lending standards – were the same guys appointed by Bush, then Obama, to fix the problem. And not a single one of them has been required to give back the hundreds of millions they made by betting against the sub-prime loan catastrophe.

This forum is separate from the Salon & Spa Owners Marketing Discussion Forum, which is open to any salon owner. In the Members Only Facebook Forum, you can feel free to discuss and share any ideas, strategies or tools in the knowledge you’re only sharing with Members.

Remember, among our salon & spa owner Inner Circle members throughout the world, there is a VAST bank of knowledge, experience and mentoring available.

There is NO challenge you are facing now that hasn’t already been faced and overcome by these salon & spa owners, so Inner Circle members need never feel alone.

From salon marketing, to hiring and training staff, to information about product suppliers, software systems and much more, you’ll find an answer.

NOTE: Only Inner Circle member salons will be admitted to this group. It is a manual process, requests to join are not automatically accepted until their status as Members has been confirmed by one of our Administrators.

NOT yet a Member of the Inner Circle marketing & mentoring program? Don’t yet have the power of the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit? Click here to find out more and apply for a 90-day Money Back Guaranteed Test Drive of the entire system, including the Toolkit, one-on-one coaching (with our experienced coaches who are all salon & spa owners themselves) and access to the Members Only resources website.

Hana Snowden, Owner of Ataahua Day Spa in Lower Hutt, NZ

But for Inner Circle member Hana Snowden of Ataahua Day Spa in Lower Hutt near Wellington, getting 10 new clients a week means FREEDOM.

Hana has been in our marketing and mentoring program now for 8 months and in that time she has seen her business grow and grow.  Hana was a Beauty Therapist at the time of joining and has worked incredibly hard and taken lots of action to build her business.  She soon realised the value of working ‘on’ her business instead of ‘in it’ servicing just one client at a time.

For those of you who have read ‘the e-myth’ you will be familiar with the concept of working more on your business as opposed to in it.  For those who haven’t read it, it’s a MUST read so go out and get your hands on a copy asap!

Hana could spend an hour or 2 putting together her marketing campaigns that would bring her in lots of customers as well as thousands of dollars, instead of being in a treatment room making 50 bucks for a waxing appointment.

And this growth in turnover and customers allowed her the freedom to make the decision to pull herself ‘off the tools’ once and for all.  She set a date (15^th March) and told all her customers that as of that date she was a business owner, not a beauty therapist and would be handing her clients over to an employee.

Now I am not saying that being a beauty therapist or stylist is a bad thing. Rather being the owner of your business is a better thing, instead of being an employee/slave to it!

And Hana knows that should a staff member be sick, or someone leaves and has to be replaced then she can step back in, albeit temporarily, and cover for them – she has that option available to her.

And if Hana has been getting 10 new clients a week up to now, imagine what it will be like now that she can focus even more on the marketing.

10 new clients on average a week is 520 new clients per year.  If each of those clients has a value to Hana of one thousand dollars each then she is looking at an increase in turnover of half a million this year alone.  Heck, even if she kept just 50% of them that’s still a quarter of a million!

Too many business owners (not just salon owners) make the mistake of creating a job for themselves and becoming chained to their businesses.  For many, the only way they feel they can make more money is to work more in the business so they can cover the bills.  But the business will just continue to suffer if no time is being spent on the important stuff, the marketing and getting systems in place.  And so the vicious cycle continues.

And I am talking from personal experience.  Just over 4 years ago my wife Rachael was working as a Beauty Therapist in our salon D’Aguiar: hair.skin.nails in Auckland.  She’d spend about 70 hours a week in there doing treatments, I would hardly ever see her, her hair was falling out due to stress and she was suffering severe RSI.

Just like Hana, we made the call (with the help at that time of Greg Milner) to pull Rachael off the tools, as nervous as we were that the clients would leave and the business would fail.  Well, of course the clients didn’t leave, the salon flourished and today we own 4 massively successful businesses (including the salon which is run by a manager and we pop in maybe once a week).

If someone had told me 4 years ago that i’d be running 4 businesses then I would have thought they were mad and laughed in their face.  But today, I understand the concept of working on the business, not in it.  So I still have plenty of time to spend with Rachael and our new 2 week old baby.

