28. Work-Life Balance and your salon business

Hi everyone, this is the weekly Build Your Salon podcast with me, Phil Jackson. I'm here with the tools you need to generate the profits you deserve so that you can lead a fuller life. Welcome, and today we're talking all about work-life balance. Many salon owners and managers are feeling an awful lot of pressure at the moment. This is a brutally competitive environment that we're operating in, so it's no wonder there are lots of salon owners feeling out of control. As far as work-life balance is concerned though, I think I've got three strategies that could really serve you well. I have a problem with the expression work-life balance. I think it puts a pressure on us as human beings that we should be spending 50% of our energy and effort on our businesses and the other 50% outside having some kind of other life. I think that's unrealistic. I think if you're a salon owner or an entrepreneur or a salon manager, chances of you having 50% of your efforts going into your business are very, very slim. If you live in that utopian world, by all means switch me off now because I have nothing to add. You've got it nailed. I think that where you set your percentage is entirely up to you. If you are comfortable with a 60-40 split or even an 80-20 split, go for it. Stop beating yourself up. Stop trying to move to this 50-50 utopian world. First up, you need to know what's needed. This goes back to your goal setting. You will never achieve work-life balance wherever you've decided to split unless you are crystal clear about what it is that you're trying to achieve in the areas of your life. It is not enough to say that you want your salon to grow. You need to know exactly what success looks like to you because then you can start to plan. Once you know what's needed, it's also much easier to figure out what's not needed. What I need you to do after you've set your goals, though, is have a really honest conversation with yourself. You need to sit down with a piece of paper and imagine your life as a pie chart. Where are you willing to spend your time and your effort and your energy? For example, I'm a small business owner. I'm also a consultant for other small businesses, but I'm also primary carer for my two children. My children are of school age, so I split my time and my effort and energy like this. 35% of my time and effort and energy goes on my kids.

Even though they're of school age, I'm the guy that does the drop-off, I'm the guy that does the pick-up, and I'm usually the guy that's cooking the dinner as well. 20% of my time, effort and energy goes into my salon business. I'm very lucky. I have an experienced team, I have a really stable team. They don't need a lot of effort and energy on my part on a day-to-day basis. They can pretty much get on with it with minimum input from me. I allocate 40% of my time and effort and energy to build your salon. It's a relatively new business, lots of work to do there, so 40% of my time and effort and energy is allocated in that direction. And then 5% of my time, effort and energy goes on what other people would see as purely selfish things. So 5% of my time, effort and energy is me taking myself to a movie. Or me spending some time with a bottle of wine and some friends. Or me even having a spa day occasionally. Where you set those percentages is entirely up to you. You have to be comfortable, you have to be able to sleep at night. But then what I want you to do is revisit your goals. Somebody much cleverer than me once said, You can have it all. You can't have it all right now. So have a look at those percentages. Does your goal setting then seem realistic? If you're trying to achieve 45 projects that are going to take an awful lot of time, effort and energy, and you're only allocating 10% of your time to those projects, something's out of kilter. Something's got to give. So either you need to be willing to allocate more effort in that direction, or some of those goals have to go. Once you've got that clarity, you're going to find achieving that balance, wherever you've put the mark, a lot easier. Next up, you've got to plan. And plan to death. You have to be ruthless with your planning. Once I take on a new salon for mentoring, the first thing we do is go through a goal setting exercise similar to what we've talked about in item 1. Next, what I do is pick up that person's journal or planner or agenda. I give them two weeks after we've done the goal setting. I pick up their journal, and I should be able to see just by flicking through the pages of the journal what goals that person has for themselves. Nine times out of ten, I can't tell. They have these ambitious goals, these things they really want to achieve at home and in their business. And when I open their journals, I see a to-do list of things that have just come along that day or the day before. You can't plan that way.

Once you're really clear about your goal setting, I want you to block out time on a weekly basis, get really, really disciplined with your planning so that you can start moving towards those goals. But also, it means you're going to get really good at saying no. I do all my planning on a Sunday evening. It takes me about an hour to revisit my goals, allocate my time, and make sure that everything is as it should be for the week coming up. If anybody calls me with anything during the week, unless it's a dire emergency or a golden opportunity to move me much closer to a goal, much quicker, I'm afraid it's a no. It won't get allocated time that week. And you need to be that ruthless as well if you're ever going to achieve this balance. People are greedy for your time. They are continually pecking for your attention. You have to be able to switch off the phone. You have to be able to say no. And point number three is you play the long game. Just because you've set those percentages for your time, effort and energy does not mean that I have to spend 35% of my time, effort and energy every week with my children. It doesn't work like that for me. For example, August, I don't work at all. August is purely about my kids. That means that July tends to be all about the business. But when I get to the end of the year, or actually more specifically for me, when I get to the end of three years, my three year plan, I should have allocated the right percentages in the right directions. So as long as you're playing the long game, as long as you're achieving that balance over time, it's okay for one area of your life to dominate in the short term. I hope that's been useful to you. If it has, don't forget to subscribe. I'm putting a video like this and a podcast like this out every single Monday. I would hate you to miss out on the content that I'm sharing. Take care, I'll see you soon. Hey everyone, it's Phil again. I hope you enjoyed the episode. If you did, please subscribe and be sure to tell your friends. For more help and information on running your salon and your life, head over to buildyoursalon.com. I'll see you there.