Transform Your Salon: Purpose, Pricing and Rapport

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. Hello, hello, hello, my salon friends, and welcome. Phil Jackson here, your Queen of Salons, here with some more industry knowledge and business education to help life go with a swing. How on earth are things for you this July? And also a very warm welcome if you're joining me over on YouTube. This is the first time I've done a YouTube video for a very long time indeed. So if you're listening on the podcast, then please feel free to zip over to YouTube and you get to see my smiling face in person, you lucky duck you. How on earth are things for you this July? We're at the crux of the summer holidays. My kids are just about to break up from school. So I've got that long, yawning six weeks with the children at home ahead of me. And I have to say, I try very hard to preciously treasure every single moment with my children. But when it's a very prolonged period like that, I must admit, I do get tested. I'm only human after all, my darlings. I'm also always on the lookout for business lessons. And I'll try and bring you a couple of world examples of my business education. And they've been coming thick and fast recently. So I managed to manage to annoy somebody this week. And it's not usually in my remit to get on people's nerves. Not in that kind of way. Anyway, I managed to offend somebody and I'm not a very confrontational person. I don't tend to get into scrapes with people very often. But there's a wool shop, a yarn shop, a craft shop in our village. And as you know, I am so gay that I also now knit and crochet. And I was in there buying some yarn. Anyway, this yarn shop is closing down. They're having a closing down sale, 40% off everything. So I zipped in there and I must have been her best customer in years, to be honest with you, darlings, because I literally filled a dustbin bag with yarn and replenished my stock, ready for all the projects that I'll probably never get round to across the autumn and winter. Anyway, to cut a long story medium length, I went back in last weekend and I didn't get the warmest of welcomes, if I'm really honest with you, darlings. And I'd been perfectly pleasant last time round. And the first thing that the lady said to me was, the yarn's a full price now.

The 40% discount doesn't apply anymore. And I didn't really like her tone. I didn't like the cut of her jib, darlings. And I have to say, I almost felt like she wanted me to bring all the yarn that I'd bought previously back. Like I kind of ripped her off or something. Anyway, business lessons abound, of course. And the first was that you can't be like that. If you're in a people industry, you've got to be able to build rapport and be pleasant to people, even when you're not having the best of days. And I thought perhaps she could have stayed in bed and had an extra cup of tea rather than coming into work and ruining my day. But the other thing which I thought was more interesting is as soon as she said that discount had finished, I stopped browsing. Now, I don't know what full price on those items was. I didn't really check what it was before they took the 40% off on my first visit. What I thought was really interesting, and I think this is the pertinent business lesson here. I think what's really interesting is once you anchor the price of a product or service at a certain level, it's almost impossible to raise that price later with the same customers. Does that make sense? So if you're bringing people into your salon on an offer, let's say 50% off for new clients on a certain service, it's almost impossible to then charge full price for that service to the same client later on. So I thought that was a really useful business lesson there. Also, if you're watching on YouTube, let me know what you think of my backdrop. We have to get used to this backdrop because it's one of those pop-up things, you know, with the metal hoop inside. And I can't get the bloody thing back in the bag. So we're stuck with it, at least for the foreseeable, until I can get a man in to take my backdrop down. Anyway, what are we talking about today? Well, today we're talking about something that feeds into overwhelm, feeds into procrastination. And basically, it's answering that question, how do you know in your business what to work on next? And the only way we can answer that question effectively is to have a really clear understanding of why we're in business in the first place. And I know lots of you will be saying, I'm in it for the money. I've got my own business because I want to make a profit. I want to make some money. Beyond that, though, what is the reason that your business exists? Because to be blunt, the way that we make a living in our hair salons and beauty salons and aesthetic businesses is bloody hard work. It's a brutal way of making a living. In fact, I think there are much easier ways to make a living than standing behind a salon chair doing hair all day, every day.

OK, so I don't personally believe that many people are attracted to our industry purely for the money. So let's try and discover exactly what the purpose of your business is. And this is why when I'm going through my crystal clear goal setting, this is why we always start with what you want the bigger picture of your life to look like, because then we build a business which supports your life goals rather than the other way around. If you do things the other way around, if you start with the business goals, you become a slave to that business. And I've seen it time and time again. So if you're starting to resent the business, it's because it's not supporting the bigger picture of how you want your life to be. So the kind of questions that we should be asking if we're trying to discover our purpose is what inspired you to start your salon business in the first place? What did you think you could do better than your existing competitors? What did you think you could do to stand out in the marketplace? What's unique about the way that you do things compared to everybody else who's offering services to your clients? How do you want your business to be remembered? What do you want to be known for in the marketplace? That gives us clues to the kind of purpose that you have, because your purpose and your values go hand in hand and they are your beacon. They are the things that will shortlist everything. They are the things that will decide what you work on next, because we only work on things that align with our purpose, align with our vision and align with our values. It does all of that shortlisting for you. And then once we've got a really clear idea about the purpose of our business and what we want our business to be all about, not only have we made our decision making easy, but we can start to build some routines. And I've talked about this in previous podcast episodes. If you're overwhelmed, if you've got too much on your plate, if you're struggling to get the necessary work done, we've got to start building some habits. We've got to start making some of these things automatic in your business, things that just take care of themselves in the background or take care of themselves because they're built into your daily and weekly routines. Because your vision and your values are going to help prioritize your tasks, we need to establish those daily, weekly, monthly routines, breaking those goals into small and manageable tasks and then scheduling them into our calendars. And I'm a big fan of scheduling because we're an industry, we're a business that's built on appointments.

