How to Take Ownership of Your Salon Year (Without the Blame)

If everything that went wrong this year was someone else's fault, that means fixing it is someone else's job too. It's a handy little excuse, isn't it? But not terribly empowering, and I think that's a trap. 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. I've just noticed that today's release is Friday the 13th, but I'm not recording it on Friday the 13th, so it's all going to be fine. It's all going to go swimmingly because I've put the stuff in place, you see. I've done the homework, I've done the scripting, I've made sure all of the technology is working beautifully and tested everything twice. Why am I bragging about that? Why is your uncle Phil crowing about how organized he is with the podcast? Well, because today we're talking all about ownership, and I want to be clear from the start. This is not blame. Ownership does not equal blame, but it is what gives you something to work with. And in fact, I've been doing a whole load of training in counseling, counseling and therapy just recently. And ownership is a huge part of the counseling process because until someone starts to own their process, very, very difficult to get change and certainly almost impossible to get change to stick. Let me describe a bad day for you. Let's imagine that you've overslept and your alarm didn't go off or you didn't hear it or you put it on snooze and went back to sleep. And that meant that you were running a little bit late and you've also managed to miss the bus. And when you did get a bus, there was a nice wobbly old lady in front of you who wanted a big long chat with the driver rather than letting him get on with his work and get on with the route. And that meant that you were even later by the time you'd got into town and you were hungry, but didn't have time for any breakfast. Then you got into the salon and lo and behold, sat on reception is a little envelope with somebody's resignation in there. And all right, it might be the right person who's leaving, might be the person that you were kind of secretly hoping would manage themselves out of the business. But it still hits like a bit of a brick wall. And, you know, you've got lots and lots of stuff to do today. And then you look in your column and there's a couple of those people in there. Now, I know we all love our clients because they spend time and money with us. But occasionally there's people in your column that just make you sort of roll your eyes a little bit. And you'd much rather spend your time with anybody else on Earth sometimes than those one or two clients. You kind of ran behind all morning and your first client was sort of tutting because she was already waiting in reception when you got to work. One of those days. And then by the time you'd got home, you were ready for a row with your boyfriend. So you had your little argument. And then rather than sticking to your slimming world plan, you decided you were going to eat your way through a giant bar of galaxy. One of those days. So nothing terrible. The world's not spun out of orbit. Nobody's dropped down dead, but it's been one of those annoying, gnarky kind of days. It just puts you in a tetchy, tetchy mood. And it's really easy in those kinds of days to start apportioning blame to everybody else. Maybe it was Apple's fault for not making an alarm that you couldn't snooze. They do. Or perhaps it was Apple's fault for not making the alarm loud enough that you actually got up. Perhaps it was your boyfriend's fault because he knows damn well that you need to get that early bus. Perhaps it was the wobbly old lady's fault. Maybe it was the bus driver for not cutting her short. Maybe it was the team member who ruined your day by putting their notice in. Perhaps it was those pesky clients who booked themselves in on a Friday when they know damn well that Friday should be your favorite day of the week. Or perhaps it was the boyfriend's fault when you got home as well. He picked around with you and he knew that you probably had a rotten day because you were running late all day. Maybe it was Slimming World's fault for not coming up with a plan which allows you to eat a giant bar of Galaxy every Friday and still lose weight. But let's talk about who's driving. What are your decisions that actually meant that you were in control of that day? Now, I'm not suggesting that all of those things were your fault, but there is usually a list of suspects when we start looking at why we're having a bad day. Is it the economy's fault? Is it the high street? Is it staff? Is it clients? Is it boyfriends? Girlfriends? Is it the traffic? Is it the council? Is it the government? All of these things, the salon down the road, even the weather, gets the blame. But you decided what time you were going to set the alarm. You decided you were going to stay awake watching a box set the night before rather than getting to bed on time. You decided which bus you were going to take and the fact that you were actually not going to take your bike to work today because you were a bit worried about the weather. You decided how to market your salon and attract a certain type of clientele. Well, you decided how to market your salon and attract a certain type of stylist or therapist. You decided not to take performance management into your