From Overwhelmed to Overachieving: September Q and A

Hello, my salon friends. How's business? How's life? Let's find out in my monthly Q&A. Hello, hello, hello, my salon friends. How on earth are you? Achingly well, I hope, as we steam towards the end of September. My goodness, this year's gone in a blink, hasn't it? Actually, I don't know, has it? After that 11 months of winter that we had, that lasted all the way through till, let's face it, July here in the UK. It did drag a bit at the beginning of the year, didn't it? So how's it been? End of September, always a really interesting time for me. It means that we're heading into a new quarter, October, November, December. And of course, for lots of you, it's the big money quarter. I always liked the marketing in the last quarter of the year. I love, I'm very much a winter type person. I don't like autumn. Autumn's too muddy, too messy for me. I love the spring. I love summer because I'm solar powered. But winter, when it's crisp, I'm very much a boots and jacket kind of guy and I really enjoy the crispy weather. But I really like the marketing. I like how it kind of cosies up to me a little bit. And I love all the stuff that we do around Halloween. Then, of course, we head into Black Friday. Lots to be gained in Black Friday, even here in the UK, which is a relatively new thing. We've only been doing Black Friday for a few years over here. And then, of course, we've got Christmas and New Year to look forward to as well. So lots of opportunities for salons. But we're not talking about those things yet because I haven't had any questions on those things yet. This is my monthly Q&A session and it does rely on you sending questions. So please reach out phil at buildyoursalon.com. I would love to be answering one of your questions in a future episode of the podcast. In the meantime, excuse me for looking down if you're watching on YouTube. But I need to because that's where my notes are and that's where all the questions are loitering, waiting for my pearls of wisdom. So first question comes from where it's not really not much of a question, to be honest with you, comes from Graham. I'm overwhelmed and don't know what to do. That's all I got over on Instagram. And that's fine. Nice and short and sweet and to the point. I'm guessing that that means you've got an awful lot to do and you don't know what to do next. Or maybe you're focusing on the wrong things a little bit, Graham. So I'm going to give you a few productivity tips. And if they're relevant to you, reach out and let me know. If you need more help in a different direction, then reach out as well. Ask a second question. I don't mind a follow up at all, Graham. The first thing I would say is if you're overwhelmed, you need to be doing less where you can.

And honestly, say no. Say it frequently. It gets easier and easier over time. But say it early on. And I say no a lot more now than I used to. I don't know if it's because I'm turning into a bit of a cantankerous old fart. Because let's face it, it's not long until my mid-century birthday. But I'm very good at saying no these days. And what I've noticed is the more I do it, the easier it gets. But what I've really noticed is it's got to be timely. Let me give you a social example. So I'm a brilliant person for saying, oh, I'll think about it. If somebody invites me to something, oh, I'll think about it. I'll see. I'll see whether I've got time. And then I kind of don't decide and don't decide and don't decide right until the last minute. And then I either don't show or I let people down. And it's a horrible way to be. It's very rude. And that's all because I was trying to save people's feelings. I thought if I said no, that they might be offended. So it's better to say nothing. But trust me, if you say no really quickly, people aren't offended at all. They're much more offended by a no show or much more offended by you messing about about for months and months and then letting them down at the last minute. So it's far better to say, actually, that doesn't sound like something I'd enjoy. I'm going to give that one a miss if that's OK. If you say that as soon as you're asked, people don't mind at all. They don't give it any thought. All these things that we overthink, don't we, late at night when we try and handle situations differently in our minds than they actually went. But I promise you, if you say no quickly, people really don't mind at all. So let's get some stuff off your plate. I don't know whether you've got a salon with a team in place, Graham, or whether we need to be looking outside the team. But you've got to delegate as much of what's left as possible. And there are a lot of people who I think are crucifying themselves for their business. They are martyrs to their business. They feel that they need to hustle and 10x and be rushed off their feet all the time. And they need to be seen to be hugely busy. And I promise you, I'm not a very busy person as far as business is concerned. I don't work as many hours as I bet lots of you do. And I get plenty done because I have people in place to help me with these things. So right from the start, that would be my recommendation. Even if all you can afford is a virtual assistant for a couple of hours a week, get stuff out of your inbox and into somebody else's. Now, I know if you're a bit of a control freak, that can be a challenge because you think no one's ever going to do it the way that you will. No one's ever going to do it to the standard that you will. And that's fine. They will never care as much as you. It's your business, not theirs. They shouldn't care as much as you.

