Is AI Good for Salons? My Honest Answer

Everyone went a bit mad for AI and now a lot of people are quietly falling out of love with it. And I think I know why. It's because they're using it for the one thing that it's actually not that good at. All on Build Your Salon. Hello, hello, hello. My salon friends, Phil Jackson here, your Queen of Salons coming over the internet again with another dose of My Wise Owl wisdom. How on earth are you achingly well, I hope as we storm towards the second half of July. I'm not gonna comment on anything in news. I'm not gonna comment on anything to do with the weather 'cause I'm not in the country. I'm recording this ahead. I should be hopefully in sunny, sunny Spain. So yeah, I can't give you anything timely, but I don't know, what should we talk about? Do you like my blue background? Haven't done a blue before. So today I'm gonna give you my honest answer to a question that I think is being bounced around online an awful lot. And that is, is AI actually any good for salons in the salon industry? And I think I'm in a pretty good position to answer it because I use AI every single working day. This podcast is put together through an AI process. I've built tools with it. It's not just a skeptic having a pop at AI. I'm someone who is telling you, I hope I'm telling you where it genuinely helps and where it lets you down. And I think my honest answer is that AI is brilliant for your business, but it is rubbish at being you. And if you get that distinction right, it can be the best assistant that you had. If you don't, you are gonna get exactly the disappointment that I think lots of people are feeling right now. Let me start with actually what's happening out there. If we cast our minds back about 18 months ago, everyone was losing their minds over AI and they were using it for as much as they possibly could to write all your posts and your emails to fill your diary where you put your feet up. And we sort of hit a bit of peak excitement about it. And now I think there are quite a few people that are cooling on it. They're underwhelmed. The magic's worn off and I think there's a very strong reason for that. I don't think it's that AI has got worse. I think it's that they're sat there chatting to it, prompting and re-prompting in the same way as they always did, and getting absolute generic crap back. And we call it AI slop. It might be polished and grammatically perfect and keyword friendly, but it's completely soulless. And sometimes the salon owner has gone that little bit further and asked it to be their voice, but it can't quite be their voice. And I think this is where things are going wrong. I think this is why a lot of the content that's made by AI and by your competitors, let's face it, feels tired. It feels like recycled content. And I think it's because even if you train it on your voice, it becomes static. It becomes stagnant because your voice changes. What's interesting to you, what's going on in your business, what's going on in your life shifts minute by minute, day by day, week by week, month by month. If you've locked your brand voice into AI over time, it starts to just feel a bit stale. It feels like you've created the same post for the last six months. And you can try and fix it. You can say make it funnier, make it warmer, make it sound more human. And it often gets more generic, not less because it's pulling from a wider average of what the internet thinks is funny and human. It is not quirky anymore. It is not freaky like you are my darling. And if you're not free, well frankly, why are you listening to the Bud Song on podcast? You're trying to chase your own voice and it running away from you every time you try and revise a post. That's why people are getting disillusioned. It's not because AI is failing, it's because they pointed it at the one job that's really crap at, which is sounding like you. But I love AI. I think it's absolutely the future. And if you are the ignorant salon owner out there, who's going, I will never let AI into my business. Well, frankly, I hope you enjoy your retirement because I get AI is not gonna replace you as a beauty therapist or a hairdresser or a massage therapist or a holistic therapist or an aesthetician yet, I get that. But you can easily be replaced as a hairdresser by a hairdresser who also understands AI because they're moving quicker, they're moving in a smarter way, they've got their business system streamlined, and that's where we need to be leaning in because where AI is fantastic is in your business, in the engine room, in the back office, not the shop window. I've got a few examples of my own, of course. I told you a few episodes ago, I built an app called Gifty Poo, which is available giftpoo.com. If you wanna sign up, you can still get the founders rate and it's a wishlist tool for salon clients. Built by coding with AI took me a few weeks to build and polish and refine. I built my own invoice creator. I've built a