Reducing overwhelm and getting more done

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. Hello, hello, hello, my salon lovelies. How on earth are we? Achingly well, I hope. My goodness, you're looking trim. You've been losing some weight recently. So here we are on the very edge of March looking in. How was February for you? Talking to lots of my group coaching clients and one-to-one coaching clients this week has been very interesting as far as February is concerned. Do remember, darlings, if you have a big rush of clients on the way up to the festive season, then it's going to take a couple of months for things to even back out again. You're going to get these peaks and troughs if you're expecting to see people every six or eight weeks, say. And there's been a bit of that in February, I think. There's been some really good weeks for a lot of people and some very quiet weeks in between. But overall, it looks like performance in February has been pretty strong, considering it's a short month and considering that we're still in winter. I always think that in the hair and beauty and aesthetics industry, things are easier when we get to the spring and the days are a bit longer and people know they're going to be socialising more. And if you're not socialising, well, does it really matter if you've got hairy toes? Anyway, that's looking back. Let's start looking forward. And we've spoken before about the difference between overwhelm and procrastination. And today's episode is largely focused on reducing overwhelm. But I don't want to do it in a kind of fluffy nurturing sort of way, though, of course, you know that I nurture all the time. I love giving suck to the salon industry and making sure that you're all behaving yourselves properly and looking after yourselves properly, more importantly. But I want some practical stuff, some tips on how we can start to reduce overwhelm. And essentially, overwhelm comes from just not seeing the wood for the trees, trying to do too many things or feeling that there are too many priorities pulling at your sleeve. And I want to take you through a three-step process, which I call DAD, D-A-D. And essentially, the three-step process is delegation, automation and deletion. And this comes from a very old program that I've revised and refined over lots of years, which I call Do Less, Achieve More. And it's one of my favorite programs. It's one of the shortest programs that I sell, actually. And it's one of my absolute favorites. I love increasing productivity and reducing overwhelm at the same time, because I think we can do both. A lot of people worry that by reducing overwhelm, they're going to be achieving less, moving the business on less, achieving less of their goals.

And actually, the opposite can be true. So let's jump into this delegation, automation and deletion process. And this is something that I take lots of my clients through in my group coaching programs. And also, it's something that I implement myself. And it's a work in progress for all of us. We never quite get to the end of this process. There's always more to be gained. There's always more that we can be delegating, automating and deleting from our to-do lists. And we keep catching ourselves out every now and again. Sometimes we think that something has to be done a certain way. And we've been doing it the same way for years and years and years. And then there's a little light bulb moment we go, actually, it doesn't need to be done that way. We could be delegating this to someone else. We could be automating it. And of course, as the business changes, we have to review those processes and those systems on a regular basis. Because things become redundant. And it's very easy to do things just because we always have. And I have earned the title in a local networking group of the implementation queen. I get a lot done. And I do it relatively. I'm saying relatively because there are times when I'm overwhelmed. But relatively without overwhelm. And I've got a busy life. You know, I've got my own business. I also interfere in my husband's salon. It's not my salon anymore. But it doesn't stop me interfering, darlings. And also, I'm a father. You know, I've got two wonderful, gorgeous adopted children. But they take a lot of my time. And I try and be there for every school run. And every school play. And all the sports days. And all the rest of it. And try and be a good father. And present with them when I'm there. So I've got a lot to juggle. And I'm sure you have, too. So I hope this three-phase process serves you well. So first of all, delegation. And I always meet resistance in small business owners around delegation. And I think the first thing to point out is that, actually, you're already delegating in lots of ways. And delegation, of course, is by moving tasks from your to-do list, from your calendar, into the to-do list, the inbox of other people who can help you complete a task. And this can be internal delegation. So it can be employees or colleagues. Or it can be external delegation, which we more regularly call outsourcing these days to some kind of contractor or freelancer. And usually, we're tapping into the experience and the expertise of people outside the business.