So what I want you to do is take those visions, take those attitudes, values and beliefs, turn them into goals, break them into manageable tasks and then make appointments with yourself to get those tasks done. Because when you turn up for work that day and you see that you've got certain tasks scheduled for 11 o'clock this morning, you don't need to think about what's important or not. You just need to do as you're bloody well told. And once we've got to that level, then the decision making is kind of taking care of it for us. Now, you do need to regularly review your routines, regularly review your progress. You should be doing that anyway because we're looking for reasons to celebrate. We're looking for things that are going well. But also when it comes to routines and it comes to habits, we also need to polish and refine them and make sure that we're still focused on the right tasks. So we're making sure that we're making progress, but ultimately that we're working on the stuff that's necessary to get us closer rather to our business goals. Are you feeling like you're stuck in a rut? Like you're just going through the motions or that whatever you do, the next level in your business stays just out of reach? Well, it's time to shake things up. With one-to-one coaching, you'll have buckets of support, inspiration and accountability to help you bring the buzz back to your salon business. Whether you're looking to achieve a specific goal or just feeling that things are lonely at the top and you want someone to coach you to be the best version of yourself, I am here to support you. And don't worry, even though it's called coaching, I won't make you join a gym and I will never suggest you give up your Toblerone habit. What's the alternative? More of the same? Come on, you can do better than that. Ping me an email at phil at buildyoursalon.com with the subject line coaching and I will send you all the details. I can't wait to help you on your journey to salon success. So before we start to wind up this episode, let's have a couple of real-life examples of how our purpose, how our values, how that bigger picture of how we want our business to be starts to inform how we run our businesses on a day-to-day. So let's take a couple of imaginary examples. Let's imagine we've got a salon and it's run by a lovely lady called Sarah and she's all about providing a relaxing, rejuvenating experience for

her clients. So her purpose, her vision, her values are all around that blissful experience, that space away from the daily grind for her customers where they can relax, bliss out completely, be pampered. So what she's going to be doing and building into her routines is that she's going to start each day reviewing her appointment schedule, making sure her team has everything to hand so that she has that calm atmosphere for her clients. I've been into salons again and again as part of my coaching where particularly the owner or supervisor or sometimes a stylist or therapist who isn't terribly busy, they feel the need to flap. They feel the need to shoot around the salon trying to do multiple things and bring that air of chaos with them because they think it makes them look busy, I think it makes them look successful. Not for Sarah though, Sarah's decided that blissful calming environment is the priority. So she's going to spend a lot of time every day, every week preparing, making sure she's got everything she needs to deliver that blissful experience. Let's compare and contrast that with another imaginary salon owner. Let's go for a chap called John and John's vision, John's purpose. In fact, I've got a one-to-one client who's a bit like this, her name's Krishna. And she is all about having lots of knowledge and understanding and she educates her clients. She teaches her clients. She's very heavily focused on skin. So she's continually teaching her clients how to look after their skin best, how to protect from the elements, how to rejuvenate and get the skin results that they want. She sells an awful lot of skin transformations, those kinds of services. Very, very successful business and a big inspiration to me and lots of other people as well. So our imaginary John, or perhaps Krishna does this as well, is going to spend a lot of time in her weekly or monthly routines and habits, researching the latest beauty trends, making sure that she's up to date with the latest knowledge so that she can share that during team meetings and ultimately share that with her clients. Now, I'm not saying that she doesn't spend a lot of time getting everything ready for her clients as well and making sure she's prepared, but that's not the priority. The values, the attitude, the beliefs, the vision for the future have dictated what's important. So she knows exactly what to work on next because the values are acting as that beacon in the business and helping prioritise and shortlist tasks. So ultimately what I'm saying is by determining your purpose and building routines around it,

you get the clarity on what to work on next. You get to make better decisions. You get to decide where to spend your energy. So for example, someone who's very heavily into a much more formal way of doing business, very research focused, very factual, hugely professional, might, for example, lean into certain social media platforms, might be very big on LinkedIn, for example, compared to someone else who's much more about a light experience, which is very entertaining for their clients. They might be leaning into TikTok. So those values, those visions decide the direction of the business. Ultimately, that's making decisions for you, which means that we're starting to reduce overwhelm. Hopefully that paralysis and procrastination starts to ebb away as well. So start with understanding what you want your business to be known for. That starts with knowing exactly what you want your business to do for the bigger picture of your life. So I hope that's inspired you a little bit. And I hope it's brought a little bit of clarity around your thinking. But let me tell you, you are not alone. If you're finding yourself paralysed because you've got so much to do and you don't know what to work on next, it's a very common thing that I come up with again and again when I'm doing my one-to-one coaching. So just seven short days until I'm coming in your ears again with another episode of the Build Your Salon podcast. What's it called? A podcast that's got a video attached to it? A vodcast? Vlogcast? Don't know. One of those in seven days' time as well. And I hope July is treating you well. Lots of my clients actually enjoying a very good July. And I hope that's the story in your salon too. And if you've got any questions, comments, any topics that you'd like me to discuss in future, please reach out. You know I adore hearing from my salon business owner friends. Phil at buildyoursalon.com. I would love to hear from you. If you've got the time to click subscribe, that would be awesome too. And if you've got the opportunity to give me a review, I always think five stars looks best on the page. I'd be thrilled. It would make my week. Nay, it would make my month, darlings. And until we speak again, please take care. Sit down and see what's going on with the queen of salons. Hair and more successful tips for business owners. All on Build Your Salon.