Do you want to add an academy to your salon business? with Donna Clayton

Hello, hello, hello, my salon friends. Phil Jackson here, your queen of salons, coming in your eyes and ears again with another dose of wise old owl wisdom. But you lucky people, it's not my wisdom this week. You know that I love a good salon team and I'm always encouraging you to be much better, stronger team leaders, but somebody feels that small can be very, very beautiful indeed. And I'm joined today by the Solo Academy consultant, Donna Clayton. Hi, Donna. Welcome to the Build Your Salon podcast. Hi, Phil. Thanks for having me on. You're very welcome. It feels like it should have happened quite some time ago. So I'm pleased that you're here with us now. So a little potted history for people that don't know you. I'm always intrigued on how people end up in the salon industry because actually timing wise, we were pretty similar, I seem to remember. I think we were floating around Basingstoke at about the same time. So what brought you into salons in the first place? Do you know, actually, I always wanted to be a hairdresser, actually, thinking about it when I was a child. And I went into Basingstoke College and did my hair and beauty because I wanted beauty as a backup. So I was always kind of very kind of settled on that, did my apprenticeships at, well, I wanted to do an apprenticeship at Julie Cruz and then saw they did the combined course at Basingstoke College. And I thought, no, I'm going to go and do both. So I did. And I got more practice at the beauty, I think, actually, I just definitely didn't quite feel the hair as much. But I completed my qualification in that. And then I went out into the salons, working in spas, local salons in town, things like that as a beauty therapist, enjoying my time. But then quite quickly, you pivoted into teaching and training, didn't you? I did. The problems with Donna is she gets bored quite easily. OK. I love it when people externalise what they perceive as personality flaws and start talking in the third person. It is. I do. Donna gets bored quite easily. I'm one of those lifelong learners. And I've definitely got to be, like, facing another challenge. And I'd try and I'd get into a salon. And I think the longest I stayed was 18 months, actually, in a salon. And I'd get into a salon, build up my clientele, and then I'd be on an automatic pilot because I'd have the same clients kind of coming in. I was doing the same thing. And if I wasn't learning something new to then add to that, I then absconded somewhere else. I think I changed about four salons in that time. So that's when I found the sort of the teaching, really. Actually, they had a maternity cover going at Bays and Stoke College. And I thought, you know, actually, I'm really it was at that pivotal point where I thought, should I come out or should I go and carry on doing something else?

Actually, I'll go into the teaching and started part time and thoroughly enjoyed that, which is obviously I think I'd been there a few years before I met you, before you came and started teaching there. Well, we did actually. I was looking at your timeline and we did actually slightly overlap when you were doing your MVQ right at the beginning. Oh, really? Yeah, we did. In 98, I laughed. That's just when I was just starting in 98. So we just overlapped. But I think you've touched on something that's actually a really strong feature in our industry is that lifelong learning, that passion for learning. And I've known when I've been running teams, if I want to motivate people, then training is a really, really good way to do it. I think we take to training really well in our industry. But I also know having worked alongside, well, not really alongside you at Basingstoke College, but you were really good, weren't you? Everyone used to really sing your praises as a lecturer and as a teacher. I did really enjoy it, actually, I have to say. And I always thought I should have been in the Guinness Book of Records for the length of time I worked there for, actually, because it was my longest standing on my CV. So I was quite proud of that. You were there for a long time. I think I tried teaching at Basingstoke, I think it was three times, three separate academic years, and never got to the end of any of them. It was definitely something that, I mean, it can be a challenge, but I guess I started teaching mature students when I first started there. And then I gradually migrated into the 16 to 19s, then went back to the matures. And because we offered so much as well, I could teach across like the beauty, the level three beauty, we had the logistics and we brought the nails on. So there was always something new. And yeah, every academic year, every September was a fresh start. I'd still get nervous. Every time I would still get really nervous about meeting my new cohorts. But there was always a challenge. Every group was different. Everyone responded differently. And I think that's why I stuck at that for so long, actually, is because every time it was different, I could approach the same subject in a completely different manner, and they would take it completely differently. So it kept me on my toes. And that's what I needed. I needed that, that challenge. Plus, you know, you can work your way up the levels, you know, I became a coordinating lecturer. I was managing programmes. I had staff under me as well that I was working with. And I also worked on other qualifications with my teaching side of things while I was doing it.