And because we are small business owners, we feel that we have to do everything ourselves. And there's a bit of martyr syndrome that comes along with small business ownership as well. We feel that we have to be seen to be doing everything else in a very flamboyantly flustered way. And I've said a lot of times it's a lot more inspiring for people to see you gliding around the salon, not panicking like a chased chicken. And also, delegation has lots of benefits because we're nurturing the talents of other people. It allows people to tap into the things they actually enjoy doing a lot more. And by sharing those tasks and responsibilities, we're showing the people on our team a different area of our business. And it's a bit more variety in their job. It's a bit more interesting for them too. But there's a bit of comfort to realize that actually you're already delegating. Even if you're a complete control freak who feels that they have to do everything themselves, you're already delegating in lots of ways. For example, if something catches fire because you plugged it in, you're not going to be stripping out that wiring yourself. You're going to bring a contractor in to do that. So contractors, maintenance people, engineers and so on. We don't do those things ourselves, largely because we don't have the skill set. But we recognize that delegating that is not only more effective, but also more efficient. It might well be that if you've got an apprentice on the team, if you've got trainees, you've delegated their off the job training. So yes, their practical training might be in the salon, but their off the job training, all the paperwork stuff, we've delegated to a training provider. It doesn't always feel that way. It feels like they've delegated the practical training to us. But in fact, if they're on your payroll, you've done the delegation. And if you've got employees carrying out service, well, that's a form of delegation. What you've done is delegated the carrying out of service on those particular clients to someone else. So we're already delegating in lots of ways. But there's more that can be gained by finding areas to delegate in the business. And all you're saying, if you're saying that I'm a control freak, what you're actually saying to people is, I don't trust you. And that's a really demotivating person to be around over time. So we need to start to release the control a little bit and areas that I would be looking at or areas that I've delegated successfully in my own business. The first huge one for me was payroll. I'd been doing payroll manually for years. And bear in mind, I've been hairdressing since the 18th century. And when we first started employing people and carrying out payroll, we used to get these huge tax sheets from at the time it was Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs. Now, of course, it's His Majesty's. But we used to get these huge tax sheets and it had all of the tax codes in the booklet and these little spreadsheets. And you had to and this was a paper thing. It wasn't online. And you had to manually look up the person's tax code and then look up how much they'd earned that month or that week.

And it would tell you in this paper document how much tax to deduct from the from the employee. And we had one for their tax and one for their national insurance contributions. And I've been doing this for years. And then payroll software came along and I thought that we were automating in a beautiful way. And we'll talk about automation shortly. But actually, I was still carrying out the task myself. And it was only when I was forced by a new accountant to delegate pay. Well, I wasn't forced. I mean, nobody was twisting my arm. But essentially, we had a new accountant who was brilliant, by the way. And I was devastated when she decided to move on in her career. But basically, the deal was that we paid her a certain amount per month. And I said, well, what does that include? And she said, well, it includes all your bookkeeping. It includes all your returns and it includes all your payroll. And I said, well, what if I did the payroll because I do that anyway? Can we get the cost down? And she said, no, I would charge you the same. So I said, well, stuff it then. You might as well do the payroll, darling. And delegated it over to her. And it was such a relief, honestly, to pass that over. And it took a little bit of time. And delegation can take a bit of time to get right. Because sometimes there are a few teething problems. And there is a lot that we assume. There's a lot of knowledge that we've gathered over the years that we assume is obvious to other people. And it isn't always immediately obvious. So I had to train the accountant on, for example, the way that we calculated commissions in the salon. But once that was sorted, it was done, dusted, and I washed my hands of the whole thing and have no regrets about that. And it's always been something that, as we've taken on accountants since then, it's something I've always insisted that they take over as well. We have delegated our entire reception experience at times in the business. So the phone does not ring in my salon. We could not afford, on the pricing structure that we had at the time, we couldn't afford full-time reception cover. And you think you've got full-time reception cover if you have a full-time receptionist. But of course you don't, because she has break times and lunch times and paid holidays and things like that. What we realised is there was an inconsistency in service, and it was better for us to outsource that reception experience. So we had a call centre that picked up the phone for us. And again, it took time to become valuable, but it worked. And the point here, I think, actually, a very important point, is when you're delegating, if things don't go well, that doesn't mean that delegation is a bad idea. It means we need to revisit the instructions, revisit the person that we're delegating to, work with them to make it work in the longer term.

