Top 5 Policies in My Sensational Salon Manifesto

Election fever is gripping the nation here in the UK, but before we all die in a frenzy of political excitement, here are the five things I'd be putting in place if it were down to me to improve the world for salons. Hello, hello, hello, my salon friends. How on earth are you? Achingly well, I hope, as we march towards the beginning of Q3. How's the first half of 2024 been for you? Mixed bag, I think. January, February, March, a lot tougher for salons than perhaps we were anticipating. And then the second quarter still hasn't quite taken off in the way that I would hope for you all out there. But how's it been for you? Reach out, let me know. Phil at buildyoursalon.com. You know, I adore hearing from my salon friends anyway. And here we are. And what I love about this election, by the way, is we have postal voting. And if you haven't already registered for the postal voting, I promise you it's an absolute dream because I cast my vote over a week ago. And so I don't have to listen to anything to do with the election anymore. And the campaigners that are knocking on my door, I can say, I've already voted. Go away. It's too late. You're not going to get anything out of me now. And it's an absolute relief. So I'm using this podcast episode as the full stop on my interest in the UK election. And then you can wake me up in five years when it's time to cast my vote again. I see my casting of a vote as my delegation of anything political. I've already voted for the person who I want to look after me for the next five years. Let them get on with it. And then I shan't worry about it day to day. But you can't vote for me, I'm afraid, darling, because I'm your queen of salons, unelected queen of salons rather than an elected representative. But if I were to jump into 10 Downing Street, here are the five things that I'd be doing which I think would improve life for salons. And the first one is I would make standardised skin testing the norm. And this feels like a tiny little thing, but actually skin testing does have an impact on our business and our reliance on the goodwill sometimes or the truth telling of our customers, let's say, as far as skin tests are concerned, can be stretched just a little bit. But what if there was one skin test for all of our services across the entire hair and beauty industry? Then your client could go into their nearest salon for a skin test and that would be perfectly valid in your salon when they turn up for their service.

And yes, it would mean that you'd be carrying out some skin tests on people that weren't going to be your customers. But equally, other salons would be doing the same for you as well. So it would all kind of balance out in the end. Better protection for customers, a simplified skin testing regime for salons. And I think it could actually make us a bit more money in the long run, too. What do you think? Reach out and let me know. Next up, I'm going to abolish the age limit on apprenticeship contracts. So here in the UK, we have a national minimum wage, which you may or may not agree with as a policy. It doesn't look like it's going anywhere. But there is also a restriction on the people that can sign up for contracts of apprenticeship. So above a certain age, you're not allowed to be an apprentice and paid as an apprentice anymore. And to be honest with you, it's happened to me a few times where I think this legislation is encouraging age discrimination. Because if you have two people sat in front of you, both applying for apprenticeship positions, one of them 17 and the other one's 35. You have a financial incentive not to look at the 35 year old with favourable eyes. So I think if the older person is more than willing to work for an apprenticeship wage and as an employer, you're more than willing to train them up and take them on. Why is that anyone else's business but yours? I'm not saying let's get rid of the minimum wage. What I'm saying is that if you want to work as an apprentice and you're above the current age limit, you should be entitled to do so. Measure number three, and you're not going to like this one, I would abolish the threshold for VAT. So we have a sales tax here in the UK called VAT, value added to tax. And there is a threshold, I think I'm right in saying that it got put up to 92,000. So below 92,000 a year, you don't have to pay VAT at all. As soon as you hit 92,000 turnover, you have to pay VAT on all of your turnover. And I think that's encouraged a huge number of businesses to remain just below the VAT threshold. So we have this artificial suppressing of business growth. That's bad for our industry, it's bad for our economy, and it means that businesses can't grow to the scale where they're making efficiencies either. So we have lots of inefficient businesses here in the UK. So I would get rid of it. So basically, you start paying VAT from the very first pound that enters your till. I think that then means that we could reduce the rate of VAT so everyone feels just a little bit better off.

And I would also, we have two schemes for VAT. We have the normal 20% VAT scheme, and we also have a fixed rate scheme. But the fixed rate scheme only applies if your turnover is below a certain threshold. And I would get rid of that as well. I would allow people to stay on the fixed rate scheme for as long as they want to. Simplifying VAT for us small businesses, but also perhaps getting a few more quid into the coffers of His Majesty's Revenue and Customs. So why do I want us to be paying more? Well, I think that suppressing of growth discourages people from employing because I think it's really hard to grow a team and stay below the VAT threshold. I think if we got rid of the threshold, then we would see more people willing to take on employees as well. That's good for the long-term health of our businesses. My next point is around legislation, and there's a huge drive towards legislation, particularly in the beauty industry here in the UK. And I think this is a bit of a mistake. I don't think those regulations are going to deliver the results that we want them to. Because to be honest with you, I think people who have shoddy work practices and unsafe work practices won't care about another layer of legislation. So what do I think we should be doing instead? Well, I've got two measures for you, my dears. The first is I think we need a licensing scheme administered by our local councils. And I think the issuance or the renewal of that licence should be dependent on you carrying out a certain number of hours of training per year. So you're encouraged or made to keep up-leveling, to keep investing in your skills, to keep investing in your business, to improve your standards overall. And let's say you had to do 30 hours of continual professional development per year in order to renew your licence. I think that would start to see an increase in our standards overall. I think it would start to see perhaps a levelling up of CPD qualifications, because there's a lot of training that goes under the guise of CPD, which isn't particularly good quality. But also I think it would be a welcome stream of revenue for our local councils as well.

And our local councils are absolutely strapped for cash and they do fund some very, very important activities in our towns and cities. So that would be the first part. The second part, I think we should make it illegal. And you may be surprised to know that it's not illegal. I think it should be illegal to operate without insurance here in the UK. So you can set yourself up as a hairdresser tomorrow with no qualifications and no insurance. And that's absolutely fine at the moment. I think if we made insurance mandatory for everybody or illegal to operate without insurance. Firstly, it would encourage the insurers to make sure that we are properly qualified because they wouldn't issue a certificate of insurance unless you've done your qualifications. But secondly, it means that we get that legislation that increase in our standards kind of through the back route, because I don't think that would increase costs to us as business owners very much at all. And my final measure, because every manifesto needs an environmental promise. I think we should make it normal for our customers to take their waste home with them. So here in the UK, we have different people picking up trade waste than the domestic waste. And actually, the levels of recycling in business are much, much lower than they are domestically. So what if we gave our customers a little bag at the end of their service and it had their hair sweepings in and it had their disposable towel? They could even take their foils home for recycling. I think it would reduce the cost of getting rid of waste as far as a business is concerned. But I think overall we'd see a reduction in the environmental impact of our businesses because more of our stuff would be recycled. So what have I missed? What do you think? How are you voting? Actually, I don't want to know how you're voting in the next election, but I'd love to know what you think would be useful to improve things for us as a salon industry. Reach out. Let me know. Phil at buildyoursalon.com. You know, I love hearing from my salon owner friends. I get most weeks I get a couple of emails with people just telling me their view of the world and how things are going. And I absolutely love reading those emails. Also reach out same email address if you would like to be a guest on a future episode of the Build Your Salon podcast. Also reach out if you have any questions for my monthly Q&A episode. I can't keep doing those episodes unless people actually send me questions in. When I get them, they're fantastic. So please reach out with a question. If you want to remain anonymous in that episode, then you absolutely can do.

Just seven short days until I'm coming in your eyes and ears again with another dose of my wise hour wisdom. And until then, take care. Sit down and see what's going on with the queen of salons. Hair, beauty, and more successful tips for business owners. All on Build Your Salon.