But for me, my line in the sand is 85%. If you can do 85% of the job that I was going to do, that's a bloody big win for me. If it's something that I haven't got to worry about and it's 85% as good as I could do. Brilliant. Let's crack on with it then. The other thing, of course, is that people can come up with better ways of doing things over time than perhaps you would have thought of on your own. So let's say no, let's get some stuff crossed off the list immediately. Let's delegate as much as possible. And then I think it's about setting yourself up for success. And I did a little reel on this, a little Facebook post, I think it was, or perhaps an Instagram reel, I'm not sure, about your environment and how we manipulate our environment for success. And it really helps with discipline. Discipline will get you so far, okay? Knuckling down and working hard will get you so far. But that level of motivation is finite. There's only so much that we have in the tank as far as discipline is concerned. The rest of it we need to make up with habits and our environment. And if you haven't read Atomic Habits, James Clear, I think it's the best-selling nonfiction book outside the Bible or something now. It's sold insane numbers of copies because it holds very true. So I would definitely get hold of that and start helping you get into the habits of getting some of these things crossed off your list. But the other thing is set yourself up for the environment. I'm going to give you an example, a very glib example from my own life, okay? If I've got ice cream in the freezer, if I've got Ben & Jerry's in the freezer, I can hear it calling me, okay? From the other side of the house, I can hear it calling me and it will keep calling me until finally I give in and I eat the ice cream, okay? Because the level of discipline, the level of self-discipline that I have is finite. Eventually, it will run out. It's much better for me to control my environment and use that discipline when I'm doing the shopping. When I'm stood in Sainsbury's and I choose to use that discipline not to buy the ice cream in the first place, I've got a far higher level of success as far as my slimming journey is concerned. So use the discipline when you're setting these things up. So use the discipline early in your journey rather than relying on willpower alone later on. And that can work for your personal life. It can work for all sorts of things around diet and fitness and all those good things or those boring routines that we have around the house.

Or it can work in your business too. So set your environment up for your success. I'd love to hear back from you, Graham. I'd love to hear a bit more detail on this question, whether there's something that I'm missing, whether there's something that I can give you in terms of slightly more directed advice as to what's going on. So please reach out and let me know. Next question comes from Tim from Liverpool. It's all the boys today. Not all boys, but it's rare. We don't get many boys listening. It's mostly girlies and others. So Tim from Liverpool says, how much admin time do I need? I hear. Gosh, let's have some punctuation next time, Tim. How much admin time do I need? I heard you say to build four hours admin time into my week. And that is nowhere near long enough for me. I'm doing admin closer to two days a week. Draw a breath. OK, Tim, the four hours admin time is a general rule of thumb for the businesses that I'm involved in. And it depends on your turnover. It depends on the complexity of the business. It depends on the on the stage of your business growth. So generally, as a rough rule of thumb, I recommend if your turnover is below quarter of a million, half a day a week admin time should be enough. OK, bearing in mind, we're also trying to say no to things. We're also trying to delegate as much as possible as I described for Graham. So half a day a week should be enough to run a business of that size. That said, in the early days, it might be double that, triple that, quadruple that. OK, if you've only just opened your business and there's an awful lot to do in terms of putting systems in place and getting marketing systems in place and all of these things that we need doing, then it might be that we need a bit more time in the short term. But I think two days a week would be an awful lot. Once you're beyond that 250,000 mark, then, yes, your admin time is going to increase. And perhaps we're at the stage where it could become a full time job if you're running a business beyond a certain size. But as far as building that admin time into your week's concern, though, Tim, I'm pleased that you're doing that. I'm pleased that we're actually finding time in the week rather than trying to squeeze admin time around our working week. But I think, yeah, half a day will be a good rule of thumb. The other thing I would say, is it Parkinson's law, which basically says that tasks will grow to fill the time slot that's available to them.

