Stop Chasing Growth: Maximise Salon Profits

What if I told you that growing your team is the biggest mistake you'll make in 2026? You see the bigger revenue numbers, but you're blind to the fact that you might be working harder for less money in your own pocket. Stop chasing vanity, let's start building actual wealth, shall we? Hello, hello, hello, my salon friends. How on earth are you? Achingly well, I hope. As we storm towards a Christmas break, oh my goodness, who's ready for a bit of time off? I know I am, dear, but my God, I've eaten some mince pies. Fat jabs obviously not kicking in this week. So, also, by the way, how are you liking the new format with the shorter episodes, but a bit more frequently? I'm getting some really good feedback. People are saying lovely things to me. If you'd like to say lovely things, please take two minutes to jump onto your podcast platform of choice, whether that's Apple Podcasts or Spotify or whatever it is that you're listening through. And please think about giving me a five-star review. It makes such a big difference to my day. It makes such a big difference to the reach of the podcast. And it really would make me smile. And who doesn't want to make me smile? I mean, what kind of monster are you, darling? Today's episode is brought to you by our friends at Booko, the intelligent appointment software that transforms empty slots into profitable opportunities. Their smart pricing engine works automatically to fill your schedule and maximise your daily earnings. Head to bookoapp.com to book your free demo. Don't forget to mention your Uncle Phil and give the boys my love. So what are we talking about today? Well, we're talking about a bit of a wake-up call and a little word of caution around chasing vanity metrics and growth for the sake of growth. What do you mean, Uncle Phil? Put some meat on the bones. We haven't got time in a shorter episode for you to dick about and beat about the bush. You're absolutely right. Of course, we haven't. So what am I talking about? Well, I'm talking about numbers that don't make sense. I'm talking about salon owners who are growing their turnover and actually making less money because the reality is, and I've seen this. In fact, I have a very recent example of one of my clients who came to me with a set of stats that actually look very promising. We've got growth in about 18 months of just under a third. So they've gone from 103,000, which is, if you're in the UK, 103,000 is a shitty place to be because it means you're VAT registered but not making enough money to make it worth being VAT registered.

So we knew we had some growth to do, and she managed to grow the turnover to 160K. So we're looking at about 50% growth, which is going some, and she'd gone from one team member to four team members. And on paper, £57,000 growth feels like a really good thing. The problem is, when you looked a little bit closer and started looking at some of the figures that your salon software doesn't give you, and you know I'm not in love with salon software at the moment, actually, she was earning less per hour across the business. Plus, she's now running a team of four instead of a team of one, which means she's more stressed and making less profit. Why this happens is we get this death spiral. It's kind of a capacity into pricing, into confidence death spiral. It creates psychological pressure to keep growing and keep growing and keep growing, because the narrative, the story that we're fed as salon business owners is that we need to take on more team members because that means we're more successful and we're a better business owner. The thing is, we forget that more team members means more drama, more management time, and more mental load for you. Now, I'm not saying it's all bad news, because actually a bigger team also brings a level of stability. The less people you're relying on individually in a business, the less risk we have built in. But the cost of the drama and the cost of the mental load on you, of course, doesn't show up in your profit and loss, but it will absolutely impact your lifestyle. And you know I'm the lifestyle first coach. I want you to enjoy your business. So basically, the cautionary tale is that so many of us are tracking revenue across the entire team. And maybe if you're a slightly better manager, you're also tracking revenue per staff member. But that's actually vanity. What we need to be tracking is the profit per staff member. So, for example, 40k revenue sounds great from a particular team member until you factor in their wages, factor in their commission, factor in the drama, factor in the training time, factor in the sick days. And the real question is how much is actually landing in your account at the end of the month? And where I see people going wrong is they're bringing people into the team,

bringing people on board, training them up to do low-level services. And they're kidding themselves that because they're doing the low-level services, the salon owner is freed up for these more profitable services. Honestly, those low-level services shouldn't be part of your business at all. They should just be eliminated from your price card, freeing up the entire business to carry out high-level services. Because if you haven't got your team members doing high-level, it's going to be really, really hard to turn that team member into someone profitable, to turn them into someone who is a valuable part of your business. So how do we calculate if someone's actually profitable? Well, we actually look at what they're doing, actual hourly rate per team member. Add in all the hassle that they're bringing you. Add in all the paid leave and the sick days that they're doing as well before you run that calculation. It's not about revenue per hour. It's about profit per hour. And the only way to get that up is, firstly, to increase prices, but secondly, to look at what services each team member is carrying out. And that might mean that we need to have a difficult conversation. It might mean that we need to do some strategic downsizing. And I don't want to see you running a smaller business, but equally, I don't want you feeling shame around going backwards, because sometimes small isn't just beautiful, it's actually smarter. That lifestyle business is not a dirty word. It's called having a fucking life, darling. So we need to be really proud of the fact that we're putting our lifestyles first, putting our needs first, and building a business that serves you rather than the other way around. So this week, head into your stats, start looking at the actual profit per team member. I don't want you going in to 2026 without this bit of information. Include everything. Include your management time, plus the mental energy, which is hard to put a value on, and the cost of their mistakes. And be brutally honest about actually who's contributing to your profit, rather than just keeping you busy. And give yourself permission to make some uncomfortable decisions in January. Now, I'm not asking you to do a knee-jerk reaction, where you start cutting team members all over the place. Maybe you want to reach out, maybe you want a conversation with a coach about this, before you do something that you might later regret. But it's not rude to want profit from your business. It's not rude to want better for yourself. You're the business owner. Your business needs to serve you. So what do you think?

How do we feel? Do we feel like small might just be better? And I know that has an impact on the future of our business, because less team members means less training going on in the business, less training going on in our industry overall. Maybe you feel it's a bit of a short-term gain for longer-term pain, or maybe you're okay with putting you and your needs first. Reach out and let me know. I would love to hear from you on this. Phil at buildyoursalon.com is my email address. Also reach out if you'd like me to be interviewing you. Maybe you've got a story about how small is beautiful that you'd like to share with my gorgeous Build Your Salon podcast listeners early in 2026. Just a few short days until I'm coming all over the airwaves again with another dose of wise hour wisdom for you. And until then, take care. All on Build Your Salon.