Time to Step Up: Ambition Isn’t a Dirty Word

If you're in this industry because you're enjoying playing at business, my darling, you are in the wrong place. But if you want to finally start ripping off the bandaid and make some decent money, stick around. Let's see if we can't fix a few things, shall we? Hello, hello, hello, my salon friends. Phil Jackson here, your queen of salons. Coming in your eyes and ears again with another dose of Wise Owl Wisdom. How on earth are you? Achingly well, I hope. As we storm towards the end of March, spring is literally just around the corner, just a few days away now. And everyone's feeling a lot better, I think, now that the days are getting a bit longer, everyone's a bit more social. And there's been some people making some decent money over the last few weeks as well, which is always a pleasure to hear. Today's episode is a bit of an extension of an episode I did a couple of weeks ago. So I am not terribly controversial as a character, my darlings. I'm not somebody who likes to ruffle feathers for the sake of it. I'm no Gordon Ramsay going in and screaming and shouting and telling you how to run your kitchen. I've always tried to have a much more collaborative approach. And I've often felt that actually the best way to do well in business is to enjoy yourself more. The more fun you're having tends to be, the more money you're going to make as well. But that said, I did an episode a couple of weeks ago, which was a little unpopular, my darlings. It was one where I said that I wanted more people to be paying our VAT, our value added tax over here in the UK, so the government could bring more money in overall, but also so that we could perhaps look at a lower rate of VAT across the board. That would level the playing field and take away the artificial suppression of growth, which comes from the VAT threshold. Since then, we've had protests in London from the salon industry, all frankly, wasting their time and barking up the wrong tree entirely, in my opinion. And I thought, you know what? While people are hating on me, fuck it. Let's let them hate a little bit more, shall we? And I'm afraid I'm going to give some of you a bit of a telling off now because I've seen this worrying trend in our industry towards people making less and less money. Everybody's struggling more and more. The general public valuing what we do less and less over time. An erosion of standards, an erosion of the quality of trading. My goodness, we've got some shit to sort, haven't we? We've got some stuff to fix and your Uncle Phil is here for it, my darlings.

But I want to, first of all, have a call to arms that means that we have to get our own house in order. It's fine saying that the government needs to step in with this and regulation needs to step in with that. Also a load of toss, by the way. And that we need to increase standards and registration for hairdressers and all the rest of it. All this absolute nonsense, which isn't going to do a damn thing to improve the industry. But anyway, by the by, we can rage against those things. We can wring our hands. We can complain. We can say that tax rates aren't fair and there's no incentive to be an employer. Blah, blah, blah. But we've got to have our houses in order. And that's not going to work if we're being lazy in our industry. That's not going to work if we haven't got people who are willing to step up, who are trying to be ambitious, who are trying to improve things for the industry as a whole and for themselves in particular, who are trying to get to the next level. And there are too many people playing a small game. Here's what's happened. Here's what should happen in any industry. Let's say you've got an industry where people are well paid and it's highly profitable. What happens over time is that's attractive to more people. Competition increases because if we see a market where there's lots of money to be made, that's enticing for people. People want to come in, retrain in that industry, start carrying out that service themselves in order to make more money. But what happens then? Well, in a free market where there's excellent information, because we've got more people offering those services, the price of those services comes down. People start to compete on price. There's an abundance of supply to a finite level of demand. So the profits and the prices start to tumble a little bit. And that can be an uncomfortable adjustment in any industry. But what happens over time is things start to achieve a kind of balance. Because after the profits tumble, what do you think people do? Well, they go, well, this isn't an attractive market to operate in anymore. I'm going to go and do something else instead. And this happens over generations. It's not something that happens necessarily in a heartbeat. But what's happened in the salon industry is we've got an abundance of supply. We've got too many people supplying services. That's squeezing profits, squeezing prices down. But instead of people leaving the market, instead of people saying, I can't make this work as a business on my own. I'm going to get a job in a salon somewhere else or I'm going to retrain in a different direction. What we've seen instead is people using sub-quality products, using sub-quality training in order to offer a discount level price and make a piss poor living in the meantime.

