How to Get Systems in Place in Your Salon

If your salon won't run for a week without you checking your mobile after hours, you haven't built a business yet. What you've built is a very demanding job that just happens to have your name over the door. Today I'm gonna show you where to start fixing that. And it doesn't involve writing a thousand page manual that no one's gonna read. Your salon. Hello. Hello, hello. My salon friends, Phil Jackson here, your Queen of Salons coming all over the internet again with another dose of My Wise Owl wisdom. How on earth are you achingly? Well, I hope I have learned in my years as a coach that the word systems makes a lot of salon owners feel one of two things. Either their eyes start to glaze because it sounds boring and corporate or their stomach kind of lurches because they know they need systems but they have absolutely no idea where to get started if you're in either camp, well your Uncle Phil is camp alongside you and this episode is for you. Before we start, I'm thrilled to welcome a new sponsor to the Build Your Salon podcast. And that's Pretty Data. Are you ready to finally make friends with the money in your salon business without touching spreadsheets? Pretty Data connects your booking system and accounting systems, knows your numbers and tells you straight when you ask it. If you are on track this month, it's perfect for salon owners who are flat out but running their business on gut instinct, which is an exhausting way of running your salon. You can start your free trial at prettydata.co and the link is in the notes. So before we get stuck in just a heads up through August, I'm gonna be running a lighter schedule, just one episode a week out on a Friday and then we'll be back into our usual rhythm in September. And I'm telling you that on purpose because that is exactly the sort of thing today's episode is all about. A business should be able to ease off for a few weeks without the whole thing collapsing. Mine included. And I'd be a fraud if I told you to build a salon that runs without you and then never practised it myself. So that's the plan. Now onto systems, there's a trap a lot of salon owners fall into. Someone tells them they need systems so they sit down one quiet afternoon and they open a blank document and type the word systems at the top and then they stare because the job framed like that is enormous. Everything you do in a day could in theory be written down as a system: reception, stock, cleaning, bookings, complaints, ordering, aftercare advice, cashing up, plus all of your services, all of it. And when the job is everything, you close the laptop and you go and do something that feels a lot more productive instead. And I did this for a really long time. I told myself I'd sort the systems out when things calmed down. And of course, you know as a small business owner, things never calmed down. And the reason they never calmed down is because you haven't sorted your bloody systems out. And it was a lovely little loop that I trapped myself in and I'm sure I'm not alone. And the thing that finally broke it for me was being forced to step away from my salon for a long stretch, not by choice. It was because we'd adopted my eldest son and him settling in was taking a lot longer than we'd anticipated. And what I discovered was really sobering. The place didn't start falling apart because my team wasn't any good. It was falling apart because the entire operation was stored in one place and that place was my head. Nobody else knew how to handle deposits for a wedding booking. No one else knew what I said to a client who was asking for a discount. Nobody else knew how to handle the suppliers when they ran out of the thing that we always had. It wasn't written down anywhere. It was just me walking around all day being the system. Because you have systems, what you don't have is documented, repeatable, reliable systems. So let's firstly forget about systemising everything. Let's figure out where we actually start. And I want you to think about the last time you had a proper day off or a holiday and your phone went. What was that call or that message about? Not the social stuff, the work stuff. Where do we keep the spare till roll or a client's kicking off about a refund? What do I do? Or we run out of our favourite tint? Who do we order it from? Or someone wants to rebook but I can't see a place in your diary. Those interruptions. Yes, they are annoyances, but they're also free research. There are really accurate list of the systems that your salon is missing. So every single time someone has to ring you on your day off or send you a text message when you're on holiday is because the answer to that question lives in your head and nowhere else. And that's your starting list. And your business has just given you that starting list for nothing. If you're a solo operator and you're thinking, this doesn't apply to me 'cause I've got no one to ring me, stay with me. 