WSM graphic artist Vanessa Goh and copywriter Chanelle Van Der Heijden with the all-new Essential Salon Owner's Marketing Toolkit - the first major update since the product was launched in 2004

If you want to work more on your business and make more money instead of being a slave to it working 70 hours a week and still struggling to pay the bills then Click here to find out more about the Worldwide Salon Marketing Inner Circle of entrepreneurial salon & spa owners, and the world-famous Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit® – and how you can apply for a 90-day Risk Free Test Drive of the entire system.

Cathy Davys of Cathy Davys Hair Design & Day Spa, Wellington NZ - a spectacular start to 2011

New templates for Inner Circle Member salons – see below.

The New Zealand economy – never robust since the onset of the GFC – is bracing itself for another hit in the wake of Christchurch’s $12 billion earthquake.

But for salon business owners like Cathy Davys, of Cathy Davys Hair Design & Day Spa in Wellington, such awful disasters are all the more reason to do what true entrepreneurs do best – in times of trouble, market harder, sell with more enthusiasm;

In other words, she abides by the advice of veteran sales trainer Zig Ziglar:

“Go out and sell something. Your country needs the business.”

“We did a special Christmas offer – we took it from the Members Only website – and took $30,000 from that one promotion. Along with a couple of other promotions we ran after Christmas, it gave us our best January/February ever!”

writes Cathy.

“In January we ran a special Diamond membership promotion, with a ticket price of $1,800 for a $2,400 value. We limited numbers to just 12, and sold them all in a week! That alone brought in $21,000. Clients love renewing, as they all run out at different times now its great for cash flow. Just need not to spend it:-)

“Now we’re about to launch a Platinum membership offer, $6,999 worth of hair & beauty services for $4,999. I’ll let you know how that goes, but if all 7 of them sell as expected, that’s another $34,993 in cash up front.”

Christchurch earthquake fundraiser

But it’s not all about cash for the business. Like many entrepreneurs, Cathy is discovering the benefits of ‘community responsibility’ to drive sales for the salon, with a special promotion to raise funds for victims of last week’s fatal earthquake.

“We are doing a fund raiser for Christchurch through our email to non returning guests for a $30 cut and blow wave with funds going to help Christchurch Hairdressers. This will also help to get 2 new stylists up and running.

“I love Worldwide Salon Marketing!”

ATTENTION INNER CIRCLE PREMIUM MEMBERS:

Want to see the exact promotions Cathy used to bring in that cash? Log into the Members Only ‘sealed section’ here to download Cathy’s big-ticket membership campaigns.

]]> http://www.worldwidesalonmarketing.com/salon-marketing-superstar-how-cathy-davys-created-her-salons-best-januaryfebruary-ever/feed 1 http://www.worldwidesalonmarketing.com/young-kids-heavily-pregnant-and-struggling-to-run-your-salon-business-listen-in-as-these-young-mothers-show-how?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=young-kids-heavily-pregnant-and-struggling-to-run-your-salon-business-listen-in-as-these-young-mothers-show-how http://www.worldwidesalonmarketing.com/young-kids-heavily-pregnant-and-struggling-to-run-your-salon-business-listen-in-as-these-young-mothers-show-how#comments Fri, 14 Jan 2011 03:12:01 +0000 Greg Milner http://www.worldwidesalonmarketing.com/?p=4598 Click the ‘play’ button below to find out how three successful salon owners not only faced and solved the challenge of pregnancy versus business management, but thrived on it…

Just before Christmas I took a call from a young salon owner who was clearly in some distress. It soon became clear why.

“I’m due to have my first baby in 6 weeks,” she said. I congratulated her and said she must be excited, wow, wonderful and other such supportive small talk.

“More terrifying than exciting,” she said. “I’m still working 5 days a week behind the chair, I’m the main money-earner in my salon, and I don’t know how I’m going to survive when the baby comes. I just don’t know what to do….”

Crikey. Six weeks to go, and no back-up plan? Without wishing to state the bleeding obvious, childbirth isn’t something that kind of sneaks up on you without warning. Like, about 9 months warning.

But this young lady’s story of woe is hardly unique. Thousands of salon owners – who are, by nature, mostly women – face this (very) common problem. Yet so few seem prepared for it.