We've got people avoiding paying taxes so that they can make ends meet so they can take cash under the table in order to remain actually solvent at all in any way, shape or form. And what that's done is artificially cheapened the industry overall. We've got more and more people playing too small a game, not being ambitious, not trying to step up, not charging properly for what they do. And it is killing our industry. Now, part of that is being hidden behind this absolute toss around work-life balance and self-care. And this came to a pinnacle for me. Listen to me, ranting. You've got me all riled up again, darlings, and I shan't stand for it. I'm really not paid enough to have high blood pressure, you know. But this came to a pinnacle for me before Christmas. And I actually mentioned this in a podcast episode just over the new year around the number of people who were basically hating on their clients, saying how unacceptable it was that people were no-showing or cancelling last minute. And how their business was going to be on its knees because people weren't taking their services and their appointments seriously. Well, you've only got yourself to blame for that. If you're charging bargain basement prices, taking cash half the time because you don't want to declare it to His Majesty's Revenue and Customs, not investing in your training, not positioning those appointments as important in your customer's mind, not raising standards, not bringing new stuff in, which is actually going to elevate the customer experience. Looking for 5p to save off a cup of coffee or 10 quid a month to save off your salon software rather than pricing your services properly. Is there any wonder your business ends up on its knees? And this absolute toss around people not willing to put the extra hours in, not willing to do the hard work, and then complaining that they're not profitable, come off it. We've been raging against the young people in our industry saying there's a sense of entitlement which is interfering with work ethos. And yet the owners are just as bad as the people they're employing in 5 out of 10 cases. We want the work-life balance, we want the short hours, we want the profits, and we're not willing to invest the work in the first place. Growth and development is supposed to be uncomfortable. It's taking us out of our comfort zone in order to achieve something greater than ourselves. By definition, it's not supposed to be easy. It's supposed to be hard work. It's supposed to take discipline.

And discipline is what I see missing in nearly every business that's struggling. There's no discipline in terms of keeping to a consistent marketing plan, to keeping to budgets, to keeping money to one side for a rainy day. There's no discipline around the growth that's needed and sowing the seeds in a business in order to reap the benefits later on. The businesses that are struggling are not there by accident. It's because they haven't had the discipline. They haven't put the work in. They haven't sown those seeds when times were better. And I know that seems harsh. And I know that sounds unhelpful. And I'm not hating on this industry. This is coming from a place of absolute love. But every now and again, my darlings, we all need a bit of tough love. And the salon industry needs it this year more than ever. And I'm not suggesting we need to get to a stage where everything's hustle and everything's 10x and we're all getting up at four in the morning. But my dears, let's not hide behind our mental health and our need for work life balance in order to play a smaller and smaller game. That's not actually buying you any security at all. Security comes from financial stability. And that comes from discipline and hard work. So there we have it. It's my thoughts on the real problem in the salon industry right now. Let's get this shit sorted. Then we can go to government. Then we can go to the people that provide education and training. Then we can go to our suppliers from a place of strength. But while all of this absolute nonsense is going on, we are vulnerable. And we're also vulnerable to the hoodwinks. We're also vulnerable to people who are pulling the wool over our eyes. And we've seen them, these so-called experts that come into the industry and basically fleece salon owners for the little bit of profit they are making because they know we're not disciplined enough to put the hard work in. We're looking for the quick fix. We're looking for the easy win. And that makes us vulnerable to the scam as well. Let's get our houses in order. I'm sure there are lots of you who are going to hate this episode. And frankly, my darlings, I'm here for it. I live for it. Reach out. Hate on me. Phil at buildyoursalon.com I dare you to pick an argument with me, darling. I'm just in the mood. And I'd also love to interview you if you've got an opposing set of opinions to me. Let's have a proper discussion on something that might actually improve the salon industry. Between the two of us, let's have a chat and figure out a way forward which is going to improve things for all of us. My email address, scrolling at the bottom of the screen, phil at buildyoursalon.com Reach out any way you know I love hearing from my salon industry friends.

Just seven short days until I'm coming in your eyes and ears again with a positive, I promise, a much more positive dose of wise hour wisdom. And until then, take care.