Do you even know what you want? Get clear on your goals

A clearly defined goal for your salon business can be the difference between drifting around aimlessly, getting frustrated and overwhelmed, and having the clarity that you need in order to survive and thrive. But how do we set these goals? Where do they come from? Let's jump in and find out, shall we? Hello, hello, hello my salon friends. How on earth are you? Achingly well, I hope. Phil Jackson here, your queen of salons, coming in your eyes and ears again with another dose of Wise Owl Wisdom. And this time we're getting a little bit meta, we're getting a little bit higher level with this episode. We're going to start looking at the overall goals that you set for your salon business. And I want to give you some specifics on what those goals ought to be, but all of that's going to make a lot more sense when we understand where those goals come from. And I've always subscribed and prescribed that your business should be there to serve you, not the other way around. And your business is not your baby. Your salon is not your baby. It's this ferocious monster that needs feeding. And in exchange for that feeding, it can provide you with the lifestyle that you want. So when we're looking at our salon goals, if they're going to support our life goals, we firstly need to get really, really clear on what those life goals are going to be. And I'm not going to jump in in some huge way into what your life goals need to look like, at least not in this episode, because I think that that's something that takes really quite a lot of time. It's something we polish and refine. And also, I don't think it's always something that you should be doing on your own. And I think if you share your life with somebody else, then I think it's only polite, really, to set your life goals and figure out where you want to be living and the kinds of lifestyles that you want to be leading together. And when you want to retire and what that looks like for you, all of those things will have an impact on what you need from your business, because ultimately, all of those things are going to dictate the level of profit that you take out of your business this year, next year and for years to come. So I call it the bottle of wine conversation. It's usually something that happens for me when we go away and we get a bottle of the local red and myself and my husband just start dreaming and chewing through life as it is at the moment and kind of review where we're up to and make sure we're on the same page with where we want to be getting to.

And then that starts to inform what my business needs to look like, because once we have that profit level set, the rest of it becomes very easy. So bear in mind, though, that we don't necessarily want to allocate all of our profits to being taken out of the business to support our lifestyle. There's other stuff that we need profit for. So we need to reinvest it in the business. We need new equipment. We need to grow the team. We need salon refurb. All of those things can only be paid for from one place. And that's your salon profits. So add those two things together and we now know how much profit the business needs to generate overall. And the only way that it can generate it, of course, is through turnover. So once we know how much profit we need to generate, we now know how much turnover we need to generate as well. And that's the first of our goals is turnover. Now, the only thing to be careful of is a lot of people will put all of their turnover in one space on a spreadsheet. Do bear in mind that the turnover that we get through service is very different profit wise to the turnover that we get from retail. They have a different profit margin. So if it were me, I would separate the two out. So we've got turnover in service and turnover in retail as the first two goals that we have for our business. And then we can start to break these things down even further. So we end up with a set of measures that tell us what we need our business to achieve, because if we're going to achieve a certain amount of turnover, well, that has to come from a certain number of transactions and a certain average bill. So if our target turnover is, let's say, half a million, five hundred thousand, then that could be a thousand people spending five hundred pounds. And that will get us to our five hundred thousand. Or it could be two thousand people spending two hundred and fifty pounds. So we can divide that five hundred thousand up any which way you want to. But ultimately, we need to settle on a target number of transactions and a target average bill. And if it were me, I would be looking at an average bill which is not wildly away from where you are at the moment. So I'd be looking to grow my average bill, but I wouldn't be looking to necessarily treble it all at once. Let's try and keep it within the realms of challenging but achievable. And once we have those figures, it will start to inform the goals that we have for our marketing. For example, do we need to increase the frequency of visit from our customers?

Do we need to increase their average spend? Do we need more customers on the database? So every time we're starting to look at putting a marketing campaign together, we put the marketing together to hit the goals that we have for the salon. We hit the goals for the salon so that we can hit the profit target. We hit the profit target so that we can lead the life we want to. All of these things are pushing in one direction. And that's serving you, the business owner, with the level of profit that you need to live a happy and fulfilled life. So all of a sudden, those irritating times that we have to spend on Canva, changing templates for social media, now that we know that it's actually providing us a decent lifestyle, suddenly we're a bit more motivated. Does that make sense? I hope so. And I hope you're going to take just a grain of that and translate it into your own business. Start really thinking about what you want out of the business. And whenever I'm one-to-one coaching, that's always the place we start. Now, it might mean that when we get into the salon goals, some of those things are unachievable with the business model as it is at the moment. If we've said we want 2,000 customers spending £250 each, well, it might be that we can't service 2,000 transactions on our own. We might need to grow the team. We might need to employ some people. That then has an impact on our profit margin. And we need to do those calculations again and play some what-if games. But ultimately, I find that kind of fun. I find it kind of exciting because it puts me behind the steering wheel in my business. Back in the pilot's chair, steering my salon in a direction that's going to ultimately deliver me the lifestyle that I want. So what do you think? What are you setting for your goals? Reach out and let me know. You know, I love hearing from my salon owner friends. And once you get to grips with this, once you've figured out exactly what you want your salon to deliver, you're going to want to share it. You're going to want to brag because you're going to be excited by it. And I think that's what's missing in lots and lots of the salon businesses that I get brought into is the excitement has started to wane. By reconnecting with what our life goals are, I think we can bring an element of that excitement back. So my email address is here, phil at buildyoursalon.com. You know I love hearing from you. Anyway, also reach out if you would like to be as a featured guest on one of the Build Your Salon podcast episodes.

Also reach out with any questions for my Ask Me Anything episodes, which I try and do each and every month. Just seven short days until the next episode of the Build Your Salon podcast. 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.