44. Do you even deserve success?

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. Hello and welcome, and today I want to warn you about a trap that I fell into, and I'm so angry with myself because when I see other people falling into that trap, I honestly can't quite believe that they're doing it, and that is the trap of feeling entitled. If you've been in the salon industry for any length of time, particularly if you have staff, especially if you have a younger team, I'll bet you've had a conversation with somebody recently about how difficult it is to get staff to perform and to commit and to strive for better things for themselves and for the business because they have this sense of entitlement. They don't need to strive, they don't need to work, they don't need to perform in a certain way, and today I caught myself having this sense of entitlement. I don't know when you're watching this, but I've recorded it in January, and I spent the whole of yesterday doing my target setting and goal setting. So I've already set my salon targets, I did that with my accountant last year, so this was about what I want to personally achieve over the next 12 months, both in my business and in my family and personal life as well. So it's quite a long exercise, quite involved, but I really enjoy it, and if you're in the mood for it, goal setting is a glorious thing. So I spent the whole day planning out my year, what a fantastic successful year would look like for me. And then I started to break that year down into quarters and then into a monthly plan for the first quarter as well. And lots and lots of fun and lots and lots of coffee and I had a great time and I got to buy a new notebook, which as you know, always fills me with glee anyway. And so I finished my goal setting and then started planning out this month. So I wanted all my goals to be aligned so that what I was working on this month would push me in the right direction for 12 months of fantastic success in my build your salon business. The problem was, when I started breaking those goals down into monthly and weekly targets, I found that actually things didn't add up. And the reason for that is that at the moment, my life stage is that I'm quite restricted on the number of hours that I can dedicate both to my salon business and to my salon consulting business. And that's because I've got two wonderful little boys who, you know, I would never wish away in a million years. But anyone who's got children knows that it immediately puts massive restriction on what you can achieve because I'm the person who does the school run in the morning and I'm the person who does the school run in the afternoon.

So most of my working day is condensed between 9.30 in the morning and 2.30 in the afternoon. So there's a limit to what I can achieve. After I planned out my year, my quarter, my month and my coming week, I realised that actually I was trying to do too much. There weren't physically enough hours in my working week to let me hit all those targets because I've got a lot that I want to achieve. I want to take on more consulting clients. I want to help more salons this year. So I've got a target for the number of clients that I want to see. I've also got a target for the number of products that I want to put out there. So I've got nine more training products that I'm going to try and share with our wonderful industry this year. I've also got two more books that I want to get out by Christmas as well. So I'm in the middle of writing my second book as well. And when I added up all the hours that I've allocated to these different projects and put the deadlines in that I needed to hit if I was going to hit my year targets, it just didn't add up. There was too much to try and squeeze into too few hours. And I got a little bit cross with myself and I thought, well, do I need to go back to the beginning of my goal setting process and start making things a bit easier? Do I need to take anything out of my year targets to make life a little bit easier on my day by day basis? Then I realized that I'd fallen into that trap of entitlement. Nobody is entitled to a successful business. Not everybody deserves to have a salon that succeeds. Not every competitor out there deserves to be there in 12 or 24 months time. You have to accept this. Not everybody who starts a business can succeed because some of them just don't have the things in place. They haven't done the research or they're not working hard enough. So what is it that separates a successful business that deserves to be there in 2, 5, 10, 20 years time and a salon business or a consulting business like my own that doesn't deserve to be there in 12 months time? And part of it is being absolutely clear and committed to your success. And I'd fallen into that sense of entitlement. I don't deserve that level of success if I can only commit those few hours Monday to Friday when my children happen to be at school. So I started looking at the rest of my day. I don't deserve that level of success if I'm quite happy to sit down and watch a box set for an hour and a half every single night. I don't deserve that level of success if I'm quite happy singing to myself in my car instead of listening to an audio book.

So I had to find all these little pockets of time that I was spending not on my business, not on my success and actually not on my family goals either. Just wasted time. I felt like I was entitled to that level of laziness and I don't want you to fall into that same step as well. If you're not getting the results that you deserve, if you don't feel that you're pushing your business forward in a meaningful way, in a way that charges you and gives you an emotional drive to carry on and strive for even more success. Then I'm sorry, maybe you don't deserve any more success. Perhaps your salon business is at the level that you absolutely deserve. Have a look at your whole week. Have a look at your plans. Make it add up. Sometimes you just have to commit to yourself. You're going to achieve certain things this year and then figure out how the hell you're going to make it work. And that's what I've been doing today. So learn from my mistake. Forget that sense of entitlement that we criticise so readily in others and just look forward to a fantastic 12 months and going balls deep with your success for 2017. I hope that's been useful to you. I hope you can learn from my mistake today. And if it has been useful, please don't forget to subscribe. I do a broadcast like this every single Monday and I would hate you to miss out on the content that I'm sharing. Sometimes it's positive. Sometimes I get things right instead of wrong. Don't hold your breath though. In the meantime, if you subscribed, I will see you next Monday. Take care. 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.