What we don't do is delegate, have a bad experience, and then pull it back into our own inbox again. The worst experience of this I've ever had, I was coaching a salon owner, and I used to go in and visit a lot more salons. Before Covid came along and we got so comfortable with online meetings, I used to visit salons an awful lot. And I was allowed to have a look at the appointment book for a particular salon, and the salon owner was just so overwhelmed and so busy all the time. And we were really struggling to make his time more effective. And then I noticed there was a big chunk of time every Saturday morning. This was a hair salon. And in a hair salon, by the way, Saturday morning, that's your prime real estate. That's where the big bucks should be coming in. And there was a big chunk of time booked out. And I said, well, what's that for? And he said, well, that's when I clean the windows. I said, so you clean the windows in the salon? And he said, yes. And I think it's really important that my team see me getting down and dirty and rolling up my sleeves and that I'm at the coalface with them. And I said, well, actually, think about the signal that you're sending to your team, darling. And what you're saying is that after I think you've been in the industry for about 15 years. I said, what you're saying is that after 15 years, what you've got to look forward to is cleaning windows. And I said, there are much better ways to show people that you work hard if you feel the need. But you shouldn't be justifying it by cleaning the windows. And he was literally booking out two hours of prime real estate on a Saturday morning when he could have been earning hundreds and hundreds of pounds. And essentially, it was a task that he could have been delegating probably for a tenner. So, yeah, let's have a real close look at what it is that we're doing and see where we could be delegating. Because if not, you're increasing your workload, increasing the tendency to overwhelm. You're reducing the time that you've got for other really important tasks. You're showing people that you're not only not always productive, but you're pretty inefficient as well. You're probably missing deadlines and certainly missing opportunities in the business. And you're also kind of decreasing job satisfaction for other people because you're not delegating those tasks. You're not entrusting them and you're not moving their careers forward. You're keeping everything to yourself. So what you're doing by not delegating is you're saying that everything you do is hugely equally important. When actually it's your job to have the more grown up attitude and focus on the tasks and the responsibilities that actually move your business forward. And that's kind of what this whole dad process is all about. Are you feeling like you're stuck in a rut? Like you're just going through the motions or that whatever you do, the next level in your business stays just out of reach? Well, it's time to shake things up.

With one-to-one coaching, you'll have buckets of support, inspiration and accountability to help you bring the buzz back to your salon business. Whether you're looking to achieve a specific goal or just feeling that things are lonely at the top and you want someone to coach you to be the best version of yourself, I am here to support you. And don't worry, even though it's called coaching, I won't make you join a gym and I will never suggest you give up your Toblerone habit. What's the alternative? More of the same? Come on, you can do better than that. Ping me an email at phil at buildyoursalon.com with the subject line coaching and I will send you all the details. I can't wait to help you on your journey to salon success. So after we've delegated, what are we going to do next? Well, we're going to start automating and this is my favourite because I'm a nerd. I'm a geek. I'm one of those rare creatures where I'm a gay and a geek, which is pretty rare, it has to be said. But automation is my absolute favourite. I love working on a new app or a new system or a new process. And in fact, automation and systemisation are sisters, they go together. And we could do an entire podcast episode on systemisation if that would be useful to you. In fact, if it would, reach out phil at buildyoursalon.com. I would love to hear from you. And if you've got ideas for topics that you would like me to cover in a future episode of the Build Your Salon podcast, then of course, I would much rather be ticking things off your list rather than just talking in the dark and guessing what kind of thing you might be interested in. So systemising could be a whole new episode, but we'll talk about it as well. We're talking about automation because automation is a magnificent tool for reducing workload. So we're leveraging software and we're leveraging technology. So we're in delegation. We're leveraging other people's time. This time we're going to leverage software and tech. And of course, the wonderful thing with software and tech is that it doesn't get tired and it doesn't ever clock off. You know, your reception system, your salon reception system. And please tell me you've got a salon reception system. Please don't tell me you're working on paper and pen. But your salon reception system, it could be working for you 24-7. Certainly switch on online bookings. And I know people have lots of fear about that.

