Challenging the Salon Industry: Is Now the Time to Be Brave?

I'm not the only one trying to elevate our amazing industry, but if we're going to, here are five habits I think we need to break. 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 lovelies. How on earth are you? Achingly well, I hope. Wonderful to be here. Coming in your ears again, Phil Jackson, Queen of Salons, here with a big dose of industry know-how and wisdom from the wise old owl, helping you towards salon success. How's things going for you? I'm just about to face the school holidays, so that's kind of yawning ahead of me now. But I had a very useful meeting with my husband this week, and we went down day by day and figured out who's doing what, which days, and I feel much more in control. And I said, wouldn't it be wonderful if we had this chat probably a couple of months ago? It would have been helpful, wouldn't it? I had a comment on my last video, if you're watching me over on YouTube. I had a comment on my last video that my glasses were distracting because of the glare, because of the reflection on the light. So apologies if you're watching on YouTube, apologies if it looks like I'm crying, but I've gone over to contact lenses for recording purposes, and I have to say it's possibly the most unpleasant thing I've had to do for a long time. Maybe not, but it's certainly not the most pleasant way of starting my day, stabbing myself in the eye twice. And honestly, this is good. All the rage has started to calm down a little bit. But I did go to the opticians, to the optical specialist, whatever it's called, wherever you are. And a little salon lesson for you, actually, because I've been going to the same opticians for about six years, because you only go every couple of years, don't you? And they cancelled my appointment last minute, which I was a bit cross about, because I'm a busy person. You know, I've got lots of plates spinning, lots of balls passed through my hands during a week. And it took me a long time to find a slot that actually suited me. So when they cancelled the appointment, I was like, God, it's going to take weeks to find something else. I'm not going to go. And it was a bit of a shame, actually, because the guy who looks at your eyes, gosh, it was a bit of a dish. And I was quite looking forward to seeing him. But even his dishiness was not enough to save me as a customer,

because I just found somebody else who could get me in a lot quicker and booked in with them. So take note, my salon friends, that if you're messing people about, an apology is not enough. I think if they give me some sort of explanation as to why they'd had to cancel, then perhaps I would have been a bit more pliable. But as it was, I said, no, you can shove it up your arse. I'm off. And anyway, I went to a different opticians. And I thought it was interesting, actually. And another little analogy we can bring in to the salon industry. And actually, the first thing that I want to talk about, the first habit I think we need to break is doing what the client wants every time. Because, and actually, I've changed my opinion on this over the years. So when I was running my big salon team, I used to say to people that you should never judge. Never judge. Don't be a judgy person. But never judge what is sat in front of you. You know, if you come across somebody's hair, they've been going somewhere else, they've come to you, and it's an absolute dog's dinner. Don't judge. Because you don't know what she asked for. You don't know what they were requesting. You don't know what the consultation was like. So it's not your place to judge. And I've started to shift my opinion a little bit over the years. Because, actually, I think it's time that we kind of put our foot down a little bit. And if you think about it in terms of my eye exam and the prescription that was sent out for my new contact lenses, which are slipping and blurring as I'm speaking. But if we think about that, I didn't turn around to the optician and say, actually, no, I don't think I fancy that. I don't think I fancy that prescription. I'd like you to change the left one so that I can't see at all. You just wouldn't do it, would you? We take the advice. Now, I had a choice over whether I went with contact lenses or glasses. I had a choice of frames if I wanted that. I had a choice of whether I wanted daily or monthly or yearly contact lenses. I still had an input into the consultation. I still had the final say. But, actually, as far as the prescriptive part was concerned, that was taken as read. And I think that's the attitude that we need to have in the salon. We need to stop doing work that we don't think is correct. We need to stop doing work that we're not proud to put our name to. Now, I do appreciate that there is a journey involved in that. We do need to build some trust, perhaps over one or two visits, where we start leading a customer in the right direction. And that's OK, too. But, ultimately, we need to stop doing what the client wants just because they've asked for it. Second habit I want us to smash is how we bring new people, young people, into our industry. Because we have this big recruitment problem.

