Stop Moaning, Start Earning: A Salon Owner’s Reality Check

You may not feel there was any good news in the budget last week from our beloved Chancellor, but my goodness, I don't think there was that much bad news in there either. Maybe it's time that we can start moving forward. Maybe it's time for us to stop moaning on social media and actually get on with the business of making some money. Hello, hello, hello, my salon friends. Phil Jackson here, your queen of salons, coming all over the airwaves with another dose of Wise Owl Wisdom. How on earth are you? Monday, 1st of December. I love it when a Monday falls on the 1st of the month. Everything feels aligned to me. And I wanted to jump on, first of all, to talk about a few changes in the Build Your Salon podcast. Basically, December is a really good time for me to rest and regroup. Not many people are signing up for new coaching programs. And it's a good time for me to just have a look at my business, figure out what's working and what isn't. A couple of things have happened which have pushed me into looking at my business as well. God bless HMRC. And I want to basically make sure that everything's aligned with my vision, my goals. And as you know, I am the lifestyle first coach. So I want to make sure that my business is serving me in the way that brings me the most joy possible, while also furnishing me with the lifestyle that I want to. And one of the things that has been just niggling me a little bit, just pushing me around and beating me up slightly on my to-do list, is the podcast. And it's because I feel that I end up batching my work quite a long time ahead, which means that my stuff isn't particularly timely. And part of that is because I think the episodes are taking me a long time to research and script. And I just want something that feels a little bit more spontaneous and a bit less contrived and a bit more, not necessarily off the cuff. I still want to put the research in, but I don't want to feel that I have to spend an entire day filming on recording. So a few things are going to happen. First is we're going to have more episodes per week and they will land when they're ready, to be honest with you, rather than slavishly putting one episode out every single Tuesday. And secondly, the episodes are going to be a lot shorter because the feedback that I get is most of you are listening to the podcast

while you're walking the dog or going for a quick run or scooting around the house doing other bits and pieces, rather than taking a big chunk of time on a huge commute to work to listen to your Uncle Phil. So to fit in with that, I think shorter episodes are going to be better. And I want to start today with also apologising to our YouTube listeners because, well, basically, it's not going to happen anymore. They're not going to be video episodes. Part of the reason that it takes me so long to get an episode together is because they're video. So we're still going to be doing video for our interview episodes. And if you'd like to be a guest on a future episode of the Build Your Salon podcast, please reach out and let me know. But otherwise, they're going to be audio only going forward, which makes it a much easier process for me, which means I can do more of the work that I want to, which is speaking to you guys rather than editing and copying and pasting and sweating. So here we are. Anyway, I'm going to jump into the first one. And we're going to make this a bit of a money Monday, not a moany Monday, I hope. There might be a bit of a telling off in there, too. I want to reflect on the last week. And money has been in front of mind for lots of people here in the UK for a number of reasons. Firstly, November seems to have been a bit of a tough one for lots of you out there. My group coaching programme, they seem to have had some good results. Some have struggled, though, to be honest. And also last week we had the budget and this is not a political show, though I'm not afraid of sharing my political views. And frankly, if you're going to vote for Nigel Farage in the next election, please feel free to unsubscribe straight away. Poisonous little turd that he is. But that being said, this isn't about... I've never felt it's my job to change the game, which is why I don't talk about politics very much. It's my job to make sure that you're winning with the cards that you've been dealt. So we look at what the world is throwing at you and we make sure that you can turn that into a winning hand. And that's what I'm all about. So we had the budget last week and you may have your own feelings around the budget. It was not one that had any particularly good news in there for, well, basically anybody. But also there wasn't a huge amount of bad news. And I think there have been a lot of people that were kind of waiting with bated breath to see what the Chancellor was going to announce.

And actually, as far as we're concerned, as business people, as employers, at least in the short term, there wasn't very much at all in either direction. There wasn't any of the good news that I wanted around dropping the VAT threshold. But equally, there was no awful news. There was no huge burden on business like we had with the national insurance changes that happened earlier in the year. So I think we can kind of breathe a little bit and perhaps get back to business and get back to running our businesses with a little bit more certainty, at least for the next few months. But here comes the bit of bad news as far as your Uncle Phil's concerned. My goodness, haven't I seen some negativity on social media? The biggest problem that we've got at the moment is uncertainty. People are feeling a bit wobbly. And there's lots of our customers who are feeling that things are just a little bit shit, to be honest. And do you know what's not going to help? What's not going to help is seeing salon owners jumping online, jumping onto social media, venting, raging, telling everyone what an awful time they're having, how much they're struggling at the moment, how awful business is, how uncertain the economy is, how our chancellor is not serving small businesses. If you've built your social media following to appeal to customers, guess what they want to hear? They want to hear some good news. They want to hear that it's OK to start spending if you want them to start spending with you. So making lots of noise about how uncertain you feel, how much stress you're under financially is not going to be filling our customers with confidence. So don't be surprised then if they turn around and say, actually, no, I'm not going to come and see you in December. I will put off that appointment until January or February. Don't be surprised if they're not taking the upsells, if they're not responding to your marketing, if your message all month has been, my gosh, don't spend any money. Everything's awful right now. So think about what you built your social media following for. Now, by all means, if your social media following is purely family and friends and you've built it in a social way, then you say what you want. But if you've built it to appeal to customers, it is a marketing channel. And I don't think you're doing anyone any favours by pretending to be authentic when actually all you're doing is moaning. That's not inspiring people to spend money. That's not making people feel good. And my God, as an industry, is that not what we're here for? And I'm not saying you need to be inauthentic. I'm not saying you should be telling lies or basically hiding huge chunks of your personality from people. But my goodness, it is our jobs to make sure that people feel comfortable to spend money with our businesses. So be really careful about the political messages that you're putting out there.

That said, I think now that we have a little bit more certainty in the economy, you can go ahead and start thinking about your price reviews. We've done plenty of podcast episodes on price reviews, and I'm sure it's a topic that we're going to come back to again and again and again. But I think you can go ahead now. We know what's going to happen with the minimum wage. We know what's going to happen as far as national insurance is concerned. We know what's going to happen as far as VAT is concerned for the next 12 months. I think you can go ahead now and press go on your pricing review. Do I think you should be increasing your prices in December? Not really, unless it's absolutely urgent. Don't start losing money by putting a price review off. If you can, though, don't do it as soon as you get back in January. Let people get over their hangovers before they start digesting more bad news in terms of price increases. What have I missed? Reach out and let me know. I do want this to be a much more interactive show. That means you need to step up. Send me an email. Let me know what's going on in your business so that I can make these episodes much more relevant to you. Also reach out if you'd like to be a guest. I would love to be interviewing you about your journey on the Build Your Salon podcast. Also reach out if there are topics that you want me to cover in a future episode. And do your Uncle Phil a favour, would you? Give me a Christmas present. And I don't want you to spend any money. What I would love, though, is if you could, on your chosen platform, please give this podcast a five-star review. It takes almost no time at all on your side, but it makes a massive difference to the listener figures and the people that get to hear about our little show in the future. So please reach out with topic ideas. But in the meantime, give your Uncle Phil a little gift of a five-star review. Just, well, I was going to say just seven short days until I'm coming all over the airwaves again. But it might be even sooner than that. I might get another episode out later in the week. Who knows where we're going to go? I hope you're enjoying this new shorter format. And until we speak again, please take care.