Transforming Salon Chaos to Profitable Peace 🌟

As salon business owners, we are busy people. On top of carrying out service, we need to be a manager, master marketer, handy person, and plumber, not to mention being a therapist for your clients and team as well. No wonder it can feel like we're living in chaos. 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. And today we're all about starting to regain some balance, starting to transform what can feel like a very chaotic environment into something a little bit calmer. And this is actually a reaction to a bit of feedback that I had on an episode that I did a couple of weeks ago, where I was talking about how we need to stop flapping around our salons in this chaotic mess. How we need to stop flapping like ducks and glide like swans. And somebody reached out and said, well, that's all well and good, Uncle Phil. Good Uncle Phil. But could you share some tips on how we might be able to go about achieving that serene atmosphere, achieving that sense of calm? So here we are diving in just a little bit deeper to see whether I can share a bit of wisdom that might just help you on your way. So where does the chaos come from? Well, some of it comes from the day to day running of our business. So it's coming from our clients. It's coming from our team members. And then some of it's coming from the other tasks that we have to do outside the business. So the marketing and the admin and the paperwork and the bookkeeping and all those good things, too. And I think it's the chaos comes from switching roles. It comes from us having too many hats to wear. It comes from us trying to carry out too many different tasks at different times. And that transition from one to the other is where that sense of chaos comes from. If you think about it, let's say you're I don't know, I'm going to use a hair example. I use lots of beauty examples, I've noticed. So we're going to use a hair example for a change. And occasionally I'm so I'm a hairdresser by trade and occasionally I would have a day where all I had booked in was foil highlights. So this is going back a couple of decades now when I first started and and highlights were quite the thing. And I was, you know, without blowing smoke up my own bottom, I was pretty bloody good at banging in foils. I was quick, I was precise and I used to get beautiful results. So I had lots and lots of highlight customers. And occasionally I would have a whole day of highlights and you just get into a rhythm and a flow.

You just get into a space where these things are easy and everything's just moving really nicely. But if you have to transition from putting in your foil highlights to suddenly having to do three bits of social media to suddenly having a team meeting and then coming back to the highlighting again, that's where the chaos comes in. It's when we're switching from role to role to role. So ultimately, my message is if there are roles that you can eliminate from your job description as a business owner, then you should definitely have a look at that. And the example I always bring to the fore is bookkeeping. I do not understand why salon owners do their own bookkeeping. It's something that can be outsourced relatively easily, relatively cheaply, frees up lots of your time. And the bookkeeper will probably do a better job than you're doing with your bookkeeping anyway. So it's one hat that we don't have to wear. All we need to do then is keep in touch with the bookkeeper, have some process of reporting so that we know how we're doing financially and let them get on with what they do best. And I think there are lots of roles that we're carrying out as business owners that ultimately we could be moving on to other people. And I think you should be looking at your job description that may not be written, but that you've created yourself over time and figure out exactly what your job needs to be and how much we can get out of your inbox and into somebody else's. And I get that there's a financial implication there that you're going to have to pay these people, but you should be at the stage where you can free up some of your time to carrying out the services that you do so well and that would more than pay for a bookkeeper for a couple of hours per week. So have a think about it. Have a think about wearing less hats. So that's the kind of delegation side of things. Next, I want to look at something which is not terribly sexy. I'm sorry, my darlings, I'm trying to make it as interesting as I can, but I want you to start looking at systems and processes for your business, because if we have a system for doing something consistently again and again in the same way properly, it takes away an awful lot of that chaos. And the example I would like to give is from my own salon. We had a big problem with wedding bookings. So weddings, we used to do quite a lot of weddings. We were a town centre salon with a good reputation. We used to get a lot of weddings recommended to us from different hotels in the area.