And this isn't just a local thing for you. It's an international problem. Not in every area. But it's not unusual for a salon to really struggle with recruiting young people at the moment. And one of the reasons, I think, is that when you, let's say, you've decided you're going to go into a career in the hair industry. When you sit at home imagining what that looks like, it's probably not two or three years of shampooing, sweeping up, and grabbing cups of coffee. You're probably imagining yourself with a pair of scissors or at least a hairdryer in your hand. And I think we need to get to that stage much more quickly. Now, what I'm not suggesting we do is cut corners on our training. I think, actually, most of the training out there, frighteningly, is not of an amazing standard as it is. We certainly don't want to reduce the standard. But what I do think we can do is flip things a little bit, change the order that they learn in, so that it becomes a bit more interesting a bit more quickly. And the other benefit to that is if we start with them being able to carry out services under supervision much more quickly, the team member becomes much more profitable much more quickly as well. So that means that suddenly this massive investment in someone's apprenticeship, we can start to reduce if they can start paying for themselves. So, for example, when I started college, pretty much the first term, so the first 10 weeks, was learning how to put rollers in. So we were learning how to set hair on rollers. My God, how dull. And certainly not something that I use on a daily basis, a weekly basis or probably even an annual basis because I avoid wedding and occasion hair like the plague. But what if we change that around? What if we taught people about conditioning treatments and blow dries? And we taught them how to do an amazing blowout so that we could start doing perhaps a little weekend special. I'm not saying we leave them alone. They'll still be working under supervision. But they could be charging 20, 30 quid for a conditioning treatment and a blow dry, reducing some of the upkeeps, reducing some of the costs that are associated with taking on a young person and actually making their job a bit more interesting, actually teaching them what they're there to learn rather than sweeping and making cups of coffee. I think part of it, though, and actually the habit number three that I want to talk about is I think we've got into a habit in our industry of paying the negative forward. So I think that there are, and I'm not suggesting every salon, but there are a number of salons out there where they treat young people pretty badly,

to be honest with you. And it could even be seen as kind of workplace bullying in some ways if we're not careful because I've seen lots of apprentices and assistants being talked to in quite a derogatory way and being made to do quite menial, quite degrading tasks. And I understand where it comes from. It's because, and if you think about bullying, most bullies are being bullied or have been bullied at some stage, and I think it's the same in our industry. It's almost become like a rite of passage where we treat people like crap because we were treated like crap. And this happened to me. I was an apprentice in the 1800s. And bear in mind, though, I wasn't 16, 17 straight out of school. I was in my 20s being treated this way. And I was verbally abused in front of customers. I was made to get on my hands and knees and scrub floors while team members were walking across the floor that I was trying to, I mean, just degrading horrible behaviour. And I think the temptation then is that we kind of end up paying that forward in a really horrible way. Same when I was a manager. You know, my team meetings were not over until someone was crying. When I first started managing a team, I would scream, shout, stamp my feet until people were really upset. But I was paying it forward because the only experience I'd had of a salon manager was someone who had two team meetings the whole time I was there, which was about two years. And in those two team meetings, what did she do? She screamed, she shouted, she stamped her feet, she humiliated people, she upset people. I thought that's how a team had to be run. So we ended up carrying these awful habits forward. And I think it's time to break that cycle a little bit. Perhaps go back to, I think it was last week's video, where I said, let's be the best version of what we can be. What would the best version of a senior stylist or a senior beauty therapist or a salon manager or some kind of industry mentor, what would the best version of them do? Let's start treating people a little bit better. Habit number four is this continual problem I have when I go into salons and we're tolerating poor performance. Now, part of it, in fact, all of it, darling, is down to you. We've got to take responsibility for everything that goes on in our business. We could do a video about responsibility, actually. Make a note of that, somebody. But we tolerate poor performance. And I think part of it comes from the problems with recruitment that we have. Because if you knew you could replace that person really quickly, would you be tolerating that lateness? Would you be tolerating that habit of not retailing products,

