The Truth About Salon Profits: 5 Steps to Stop Wasting Money and Start Earning It

By the time we get to November, most salon owners have stopped thinking about money. They think they'll wait until January to start getting to grips with their numbers, but of course by then, you've missed every single opportunity to maximise your year. So before 2025 slips through your fingers, I'm going to give you five financial moves to lock in profits before it's too late. These are the exact moves that separate profitable salons from struggling ones, and I promise there's no manifesting in there. 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. How on earth are you? Achingly well, I hope, as always. As we steam into November, my goodness, the year is nearly up, my dears. How was October for you? Was it a good start to your quarter? I have to say, I've been extremely impressed with my group coaching customers. They've had a really strong October, stronger than I would have anticipated if I'm really honest, but that doesn't mean it's time to take your foot off the gas. Lean in. Let's make hay while the sun shines. All it takes is a bit of extra snow, and we could be really struggling through November and December. So let's make money while it's still available to us. But equally, let's celebrate the win. I hope it was a strong month for you as well. Hopefully you're listening to this episode in early November when it's released, released, which means you are in the perfect position. There's enough time to fix some stuff in your business, but not enough time to faff around. And this episode is all about the money, my dears, real money, real numbers, and none of that fluffy mindset stuff, though. I do appreciate mindset matters, but not today. So unapologetically, this is going to be a money episode. So is the next one. So is the one after that. Then we'll start worrying a little bit about burnout and self-care as we get towards the end of November. But for the next three weeks, we're just going to knuckle down, get some profit through your till. And today I've got five specific moves that are designed to either save you money, make you money, or at least set you up properly for a triumphant beginning to 2026. And money is never a comfortable subject, or at least not for most of us. I don't know. Well, I say most of us.

I don't know. Is it a British thing that we don't like talking about money? Certainly, I had a lot of stories to unpack from my childhood when I started diving into what money meant for me. And that's because money was always rather a vulgar subject, my darlings. It wasn't really something you would discuss politely. It's certainly not something you would discuss with anybody outside the family. So it's no wonder I had a very strange energy, a kind of repugnant, repellent energy to money for an awful lot of years. So a bit of discomfort. Well, yeah, maybe it's inevitable, but I say it's good because comfortable business owners are rarely the ones who have the most profitable businesses. So let's get into it, shall we? I'm also going to tell you a little bit about my Get Paid Properly program, which I think is the perfect foundation for you to be steaming into 2026 with a really good, solid financial background. Anyway, money move number one is to stop looking at the figures that don't mean anything. It's time for you to actually look at your profit assessment, not what you think you made. And most salon owners have actually got no idea if they make any profit week by week, month by month. They know the revenue. Well, I say that some of them know the revenue. And if you do, congratulations. But it actually doesn't mean an awful lot. What we need to know is true profit after all of your costs. And that includes the stuff that you, my darling, are conveniently ignoring. Things like your own salary. Things like those little extra purchases outside your main invoices. Things like that retail stock that's still sitting unused. Or, and I'm pointing my finger firmly at my beauty tribe now. What about that dusty old machine sat there depreciating? You're not counting that, are you? So what I want you to do is book yourself out a couple of hours. Yes, I know it's a little bit dull. But I want you to pull out all your bank statements, your credit card statements, the whole lot. And start itemizing and listing every single expense against the revenue that you generated. Be brutal. Include everything. And let's rip the plaster off, shall we? If the, oh sorry for my American listeners, let's rip off the band-aid, shall we?