If they were out of towners, we would get recommended. And it's a different process of booking. It's not the same as booking an appointment online for a cut and finish or for a facial or whatever. And things used to get missed. They used to get lost. People weren't booked out properly or deposits hadn't been chased up or confirmations hadn't been sent. And it always felt a little bit messy and, dare I say it, a little bit unprofessional, even though we were doing a great job with the hair. So what did we do? We built a process. We built a system. We made it really clear what happens at each stage of the game and who has responsibility for each stage of the game. Whose job is it to send out a confirmation letter? Whose job is it to chase up the deposit? And all of that was put into a flow chart. So we could literally follow the flow chart down and figure out what happens next. The flow chart and all of the paperwork and even the little wishing you well card that we would buy was all put into a plastic envelope. And that pack was what contained all of the details for that wedding, kept everything together. However, almost overnight, it upped our level of professionalism, it upped the experience for our customers. It reduced the amount of chaos. So even if you're working on your own, you still need systems. You still need processes. I work largely on my own in this business, in my coaching business. I still have systems, still have processes. I have a process for producing, editing and marketing this podcast, for goodness sake. Even though there's not other people involved in that process, apart from the editor, I still have a process so that I can see where we're up to with each episode because things can get very messy and very chaotic very quickly. So systems are your friend. Processes are your friend. Flow charts are amazing. Checklists, absolutely superb as well. So we're starting to document the way that we do business. Then if there's a problem, this is where lots of salon owners go wrong. If there's a problem, don't throw the system away. So if the wheels had fallen off with our wedding booking process, what we do is go back, we revise and we improve the system. We don't stop using it. OK, so we take on the feedback that perhaps there's part of that process that isn't working properly and we improve it. We change it. We reissue and we keep pushing until we have a system that's delivering those consistent results.

And finally, my final tip, once we've got the systems and processes in place, once we're doing less, my third way that we can reduce the chaos is by managing expectations. Managing expectations for your team members, managing expectations for your customers as well. So, for example, putting a boundary in place that explains to your team that outside business hours, you will not be reachable. OK, managing the expectation. Suddenly, there's no expectation that we're going to return text messages or WhatsApp messages. There's no expectation that they can get hold of you on Facebook Messenger if they happen to see that you're online. So, outside certain defined hours, team members shouldn't be able to contact you unless it's an absolute emergency. The same goes with your customers. When you're being fully present with your family, when you're spending time in the evening, unwinding, decompressing, being present with your loved ones, we don't want to be interrupted by customers. And we can manage that expectation too by just making it really clear that messages will be checked between certain hours, outside those hours, direct them to your online booking or say that you'll get back to them in the morning. As long as the customer knows that ahead of time and they're not waiting for you to get back to them, the expectation is put in place, reducing the need for you to switch hats in the evening. So, manage expectations around your clients, stick to your processes. I do think, though, that we need to get a little bit tougher with our customers. And I understand that at the moment, a lot of salon owners are feeling very vulnerable. We're feeling that we need to be people pleasers, that we need to keep doing everything that our customers possibly ask of us in order to keep that loyalty. But I do think being a little bit tougher with confirmations, cancellation policy, booking fees, taking deposits, those things are all part of reducing that chaos because last minute appointments and no-shows and people cancelling and rescheduling brings with it a sense of chaos. And I think by being really clear on our policies, we can just bring a little bit of calm to that storm as well. So, as always, I don't have all of the answers. I can only share what's worked for me and my business over the years. I would love to hear from you. So, what are you doing in your business to stay on top of all the different things that are expected of us day to day? Reach out and let me know. Phil at buildyoursalon.com. You know I love hearing about how well you're doing and I've heard some wonderful success stories this October, by the way.

People seem to have shaken off the summer slump, got through September relatively unscathed in October, looking very good for lots of businesses. So, fingers crossed that will continue all the way through Q4. Also, reach out if you have any questions for my regular Q&A session. I try and do one every month, but I can only do them if you're sending your questions in. And also reach out if you would like to feature as a guest. We haven't had a guest on an episode for quite some time. I'd love to be chatting to you about your success story and your own salon journey. Just seven short days until the next episode of the Build Your Salon podcast. And until then, take care.