But those mundane, repetitive tasks can be just automated. They can be thrown into a bit of software and it frees up your time for much more important tasks. And I know the tech can be scary for some. And I know that it can feel like you're slowing down while you're learning the tech and learning to automate your tasks in this kind of way. I promise in the longer term, it is going to be much, much more efficient for you. The one thing I would say around technology is we do need a small mindset shift. Technology will always let you down at some stage. OK, it's going to happen. And we need to be OK with that right at the very start when we start embracing technology in our businesses. Because the alternative is that another business comes along that has embraced technology and they can do things more efficiently and probably more cheaply and certainly much more quickly. And then we end up losing out. So we've got to embrace technology in our business. But you've got to embrace the fact that sometimes it's going to let you down. Even the very biggest software and technology companies get caught out every now and again. There's been huge examples of software failure. For example, British Airways last year, I think it was, had a massive outage of their software. Facebook occasionally goes down completely and they're not able to. Can you imagine a business the size of Facebook? Huge chunks of their servers going down at one time or another. All software companies struggle with this to some extent. Of course, the bigger the company, the more protocols they have in place, the more backup systems they have in place. But it's going to happen from time to time. You might well put together a beautiful sequence of emails inside your email automation and then wake up the next day and nothing happened. In fact, I had it this very morning. So I set up a bit of automation that took the email addresses from my Facebook ads and it was supposed to drop those email addresses into my email sending service. I woke up this morning, I'd switched on the ad yesterday, gone to bed, woke up this morning and people have been submitting their email address and not receiving anything because that bit of automation hadn't worked. And we can touch and roll our eyes and realize how flipping awkward it is and what a wasted opportunity, blah, blah, blah. Or we can just see it as part of the learning process. And so I'd had to jump in, figure out what had gone wrong and try and make sure it doesn't happen next time. So we've got to be continually optimizing our processes and that software and technology is a huge part of it. It allows us to become much more efficient, allows us to reduce costs.

So what kinds of things could we be automating in our salon businesses? Well, the first thing I'm going to talk about or have already mentioned, in fact, is online bookings. And if you don't have online bookings, you're missing out on a massive opportunity. And lots of salon owners will say, well, actually, I don't think I am because my customers won't really use it. Well, the problem is you're making a lot of assumptions because over Covid, what happened was an acceleration in the adopting of technology. So even my mother now, bless her heart, in her 80s, is perfectly able to join a Zoom video call. That would have been unheard of for her five years ago. It just wouldn't have been on her radar. She probably knew that that technology existed and she'd seen it being used, but it wasn't something she was going to embrace at all. But now she will make Zoom calls. She will have FaceTime calls. And these bits of technology are being adopted by a much older generation than perhaps they would have done pre-Covid. The other thing that's happening, of course, is that those customers are eventually going to be replaced. So it might be that your existing customers aren't that interested in online bookings, but your new customers might well be. And to be honest with you, what's the harm? If your customers aren't that bothered, you're only going to get one or two bookings. We'll switch it on anyway. It's only going to tick away in the background for you. Of course, things that we can adapt and add on to that automated process. So a lot of salon software systems now will trigger the sending of a consultation form, particularly on the beauty side. It's very important that we have these consultation forms filled out. And that automated process can save you a lot of time on the day. So rather than people coming in and getting a clipboard and you typing all those figures into the computer or them being given an iPad and wasting the first 10 minutes of that appointment time, we can automate the sending of an online consultation form that can be much, much more efficient as part of that visit. At the other end of the visit, we used to automate the sending of aftercare for certain services. So, for example, in my salon, we did hair extensions. And yes, we always used to give people the little aftercare leaflet as part of their visit. And we used to talk through the aftercare and they never read the leaflet. And they were too busy playing with their new hair to listen to the aftercare tips. So we used to automate it. It was an automated email which went out the day after their appointment just to remind them how they should be brushing and washing and what products they should be using and so on. We could be sending a sequence of emails for new clients to start managing their expectations around how they're going to hear from you, what they can expect on their first visit. Perhaps we could send them a little email just saying the best places to park near the salon. We could be automating some of our marketing. So I know lots of salon software systems now will record somebody's date of birth so that we can send them automatic marketing around their birthday.

