Build Your Salon - Ask me Anything (August)

What's going on in your hair or beauty business this August? Let's find out in my first ever Q&A. 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. Hello, hello, hello, my salon friend. How on earth are you? Achingly well, I hope. Phil Jackson, your queen of salons here with my first ever Q&A podcast, which feels terribly exciting, I have to say. And also, it's been an absolute joy because normally I spend a lot of time scripting. I know it wouldn't feel like it sometimes. It does feel like I just make shit up as I go along, but there is actually a process that goes into place for my podcast where I'm researching and making notes and all the rest of it. And this time I haven't really had to because you guys have sent me some questions in for my Q&A session. I made a few notes, which I may have to look down to. Apologies for that. A few notes on my answers. But it's been an absolute breeze, I have to say. I can understand why people do this all the time. It's so much easier than coming up with topics and content. Anyway, before we jump in, how is August treating you? I've decided to make it a bit of a different vibe from a Q&A. So I've got rid of, if you're watching on YouTube, you'll see that I've got rid of my backdrop. Normally, I've got a backdrop behind me. Not necessarily that I love the backdrop, if I'm honest, but it's one of those fabric things with a hoop in and I can't put the thing down. I'd love to say that I've managed to put it down now, but it's plonked over by the door over on the other side of my office. I'm not expecting any visitors anyway, so it'll be fine. But yeah, I thought we'd, you know, change the vibe a little bit for Q&A, change the atmosphere. You can see over my shoulder there, my spider plants. I love my spider plants because it's the closest thing I'll ever have to giving birth because my spider plant mummy keeps breeding furiously and giving me lots of plants to give to my family and friends. Anyway, I hope August is treating you well. I hope you're getting a nice work-life balance. I know I shouldn't use that phrase because I rage against it so much, but I hope you're enjoying work and life in August. Let's put it that way. And you're striking the balance exactly where you need it to be for the month. Let's jump into our Q&A. Now, of course, because I was asking for questions to be sent in, the first people to respond were my tribe. So I do know a little bit about some of these businesses that I'm going to be talking about today, so forgive me. If you've got a question that you'd like answered on a future Build Your Salon podcast, please reach out phil at buildyoursalon.com.

You know I love hearing from you anyway. Head up your questions. If you want it to be anonymous, then please let me know. Otherwise, I will tag you and your salon in the description. So let's jump in. We're going to start with Kirstie. And Kirstie says, I need to get more clients into the salon. Where do I start? So I think this is probably something that lots of people can relate to. So I put that as question one. I know lots of people think they need more clients through the door. And they're looking for a shortcut. They're looking for hints, tips and tricks to get people through. And as far as salon coaching is concerned, this is where the money gets printed. This is the fodder. This is where we put lead magnets out and mini courses on getting more people through the door in 28 days or less. And of course, unfortunately, there are no shortcuts in that kind of way. But firstly, I want to congratulate you for taking responsibility because ultimately, and I know we don't want to hear this. But ultimately, everything that happens and doesn't happen in our business is down to you. So you're taking responsibility for getting people through the door. Well done. As the salon owner, that is exactly what your job is. But we need to look at why they're not coming. And this is a bit of information that I don't have as to whether we used to be busy, whether we are now looking for extra clients because the business has grown or whether we've lost some clients along the way. Because the way that we approach this is going to be different if there's a new client problem to if there's a retention problem. And if there's a retention problem, we need to deal with that. First of all, we need to figure out why we're losing clients, why people aren't coming back, why the frequency might have dropped with some people, because there's no point in pouring new clients into a leaky bucket. There's no point in bringing in 100 new clients if we know that 80 of those aren't going to be with us after the second visit. So plug the holes in the system first. Have a look at your retention, but have a look at frequency of visit, too, because last time there was a big financial squeeze in my business was 2007, 8, 9, 10, 11 around there. And that was the problem that we had. It wasn't an average bill problem. People were spending the same amount. It wasn't a number of clients problem. We had the same number of clients pretty much on our books. It was a frequency of visit problem, and that's what dropped through the floor. So have a look at the patterns in your business. Measure the numbers.