So that kind of helped really with the sort of lifelong learning kind of aspect that I need to keep myself busy all the time. Sure. And just this is putting you right on the spot, and I do apologise. So what is your opinion of our kind of NVQ system as it stands at the moment in colleges? I think I understand what it's like to be on both sides. I do see that everyone needs that a little bit more when they get out into the working world. They need more training when they get out into the working world. They've got those basic foundations, but they really do new building to make them shop ready. So I completely agree with that. And I'm sure that's what everyone would agree with. Having said that, being on the other side of that with the pressures that you get the other side. When I first went into teaching, this is in 2002, my students would have an average of about 19 hours on their timetable contact time. When I left in 2013, they had 13 hours on their timetable for contact. So the same qualification. There was the same stuff in there, sometimes more units. Actually, we were offering at that point. And yet we have the same thing to deliver in a much shorter space of time. So something has to give all those extra things we might want to do with them just to make them a bit more polished. It didn't happen, I don't think. And I think that would be the thing, actually. I think the hours is very, very difficult and very tight. We do have the new standards. The new standards have been around with Habia for a little while now. So we have got new standards, but not the awarding bodies or not all of them have picked up the new standards yet, and they don't have to. So we are running on standards now that have been running for probably about eight, nine years now. To be honest, they haven't changed for a little while yet. There's some new fresh ones sat there ready that was updated by industry, but we're not picking them up just yet. So I can see that becoming probably an issue soon-ish. Okay. And I think the interesting thing from my point of view was always everything just felt very, just like you said, very rushed. There wasn't enough time to go into the depth that you wanted to, and there wasn't enough time or I couldn't find enough time to be inspiring. That was the bit that baffled me. I was doing so much in the way of kind of not a paperwork exercise. I never reduced it to that, but by sticking to the criteria, it just felt everything was very robotic and very factory. And that's where I really struggled. Okay. But that's not what you're known for now, is it? That's not. You're the solo academy consultant. So tell me how that pivot happened. So this pivot actually happened. I know a lot of people pivoted around lockdown. And I think that's like just a little bit of a tagline for everybody, isn't it?

When they hit that kind of point. But this was something that was actually in the works for me about a year before. And I've been doing some work with some business coaches and started to take a real step back about what it was I wanted to do with myself. And some health issues and things like that also made me think about what was my end goal going to look like and the off ramp, isn't it? Everybody talks about like, you know, what's your exit plan and things like that. And actually, that was the time I started to think, actually, what is it going to look like? And I'd largely ignored my health issues for a little while until it kind of came to the forefront about 2018, 2019. And I started to have some sort of residual problems. And I thought, actually, I might not physically be able to keep doing teaching or even doing clients. I still do a few clients now just to keep my hands in for fun. But, you know, what happens if I can't do that? What am I going to do? You know, I'm one of those people I can't see myself retiring. My husband talks about it all the time. He's plotting his exit from his office job. And yet for me, I can't see myself stopping and I don't want to stop. But if I physically can't teach, what can I do? So that's where that kind of came from, really. And I did have a few little grumbles, as we all do, about looking at how the accreditation system was working, how training was working in general. And I spent quite a lot of time giving advice on forums about setting up training academies because that bit seemed really easy to me because I've been in that side of the industry for so long. It's second nature to me. And so that's when I started to kind of plan how I was going to first build my first program on showing people how to actually set up a training academy and actually give them step-by-step instructions of what they needed to do, what forms they had to fill out, give them some templates. And most importantly, trying to set it to a good standard. I'm a bit of a standards gal and I do like everything kind of ticking the right boxes and not having anything too watered down. So that's kind of where that happened. But I did actually end up going live in the February 2020. And my first course started March 2020. And I think I delivered the first lesson because I was doing it all live. And I delivered the first lesson the week before we went into like national lockdown. So it just... Interesting times. It was interesting, quite surreal when you look back at it. I just, yeah, I was talking to my kids about it. And because in our minds, it was, you know, like six weeks ago or something because we're older.