So perhaps they get an SMS or an email. Perhaps we could do that on the anniversary of them being a customer and so on. So these automated marketing campaigns can be just set up once, press send and off it goes in the background. We do this a lot for lost client marketing, too. So after people have been missing from our appointment books, how dare they? How dare they think about going somewhere else? But after they've been missing in action for a little while, we automate a sequence which kicks in an email sequence to try and bring them back into the fold again. We could be selling our vouchers through automation. This is something that I love to geek out on. So we use a bit of software called ManyChat and we set up these sequences for our customers. So essentially what ManyChat does is it automates conversations inside platforms like Facebook Messenger. So instead of somebody having to create a web page for a new marketing campaign so that they can sell vouchers for Valentine's Day, for example, what we do is set up an automation inside ManyChat and then the customer is sent to Facebook Messenger. They have an automated conversation by a voucher still inside Facebook Messenger because there's a checkout that we can build in as well. And then automatically send out an email voucher for Valentine's Day. So it keeps the cost down. We're not paying web developers every time we want to do a short term promotion. So we're embracing technology to automate that process. What about your stock ordering? Some salon systems now, I have to say, stock ordering is an area that you all need to look at, guys. If you're a salon software system, you've really got to get to grips with this because it's unnecessarily tricky. And lots of people still using paper and a clipboard and a pen for their stock takes because you're not getting it right. OK, rant over. But assuming you can put your stock levels into your computer, lots of those software systems will have the facility built in where your order can be sent straight to your supplier. So every month it can check your stock levels and automate an email off to your sales rep, for example. And I said at the top of this section that the sister of automation is systemization. So basically what we're looking for through this automating and systemizing process is any task you're doing in the same way more than once and might expect to do again. That's essentially what we're looking for here. So we can start to get a little bit clever. For example, it doesn't have to be necessarily a bit of technology that you're looking at. It could just be changing the way that something's done. And I noticed that as we've moved into online banking, I don't look at paper bank statements anymore.

I just don't. And the bank still insists on sending them. They weren't for my personal account anymore. But for my business account, we still get paper statements. And essentially what happened was the statement would get sent to the salon. I wouldn't look at it because I've already been looking at the online banking and goes into an envelope and goes off to the bookkeeper. Well, what a waste of time to be sent to me to be sent to her. So instead, what we did was just change the address that the bank statement gets sent to. So it goes straight to the bookkeeper. So that automatically happens in the background now. But also look at things. We can be a bit more cerebral about this. And some of these things can take some time to get in place. But what about when you take a new team member on? Have a look at that entire process. Because we used to book out. Or rather, I used to book out. Because this was something that I insisted on doing personally. I would have an entire day with a new team member. And that would be my way of showing them around the salon. Helping them start to learn a little bit about the way that we do business. The ethos. Our branding. But also it was some basic stuff. Like showing them where the washroom and facilities were. And there's an entire section of that induction. Which is around health and safety. And we have to do that by law if we're employing people here in the UK. They have to have a health and safety induction. So after doing this manually for a number of years. I realised that I was giving the same information in the same way more than once. That's a trigger. That's the sign that we're looking for as far as systemisation is concerned. So I recorded a lot of that information. And then that health and safety show round. For example which fire extinguishers to use. And the location of the fire exits. That could all be put into video form. And then the team member just signed a piece of paper. As part of their induction to say that they'd received the videos. Watched them. Understood them. Didn't have any questions. And that reduced our induction process by about an hour. And if you can start looking for those opportunities just to chip away. Now an hour might not sound like an awful lot. But actually it is quite a big chunk of my time. And bear in mind that we're not just recruiting one person. It might be that I was recruiting five or six people each year. So that's six hours. Suddenly we're nearly on a working day a year. Saved by creating that video once. So have a look for those opportunities. Anything you're doing in the same way more than once. And might do again. Let's look at automating or systemising it. What would getting paid properly mean to you? A better lifestyle? Less financial worry? Being able to be present and improve your relationships with your loved ones?

