Ask Me Anything - June 2024

Hello, hello, hello my salon lovelies. How's your week been? How's your month going? How is 2024 panning out? Let's find out in my monthly Q&A. Hello my salon friends. How on earth are you? Achingly well, I hope. Phil Jackson, your Queen of Salons, here with another dose of Wise Owl Wisdom. We are jumping into the mailbag this week. How has May been for you so far? It's been a bit of a funny bumpy one, actually. I thought we were doing okay through April. I thought we'd turned a corner and finally started to shake the last of the winter blues off. And then May has been a bit disappointing weather-wise, whether that's kind of bringing people's mood down here in the UK or not. I don't know. And we've just got word that we're going to be having an election. So that's terribly exciting, isn't it? Hopefully, people will see this as an opportunity to maybe make some changes across the country. Anyway, I'm not here to talk politics with you. I'm here to talk salon success. As always, I need your questions to keep these episodes relevant and interesting. I don't want to be running around Instagram nagging people into giving me questions for the Q&A session. So please, Phil at buildyoursalon.com. You know I love hearing from you anyway. And today's episode, I'm giving over to one question. Every now and again, we get a good meaty question, which means that I can give an entire episode over. And the question this week comes from Ros Ingleby, who is the director of Pamper Me Beauty. I had a quick stalk on your website, and I can see that your salon's down in Clifton. And Clifton, for those of you who don't know, is on the outskirts of Bristol. It used to be separate to Bristol, but as Bristol's grown, the two have squished together. Clifton's kind of the posh bit of Bristol. Anyway, Ros says, I'm listening to your fabulous podcast and need your advice. Darling, the first thing you need to do is shop around more if you think this is fabulous. I've just taken over a salon. Ooh, exciting. And it's got a great location in a lucrative area. There is money in Clifton. I know this much. And we get quite a few walk-ins during the summer. Our clients are some students, but mainly women. I love the way that you can either be a student or a woman. We do mainly nails and waxing, plus massage, tinting and lash lifts, and a few facials. Interesting. I'm new to being a salon owner, and we seem to be a summer salon as we get busy throughout those months. But looking at previous figures, our income halves in winter except Christmas. How can we become a salon which is busy all year round? Many thanks, Ros Ingleby from Pamper Me Beauty.

Okay, Ros, a few things to unpack here. The first is you're in a great location in a lucrative area. Well done. So many people do not take responsibility for where their business is. So the good news is that we know there's some money in the area. We've taken over an existing salon, so I'm guessing we've got a little bit of repeat custom in there, so we're not starting from scratch. So you've got a lot going for you. There's a lot working in your favour. And the first point you make is you get quite a few walk-ins during the summer, and then it seems that things tail off during the winter months. Now, there's a couple of things going on there. The first is if you're getting lots of walk-ins, I'm guessing that's a kind of location thing, not really a marketing thing. So there's probably some work to do on your marketing. And what you don't tell me is what marketing you're doing at the moment. And I would love to know whether you are trying to keep in contact with people regularly, using your email marketing, haven't stalked you on Facebook and Instagram, whether you're really pushing into turning those walk-ins into repeat customers. Also, if you're getting lots of walk-ins, this is an opportunity. Each one of those could be a regular to keep you going during the winter months as well. So what I would do, I can't remember what episode it is. If my editor is actually listening, please head down and find the episode that we did on the new client package, new client journey, because the new client package is there to turn a one-off into a regular as quickly as possible. So have a listen to that episode or have a look for that on YouTube. Now, one of the things that I think we do need to look at is your tariff, your service offering, because you're saying you're doing mainly nails and waxing. Firstly, nails, very low profit margin, very high competition. Waxing, I mean, you can make good money at waxing. And my friend Marta has some brilliant tips on building a very lucrative waxing business. But competition is fierce in waxing, and that tends to keep the prices down a little bit. It does tend to mean that you're fighting alongside an awful lot of other salons. Plus, waxing, even though we've got some diehards, can be very seasonal.