But of course, in their minds, being the ages that they are, it feels like a different lifetime to them. And they barely remember bits of it, which I find really, really interesting. You know, something that was so traumatic to us. But yeah, you just can't imagine. Can you imagine if they tried to lock us away now for weeks and weeks on end? I know. There'd be riots in the street. Nobody would put up with it at all. Exactly. And you can't blame all of that on Boris Johnson, much as we'd love to. So let me just get some clarity then. So while you were pivoting, were you still teaching at the college or was that done and dusted and in the past? So that was done and dusted. So I've set up my training academy when I left the college in sort of 2013. I kind of set it up probably properly really 2014. I needed a bit of time to decompress. So was that teaching technical skills? And that was just teaching technical skills. Yeah. So I then went into my own training academy and I was teaching still regulated kind of training still. So sort of the NVQ types of things and some accredited courses as well and just kind of gradually built that up. So I've been running that probably eight, nine years by the time I decided to launch what was then called actually the Academy Creator was my first program. But that was when I started to kind of launch that whole actually I can help other people do what I do because I used to get questions asked or DMs, loads of DMs all the time. And I thought I can help. I can help people do what I do if they want to do what I do. I can do that. But I was quite broad when I first did that. I taught, you know, I was helping people on their own and I was helping people who had big salons. I think that's been the kind of interesting shift. And I think actually why you make such an interesting guest is traditionally in our industry, people get to a certain size and a salon gets to a certain size. And it just makes logistical sense for them to start bringing some of the training in house and they tag an academy on the side. But that's not what you specialize in, is it? You're specializing in solo academies. I've now niched right down. So why that particular avenue? For me, it was doing a proper review. So this time last year, I did a full drill down of everything. And actually, the vast majority of the people I then was helping were actually on their own and wanting to make more money for themselves. They had like a room somewhere or maybe they were working from home or had like a cabin or something like that in the garden. And so they had no intention of going bigger, taking staff on, expanding that way. But they wanted to earn more money and they were sort of ready for that sort of next step.

And they had the means to sort of show other people how to do things where they'd had clients ask questions of them, how to show them bits and pieces. And so for me, it just seemed much more logical. And particularly when you don't have others to bounce around off of around you, team members or a manager that you can then who almost thinks like you do a little bit as well. Actually, when you're on your own, it's quite isolating. And then when you want to kind of go into the world of training, it's really overwhelming as well. So actually, I decided at that point, actually, now I'm going to niche down. I'm going to go right down to solos. I'm on my own. I run my thing on my own. I have the biggest affinity with someone else who wants to run on their own as well. I can help them better than I can if they've got a large salon. I can help you if you've got a large salon, set up a training academy, but I don't do that kind of team management or anything like that. That's not my gig. And so there are plenty of others that can help you with that. But I'm better off, I think, actually on a one to one basis, because that's what I do. And I can sort of help them with every little step of that. I think the next question has to be then, apart from you've alluded to bringing a stream of income into a solo business, but what are the benefits? Why would you, if someone's kind of kicking the tires thinking, yeah, I might want to get an academy running at some stage. Why would they? What's the benefit? The benefit of that obviously is, yeah, like we talked about, it is the revenue. Your sort of per day rate increases because you're not only just working from one to one, that person that's in front of you, you then have the opportunity to sort of double or triple that depending what it is and the size of your room. I mean, some salons, you know, they are small rooms and you've only got one, one couch in the room, which means you're legitimately looking at two, maybe three people that you can train at any one time. But the other thing as well is it makes it more of a personalized service when you don't have 20 people in a room that you're trying to teach that person gets more one to one time and that one to one sort of tuition or one to two or one to three. So your revenue rate is naturally much higher as well. You can achieve more in that shorter space of time, but they also get so much more contact with you, which is great for people that are either busy and want to come in, get trained and go because they've got a busy salon to run or people that are just stepping back into that learning environment again, because it's a really big deal when you haven't learned something for a long time.

Like even some people I teach, they haven't done anything since school and it's scary, particularly as a mature learner. So sometimes that small, quiet environment where you've got just you, maybe a couple of others is less intimidating as well. So the revenue side for someone wanting to do that is great. It's very, very fulfilling in terms of the reward that you kind of get back as well from what you're able to achieve. And obviously, ultimately, you can create more value and more contact time. So your pricing can be priced right as well to accommodate that. And there's loads of things you can do, not just the physical teaching. There's a whole breadth of things that you can add to that as well. And I guess there's also potentially a positioning statement that's happening there as well, isn't there? Because you're not just the expert who's, for example, looking after your skin so beautifully, but actually you're so good at looking after skin that you're now teaching other people to do it as well. So potentially, as far as your clients go, there's a positioning. It does elevate you, gives you that elevated. And, you know, let's face it, we all like that little bit of elevation like that as well. You know, we do like to feed into our egos a little bit. And it is a nice statement, like you say, to kind of make. Well, I think also particularly at that smaller end of the market, it's a really crowded place to be. And, you know, a lot of what we talk about on the podcast is just trying to differentiate in a very crowded marketplace. So I suppose it helps with that, too. And then I guess also there's some stability that comes from that income, because by definition, if you're a solo, it's a risky business that you're in because the whole business does rely on you being able to carry out service all day, every day. So at least you've got something else that doesn't necessarily it's not necessarily so taxing physically. It isn't as taxing definitely nine times out of ten. You know, you're demonstrating parts of treatment, getting them to take over and things. It depends what the service is, but it's rare for me to do a whole treatment sometimes from start to finish. I kind of that's why I still do some clients because I've got the urge to do a job from start to finish. Whereas, you know, sometimes you're starting something and then letting your learner take over. You know, you can organize yourself in a way that makes it super cost effective as well. You don't have to have them for days and days on end. And I've got some great people that I've trained over the years that still stay solo, still do their clients latter end of the week. Beginning end of the week is their training days. And they've massively increased their revenue, still maintaining their solo status as well, because not everybody wants to have staff or deal with staff and, you know, the niceties,