Maybe even a better night's sleep? I know these are scary times. But if you're continually living paycheck to paycheck. If you can't seem to get ahead financially. I feel your frustration. I have seen your pain. It's time to stop winging it. You know your salon business could be doing more. It's time to finally fix your fear of the figures. Take control and charge what you're worth. To step into the shoes of the well paid professional salonpreneur you were always meant to be. And that's what my Get Paid Properly program is all about. I'll help you improve your relationship with money. Understand the finances in your business. And I'll show you what you should be charging to the penny. All of that without overwhelm and without guesswork. For all of the details of Get Paid Properly and to sign up now. Head to getpaidproperly.com And with the exclusive discount code PODCAST. You can get an enormous £200 off your investment in the program as well. Let's work together to make this the year you finally take control of the money in your salon business. So finally once we've delegated as much as we can. Automated as much as we can. We need to take a good hard look at the tasks that are left in our inbox. The things that are still overwhelming us. And we need to see what we can delete. We need to see how we can streamline the work that we're doing. Allowing us to become much more productive and much more efficient. So we've automated certain tasks to free up our time. We've delegated and pushed things. So that we're not only progressing the careers of other people. But also reducing the amount of work that we have to do. Now we need to look at what's left. And figure out whether actually it needs to be done at all. In fact we could even do this first. Before we start delegating and automating. We could figure out whether there are tasks that we can just delete. Or at least reduce. And I talk about reduction of time. Because there's a little law which I'm sure you've heard of by now. If you've got anything to do with reading or listening to self-development. Parkinson's law. So Parkinson's law states that basically a task or a project will expand to fill the time that you've given it. And sometimes a little bit more let's face it. So if you decide for example that a team meeting is an important feature.

Of how you keep your team up to date with what's going on in the business. And you motivate them. And you have that exchange of ideas. Which I fully encourage of course. Let's say that you book out a team meeting once a week for an hour. That meeting will probably take an hour. Now miraculously. If you decide that you're going to reduce the number of team meetings and their length. So the duration of each meeting. So you're going to meet your team once a fortnight for 45 minutes. Very strangely. Weirdly. After a certain amount of time. It might take a little while to adjust. But strangely the team meeting will take 45 minutes. And you'll cover pretty much the same amount of work. Because Parkinson's law says the more time you give to those meetings. The more time they're going to take up. So have a look at reducing. And at the end of the day. With an awful lot of tasks. In fact with an awful lot of our business. Let's face it. There are very few things darlings. That we are chiseling in stone. There are very few contracts written in blood. In business. So if you decide you're going to reduce the number of team meetings. And reduce their duration. Try it for three months. If it doesn't work. If people are saying oh we're not covering as much. Or you've noticed there's a slip in communication. Or you've noticed there's a dip in the motivation of your team. You can always change things back darling. It doesn't have to stay that way forever. No one's saying you have to do this slavishly. It's okay to change and pivot and adapt. And my goodness. In this day and age. We absolutely ought to be pivoting and adapting much more quickly. So we could be reducing stuff. Or does it need to be done at all? Have a look at social media. Now I think there's a whole episode there if you want it darlings. On social media. It used to be that we kind of had to be everywhere. And to a small extent I think that's still true. In the same way as it would be a bit strange to not feel the need to have a website for your business at the moment darling. I think you do need a Facebook account. And you do need an Instagram account for example. But I don't think you need to be there all the time. So have a look at your social media. In fact look at all of your marketing. Because if we follow another principle called the Pareto principle. And the Pareto principle you might have heard of as the 80-20 rule. And basically that says that 20% of your efforts are yielding 80% of your results. Well take that to social media. Where is the 20% in social media? Where can we stop wasting time? Stop wasting money. Stop wasting energy. What platforms can we really cut back on? Because I'm saying that yes you need a Facebook account. And it needs to show that it's at least alive. But you don't need to be posting five times a day if all of your results are coming from Instagram. We could just be doing two or three posts in a week on Facebook. Showing that the account is still live. But then focusing the rest of our efforts on our Instagram account. So have a look at your social media.