So this week I interviewed three prominent Members of our Inner Circle Marketing & Mentoring program who are, or have recently, faced and solved that precise problem.

Rachael D’Aguiar is not only a very successful salon owner, she and husband Chris Sanders own the WSM business in New Zealand. As of the time of writing, Rachael is 10 weeks away from the birth of their first child (a girl) and is passionate about ‘being organized…’

Amy Mitchell already has two-year-old Macy. As she picked up the phone to join in on this interview, she was literally a few days – even hours – away from the birth of her second child. As she reveals here, a year ago Amy’s business was on the brink of failure. But suddenly, there was a light at the end of the tunnel – and it wasn’t an oncoming train.

Tegan Messineo gave birth to twin boys two years ago. She still under the age of 25, yet now owns two successful salons, and like Amy, decided to open the second business after the birth of her boys. Here she describes how the arrival of babies can actually be a spur to working smarter, and more productively…

Below is the first 7 minutes of an exclusive CD of the Month all members of the Inner Circle Premium program receive in the mail – just one of the many benefits of Inner Circle membership….

Attention members: Can’t wait for the CD to arrive to listen to the rest of this interview? Log in to the Members Only ‘sealed section’ and navigate to ‘Group Coaching Calls’ where you’ll find the entire interview you can listen to online.

Not yet a Member of the Inner Circle Marketing & Mentoring Program? Don’t yet have the world-famous Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit? Go here to find out more and apply for a 90-day Risk Free Money Back Guaranteed Test Drive….

For all the hair stylists, nail techs, beauty therapists and massage therapists reading this – something to think about.

How long did it take you to become good at your trade? How many years did you spend studying, on-the-job training, attending professional development seminars, doing exams, going to demonstrations?

In Australia, for example, a hairdressing apprenticeship is three years. That’s just to become a competent technician.

And yet every year, all over the world, as if by magic, tens of thousands of hair stylists and beauty therapists suddenly wake up, find a shop somewhere, hang out their shingle – and overnight, they’re in business.

Exactly how so many expect their transition from highly-trained technician to zero-training business owner to be somehow painless remains an enduring mystery to me.

After many years supplying marketing and sales tools and training to thousands of salon and spa owners all over the world, it still makes me shake my head when I ask a salon owner what self-education in business she’s put herself through, how many marketing seminars she’s attended, what business books she’s read, and so many reply,

“Er…well, nothing really. I just opened my business and hoped everything would sort itself out.”

Of course, this remarkable disconnect is in no way peculiar to the hair & beauty industry.

At the height of the Global Financial Crisis, a TV documentary chronicled the breathtaking collapse of Iceland’s entire banking industry.

Iceland had been a collection of fishing villages for centuries, the skills of seamanship and fishing taught to sons by fathers for generation after generation.

As the world drowned in cheap money in the salad days just before the GFC, Iceland’s fishermen walked off their boats and re-invented themselves as bankers.

Questioned on this glaringly-obvious disconnect, one of these fishermen-turned-financiers paused tellingly, and answered

“Mmmm….yes, I see your point.”

Perhaps you’ve just started your hair or beauty business. Maybe you’re just about to. Or, like so many salon & spa owners who finally make a decision to educate themselves with systems like the Inner Circle marketing & mentoring program, you’ve been in business for years, making the same mistakes over and over again.

If you fit into any of these categories, take a moment to ask yourself some questions:

It takes years of study and training to become a competent technician. How can it NOT take years to become a competent marketer, an accomplished hirer, trainer and motivator of staff, a sensible financial manager???

And did you become a good stylist or therapist all by yourself? Of course not. You had teachers, mentors, trainers to guide you along the way.

Expecting that knowledge of how to market and run a profitable business will somehow fall out of the sky like a Fairy Godmother is almost a definition of insanity.

For how long do you wish to remain a willing inmate of the Insane Asylum?

WSM graphic artist Vanessa Goh and copywriter Chanelle Van Der Heijden with the all-new Essential Salon Owner's Marketing Toolkit - the first major update since the product was launched in 2004

Find out more about the Inner Circle salon marketing & mentoring program, and the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit® – and see if you qualify for a Risk Free 90-day Test Drive.