but also sometimes the complexities that you get with having staff as well. You always get a little bit of both, don't you? And not everybody's up for that or inviting people into their home if they've converted their home into part of the salon and things like that as well. So it gives them the same opportunity as someone with a much bigger premises. And, well, correct me if I'm wrong about, well, actually coming out of lockdown, it did feel like everybody was an educator. Everybody had a course out. Everybody was teaching something. And I think that in the two years after lockdown, training standards were really suffering. I feel like we're just starting to see an improvement in that. But if we're encouraging more and more people to look at academies and look at training as a potential stream of income, how do we maintain those standards? Do you know, I would agree, actually, because I saw the same things myself. And actually, to be honest, it was things that I was seeing a little bit before that. But like you say, there was a bit of a boom, wasn't there? Because everybody just sat there and hopped on online, did their AET, which is the Award in Education and Training at the moment, which is that first stepping stone as well. And I think that's some of the issue. We've got some of the issue of only taking that stepping stone. But we also have some ill-named courses like that that are more CPD based that aren't the same standard and up to the same standard that still are considered educators training in that whole sort of accredited arena. And that also means that you get sometimes some quite poor quality of educating being taken place in those foundation stages as well. So we have got that slightly watered down. I think we are making some better moves. Certainly on the beauty side, we've got that upper level with the standardisation then of that licensing scheme that's being proposed. Obviously, we're still a little way off of that as any in consultation at the moment. I think some of that will help. People are starting to think about things now. They're starting to look at what qualifications they've got and whether they're CPD based or whether they're sort of the NVQ, you know, VRQ regulated kind of courses as well. So they are looking towards those standards. But I would agree, we probably have got quite a few.

It's just whether they will stand the test of time, I guess, as well. And it's about educating people coming in for what to look for in a good educator as well. What sort of things they're looking for, how to look for good courses and what they're looking for in terms of teaching qualifications if they're wanting to go that route as well. And also to keep on educating. I think there's a bit of a loophole that we have. The regulated sector is very regimented. It's not perfect. I will agree. It's not perfect. But it has auditing trails and things like that where we don't have that in the accredited side. There is no audit trail. It's beyond insurance based. It's not audited at all. So whose job is it to make sure that people understand the standard of training they're going into then? Is that a regulation issue? Is that something the government needs to get involved in or is it literally down to the marketplace to decide? At the moment, because we're not regulated in any way, I'd say it's a little bit of everybody. I think if you want to step into the education role as an educator, I think you need to take that quite seriously, that role, because potentially you've got someone's whole life in the palm of your hands and their life choices. And so it's up to you to make sure that you're up to scratch enough to make sure that you can educate them thoroughly and that you also got to teach people how to find the right courses as well. Like even if it's not with you, it's about how to find the right people. I always do that when I get people come towards me for things and ask me for courses. If it's not something I do, I will help them find the right person as well to kind of refer them on as well, because it doesn't matter. Even if it's down to like academy training, I'm not for everybody and that's fine. I always say I'm a bit like Marmite. You either love me or you hate me. And that's just how it is. And I'm very much I have a hard line of standards. If you want to get something and throw it online and it's something I don't think should be thrown online, I am definitely not the trainer for you. Like that's just a hard line for me. There are some things that should be face to face. So I think some of that needs to come down the regulated side of things. You know, there may be, you never know, might have the trickle down effect of this licensing system. It might come down to sort of the regular bread and butter treatments and that might actually make things a little bit better.

