Unlocking Success: Mastering Entrepreneurial Habits and Efficient Business Routines

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 friend. How on earth are you? Phil Jackson, your Queen of Salons, here to come in your ears once more with some wisdom from the wise old owl. And a very special hello this week to my one listener in Santa Rosa Beach, which I had to Google. I'd never heard of before, but I have to say it looks very beautiful. And the thought of you listening to my words of wisdom while you're on that stunning beach fills me with joy and glee, my dear. So a very warm welcome to my listener in Florida. What are we talking about today? Actually, before that, I need to quickly put something to rest. I mentioned that I was on a juice fast to try and shift a few extra pounds and I had a concerned email from a listener saying that they were worried that this wasn't a healthy way to lose weight and that I was going to rot my teeth and do all sorts of terrible things to my body. Well, let me tell you, firstly, this is not going to be the worst thing by any stretch that I've done to my body over the years, darling, I promise. But secondly, it was just a little kickstart. That was all I needed was to shift a couple of pounds and give myself a break from the thought of what I'm going to have for dinner tonight. And that has brought me a little bit of mental clarity. So I'm into better eating routines and I promise you I'm still alive and fit and well and raring to go, my dear. I have to say that it was a very long five days and by the fifth day I was going to bed at 8 p.m. because I just couldn't bear the thought of sitting up in the evening without a bowl of popcorn or something to nibble on. Anyway, that's a habit which I'm working on, which is my nutrition and my healthy eating. It's a constant struggle for me. I have a very dysfunctional relationship with food in lots of ways, lots of emotional eating to unpack. Honestly, I'm a psychologist field day, my dear. But today I want to talk to you about a few habits that I've got in place that are much more successful. Things that I think help me on my entrepreneurial journey, my journey to business ownership without going insane. And I think there are things there that you've probably got some of these things in place. You probably don't have all of them in place consistently if you're struggling.

And none of them are revolutionary. None of them are going to change the way that you think about life forever. They're gentle reminders, gentle nudges that we could be doing things a little bit better. And I've got a few things at the end that I definitely have cut back on as far as routines are concerned. So habits that I'm trying to break. So what's my first routine? Well, the first one is planning, daily planning. And this has become an absolute must in my business. It builds off the back of a weekly planning routine. So how do I set this out? Well, on a Sunday morning, I get up just a little bit before everybody else. During the week, I'm up at five. The rest, on a Sunday rather, I get up a little bit later, usually about seven. That's my lie-in on a Sunday. And I head downstairs, make myself some coffee, grab the laptop. And I just look at the week ahead before everybody else wakes up. And it's my sanity check to make sure that I've not forgotten a sports day or that I haven't forgotten an appointment that I've got coming up for a haircut or that I haven't double booked anything or overstretched myself for the week. So it's a look at the tasks that I have ahead, the projects that I'm working on ahead. And it's my little sanity check on the week. Then the family come down for breakfast. And then myself and my husband look at our calendars together. And we just make sure that everybody knows who's doing that particular school pickup or who's taking that person for that dental appointment. So we just kind of swap diaries over breakfast on a Sunday morning. Off the back of that, I have a daily planning session. But this happens at the end of the day. So I call it my putting the day to bed. And it happens for me. So the end of my working day is about 2.30 in the afternoon. I don't really work past them because I start work so early in the morning. And so I still get my eight hours in, darling. Don't worry, I'm still I'm not slacking off too much. But putting the day to bed is essentially a reflection on the day. I just look at the tasks that I'd set out for today and figure out which of those need carrying over to another day because maybe I didn't get them done. Or maybe I did get them done. And then there's just a little moment of quiet satisfaction, a little mini pat on the back for me for getting everything done that I wanted to do. And then I set out my priorities for the following day. So this only takes three, four minutes, something like that, at the end of my working day.

