Get Ready for a Remarkable 2025

Hello and welcome to the first Build Your Salon podcast of 2025. While the year is still full of possibility and excitement, how do we make sure the next 12 months is truly remarkable? Hello, hello, hello my salon friends, Phil Jackson here, your Queen of Salons. Coming in your eyes and ears again with our first dose of Wise Owl Wisdom of 2025. How on earth are you? Achingly well, I hope. And before we jump in to 2025, I want to ask you, how has the last period been for you? How was December? How was Q4? How was 2024? Because honestly, in a spoiler alert, that's what this episode is all about. It's about taking a beat, reflecting, before we start to move forward. So first of all, let's unpack December, shall we? Interesting month again, I thought. And I think what we can finally say is that the traditional pattern of salons turning away customers throughout the whole of December, because they're absolutely packed to the rafters, has finally gone. I don't know any salon that managed to stay consistently busy from the 1st of December through to the last. In fact, the pattern seemed to be, across the salons that I coach on a one-to-one basis, it seemed to be that first week of December was actually pretty quiet again. And that reflected exactly what happened at the end of 2023. So I think this is our new normal. I think basically what's happened is we have managed to get ourselves in a situation where people are starting to stretch their appointments for much longer than perhaps they traditionally used to. And what that's meant is that our Christmas rush now relies on fewer people coming in in the couple of weeks ahead of Christmas, rather than the whole of December being busy. And I'd love to know whether that is what you were seeing in your own business too. Why not reach out and let me know, phil at buildyoursalon.com. You know, I love hearing from my salon owner friends anyway. But what does that mean for your business? How can we take those lessons forward into 2025? Now, maybe that like one of my one-to-one clients, suddenly those restrictions that we had on our team members taking leave in December can be relaxed a little bit. Perhaps we can calm down a little and allow people to take some annual leave

in December as well. Or perhaps it means that we need to push a lot harder in October and November and make hay while the sun shines. Perhaps we need a bit more in the in terms of a buffer before we head into December. One thing that disturbed me though, during December, one thing that I was getting a little bit cross about, my darlings, was a big load of old bloody rubbish coming from some other salon owner, from other business coaches rather, in terms of what we can realistically expect from December. Now, I'm not being funny. If you are looking at poor financial results for December 2024, well, we've got to scratch the surface a little bit and figure out why. But the bit that was making me cross, the bit that was rubbing your uncle phil up the wrong way, my loves, was certain coaches jumping online and telling you not to go hell for leather, not to make sure that we squeezed every last client possible in, not to bend over backwards, not to extend your opening hours, to make sure that you've preserved your sanity and preserved your work-life balance. And I don't think there's anything wrong in that necessarily, but if you're doing that and then also trying to preserve work-life balance by taking two weeks off over Christmas and New Year, and also expecting it to be a record-breaking December, then frankly, my darlings, you need a reality check, because something has to give somewhere along the line. And myself, personally, I would rather you took a proper break with your family and loved ones over Christmas and New Year, and yes, it might mean doing a few more extra shifts in December. Yes, it might mean opening up a couple of Sundays to make sure that we've got enough money coming in to fund that time off. But ultimately, you can't expect extraordinary results unless you're prepared to do something extraordinary too. And frankly, I'm seeing too many salon owners getting a little bit lazy and expecting, just because they want to preserve work-life balance, expecting that somewhere along the line, some Christmas miracle is going to happen, which means you also get fantastic financial results. It's just not tenable to run a business that way. The other thing I want to just put a little reminder out there is exactly who the customer is in some of these situations, because I saw quite a lot of posts from salon owners, probably more on the run-up to Christmas than I've ever seen before, frankly, with owners hating on their own customers, saying how disappointed they were that people had to cancel last minute, how unreasonable it was, how much it was going to