I do think that the insurance side of things could help a little bit more if they had a little bit more in place for their checks, particularly from an accreditation point of view, because it's the CPD kind of courses. It's the loosest kind of end, I guess, really, because, you know, I could have a five day manicure course written and accredited and it could be all singing or dancing. There could be a two hour one written on paper. They both look the same and it comes down to the accreditation companies. So and they are just insurance companies or insurance brokers. They follow the insurance regulations that they have, but there's nothing else outside of things. There's nothing else that checks. So I think everybody from government, you know, everybody needs to take a step into all of this, but it's going to take some time, obviously. And there are a lot of people and a lot of companies as well that are making a lot of money out of that, too. So, yeah, I've always thought the insurers could have more of a role actually across the board. I've never been a big fan of regulation as such. I've never felt that government were the right people because things move too slowly and our industry moves too fast. Absolutely. But the insurers have always thought if you make it. So, for example, in hair, you don't have to have a qualification to call yourself a hairdresser. You can just get on with it. But if we made it illegal to operate without insurance, then it would be down to the insurers to make sure that you're properly qualified. And that wouldn't give any extra burden to the salons or the hairdressers. It wouldn't rely on the government updating their standards or regulations every so many years. It would be something much more dynamic. And I've always thought the insurers should get much more involved in that. But you also help people open academies that don't have teaching qualifications, don't you? So that's, yeah, that's kind of a slightly, I guess, slightly diverting shift from my perspective, because this is now me looking at everything. Like I said, when I did this big pool kind of pull everything apart last year thing, I then sat down and looked at actually, you know, there's some people that want to help out their clients and help give them more. And I've always felt that's like an area that we're missing a little bit from the salon side of things. You don't necessarily need to become a teacher and need to start operating courses, but there are things that you can add that will add to your client's journey better and support them better and create more of a community in your salon by basically making your own client academy,

if you like, for want of a better word. And for things like that, you know, it could be something really simple, like, you know, just sort of little kind of online little courses maybe that you could do or some face to face ones. I know plenty of people that do bring other collaborative people in like Pilates and structures or something like that. And they'll do that mixed with like a facial night or something and show the clients how to look after their own skin, you know, things like that. But you could also have something online as well. I do believe that we can provide a lot more support to our clients to save them going down the YouTube route, if I'm going to be honest, you know, give them more examples of how to help themselves through, say, like menopause clients, how to help their teenagers with their teen skin. You know, if they could log on to like your little salon academy and have a little look and see what works for their teen skin, things that they can do at home, looking at the dietary kind of requirements and things. And obviously leading to a lovely call to action for us for certain things they can book in with. But just giving them the information so they're getting good quality information and not finding it off like Dr. Google and YouTube videos and things like that. You know, if there's some things they are going to do at home. So let's let's make sure they're doing those things properly when we're doing them at home. And you can create all of that, make a nice little subscription to your little academy every month. I know you love like a membership type thing there, Phil. Queen of memberships. I do love a membership. It can go alongside you. I know like your memberships, you know, work sometimes in a physical sense, but there's no reason why they can't work from an information exchange. And that could be, you know, a nice low level bit like your Apple Plus subscription. You know, it could be like a five or a month or something like that. But if you're all your clients are paying five a month, you know, that added revenue for you to put information that you try and blurt out in and around your treatment when they ask you questions about little Sally or Joe blogs or whatever, you know, that they're now having trouble while they're having their legs waxed or something like that. But they've noticed their teen skin's a bit tricky at the moment and they're going through a hormonal exchange. There could be so much information that you could put in there as well. And to support things like aftercare, you know, a lot of clients will forget aftercare stuff or don't know how to use things properly when they've had like a cream or a mask or something like that. There's loads that you can do in there. It works hairdressing as well. Yeah. It would work and always. Yeah. So, yeah, that's like a newer attachment to things that I'm doing is actually starting from that point.