You know there's a cheat sheet on my website, buildyoursalon.com, how to get to grips with the figures in your business if you're struggling with that side of things. And assuming we need some new clients in, this is where I would start. So the first thing I would do is recommend a friend. Birds of a feather flock together. It's a relatively inexpensive campaign to put in place. Now, what I don't do is have a recommend a friend program that runs for weeks and weeks, months and months, years and years, because it is largely ineffective. People forget about it. Your stylists or beauty therapists have got better things to do. They've already got 15 things to remember on every visit anyway. So what I prefer is a one month recommend a friend program. So it's a short, sharp marketing hit to get you an influx of new clients. Now, firstly, that means that it's exciting because trying to maintain recommend a friend excitement in the long term is almost impossible. But the other thing I like about this approach is we get to target it to the quieter months. So if you know, for example, in my salon, August is a quiet month. August is always the time that we do recommend a friend. The other thing that means is lots of our clients have vouchers to spend. And guess what happens in September? That's one of the times we have our price review. So people don't tend to notice the price increase because they've got vouchers to spend from recommend a friend. So I would always start with recommend a friend. And then largely, if we're looking to get a lot of new clients through the door, what I need you to have is an attitude of a new salon. If you were starting from scratch, zero clients, what would you be doing? Because I bet it's not what you're doing now. And I don't know when the shift in our mindset occurs. I don't know when we go from being in a new salon mentality into being an existing salon mentality and the marketing shifts. Because if we were starting a new salon, you would be sponsoring the local football team. You'd be doing the school fairs. You'd be networking with the local businesses. You'd be handing out flyers, giving balloons to the kids, press releases of everything that's going on for the local paper, schmoozing with the people that run the local radio station. All of those things. Is it bloody hard work? Yes, it is. Of course it is. There's no shortcut to this. But the rewards off the back of that can be huge because all of a sudden you're acting in a way that your competitors aren't. And if we want results that are different from our competitors, we've got to do things that are different from our competitors too.

So I want you to have that new salon mentality. Figure out how you would be marketing if you were starting from zero with no existing clientele at all. Put that level of effort in. Is it maintainable in the long term? Probably not. Not without some systemization, not without some delegation, not without some automation happening in the background. But as a short, sharp hit, maybe for the rest of this calendar year, let's push hard. Treat it as a new salon. Every marketing opportunity, every PR opportunity, everything you can think of to get people through the door. And at least we've given it the best roll of the dice we can. Hope that's helped. I'm going to move on to question number two, which came from Sarah. How do I not get complacent when I hit my target? So Sarah is, first of all, hitting targets, which is awesome on two fronts. Firstly, she's hitting them. But secondly, she's doing more than most of you are doing, darling. She's actually setting some targets in the first place. So let's take hats off for that and give Sarah a pat on the back for those two bits of success. But how do we not get complacent when we hit targets? Well, targets need to be challenging but achievable. And I've said this in previous episodes. If it's not challenging, it's not motivating. If it's not achievable and we're stretching too far, that's not motivating either. So that helps us get the balance of where that target needs to be right. Now, if we're hitting targets consistently, almost without trying too hard, I would suggest that that's not a challenging target anymore. And perhaps those targets need to increase. Perhaps we need to be pushing a little bit harder. What we want to be running at is about 80% effort. You don't want to be going flat out, absolutely exhausted day in and day out. We want a little bit of fuel left in the tank for the times that we need it. But about 80% is where we need to be without being overwhelmed, I think. And actually, it's a good rule of thumb. 80% to 85% is a good rule of thumb as far as your capacity and utilization targets are concerned as well. But if we've hit target and we feel like we ought to be doing more, well, that's where what I call the triumph target will come in. So let's say we've got a target of 15,000 for this month. Well, I would have a triumph target ahead of that of, say, 20,000. So that we've hit target, but we've got somewhere else that we can go to. But attached to that triumph target is some kind of reward. So is there going to be something shiny that you're going to buy yourself? Is there going to be an extra bit of time off for you?