They will grow to the resource that's available. If you give yourself two hours admin, you're going to end up being busy for two days worth of admin. Rather, you're going to end up being busy for two days of admin. So give yourself less time. See, it will make you prioritize. It will make you decide what's the important stuff that's going to move the needle on the business and what can wait until another time. I do think, though, that your admin time needs to be part of a robust planning process. And that's something that I'm very, very strong on. So I have my monthly planning sessions and I have a very long quarterly planning session. I'm going to talk about that with another question, actually. But make sure that we're planning our day, planning our week, planning our month, planning our quarter. And then suddenly those admin times are much more focused rather than trying to figure out what to work on next. So I hope that's helpful, Tim. Treat yourself next time. Let's have some commas and full stops. Next question. I'm such a cow, aren't I? I don't know why anybody listens. Next question is an anonymous question, which is fine. I've always said if you don't want to be identified, don't want your salon identified on the podcast, then I would rather you send a question and I answer it anonymously than you don't get the help that you need. Anonymous says, how do I stay motivated? I start the year strong. But this time of year, I've lost sight of my goals and I'm running out of motivation. OK, this taps into a little bit of what we were talking about with Graham, a little bit of what we were talking about with Tim. But I'm going to give you a really short answer to what could be a very complicated question. Anonymous, I want you to read a book and it's called The 90 Day Year. I think that's what it's called. And basically what they say is don't plan for a year because I'm the same as you. And this is what I do now. So I basically treat each quarter as a full year. So it has all of the planning process that I would put into a year, but it happens for 90 days because I'm just like you. So I'll start with really good intentions, lots and lots of energy. And then over time, that energy starts to slip away, that motivation slips away until towards the end of the year. When I go, sugar, I've got so much to achieve and only three weeks left to do it. And I work like Billy O trying to get everything crossed off my to do list. If we can shorten that period of time to a quarter, then yes, we still get that dip in months, too, if I'm really honest. But it doesn't dip quite as far before we have a chance to pull ourselves back up again with the third month. So I'm going to link to that book. I'm sure it's called The 90 Day Year. Anyway, I'll put I'll link to it in the show notes. Really, really good book. Essentially, a very, very simple structure.

Basically, don't think in 12 months anymore. Think in three months instead. Also implement all the stuff that I recommended to Graham and Tim as well. But you do need to find ways to stay motivated. The other thing I would recommend is find your tribe. You need some people who understand what you're going through beyond your friends and family and also beyond any team members that are part of the business as well. You need people who are in a similar situation to you or even better. If you can be in a room with people who are just that bit ahead of where you are, they understand completely what you're going through at the moment and they'll be very motivating and very supportive, whether that be an industry specific group. So I, for example, have my Salon Spark group. We meet up every week online and also go through a monthly goal setting process of accountability together or whether that's an in-person event, perhaps a networking event or whether you just put together a group of people who are at similar life stage. Perhaps it's something that's beyond the business, but find a tribe. It will help keep you motivated. Best of luck with that. Next, a question, actually a question from one of my customers. So Rebecca says, how do I go about changing my service offerings? For example, pivoting from hair removal to skin. So this is part of an ongoing conversation in our industry. Basically, it's people starting to realize that we can pivot away from lower price, high competition services. So here we're talking about hair removal, but we have a lot of conversations around things like having nail desks in salons and pivoting towards those things that are more bespoke, higher end, higher ticket in an effort to maintain a different level of profitability and a different model of loyalty from our customers too. So how do we go about moving away from some services and emphasizing others? Well, the first thing I think is a marketing exercise and we need to emphasize those new services in your marketing. And that's because we want to take as many of our customers on that journey as possible. So let's make sure that we are talking about the new services and stop talking about the old services. So, for example, I see a lot of people who say, OK, I want to do less nails. I want to do more skin because nails, very low profit margin, very high competition skin. I can make more money and it's more interesting to me and we've just done all this training and we've got all this retail that can support our profitability too. Then I look at their Instagram feed and what do I see? Nails, nails, nails. That's not going to work. So stop talking about those lower price services in your socials. Stop talking about them in your marketing. Start talking about those higher price services exclusively.

OK, so from the outside looking in, it might even look like you don't offer those services anymore. Well, that's a decision maybe for another day. But I especially want you to lean into email marketing, existing client marketing. We want to take as many of those clients on that journey as possible. We want as many good, loyal, strong clients moving with us to take those higher price services as possible. It's a very expensive and very slow way of succeeding if we have to ditch a huge chunk of clientele and replace them with new clients. So we want to transform. We want to translate as many of those clients to those new services as possible. Next up, free consultations. This actually only has a value, though, if you normally charge for consultations. So have a paid for consultation service on your price card. Make sure you're really good at consultations. Get training if you need to. There are some people who will specifically train you on consultations. It's money well worth spending. I promise. Get your consultations right. The rest of the business starts to sing. It's beautiful. So if you normally charge for consultations, then you can offer a free consultation and it stands out. So let's get some free consultations on these new services. If you are starting to discontinue some of the old services, I will begin by pricing yourself out of the market. So start increasing your prices. Next time you do your price review, review the price of everything. But the services you want to discontinue, put a couple of pounds more on there and just see what that does in terms of suppressing demand until it comes to the stage that you can comfortably drop the service altogether. If you want to free up some column space but don't want to stop those services, then one thing you could do is have a look at memberships. Head over to buildyoursalonpodcast.com forward slash memberships. I've got a cheat sheet on memberships. We had an episode on memberships a couple of weeks back as well. So have a look and get some memberships in place. What we could do is move the services you want to pivot away from onto memberships. So let's say you don't want to discontinue your nail services, but you want to limit the number of nail services you're doing to free up column space for a higher profit service. What we could do is say, OK, we're not going to stop doing nails, but our nails are now a membership service for members only. Then we can restrict the number of memberships that are available, which makes it more desirable in itself and easier to market. But it means it's going to limit the amount of column space that the lower price services are going to take up. So have a look at moving them onto some memberships. I hope it's been useful to you, Rebecca.