But it means when I wake up tomorrow, I don't have to think about what I'm working on in the morning because that's already been set out. I've already planned the following day. So today isn't done until tomorrow has been planned. And that putting the day to bed is kind of the other bookend. So I would wake up in the morning, have a look at what I've got coming ahead. But at the end of the day, I need to set that routine for the following day. And that putting the day to bed is honestly, it's been the biggest game changer for me because in the mornings when I wake up, I've got very poor discipline. Until I've properly woken up at sort of half seven, eight o'clock in the morning, that first few hours is just automatic pilot. I just need to do as I'm told. If you give me the option, I would do nothing. I would go back to bed. But with having the day planned out from the night before, I can get much more achieved in those precious early hours. That's what I call my golden time, by the way. When I wake up at five, I'm always at my desk behind my desk by 5.30. And it's my golden hour or so because there's nobody around. I'm not doing this in some, you know, you see lots of people that say, you've got to hustle, you've got to grind, you've got to be making money while others sleep. That's not what it's about at all. It's about getting some work done before the bloody kids wake up and the day kicks into gear. It gives me an hour and a half, maybe sometimes two hours, before I have to worry about what anyone else is up to. It's quiet, it's peaceful, it's focused time, and I call it my golden hour. Next up, I meditate each morning. Now, this is a work in progress for me. I'm not as consistent as I'd like to be, and I don't meditate for as long as I would like to. So, sometimes five minutes is all I can manage. Usually, we're heading towards about 10. I'm not able to keep 10 minutes of meditation focused on my own. They're guided meditations, so I use an app. In fact, I stumbled across this app by accident. Well, no, I have the app for yoga. It's called Asana Rebel. Incredibly cheap for the annual plan. I have to say, I'm not an affiliate. I don't get anything out of recommending this. It's just an app that I use consistently. And then, as a bonus, I found that there were these meditations, these guided meditations. And so, I've been trying to use those every day. Now, I don't manage every single day, if I'm really honest. I haven't built it into a particular time. I need to attach it to something else. So, what I try and do when I'm introducing a new routine is I try and latch it onto something that's already a routine. So, for example, I try and weigh myself each morning.

Please don't judge me on this. It's just a piece of information that I feel the need to have each morning. To get into that routine, I latched it onto brushing my teeth, which I didn't really have to think about. That was an automatic pilot thing. So, what I need to do with meditation is latch it onto something else. I need to make it part of another daily routine. So, perhaps what I'll do is attach it to my lunch break. Maybe that could be the first five or ten minutes of my lunch break with meditation. But then my tummy would be rumbling. I don't know if I'd be too focused on my Cornish pasty. But that needs to become something that is attached to something else for it to consistently happen. But I'd say I manage it more days than I don't. And I certainly feel better when I do. At the other end of the day, I journal every day. Now, people think that journaling has to be this massive exercise that takes hours and hours. And by all means, do. You know, if you've got the time to do it, this process of self-reflection, this process of journaling and just working things out, just externalising some of the stuff that's in your head, I find extremely helpful, very, very soothing and very good for my mental health. And also kind of grounding me in the now a little bit and putting a sense of perspective on things. I think sometimes in our heads, things can build up to this massive head of steam. And when we externalise it and reread it, we can get a sense of perspective. It's almost like getting a third person's opinion on a situation without actually involving a third person. So, I journal each day. But I would say that I journal probably five or six lines. It's not a huge amount unless I've got a particular topic. Now, when I'm reading, I'm journaling. When I'm researching, I'm journaling. But that reflection process at the end of each day is literally two or three minutes. And it's the last thing I do at night. Speaking about night, my bedtime routine is non-negotiable. I go to bed pretty much the same time every single day. And that's usually 9 or 9.30 p.m. And not much can happen to shift me from that. Because it's the only way that I can make sure that I'm getting up at five the next day. I need my rest. I need my sleep. And I am one of those awful, enviable people. Please don't hate me for it. That pretty much as soon as my head hits the pillow, I'm asleep. It doesn't take me very long. There's not lots of tossing and turning and chewing things over. I think part of that is another routine that I've kicked in. One hour before bedtime. So from 8 p.m. And I stole this from Craig Ballantyne. And honestly, if you're looking for a daily routine, he's the guy to go to.

