I Built My Own Salon Tool (And I Can't Code)

I have built four software applications this year. I have no idea how to code each of them. Designed to make my life just a little bit easier. If I can do it, you can too. Stay tuned to find out how all on Build Your Salon. Let's jump into something I am genuinely excited about, not because it's particularly clever, but because it's solved a real problem in my business and I've done it in just a few hours without writing a single line of code or paying a developer a single penny. I am going to tell you about a couple of projects that I've worked on this year using something that people are calling Vibe Coding. And before you switch off because you think this isn't for you, I'm not a tech person. I have no coding background. I have written coding in the past, during lockdown, I taught myself how to code one simple application. I haven't touched code since I built these by describing what I wanted in plain English using AI and it went away and built them for me. If you can write a text message, you can vibe code too and I think there are brilliant reasons why you absolutely should be. Phil Jackson here, your queen of salons coming all over the internet with another dose of my Wise Owl wisdom. Hope you're well. Hope you are achingly well. As we steam towards the middle of May, how's business? How is Q2 treating you? I think yes we are halfway through Q2. Are we halfway to hitting your goals? Why not reach out and let me know? I love hearing from my salon owner friends. So what are we talking about today? We're talking about vibe coding. Forget the name because it makes you sound like a tosser. And here's what it is actually in practice. You use an AI tool and you describe what you want, not in code, not in technical language, just in plain English the way you would describe it to a person or you would describe it to Chat GPT and then AI goes away and builds the code, writes the code, and builds an application for you. So let me give you a couple of examples. The first one that I had was I have to create a few invoices every month for a few of my clients and it's not something I have to do an awful lot. Most of my clients are okay with the receipts that they get automatically through Stripe, but a couple of them for their accounting processes need invoices. And it's one of those irritating little things that because I wasn't doing it a lot and because I wasn't able to batch process it, it just seemed to take too long. Even though I had a template set up on Google Drive, where I would go in and enter all the details and then export it as a PDF and then send it to my customers. Each one just seemed to take 10 minutes and it felt like something that ought to take 30 seconds. So I described that to AI and let it build an app. And that's it. That's vibe coding. So you're not learning to program, you don't have to understand the code that it's written. You are just having a conversation with something that already knows how to program and you take the creative direction yourself. The few times a month I had to create those invoices and it's not complicated work, but the way I was doing it was just a bit clunky and it would just take a little bit too long. And I reckon, each one would take about 10 minutes and I'd probably have to do half a dozen, maybe a dozen of these sometimes in a month. So it was one to two hours across a month, but I was switching from task to task. It's not difficult, but it was just a little bit irritating. So I used an app called Base 44 and Base 44 is a vibe coding app. So you describe what you want and it creates a web application just for you. It's not out there in the big wide world unless you particularly want it to be. It's just a tool for me to use inside my business. Now here's the clever bit. Base 44 gives you a certain number of requests each day and each month for free. So what I did was had a conversation first with Chat GPT. Told it what I was trying to achieve. Told it that I only had a certain number of requests that I could make of Base 44. So we had to get the bulk of it right the first time round. If you've got a paid account with Base 44, you can describe what you want. You don't quite like what it built. So you ask it to make some changes and then you ask it for some more changes and then you're going to run out of credits on the free version, you're going to run out of credits very quickly. So what I did was had a conversation with Chat GPT first. That gave me a very detailed prompt that I could then give to Base 44 to describe what I wanted. So I wanted something that would include the client name, the service description, the amounts, automatic totals. I wanted it to include my logo, my branding, and I wanted it to give me all of that as a clean PDF that I could just send to my client. And the first version probably took Base 44, about 10, maybe 15 minutes to build. And then I spent another probably an hour just polishing and refining, adding bits that I didn't like, adjusting the layout of the PDF, getting the colours just right. And now when I need an invoice, it takes me about 90 seconds. I literally just fill in a little form, hit generate, the app builds the PDF and it's done. So it's gone from 10 maybe 15 minutes down to 90 seconds. Do that several times over a month. I'm buying myself back hours over the course of a year in less than an afternoon's work and for no money at all. Just love it, love vibe coding. I think where people are going wrong with Vibe coding is they think what they're doing is creating something that they're then going to sell or creating something that has to live out in the big wide world for other people to use. And it isn't. It's about creating these little tools just for you that make life a little bit easier. Example number two for my gorgeous salon owner's retreat. And this was born out of a specific problem that I'd have in previous years. Every year we create a retreat schedule. The problem is once the sessions are put into what I used to use was Google Calendar. Once the sessions are put into Google Calendar, I could then share a link to that Google Calendar and my attendees could see the calendar before they turn up and also check on the calendar during the retreat. Simple enough, we can't really have a printed schedule because things change as we're going through the retreats. Sometimes there are topics that we need extra time on. Sometimes there are sessions that get swapped around. Sometimes there are sessions that finish a bit earlier than I expected them to. Sometimes to be honest, we swap stuff around to make the most of the sunshine. If we're going to have a cloudy morning, I do more of the work that morning so that we get more time in the sun in the