Reach out, let me know. I'm sure I'll be hearing about your success very soon anyway. And finally, I have a question from Sophie and how do I manage a lead system effectively? So I did a bit of digging and basically what's happening in Sophie's business is she's got a marketing company taking care of lead generation. So basically what they're finding is leads. So people who are interested in laser hair removal. Sophie is a solopreneur. She's working on her own. She's working on her own. And basically she's asking how to manage those leads more effectively. And here technology is your friend, because when people are so these leads are coming through Facebook marketing, by the way. So when people are clicking on your ad and submitting their details, we've got quite a short window of opportunity. Basically, if you get in touch with people two or three days down the line, they'll forget that they click the link in the first place. They'll wonder why on earth you're contacting them. They're unlikely to answer the phone, all those good things. So we've got to get back to people really, really quickly. And what I would do is start to lean into technology. We need to automate some of that response process. Basically, what I would be doing is sending people an SMS and also an email. I would send the SMS after one minute. I would send the email after 10 minutes. Why not at the same time? Well, it's so that we don't get two notifications popping up on our phone at the same time. And then basically what we're trying to do is get people into a conversation as quickly as possible. Not necessarily getting them to book the service. Not even necessarily getting them to book a consultation. Not even just getting that conversation going because taking people from the stage where they're scrolling through Facebook, looking at photos of dogs through to actually spending money with you is not going to happen in one hit. OK, that lead is going to need warming up. They're going to need nurturing. They're going to need to start building a relationship with you before they're going to spend money, particularly on something like laser, which is a comparatively a high ticket item. So they're going to need to get to know you a little bit. So let's get that conversation started as quickly as we possibly can. Then we need to get some form of commitment. And I know that the really big problem with these lead generation companies, these lead generation campaigns is we get a lot of people no showing, a lot of people not replying.

So they've shown an interest, but actually then they've kind of had second thoughts and gone off the boil a little bit. So we want a commitment as quickly as possible. Now, it's going to be difficult to get them to give you a financial commitment. But if we're going to take them on the journey where they're going to be booking a consultation with us, keep in touch, keep nurturing, keep messaging backwards and forwards on the run up to that consultation to make sure they're not going off the boil in between times. And then my final point is in the follow up, because a lot of people will be expressing an interest in something that they may or may not be interested in. Gosh, I did this just the other day. A company popped up because, of course, technology is listening to us all the time. I'm about to build a new office and I need a new door. And I was looking at door companies, but that's not going to happen for a few weeks yet. But I clicked a button, expressed an interest. Now, what will be interesting is if that door company is doing their retargeting properly, if they're following up, if they're nurturing properly, I'll be hearing from them for quite a long time after. And this is happening with you as well. Just because they've clicked a link or given their details doesn't mean they want laser hair removal now. It might mean that they're thinking about it for the future. So keep in touch. Keep going back to these people each time you run a promo, each time you run an offer just to keep in touch. We just need to keep them warm, keep the lead alive, keep nurturing. At some stage, they will either tell you, absolutely, I'm not interested or now is the right time. So three main points to that, Sophie. Firstly, use technology. Secondly, make sure that we're getting back to people and nurturing that conversation as much as we can. And thirdly, don't forget the follow up, even if it takes weeks or months. So I hope that's been helpful to everybody else as well. I would love to be answering some of your specific questions in a future episode of the Build Your Salon podcast. Here's my email address, phil at buildyoursalon.com. You know, I love hearing from you guys anyway. I love sharing your success stories. Also reach out if you'd like to appear on a future episode of the Build Your Salon podcast. I'd love to be interviewing some salon owners around their particular journeys to success. If you feel you've got something to share, then reach out and let me know and perhaps we'll be talking soon. Just seven short days until I'm coming in your eyes and ears again with another dose of Wise Owl wisdom. And until then, take care. Sit down and see what's going on with the queen of salons.

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