own hands and manage that team member out of the business. And you were the one who stopped at the co-op and bought the bloody Galaxy on the way home rather than a nice, healthy salad. All of these things played into your day, but it's so easy to portion that blame out. And some of those things are other people's fault. Sometimes life happens. Shit happens. It's Friday the 13th. Anything could happen. And I'm not saying those things don't matter, but they're not the whole explanation, because if you allow it to be the whole explanation, you've got nothing left to do yourself. You've got no control left and you've cast yourself in the role of victim and victim mentality means that someone else is steering and who on earth wants someone else steering their business? Who on earth wants someone else steering that life? So ownership isn't by saying everything's my fault. It's about trying to figure out what your part in that negative was and ultimately the most exciting bit what you can do about it. And here's something that I've come to believe. Blame only hurts because we attach meaning to it. Sometimes we take a set of facts, a set of circumstances, and start blaming ourselves because of the meaning we put onto them, and it really hurts. So a client decides not to come back in or a review stings or someone on the team hands in their notice. These things happen and then we start building a story around it. The client left because we're terrible at our job. The review stung because we let them down. And honestly, why are we even charging what we do? Someone on the team leaves because we're running a terrible business. And why would anyone want to work for us? We're a terrible business owner, a terrible manager. Can't manage team members, can't do marketing, can't do this, can't do that. Ultimately, chipping away at your value. And if you don't value yourself, how can you expect anybody else to? But it's not the facts that hurt. It's the story around the facts. And it's the story around the facts that also stops you taking action. Let me give you a simple example. You decide you're going to do email marketing because email marketing is the best thing since sliced bread. You put an offer together. You work hard building the ultimate bundle, which your customer is going to want in November. You put it out there and you sell zero. The fact is nothing sold. It doesn't mean you're a failure. It doesn't mean email marketing doesn't work. It doesn't mean nobody values you. It doesn't mean you're a terrible marketer, a terrible manager. Just means zero sales. It's information. It tells you something about the offer. Perhaps the price wasn't right. The timing wasn't right. It was going out to the wrong audience. Maybe email marketing wasn't the best way. Perhaps that message wasn't landing. And you can tweak and change every single one of those. But only if you take ownership. Only if you take responsibility. Change one or two things. Get one or two percent of people. Let's say you send it out to 400 clients. Get two percent of people. That's eight bookings. And suddenly treating that zero as data is what gets you to the eight bookings. So try and separate the facts of the day from the story, from the meaning you're giving it. Write down what happened as if a camera had recorded it without judgment, without the dramatic music in the background, and then start to identify the meaning you give to those facts. That's how we take control. That's how we start steering again. You can't plan next year properly unless you've owned your part in this one. That means reflecting. It means owning your year. It's not a punishment. It's not a way for me to beat you up. But it's how you get back in control and get back behind the steering wheel. If any of that has landed with you, two things I want you to do. First, I want you to head over to the yearsorted.com and download Last Year Honestly. It's my free download. A couple of pages that walk you back through the year covering what worked, what we dropped the ball on, and what you kept doing that you probably shouldn't have done. Then I want you to put next Wednesday, the 18th of November in your diary. That's when the year sorted the program opens. It's a recorded course. You don't have to do it on the 18th. It's about five hours of your time and you work at your own pace. By the end of it, you're going to have next year planned on a single piece of paper. Three things you're actually going to change. The things you've decided you're not doing and the hours you genuinely got to do it. Everything's over at the yearsorted.com. That link also in the show notes. What do you think? What have I missed? Where are you struggling to take responsibility in your business? If you've got a story you would like to share with my audience, why not reach out and let me know. My email address scrolling at the bottom of the screen right now, phil at buildyoursalon.com. You know I love hearing from my salon owner friends anyway. So reach out and just have a little chat if you want. Why not? We're all in this together. Just a few short days until I'm coming all over the internet again with another dose of my Wise Owl wisdom. Until then, take care. We'll see you next time. We'll see you next time. We'll see you next time. We'll see you next time. We'll see you next time.