Is there a new gadget or toy that we can buy for the business? Something needs to happen that recognizes the extra effort it's taken to get to that triumph target. So every time I set a target, there's a triumph target in there as well. Or maybe it's just recognizing that in a good month where we've hit target relatively easily, we need to be doing a bit more ready for winter. I'm not talking about the calendar winter, but there will be a winter in your business. There will be a season when things are tougher. Perhaps that's January, February, or perhaps that's when the kids go back to school in September, October. Perhaps it's that quiet bit October, November before we get into the Christmas rush. There will be a time in your business where business is just harder. It's harder work, harder getting people through the door. So perhaps we need to be squirreling some money away and perhaps that needs to be priced in to our targets. And that's something we're going to come on to in a following question as well. So perhaps we do need to work a bit harder or maybe we don't. Perhaps we just need to celebrate the fact that actually we've hit target. We need to celebrate the win and perhaps reinforcing the behavior that got us there actually takes the form of a bit more time off and relaxing a little bit or maybe getting some of those bigger projects. So I have a project folder in my office here, which is my someday maybe folder. And these are things that aren't on my radar for this year, but they're things that I would like to get to at some stage. And each time I'm doing my goal setting in January that folder comes out to see if any of those projects are now timely. Perhaps there are things that we could be doing in that calendar year. Now, if ever I'm running ahead, if ever a project gets cancelled or it didn't take as much time, that's where I go to. So perhaps you need a someday maybe folder as well so that if you do hit target and you find yourself with some management time on your hands, perhaps it is time to revisit some policies and procedures. Or maybe it is time to dust off your job description. So those projects that we keep putting off and putting off because they're not urgent, maybe we need some of those ready to go as well. Question number three came from Sophie. Sophie says, any tips? And I feel a bit guilty because the answer to this is probably coming a bit too late. But any tips on juggling the salon in summer holidays when you are a lone worker? And we're already into August, so we're probably already into the summer holidays. But let's bear this advice in mind, shall we, for next summer. So if summer holidays are tough for you, if it's tough getting lots of work done, you know, I talked about the seasons in your business.

The summer is your winter. That's when not much is happening. There's not many green shoots. It's not worth trying to sow seed. We're certainly not harvesting a lot. So the summer is, in fact, your business winter. And if we've got a business winter, there are some things that we need to do in place. So part of it is what I talked about before, putting some money away, pricing it into your targets for May, June and July so that we've got a buffer. We've got some cash. We've got everything covered as far as the winter is concerned. So as far as August is concerned. So the first thing we need to do is prepare for it. Now that we know that that's a pattern in the business, we can budget for that in the months that run up to it. Secondly, we need to get super organized. So we really need to prioritize your time and we need to think laterally about the time that you have. So it might well be that you've only got a certain number of hours that you can dedicate to your business each week. What I really get excited about, though, is that immediately makes you prioritize because you're only going to be doing the stuff that's urgent and important in your business. You're only going to be doing the things that actually move the needle and actually contribute to the business in a meaningful way. All of the superfluous fluff gets pushed to one side. And what I would suggest you do in September is when you come back into the business properly, have a look at the stuff that you've had to push to one side and figure out whether you actually need to bring those tasks back on board or not. Because there'll be some stuff that got deleted in August that didn't make a difference. In which case, why carry on doing it in September, October, November? So I would look at how you're spending your time where you have less time available. I'm going to ask you to look for my equivalent is called my golden hour. And my golden hour, don't cringe, my golden hour is 530 in the morning. So 530 to 630, I'm up, I'm at my desk, I'm working, I'm moving my business forward. Now, the reason I've chosen 530 is I've got kids. I've got special needs kids, which brings an extra layer of challenge to it as well. And I've got school runs that I need to arrange and breakfast that I need to serve and all those good things, too. So 530 to 630 is before the kids get up. It's before my husband's up. And I probably get more done in that golden hour than I would in an entire afternoon with the kids around.