impact their Christmas, their takings, their business in the short term. And frankly, I think it was a little bit ungracious, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of those customers, who may legitimately have had reasons for cancelling those appointments, decide not to come back in 2025. Let's not forget who's in charge in this situation. Let's not let the tail start wagging the dog. By all means, do business on your own terms, but let's also remember why the business exists in the first place. And if you're not coming from a place of service, I think you may well struggle in 2025. Listen to me, getting all riled up. First thing of the new year. Thanks a lot for that, guys. Goodness me. I just want you to do well, my loves, and I don't want you to be disappointed with your results in 2025 as well. So what I'm encouraging you to do is take a beat, reflect on December. What worked? What didn't? What would we change in 2025? And just make a few notes. And the other thing that I want to perhaps emphasise a little is that sometimes our marketing results in December were a bit disappointing, because there's just too much going on. And I love Q4, OK? I love that last three months of the year. I love the marketing flavour that we get to tap into. I love the fact that we go from cosy evenings and the clocks changing into pumpkin latte season, into Halloween, into Black Friday, and then into Christmas and Advent and all those wonderful things, then into our Boxing Day sales, then into New Year, New Year, and all those good things. The problem is, if you're trying to do all of those things, that's an awful lot of marketing message to get out there. And I wouldn't be surprised if you were trying to hit lots and lots of those marketing notes. I wouldn't be surprised if maybe a few of them were starting to sound a little bit flat. So what I would do is perhaps reflect on the last quarter of the year and figure out where we can really emphasise our marketing and where perhaps we need to take off the gas a little bit and allow the other marketing to breathe a little. We don't have to do everything that we could do. So perhaps do a little bit less, allow the marketing to breathe. It also allows you to stay excited about your marketing. It's very difficult to maintain high

levels of energy across an entire quarter. So we've reflected on December. We've started to see it in the bigger context of Q4. Then it's time to take a further step back and see it in the entire context of 2024. How was it for you? Take a page in your journal, take 10 to 15 minutes just to reflect on what worked and what didn't. Because the temptation is either we had an amazing December, which means we feel like we had an amazing year, and I promise we didn't. There would have been some tough times in there as well. Or the opposite is true. You had a bit of a disappointing December, and that's making you feel like the entire of 2024 was disappointing. And it probably wasn't. There were probably some high points in there as well. So this process of reflection can really put you in a much more realistic frame of mind, a much more balanced frame of mind, before we start doing our goal setting for 2025. So we've had our reality dose, we've had our reflection, then it's time to celebrate the wins. So those things that you got right in 2024, take a moment to credit yourself, because we are operating in a challenging economy. Let's face it, we're now entering five years of challenging economy. We haven't had an easy run of it for a very, very long time indeed. So if you've got through 2024 relatively unscathed, with some ambitions, with some stretch goals for 2025, with the belief and the ability to take the next 12 months off with passion, then you're doing better than most. So well done. Let's celebrate those wins that you would have had in 2024, before we can move forward. And then my overarching piece of advice as far as 2025 is concerned, in terms of marketing, I've asked you to reflect on Q4, and I think he's got a bit too busy and a bit too frantic. I feel like everybody's business is getting a bit too busy and a bit too frantic. And I want you to do less, not in terms of your work ethic. I want you to double down and work really, really hard in 2025. If you want to achieve some extraordinary results, we've got to do some extraordinary stuff. But I want us to be focusing on less. I want you to be setting less goals and really doubling down on them. Set yourself less New Year's resolutions and make sure we achieve them. Less marketing campaigns that have time to breathe. Less services on your price card that enable you to specialise.

Less social media posts, which actually allow you some time to run your business instead. Gosh, doesn't that sound wonderful for 2025? So I want you to do less. Make sure that what you're actually choosing to do, you double down on, give it your full commitment, full energy, rather than trying to chase 150 different goals in 2025 and ultimately leaving yourself disappointed. So there we have it. That's how I'm going to be facing 2025. It's how I'm going to be encouraging my salons to do the same. What have I missed? What are you going to be focusing on in 2025? And more importantly, what can I help you with? Reach out and let me know. You know I love hearing from my salon owner friends, but I want your ideas for this podcast in 2025. I'd also love to get some of you on air with me. I'd love to be sharing your success story with our amazing, wonderful salon owner audience. So reach out, let me know. Phil at buildyoursalon.com if you'd like to be a guest on a future episode. We have some guest episodes coming up. In fact, I think next week's episode is an interview episode. I've started bringing some experts back in. So you're not just putting up with my dulcet tones week after week after week. We've got some other voices chipping in with their expertise as far as salon business is concerned. So also reach out if you have an area of expertise that you think you could help my salon owner friends with. I'd love to be interviewing you on a future episode too. In the meantime, 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.