How to Steal a GREAT idea

Hello, Phil Jackson here from Build Your Salon, bringing you the tools you need to master to build the salon business you deserve, and today I want to talk to you about people that you can steal ideas from. Hello and welcome. Any of you who have been following my work for a while now will realise that I love taking ideas from other people in our industry, other salon owners and managers, but also taking ideas from outside our industry as well. And there's a very good reason for this. And the reason is that if you only take ideas from inside your industry, there are a number of norms, there are a number of things that are taken as read, as just the way things are always done. And I think those ideas need challenging wherever we possibly can. So what I want to talk to you today about is who we can learn from. Absolutely, you need to learn from the best. But I'm not just saying about the best in our industry. Of course, if you're in the hair or beauty industry, there are some really strong salons out there that you should be looking to for inspiration. I don't necessarily think, though, that you should be stealing ideas from their business in a wholesale way. And that's because their business is at a different stage to yours. So let's say you're following somebody on Instagram who is an inspiration to you. They have the kind of salon that you are striving to run, but they are posting to Instagram eight times a day with inspiring, fantastic and varied comment. If you scale that business back to how it was when they were your size, I bet they weren't doing the same thing. Because what's appropriate to them now may not have been appropriate when they were at the stage that you're at right now, too. So absolutely use these industry figures as inspiration, but be very careful about stealing their ideas in a large way. Also look at the best in class. So don't just look for the high flyers, the headline stealers, the really big names in our industry. Also look for the salons that are similar size to you or slightly bigger who are really nailing it either locally to you or in different areas of the country or even the world. Start taking ideas from them as well, because they're going to have some really smart, really innovative ways of capturing their audience and making a profit in their salons that maybe you haven't heard of. But also it's appropriate to the level of business that you're at right now.

Also, make sure you're looking outside the industry. So for example, my guys needed some training on sales and the easy thing to do, ours is a hair salon, I'm a hairdresser. So the easy thing to do in our industry is get in touch with your manufacturer, get them to send a rep or a salon trainer into the salon and give your guys some sales training. But the problem is we've been trying that approach for years and years and years. 15 years now I've had my salon and our retail was still not where I wanted it to be and not at all impressive. And it's because they send these people in from manufacturers who are already brainwashed with how our industry sells products and what is a level of sales which we should be striving for in our salons as well. And I don't think we should be taking those things as read. So what I did was got my thinking cap on and I thought, OK, who's really good at sales training? Who can teach my guys to get past the embarrassment around recommending products to their customers and do it in an effective way that keeps a little bit of a sense of humour? So what I did was went through my client list and I found somebody who used to train call centre teams. And I thought, you know what? Those guys in call centres must put up with all sorts of crap from the people that they're calling. They must be getting called every name under the sun. They must have the thickest skin and yet they keep going and keep plugging and keep selling. So actually what we have to put up within the salon is much, much less than that. So if a call centre supervisor and trainer can train a team that puts up with all sorts of rubbish, I'm fairly sure they can deal with a team of hairdressers. I got a call centre trainer into my salon and they trained my team on sales technique. So don't just look for the best in our industry. Look for the best in class. I hope that's been useful to you and given you some ideas. So if there's other areas of your business where you think you might need training, absolutely look outside the industry for the best examples you can find in your network. If that's been useful to you, don't forget to hit subscribe because I do a broadcast like this every single week and I would hate you to miss out on the content that I'm sharing. If you're ready for a bit more up close and personal, check the description box because I've put a link in there for my first ever live event. It's going to be fantastic. We're going to take on Facebook, Instagram and email marketing for salons in one day in central London in September. I would love to see you there until next week. Take care.