And I know this number might hurt a little bit. But we can't fix what you don't measure. So even if the number that you're looking at is terrible, well, at least now that you know. If it's better than expected, brilliant, though still naughty for not knowing. And now we can build on that into 2026. So there's your action item number one is to get to groups with how much profit you're actually making. And now that we know the real number, it's time to stop wasting that money. So money move number two is to review and ruthlessly cut or renegotiate. Because the truth is, profit doesn't generally leak out in great big lumps. It drips away. It oozes away through the stuff that you've stopped noticing. And I'm talking about all those little subscriptions. And I must admit, I don't think suppliers make it very easy when they're putting things on the bank statement that don't match the business name. I think they make it deliberately difficult for you to monitor what you're spending sometimes. And those suppliers that are bleeding you dry a little bit, how many of us just blindly renew our insurance policies? Even at home, actually. I have my home insurance through this week. And the price for my home insurance had gone down. But only by about four pounds. And I was just about to renew and leave it as it was. And then I thought, no, I will take two minutes to shop around. And actually found another supplier who could save me 84 pounds, which is a useful amount of money that I could be spending on strippers and drugs. So the software that you haven't logged into in six months, time to cancel it. Those products that nobody are buying just because you like it. Sorry, my darlings. Time to drop it. Perhaps your suppliers are charging more than your competitors. And I really get very cross when suppliers are charging more than wholesalers. Maybe it's time to renegotiate or switch. So list out all of your recurring payments, all of your direct debits, all of those subscriptions, and ask these questions about each. First, does this directly generate income? Does it generate revenue? Two, would clients notice if I canceled this? And three, am I using this enough to justify the cost? And if the answer is no to two out of those three, then it's time to bin it or to renegotiate.

And lots of suppliers know that December is negotiation time. It's actually a pretty good time to put some pressure on your suppliers ahead of the new year. Also, they've got targets they want to hit in Q4, so they don't particularly want to lose you as a customer. And also, I think a lot of our suppliers do rather rely on us being a bit too busy to take any bold moves in our businesses. So let's be a bit cheeky. The worst they can do is say no. But most suppliers would rather keep you at a lower price than lose you in January. So make those calls now. One of my clients managed to save over £5,000 a year just by switching color suppliers. Not color brands, just who they were buying the color from. And also cancelling three subscriptions. That's profit that you're currently flushing away. Now, here's the wake-up call. If you're looking at a 20% profit margin on your business from money move number one, we should know this now. And 20% is pretty good, actually, in our business, particularly if you've got premises costs. Every pound that you save is actually £5 of service that you don't have to do. So that £4,800 that my customer saved, call it £5,000, if she was on a 20% profit margin, that's £25,000 worth of service that she no longer has to carry out. That's an insane number. So just because we're moving the needle small amounts on some of these costs, don't think it doesn't have a big impact. More on this after this short message. Let me guess. Your appointment book is full, but your bank account isn't. How long are you going to let that go on for? Isn't it time that you got paid properly? My Get Paid Properly program isn't just another course. It's your roadmap to boosting your profits, increasing your takings, finally getting rewarded for the hard work that you do. With nine straightforward modules, my foolproof pricing spreadsheet, and I'm even throwing in a one-to-one coaching call to answer any questions that you have about the training or anything else that's getting in the way of your incredible success. Head to getpaidproperly.com forward slash podcast and you can save £100 on your sign-up and get that bonus coaching call with me. The program is backed by my signature 90-day no-quibble guarantee.

Take the training, take the coaching call, and if you don't feel you know enough to confidently set your prices profitably for the future, I will coach you myself until you do. Head to getpaidproperly.com forward slash podcast, lock in that saving, and finally take strides in the direction of getting rewarded for your hard work. Money move number three for you to jump into this side of Christmas is to start planning your 2026 price increases now, not on December the 28th. If you're not raising prices regularly, you're actually moving backwards because inflation exists whether you acknowledge it or not. And you know this because the price of your groceries is going up every week, the price of your fuel is going up every couple of weeks, your costs are going up, your prices need to keep pace. But most salon owners panic. They plan their price increases right at the very last minute, then they communicate them badly, or they have to wait even longer because they want to give their customers some notice, and then they're losing customers that they could have kept. So I want you to calculate your price increases this month ready for January. As a minimum, you want your prices to be going up by the rate of inflation, and depending on where you are in the world, that's probably around 3% to 5%. Better than that, though, would actually be to start improving that profit margin from money move number one. And then we need to plan your communication. Now, I don't think social media is a great place to announce a price increase. I think social media should be for good news, not bad news. But however you decide to do it, really, I want you to start planning your script. Decide what you're going to say if clients start to push back. Train your team on the main talking points and schedule when your announcements go out. And if I was putting the prices up in January, I would probably start announcing maybe mid-December, early December. I'd give my clients three or four weeks notice. And in my salon, that just meant a small notice on reception saying new prices apply from January the 1st. Be confident. You don't need to apologize. I don't want to hear. Sorry, we've got to put our prices up.