Until the sun comes out, lots of people actually don't worry too much about their waxing services. Then you're doing massage, high competition. And also, even though it can be lucrative, massage tends to be a fairly standard price pretty much across the UK. And also, you don't want to fill your columns with massage because your team is going to be knackered. Ting and ting and lash lifts, very low profit margin, and a few facials. So out of all of that, the only bit that really gets me excited about your profit margin is your facial business. And it doesn't sound like you're doing very much with that at all, Roz. So what I'm trying to get at is if you fill people's columns with low profit margin services, you need an awful lot of them. If you've got a target of, let's say, £10,000 worth of profit next month, that's a hell of a lot of nails and lashes. Whereas if we can start to lean into that facial business, and I'm particularly thinking about problem facial, prescriptive facials, if we can start to lean into that side of the business, we don't need quite so many people to keep us busy and to keep us profitable. So it might be, there are some salons out there, it doesn't matter what marketing you're doing, just have a seasonal business. They just have a really busy summer and a really quiet winter. If that's the case, we want to make sure those clients that are coming in in the winter are the ones that are making a big difference to the bottom line in the business. So I would have a look at how you're angling the business and start to lean into higher profit services wherever you can. The other thing I want to maybe suggest to you is that you start to specialise. Now, I'm not saying that you need to take anything off your price card, though there's a couple of things in there that I'm sure you know by now I'm not a huge fan of. But, for example, nails, you're competing with everybody in the whole damn world as far as nail services is concerned. Very, very hard to stand out. But if you can become a specialist in something to do with nails, for example, I used to be a part owner in a beauty business. The beauty business got ripped off on that one, took huge amounts of money from me and never gave it back. But that was my fault. We either get success or we get a lesson, don't we, darlings? But the lady who was running the salon, even though we hate her, had carved out a bit of a niche in the nail industry. If you were getting married next week and you still didn't have any nails, you've been trying to grow them but managed to bite them down just as quickly. She was the one who could build you a nail to get you through the day. OK, those nails may not last weeks and weeks and weeks, but they would look nice on your photos.

And she carved out a bit of a niche. Similarly, I was helping one lady who was trying to get into Botox in a very competitive part of the country. And Botox is a very competitive service anyway. She was really struggling to stand out because everyone describes their services in the same way and they charge pretty much the same prices. Which means the only thing people can shop around on really is reputation and price. But I said to her, if we can build a package together where, yes, you offer all of the Botox services, but you're the absolute expert when it comes to, say, smokers lines, then all of a sudden we're starting to specialise. It means we can charge more, but it also means people will travel. So we're starting to extend your target market away from Clifton, away from Bristol. Perhaps the whole of the southwest might be beating a path to your door for a very particular type of service. Now, it does mean that the marketing is going to have to support that, of course, and that might be a little bit more work. I do think maybe leaning into some kind of recommend a friend would be really useful. I've talked about recommend a friend on the podcast before. And in a nutshell, I don't believe we should be doing recommend a friend all year round. I think we want our marketing campaigns to be things that we can be enthusiastic about and that we can put lots of energy behind. And that's really hard if you're offering something all year round. So I would once or twice per year lean into recommend a friend, get some recommendations, get some referrals going on from the best clients that you have. Hopefully then birds of a feather flock together and we can start to see some of their friends turning into your amazing regulars as well. So there's a few things we can be doing there. And then finally, I will be remiss of me to talk about getting some kind of reliable income, some reliable steady stream if I didn't talk about salon memberships. And as you know, not only am I queen of salons, I am the undisputed queen of salon memberships. So I'd be looking at getting some of your regular clients hooked onto a 12 month membership program. That way we've got a steady stream of income through the summer, but into the winter as well. I've spoken lots of times about salon memberships, but I really do think that we could put it. Maybe that's the way that we build your facial business. Perhaps we need to start looking at some facial memberships to boost takings and boost profit as well, but also keep us a bit busier during the quieter time. So perhaps those two parts of your business could be building together. So there we have it in a nutshell. My answer, sorry, very long answer to a very short question, Roz. How do you become a year round salon? I would be looking at your marketing, leaning into higher profit services, which maybe means we don't need to keep us busy all year round.

I'd be looking at recommend a friend and referrals as well, specialising so that we're bringing people from a bigger target market. And of course, leaning into salon memberships as well. So I hope that's been useful to you. Please reach out again, Roz. Let me know how you're getting on. It's lovely to get questions from people. It's even lovelier when I get a bit of follow up and a little bit of a little bit of information on how maybe my advice is starting to pan out into the big wide world. Just seven short days until our next build your salon podcast episode. In the meantime, my email address here. Phil at build your salon dot com. I would love to get your questions for next month's Q&A and anything else in between. I love hearing from my salon owner friends anyway. Also always on the hunt for amazing, interesting guests. Got some brilliant feedback from last week's episode with my friend Liz McKeon talking about domestic abuse and domestic violence. If you haven't heard that one, go back a week. Have a listen. It's an amazing, interesting chat with a fascinating lady. And I'm always on the hunt for guests. So if you know someone who would make an amazing guest for the podcast, reach out Phil at build your salon dot com. I would love to hear from you. So just seven short days until I'm coming in your eyes and ears again with another dose of wise old owl wisdom. And until then, take care. Sit down and see what's going on with the queen of salons. Hair, beauty and more successful tips for business owners. All on build your salon.