afternoon. The other problem that I had was that some attendees don't use Google Calendar, or they couldn't use the Google Calendar link. So I'd end up changing things last minute and then I had to text everybody to tell them there were changes and so on. I was resending the schedule a couple of times a day and it gets a bit confusing when the changes come along. So I jumped into Base 44 again and built a simple little app. It's a web app, it's not an app that lives on the Apple store or anything like that, just a simple little app. Attendees get a link that they can open on their laptop or they can open on their phone and they get to see the full schedule for that day and the upcoming days. So they get to see the sessions, they get to see the times, they get to see the descriptions and any updates. When I change something on my version of the app, it gets changed automatically next time they open it. So they don't need to download anything. They don't need a Google account, they don't need to import it into their calendar and there's no PDFs or anything flying around either. No out of date information. Built it in less than an afternoon. It looks professional. My attendees love it. And I've had a couple of event organisers that have heard about it that are also using the app now. And that's the point. It's not replacing a piece of software that I'm spending out on, it's just solving one specific annoying problem in my business in a way that's completely tailored to how I work. So what could you be building? I want you to look at the stuff that's happening in your business. It's not about big bits of technology that are being replaced. What are the tasks in your week that take a bit longer than they should? Or where are you using a tool that's not quite right? Where are you using a spreadsheet or where are you using a Google document that doesn't quite fit the purpose that you've got? Or is there something manually that you think could be, should be automated with a simple system? So you could have a client intake form that captures all the information you need before a new client arrives. Maybe it's got all of the client history. Perhaps you haven't got that facility in your salon software and you want it put into a different format or you want it put into a sheet, a Google sheet for example. Or maybe, and here's one that I would be using. You want some kind of rotor for your staff holidays that you can update in one place. Your team can check it on their phone without needing to be added to yet another app without you needing to take out another salon. A another software subscription or a little calculator that works out some of your product costs for a service and tells you what you need to be charging. A little pricing app could be really good fun to use. None of these are hugely complicated. None of them are beyond the realms. None of them involve you in creating any code yourself at all. You just need to be able to describe them in some detail and that's all you need. So here's what it won't do though, because I don't want to oversell this. It probably is not going to replace your main booking software. If you are using something like Forest or Fresher or Treat, these are complicated systems with years of development behind them, you're probably not going to be able to rebuild those in Vibe Coding. You probably could in the end, but it's going to take you an awful lot of time and an awful lot of knowledge. Also, bear in mind the first version is not going to work perfectly. Sometimes it builds something that looks right but behaves a little bit oddly. You need a bit of patience, a bit of backwards and forwards in that refining stage. And it works best for very specific, very focused problems. The more clear your description of what you want, the better the result is going to be. But for those little specific frustrating problems, I think this is one of the best things that's come along in years. So I want you to identify that one bit of friction that's happening in your business, that thing that takes a bit longer than it should or that tool that you think, why has nobody created that yet? Then we're going to do a little bit of backwards and forwards with Chat GPT or Claude or whoever you are using to get a really good prompt that you can take. Now I use Base 44 because the bit that's tricky is what we call deployment. The bit that's tricky is getting it from that little library of code into a place that you can actually use it with a link. Some things you don't need to use with a link, so it's not a problem. But if you need to use it with a link that goes through a process of what we call deployment and deployment is a little bit messy and a bit clunky. All of it is on YouTube out there. If you want to learn how to deploy an app, it's something that I do now and I'm replacing the software that I've built all my websites on now because I understand how to deploy a website as well. But if you don't want to learn deployment, something like Base 44 or Lovable will do that bit for you as well. So it's a lot simpler. But if you know how to deploy an app, you could be looking at Codex, which is created by Chat GPT or Claude Code or Claude Cowork will do the same thing for you, but they need that deployment stage at the end. That said, none of this is beyond the realms of comprehension. If you can set up an email account on your iPhone, I promise it's a lot less complicated than that. We just need to be able to describe the problem and put together a little bit of backwards and forwards so we get the result that we want. The first version is not going to be perfect. That's fine. We're going to tell it what to change, treat it like a conversation and keep working until we get what we need. It's not going to change your entire business, but it might just make life a little bit easier in your working day, in your working week. So what do you think? What have I missed? Why not reach out and let me know, phil@buildyoursalon.com is my email address scrolling at the bottom of the screen? What are you using Vibe coding for? How are you using AI in your business? This has got you thinking about how you could use AI in your own salon business, not theoretically, but in the real world. Then my AI program is exactly what you need. It's called AI by Your Side and it's built for small business owners who aren't techie and do not want to be. There is a bit of vibe coding in there, but there's plenty of other ways, simpler ways even that we can be using AI in our day-to-day. Head over to Phil Jackson coach and take a look. I'll put that link in the description, just a few short days until I'm coming all over the internet again with another dose of your Uncle Phil's Wise Owl Wisdom. And until then, take care.