What's working for you? What isn't? And then use the deleting part of the dad process in order to save some time. So stop wasting your time. Stop wasting your money. Stop wasting your energy and your attention. And then bring that to your services. Are there services that are no longer profitable? And it might be that you say well actually all of my services are profitable. Because I've been through your pricing program Phil. And I know that we're charging at least what we need to per minute for all of our services. Ah but really is that profitable? If you've got to keep a certain amount of stock. If you're keeping a certain range of products in just for one or two clients to have those services. Does it really really add an awful lot to your bottom line? Or perhaps if you've got to keep updating training on a certain service. But actually only one or two clients are having it. Is that still good use of your time? Is that still profitable? Could we be using that time, that effort, that money, that energy in a more efficient way inside the business? Are there certain clients that we need to apply the Pareto principle to? If 20% of your efforts are yielding to 80% of your results. 20% of your clients are generating 80% of your profit. So are there some of that 80% of clients who are not generating all that profit that we need to just let go? Are there certain clients that are holding the business back? And yes I know it sounds awful to think about sacking clients. But I've had to do it in my business and I promise you for a little bit of pain there's an awful lot of gain. We had one client, and I'm sure you must have encountered this at some stage in your business too, who was never happy. Every time she came into the salon for a service I could almost, I might as well just book a second appointment for her a week later. Because I knew she would be coming back for a redo. She'd be coming back to have something tweaked, something changed, something she wasn't happy with. And this went on for years, my darlings. Years. And in the end I just kind of looked at the calculations and went, Yes, we're charging what we need to per service. But not that client. She's an unprofitable client. Even though she's paying the same as everybody else, she's taking twice the amount of effort. Twice the amount of energy. Actually more than twice the energy. Because it pissed me off every single time she did it. Is it really worth it for that kind of... Oh gosh, I'm ranting. Can you hear that darlings? I'm ranting at you. I'm sorry. But is it really worth keeping those kind of clients on your books? So just a very honest conversation with her. Where I said, look, it seems that we're not able to satisfy your needs reliably. It seems that we're not the salon for you. And I need to cut you loose so that you can find somewhere that's going to get it right for you first time, every time.

And I'm really sorry, but it doesn't sound like we're going to be able to do that for you. Maybe there are team members that we need to apply that principle to. Maybe there are team members that, yes, they're generating the profits, ticking the boxes, earning the commissions. But my God, how much energy is it taking from you? Gosh, that could be a whole episode on its own, couldn't it, Popit? How much energy are they taking? How much of an energy drain are they on you and your time? So look at the things that you're doing as a matter of course. Look at the things that we're doing week in, week out. Perhaps take a little leaf out of my book. And I follow one of my mentors over the years. There's been a chap called Craig Ballantyne, who's very much into productivity and efficiency. And he encourages you, if nothing else. I mean, it's a good book. I mean, he's got three books, actually. But Perfect Day Formula is a very good book. But he encourages you to do a little audit of how you're spending your time. And essentially what you do every 20 minutes for three days. And one of those days, he says, make a weekend day. But just notice what you're doing. And then go back and have a look and figure out whether those things need doing. And do they need doing in that way? So look at those things that you're doing as a matter of course and ask yourself why. And we've had instances in my salon where, gosh, there was one report when we used to cash up at the end of the day. So reconcile the till. And then we would print out a report at the end of each day. And then staple all of the credit card receipts for the day to that report. And then it would get put in an envelope and sent off to the bookkeeper at the end of the week. And it was only years and years this went on. And it was only after a long, long time that I realised that all of those receipts, actually, we didn't need to produce at all. We didn't need a merchant copy of every transaction because that was available on the card processing software. So they had a copy of everything on the software. We didn't need a paper printout. So that was the first bit that we did away with. And it saved us a fortune on till rolls apart from anything else. And then I started to question, actually, do we need the daily reports? I didn't use the daily report as the salon manager. I used to use the monthly report. Then I spoke to the bookkeeper and she didn't use the bloody daily report either. She was using the monthly report for all of her stuff. So all of a sudden, it wasn't just we're saving on till rolls. We were saving huge reams of A4 because we weren't producing this pointless report that nobody was looking at. All of the information was there. If we needed to delve into what had gone on on a certain day, we could jump into our beloved salon software system. It would have all of the information in there for us. And was this available somewhere? We didn't need to produce that pointless, pointless report.

So there we have it. My three step process to increasing productivity while also reducing overwhelm. I hope it has served you well. If it has, if you've taken on any of the ideas at all, or perhaps even if you disagree and want to have a go at me, go on, let's have a row. Let's have an argument about something. Then feel free to email me, phil at buildyoursalon.com. Just seven short days until I'm coming in your ears with a brand new topic. Until we speak again, my darlings, 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.