not recommending, not upselling? Would we tolerate the little niggly things that affect our team and affect our day and affect our clientele? And I don't think we would if we knew we could replace that person really quickly. So this toleration of poor performance has got to stop. And I promise you, if you've got a poorly performing team member, I always call them the iceberg. What you're seeing is 10%. After the person's left, you'll find out about the other 90% or at least some of it. Because other team members will go, oh, do you know what? In fact, when you weren't here that day, X, Y, and Z happened. Or your clients will start saying, oh, I'm pleased you got rid of her. She was terrible, you know. And the things I used to hear her saying to her clients, all of a sudden, we start hearing about all the damage this person has been doing to your business over the years as well. It's terrifying, I promise you. But if you've got someone who's not performing properly, of course, we have to step in with performance management. And we've done some recordings about performance management. Dig into the archive over on the buildyoursalon.com website. There's plenty of brilliant information on performance management over there. And of course, we've got to go through that process of trying to coach someone to better results. But ultimately, we don't tolerate poor performance because it turns into a habit. It turns into a poison, in fact. It's contagious to your other team members. And it's certainly setting the template for the younger people in your business too. Because if they see that not only is someone performing at a bad level, but you're performing badly as a manager by tolerating that behaviour, well, guess what that young person is going to do? Guess what standard they're going to rise to? And then finally, and I've left this one to last because hopefully people have dropped off the recording a bit by now. And I know I'm going to get some flack for this one, but I think it's time that we smashed the habit of accepting tips. And I know times are hard. And I know it's handy to have a little bit of cash in your purse. And I know it's great when you've forgotten your wallet because you can still afford lunch. And I know it's ingrained into our industry. But while we're trying to raise our standards, while we're trying to be perceived as professionals, or at least as craft people, or maybe even trades people, what we're doing by accepting tips is putting us straight down there alongside people that wait on tables, or maybe people that drive you an Uber or deliver food to you.

And I'm not degrading those jobs at all, but I don't think that's the level that we want our jobs, our careers, our industry to be perceived at. When was the last time you tipped your plumber? When was the last time you tipped a carpenter who made a beautiful piece of furniture for you? When was the last time you tipped your dentist or orthodontist or optician or lawyer? You might buy them a beautiful gift at Christmas. And I think that's a different thing, actually showing your appreciation for a relationship that's being built over time. But there's continual adding 10, 15%. And I tell you what's even more harmful and actually degrading and reinforcing this on a regular basis is where we hand someone a credit card terminal and it asks whether we want to add a gratuity. That's pushing this habit of tipping deeper. It's ingraining this splinter much deeper into the flesh of our industry. And I don't think it's doing us any favours at all. I also think if we made a big song and dance about not accepting gratuities anymore, if we put a notice on reception saying this salon does not accept gratuities, we are professionals, we want to be perceived that way, I think it buys you some licence with your pricing. I think it means that you could probably increase your prices by 10, 15% immediately without causing too much of a fuss. And I think it means that we might be able to pay our teams properly with that extra money as well. So there we go. Five habits I think we need to smash in our industry in order to raise the standards, raise the bar so that we can all make an exceptional living in this glorious industry. What have I missed? Let me know. Questions, comments, ping them over. Phil at buildyoursalon.com I love hearing from you. Or find me over on Instagram. That's where I seem to waste most of my time these days at philjacksoncoach. I'd love to hear from you particularly because one of these episodes each month now is going to be given over to Q&A. I want you to send your questions in to me that I can answer on a broadcast to help you but also to keep me in touch with what's going on in the industry. I've never wanted to be a guru atop a mountain handing down my wisdom to mere mortals. I've always wanted to be battling next to you in the trenches fighting the good fight. I hope that's been helpful to you. Just seven short days until I'm coming in your eyes and ears again. 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.