Hope you understand. What I want to hear is our prices will be increasing from January the 1st to reflect the quality of service we provide and our continued investment in training and the very best products. This confidence matters. If you act like you're doing something wrong, clients will think that you are. And money move number four. I want you to do a bit of looking back. And we did lots of this at my retreat in Alicante last month. I want you to analyze what actually worked in 2025. And this is where a lot of people make a lot of extra work for themselves. They remember the things that were exciting, but not necessarily the things that actually made them money or were still. They don't reflect on the things that lost the money. So pull your appointment data. Dive into some of those reports that your salon software loves to generate. And start having a look at what actually made you the most profit. Not revenue, remember, the profit. What marketing actually worked to bring in new clients. Because guess what? In 2026, we can just do more of that. We don't have to keep reinventing the wheel. It's an exhausting way of doing business and very inefficient too. Look at what retail actually sold versus what's gathering dust. And there's a very handy little measure called speed of sale. Let me know if you want me to talk about speed of sale on a future podcast episode. Also, have a look at which team members are the most profitable. It's not about being mean. It's about being smart. Because in 2026, we want to double down on what worked. We want to stop doing what didn't or at least try and fix it. But we need the data because the data will beat your feelings every single time. If you run your business in an emotional way, yes, of course, you can wing it. Maybe for decades, but it's an exhausting way of running your business. Your gut is just not as reliable as your spreadsheet. And it takes away the fear when we're acting from a place of certainty. Money move number five is to set up your financial tracking system for 2026. If you've been winging it financially, this has to end now. You need a system for 2026. It doesn't need to be complicated, but you do need to be consistent. So choose your tracking method. It could be as simple as updating a spreadsheet for your own use. It could be if you're doing your own bookkeeping, making sure you've got time carved out to use

your accounting software properly and get yourself into a routine. But we've got to make sure that it's a system we're actually going to use and stay consistent with. Myself, I have Finance Friday. Every Friday, I have an hour and a half booked out to run the money in my business. Now, mine is not a very complicated business. I am the only person working in my business. So it's relatively straightforward, relatively simple for me. And you're going to have some tracking that you need to do. You're going to start looking at your revenue. You're going to start tracking your expenses, your profit margin, your retention rates, your average bill. Figure out the data that you're actually going to use to build on and start measuring that consistently. A lot of my customers have a money Monday. So every Monday they sit down and go through their finances. But this is a non-negotiable appointment. Take it as seriously as you would a customer appointment. Just because you don't fancy doing it doesn't mean that you would turn a customer away. And it's got to be the same when we get to your money Monday or Finance Friday. I know that being aware of your finances isn't particularly sexy, but it is the difference between running a business and just doing your job. We want a system that's going to help you spot problems straight away in week one, not waiting to find out some horrible news in month six. So there we have it. Five money moves I think you should be making before we get to the end of the year. Notice none of them involves just raising your prices to a luxury level overnight or positive thinking. You don't need luck to win in 2026, but you do need a plan, maybe a spreadsheet. But most of all, the guts to follow through. And I think that's exactly how business should be. Just seven short days until I'm coming all over the airwaves again with another dose of my Wise Owl wisdom. If you would like to feature as a guest on a future episode of the Build Your Salon podcast, it will be in the new year now, but I would love to hear from you. Phil at buildyoursalon.com is my email address. Otherwise, I will speak to you soon. Until then, take care.