And then I guess from my point of view, you know, should they really enjoy that aspect? It's like growing your own educators then. You know, it's right at the beginning of my journey. So if somebody's been listening to our conversation, they've decided this is the path they want to go down. They want to start opening up some form of academy. Is that where you would start then with something lower key client facing? I think it's all about audience building. And the people that I've seen with this have gone down the educating kind of route as well anyway, do better when they've already got that need and that want and that people are used to it. So those that have been doing lots of little demos, you know, how to do things. Even I see them, I get sucked into them all the time. There's like a hair tutorial one that keeps popping up and I'm like, oh, that's a different way to wear a bob. Or, you know, and I'm like, oh, I'll save that one for later. That kind of thing, you know, and it's things like that. If you're demonstrating and showing things, not just doing your before and after pictures, that starts to build that, that want to learn more. What else are they going to show me? Because, you know, it's only something might seem something really small, like a different way of putting your hair up or different way of doing your eyebrows or something like that. But actually it gets your client learning from you and then they're used to learning from you. So when you do want to become an educator, you start dropping those little breadcrumbs. You start to build up that want and that sort of waiting list and that sort of build up to Christmas kind of thing, if you like with that, that you're likely to have more impact when you do launch. You know, you can start it without, but it's going to be a bit of a slower journey. And you just have to accept that it's going to be a slower journey. And actually, I guess if we're looking at something online where we're just giving some great information or some little walkthroughs or mini tutorials month after month. By definition, what we've done is taken the limit that being solo has, because even if you're doing in-person training, there's a limit to how many people you can actually educate in a day. But there's no limit to the number of people that could sign up for that membership. And there's no physical location they need to be in either, is there? No, not at all. And that's something you can scale a little bit more. I still think, you know, academies need to do that. I've actually got, it's only for some of my students at the moment, I've actually not allowed that to go out too far at the moment, but I've actually got a subscription service myself within my training academy. Because there's loads of things I can do and that you can do just to sort of fine tune people's skills, help them with some of the business related skills and things like that as well.

And again, that just that nice low level subscription thing also keeps them in contact, keeps them nurtured too. And it's a, you know, a nice exchange of information, you know, for the fee that they're paying as well. Superb. Donna, how do people follow you for more information? How should they be getting in touch with you? Probably the best one is probably Instagram, because on my Instagram I've got a link tree on there. So then that way I've got my free group for my solo educators or solo wannabe educators as well. So there's a free group on there. All my contact details are on there as well. Websites and other little links as well to my products and things are all on there. And so, yeah, or you can just slide into the DMs and, you know, depending what it is, we'll get on the phone and, you know. Excellent. And we'll make sure that Donna's link tree is in the show notes when this episode goes out. Three quick fire questions that I don't warn people about. I like quick fire rounds. Actually, it's not going to work for very long because they're the same three questions. I want to come up with different ones each time. What's the best thing about working in the salon industry? I love just the community, like the communication that you have with your clients. And it's such a social job because it doesn't feel like I go to work every day. It's not really work. It's a very social kind of role. So that's my favorite thing about all of that. And what's the best piece of advice that you've ever personally received? Do you know what? Actually, stay in your lane. Don't look at other people. Yeah, actually, just stop. Look, it's so easy to compare yourself to other people. Look at your stay in your lane, look at your pathway. And you can, you know, that way you can say no to things that don't. You don't have to say yes to everything. Like just if you're looking, looking ahead to what you want, where you need to go. Some other bits might pop up if they don't fit into that path where you can say no. So I think, yeah, just staying in your lane, not worrying about what everybody else is up to. That's probably the best advice I was given, actually. And it stops me kind of going, oh, my God. Sounds like a route to sanity. I'm taking that advice myself. And if you were speaking to someone right at the beginning of their career and they wanted to follow in your footsteps, what advice would you be giving them? My advice would be actually just putting as much effort as you can into making the best quality client journeys as possible. I think that's probably the key thing, making sure that you get each piece of training right before you embark on a new a new skill, like make sure you get that nailed.

For me, I'm always like paint by numbers kind of girl. I like to automate it in my head, that treatment and get that service exactly how I want it to be. Get the client journey right before you go and embark on to the next one, because it's too easy to kind of do that shiny object syndrome or just training too much. And each thing becomes more watered down and perfect it. Get that one, get one right first, then move on to the next thing. Love it. Thank you so much for your time today, Donna. I could speak to you all day. There's so much more we could be covering, but time is our master, I'm afraid, in the podcast world. So thank you so much. And hopefully we can get you back on the podcast again soon. It's been a pleasure. Thank you very much. So there we have it, my conversation with Donna Clayton. Are you inspired? Are you ready? Are you looking to branch out and maybe start sharing some of the knowledge that you've accumulated over the years with either your clients or with other therapists or hairdressers? Reach out and let me know. I would love to hear from you. Phil at buildyoursalon.com. Also reach out if you would like to feature on a future episode of the podcast. 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.