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That two week holiday your top team member just booked. Oh my god, there's a big black hole in your cash flow. Well, here's the thing, the holiday isn't really the problem. The way your salon makes money is the problem. Let's fix that. Shall we Build your salon? Hello, hello, hello. My salon friends, Phil Jackson here, your Queen of salons coming all over the internet again with another dose of my wise owl wisdom. Let's be honest about that feeling. When your busy team member puts that holiday request in, it's not that you're going to meet that with happiness, is it? Immediately you are starting to do the mental maths. You are looking at the lost revenue, the scramble to cover their clients, the fear that that one person's fortnight in the sun can sink your whole month while they're in their Speedos drinking cocktails. You are sweating and losing sleep and you stare at that column wondering how on earth you're going to magic up the turnover. And I get it. It feels personal, it feels stressful, but it is also completely unavoidable. What if the problem isn't the holiday rota at all? What if it's the way your business generates income? Well, today I'm going to give you some sensible holiday management stuff first and then we'll talk about the bigger fix, which is how to get paid even when your team is lying on a beach in the sun. So firstly, the standard advice, you've heard it, you've probably tried it and it's all worth doing. Firstly, you want any annual leave booked well in advance so you can see the iceberg before the Titanic hits it. You can cap how many people can be off at once? So what we had was people put into buckets, into teams if you like. We had a senior team, we had a stylist team and we had a support team, which was apprentices and receptionists. We wouldn't have more than one person from each bucket off at the same time. So we'd have a stylist and a receptionist off at the same time, but we couldn't have two managers off at the same time. So we brought those things in and there's some brilliant software out there to help you sort that kind of thing out. And I really like using software for this because then when they put the request in, if they're trying to book the same dates as somebody else, it's not you as the manager saying, no, you can't have that anymore. The app just says, I'm sorry, we can't accept that request. So I really do think that we need to start guarding who could be off at the same time. Also guard those times of the year that you know are your money-making times. Now, traditionally for us, it was always the bit before summer holidays, the first couple of weeks in September and Christmas and people weren't allowed to leave in those times. These days have a look at your own business. You can't make those general assumptions about businesses anymore. There are lots of salons out there encouraging their team to take leave over Christmas because it's just not the month that it used to be. In fact, they're a lot busier in November and a lot busier in January. So you know the rhythm, you know, and we've talked about seasons in people's businesses on the Build Your Salon Podcast before. Surely we'll get to grips with that by now. And we need to get clever with clients. Cross-introduce them to other team members so that what we're trying to build is loyalty to the salon, not just to one beauty therapist or stylist or esthetician, but let your clients know early when their regular's going to be away. This is all good. This is the sign of a well-run salon and it takes the edge off a little bit, but be honest, it doesn't fix the actual problem, does it? It's like a really good sticky plaster over a gaping great wound. If you've done all this and you're still dreading signing off a two week holiday, it's because you know that's not really touching the real issue. The real issue is that we are relying on bums on seats income. So your salon only makes money when a client's in the chair or a client's in the beauty room and someone is carrying out service on them. As soon as that chair's empty, the income for that slot for that day, for that column is zero. So the holiday is not just leaving white space in the diary, it's income disappearing, which you can't call back. A training day costs you and a sick day costs you and a fortnight off costs you what feels like a small fortune because your cash flow is tied directly to the physical presence of your people. And I think that's what really needs fixing. The real issue isn't that people need a break, it is because the business depends financially on nobody ever stepping away. And so many people are pricing their services assuming that nobody steps away either. I see so many price cards where they say, yes, of course these services are profitable. Here they are. If everyone's fully booked all day every day and no one takes any time off, and that means pricing into the equation as well. So what's the answer to this? Well, what if your client paid you whether they visited or not? What if you had a baseline of revenue that landed in your account regularly, regardless of who's on holiday or how quiet the diary looks? That's recurring revenue. And in our world, it means one thing. And you know what I'm going to say darlings, we're talking salon memberships. And don't switch off thinking that it's not going to work in your business. Don't switch off thinking it doesn't apply to you. The membership is the single most powerful way to break the link between time and income. Let's say you've got a hundred clients paying 50 quid a month, that's five grand landing on day one of the month before you sold a single service, carried out a single blow dry, sold a single bottle of moisturiser before anyone even walks through the door. And that can be covering your rent, your rates, your software straight away. Then when your top stylist or your top therapist goes on holiday, does that recurring income stop? No, it keeps coming. When you go on holiday as a solo owner, does it stop? No, it keeps coming. This is your shock absorber. The hole in your revenue stops being such a gaping chasm and becomes a bit of a dip, cushioned by the number that was never tied to those appointments in the first place. We're not selling appointments anymore, we're selling an ongoing relationship. Now, I'm not going to turn this into a membership masterclass. We've got plenty of programs out there, but the principles are really simple. Base it on what your clients already do, whether that be regrowth every six months, a monthly facial, their regular gel mani, a maintenance appointment that they're coming for anyway. We're not inventing new habits. We're just building a membership around a habit that already exists. Then we build that into a membership. Price it for profit. A membership that loses you money is worse than none. So we're going to make sure it's profitable. Keep it really simple so that your team can explain it in a sentence or two. This isn't holiday planning or a new way of doing business. It is both. Holiday planning protects your diary. Memberships protect your income. Do the sensible rota stuff, but think about shifting the way that your clients are paying you so that we don't take those huge hits when somebody takes some vacation time, if that's landed. If you actually want to build a membership, that's exactly what my Salon Membership Made Easy program is for. You can head over to queenofmemberships.com. I'm going to put that link in the description below. It walks you through designing a membership that clients love and that's properly profitable. No guesswork, no missing steps. Head over to queenofmemberships.com and I'll put that link in the description. We're going to sort your income model and then the next holiday request, we could actually be kind, glad for them instead. Although I miss, how are you doing this summer? Reach out and let me know: fill@buildyoursalon.com. Scrolling at the bottom of the screen. Also, a request: If you are listening on Apple Podcasts, please leave me a review and you can take this from me. Spotify are beating you. Okay? So if you're an Apple person, you're an Apple lover, you need to step up and start giving me some reviews because the Spotify people are wiping the floor with you. How does that sound? Just a few short days until I'm coming all over the internet again with another dose of my wise owl wisdom. And until then, take care.