scheduler which helps with scheduling for my retreats. I can't code not a line. A couple of years ago, the idea of building that kind of thing would've been laughable. I certainly, we wouldn't have been able to build all those things in the last six months and AI has made that genuinely possible. That's not hype, that's the truth. But notice what all of those things are. They're systems. They're the plumbing, they're devices that make my business life easier. None of them is taking my voice. None of them is my voice talking to my clients. And I think that's the pattern. Think of your salon like a restaurant, your skill, your artistry, the relationships, the food, the experience, all of that has to be yours. But you wouldn't think twice about a machine helping you with the stock ordering or the bookkeeping. So let's move AI to the back of the house where it can earn its keep. Keep it out the window. The window is your brand, your quirky freakishness. Don't put a generic sign over your brilliant business. So what could you actually use it for? Well, drafting the boring emails, but then rewrite it in your own freaky little way. Get your head around the numbers, pasting your figures, ask it to explain what's going on. And then build yourself a freaky little dashboard. My darlings, you are so unique, my little monsters, and I want you to build your business around that. Not the generic AI slop when it comes to your planning, your quarter, your marketing calendar, your road test, of course, AI involved, policies, procedures, contracts. Yes, yes, yes. We want AI all over it. Even simple tools like I did. If you've ever sat there and gone, I wish there was an app for that. You can build it and you can do it really quickly and really easily. All the things that don't need a voice, I think AI can really help with. There is an exception to this though. I'm calling it the marketing exception, and that's where AI is the new word of mouth. There's one place where the voice and the business actually meet. Your clients are starting to use AI like a search engine. They're not going for a salon near me in Google. Well, they are of course, but not all the time. They're also asking things like Chat GPT to find me someone good for fine curly hair near me who's open on a Saturday, and asking AI to do the research. How does AI decide to suggest? It reads the web, it reads your service descriptions, your reviews, your team bios, your site. So the irony is that if your website's stuffed with slop, you've actually made it harder for AI to recommend you because you sound like everybody else. If your site is rich with your actual voice, your specifics, your little freaky way of doing things, then you're teaching AI exactly who to send your way, which is the whole point coming back around, write it in your own voice even if the machines understand you better. The reason I was excited anymore, honestly, my last honest observation, you notice that when a new AI model used to come out, it was news, it was everywhere. There's a new model from Anthropic, there's a new model from OpenAI. Gemini have just done this. It's usually a fuss every few days, if not every few weeks. Now a new model lands and everyone kind of goes 'meh'. And I don't think that's a bad sign. I think it means that we've arrived. And for a salon owner, what that means is that AI is as good as it needs to be. You don't need the next latest model. The one you've got is gonna do everything on your list today. So that plateau, it's not disappointing. It shows that the tools are maturing. It is stable. You can get them and use it now without feeling like you are falling behind. The excitement's gone because it's now become truly stable and useful. So here's my honest answer. Boiled down, stop asking AI to be you. It can't. And every time you try, you generate more slop and you're gonna fall further and further out of it. Instead, I want you to point AI at your business, the admin, the numbers, the planning, the tools, the bits that make you want to just go and do something else. Let's get AI on doing. Keep your voice for yourself because your freaking voice is the one thing that AI can't copy. Use AI for the engine instead. If you wanna get really good at the business side of this, that's what my program AI by your side is for. Not a huge pitch. It's where I show small business owners like you how to put AI to work on the right jobs without getting overwhelmed. Overwhelmed, even put your teeth back in Jackson. Have a look at philjackson.coach, the link's in description as well. Just a few short days until I'm coming all over the internet again. In the meantime, if you are pushing AI to a use that I haven't come across, reach out and let me know, phil@buildyoursalon.com. Love to be interviewing some salon owners on how they're using AI. I've had lots of industry experts from AI on. Really love some salon owners giving their point of view. Until we speak again, my darlings, please take care.