'Cause it absolutely does. You are the most at risk person of all here because if you get ill or want a fortnight off or one day you want to sell up or bring someone in, every bit of your, how your business runs is locked inside your head with no backup. So systems aren't just for people that are handling working alongside a team, they are looking after future you as well. The you who's a bit exhausted or away and wants to step back a little bit as well. So here's what a system is and what it isn't. And we need to take a bit of fear outta the word. A system is not necessarily a glossy manual; it is simply the recorded way of doing things, the recorded way that your salon does something. It's the answer to that question that your salon keeps asking. That's it. So let's take, how do we take a deposit as an example? We write down the answer once in plain English. That becomes a system. What do we say to a client who wants money off written down? That's a system. How do we run a skin test before a lash tint? And where do we record it? System? What's our aftercare advice after a particular treatment or a skin treatment? It might be called a protocol. Each of those written down is a system. The other thing I would say is it doesn't have to be written down. It can be a long document and some things actually make sense as a written document. Sometimes they're just three lines long. Sometimes it can just be a couple of photos of the till with arrows on it. It can be a voice note that you record while you're actually doing the thing. It can be a screen recording. The format doesn't actually matter at all. What matters is it exists somewhere that isn't just your memory. And the lovely side effect, especially for the beauty and aesthetic side where consistency is half of the service, is that your clients start getting the same experience every single time, regardless of who's looking after them. Your consultation gets done properly because there's a system that prompts it. The aftercare advice is the same on a Tuesday with you as it is on a Saturday with someone else. A salon starts to feel steady and stable and reliable. But the reason they never get written down is that people treat it as a separate project. The thing that you do in your admin day on top of the work that you already do, you don't need that. You need to capture the system inside the work. So the next time you do something, document it as you go. If you are cashing up on your computer at the end of the day, do a screen recording and record your voice going through that process. If you're showing a new team member how to handle a complaint email, don't just say it and lose it. Write down a few instructions while it's still fresh and that becomes your new system. If you're setting up a new client on your booking software, do some screenshots of each step as you go through it. You're gonna do the task anyway, just do it a little more slowly. Capturing it as you go costs you an extra 10 minutes, but it saves you that conversation again and again forever. So you don't need any fancy software for this. You just need a cheap folder and a folder on your desktop and obviously make sure that somebody can see inside that folder. So make sure everyone has access to those documents. It's not about having lots of tools. It's about having the habit in place of recording. If you've got a list of 10 missing systems, there's a very simple order of priority. Anything that touches money or touches the client comes first. 'Cause that's where the cost of getting it wrong is the highest. So how your bookings and deposits are handled, how your cancellations and no-shows are dealt with. How you open and close the salon, how a complaint gets handled before it turns into one of those dreaded one-star reviews. How a new client is consulted and recorded, and get those written down. And you've got the situations that actually could lose you money tightened up. The cleaning rota, the stock cupboard. They can wait a couple of weeks. They're not the ones that are ringing you when you are on holiday. So here's your job this week and it's genuinely small. I don't even want you to write a single system yet. I just want you to start making the list. Think back over the last few weeks and months and write down the three things that people most often interrupt your time off to ask you. Or if you're solo, the three things that would grind to a halt the day you couldn't come in. And I want those to be your first three systems handed to you by your own business. Then pick the one at the top, the one that costs you the most when it goes wrong. And the next time you do that task or take someone through it, capture it with either voice notes or screenshots. A few lines written down, whatever's easiest. One system written down this week, that's the whole job. And you can build a salon that runs without you. Or maybe not completely without you, but at least we can give ourselves some proper days off. If you're listening to this and quietly realising that the honest answer is almost nothing in your salon is written down and that the whole thing is being held together by you turning up, you might be ready for something a bit bigger than a to-do list. That's what my one-to-one Ultimate Clarity program is for. Over 90 days, I work with you privately to build a five-year plan for the life you actually want, a profit and pricing strategy so the numbers genuinely work on a 12-month marketing plan so you know exactly what you're gonna be doing and when. It's the strategic version of everything we've talked about today, built around you and your salon. I only take on three new clients a month and you can book your free strategy call with me at meet.philjackson.me/strategy call. I'm gonna chuck that in the description box below 'cause you're never gonna remember that. Jump on a free strategy call and see if one-to-one coaching is for you. What have I missed? What are you gonna be systemising this month? Reach out and let me know. fill@buildyoursalon.com. Scrolling at the bottom of the screen right now. You know, I love hearing from my salon owner friends. Anyway, just a few short days until I'm coming all over the internet again with another dose of my Wise Owl wisdom next Friday. And until then, take care.