So find your equivalent of a golden hour. When's the time? If you're not a morning person, is there a time after the kids have gone to bed where you can contribute an hour? Because what I don't want you to be doing is multitasking and juggling. So trying to run your business and trying to run the family at the same time. That means you're not being fully present for either. You're not doing a great job as a parent and you're not doing a great job as a business owner either. So take some time off, but do it with intention. Then it's never wasted time. But find the time that you can dedicate to your business, even if it's only an hour a day or maybe even if it's only a couple of hours a week. Find that golden undisturbed time when we can prioritize and work on the business. So I hope that's helped you a little bit, if not for this year, at least for next. Final question, because we're running over time, supposed to be a 15 minute episode. Emma says, why aren't my promotions working? I only get one or two buyers. OK, there is a marketing process that we follow that I teach and that my students follow. And we start with the goal. So what do we want that marketing promotion to deliver? Then we look at who is the best person to deliver that result. So who are the best clients to get you that result, to get you that money through the door? Then we look at the promotion that we want to put together, the messaging around that promotion that's going to appeal to that target market. And then finally, we decide where we're going to be putting that promotion out. So the media, how are they going to hear about it? Is it going to be email or social media? Is it going to be offline altogether? And we go through it in that process. And usually if a promotion isn't landing, it's because you've come in at the back end. You've decided you want to do an Instagram promotion or you want to do a promotion on facials or you want to be promoting RF or you want to do a highlight promotion. And usually it's because we haven't gone through that market message media. So that's why a promotion won't land. One of those stages has come out of order or not being given any consideration at all. Whereas if we're coming at it from that direction, it's a logical flow and that tends to deliver the best results. Now, part of that messaging will be pricing and you've got a pricing decision to make. So if you've got a target of ten thousand that you want to hit in a month, you've got a decision to make. Are we going to sell ten packages of something a thousand pounds each or is it going to be a hundred packages a hundred pounds each? Or is it going to be a thousand packages at ten pounds each? You've got to chop and change and decide what that's going to look like. Then your marketing job is to make that a no brainer. Now, what I see again and again, and I happen to know this has been the instance in your business as well, Emma, is where people look at their average bill.

And let's say your average bill is fifty pounds. But the package they're putting together is a thousand pounds. That bridge is way too far. So, yes, of course, we want to be selling those big courses. Of course, we want to be selling those big transformations. Of course, we want that kind of money in the bank because finding ten buyers is a lot less work than finding a thousand buyers. But we need to bridge that gap slowly. So look at your average bill first. If your average bill is fifty pounds, probably putting a promotion out that's more than sixty sixty five this time is not going to get you huge results. If you're only getting one or two buyers, it's probably the price point that's out of sync. Now, sometimes that means we need to scale back our ambitions. Yes, we'd love to sell a course of three RF treatments because that's going to give us the best result. But at that price point, maybe a package with one is all we can manage. And then we can look at upselling once they come through the door. So have a look at your average bill compared to the price point of your promotions. Go through that market message media process really clearly in that order. And I'll bet things are going to start landing for you in a bigger way. So I hope that's been helpful to you. If you've got your own questions for next month's Q&A, obviously we'll be answering them in September. So nothing too urgent. OK, but if you have reach out phil at buildyoursalon.com. I'd love to hear from you anyway with questions and comments about this episode. Don't forget to leave me a review. If you're listening on your favorite podcast platform, I always think five stars looks the best and absolutely makes my day. Don't forget to follow or subscribe. Just seven short days until I'm coming in your eyes and ears again. 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.