But one hour before bedtime, no screens. So I'm not suddenly bothered by something I've seen on the Instagram feed or a Facebook profile. I'm not suddenly bothered by an email that I've received. And also I'm cutting down on that blue screen time an hour before bed. So I think that helps me get to sleep a lot, lot quicker. What would getting paid properly mean to you? A better lifestyle? Less financial worry? Being able to be present and improve your relationships with your loved ones? Maybe even a better night's sleep? I know these are scary times. But if you're continually living paycheck to paycheck, if you can't seem to get ahead financially, I feel your frustration. I have seen your pain. It's time to stop winging it. You know your salon business could be doing more. It's time to finally fix your fear of the figures, take control and charge what you're worth, to step into the shoes of the well-paid, professional salonpreneur you were always meant to be. And that's what my Get Paid Properly program is all about. I'll help you improve your relationship with money, understand the finances in your business, and I'll show you what you should be charging to the penny. All of that, without overwhelm and without guesswork. For all of the details of Get Paid Properly and to sign up now, head to getpaidproperly.com. And with the exclusive discount code PODCAST, you can get an enormous £200 off your investment in the program as well. Let's work together to make this the year you finally take control of the money in your salon business. And speaking of bedtime and waking up routines, the final little bit of wisdom I have on this is never hit the snooze button. Again, this is another Craig Ballantyne piece of wisdom. But essentially, I think what you're doing when you set yourself an alarm or a reminder is making a little promise to yourself. And if you hit snooze, what you're saying is that those promises to yourself aren't important. And that sounds quite grandiose and sounds a little bit like over-egging the pudding slightly. But I promise you, if you know that you don't have to be up until 7.45, but you're going to set an alarm at 7.15, don't. Just set the alarm for 7.45 and actually get up first time.

You'll find that you're much more alert and much brighter if you consistently get up first time every time. So I never hit snooze when I'm waking up in the morning. Most of the time, I have to say, particularly this time of year, I'm awake before the alarm anyway. And if I'm awake before the alarm, I just get up. Because how lovely not to have an alarm going off at all. I find alarms slightly alarming. I find alarms a little bit irritating first thing in the morning. It's like being nagged by technology. And I know that I set the alarm in the first place. And I know it's there to help me. But I have to say, I do find it mildly irritating. Just one that I would slip in, and this is a weekly thing rather than a daily thing, is do your meal plan. Do your meal plan before you do your weekly shop. Not only does it save me an enormous amount of money, but it saves me a lot of time. And I just find decision-making really tiresome sometimes. And I make a lot of decisions during the day, during my work day. I don't really want to make 150 decisions when I get home as well. And I certainly don't want to have to decide what's for dinner. And I certainly don't want to have to answer the bloody question from my kids. What are we having for dinner tonight? Oh my goodness, there's nothing more guaranteed to put me in a bad mood. So Saturday morning, I sit down. I'm very lucky. I don't work Saturdays like many of you. I haven't worked a Saturday for a very long time. But I will sit down on a Saturday morning and make my meal plan for the week. Then I will zip through the cupboards, zip through the fridge, see what I can cross off the shopping list. And then I will go and do my weekly shop. Or even better, if I'm very organised, I do this on a Thursday and get it delivered for Saturday morning, which is wonderful. But then I've got my meal plan for the week. I've written it out, chucked it on the fridge. The kids can see what they're getting for dinner. I know what we're getting for dinner. If I'm feeling super, super organised, then I'll do some batch cooking on a Sunday as well. It just takes a lot of the hassle away. But also what I'm really pleased about, in these days of environmental concern, and these days when we're trying to save a few pennies, though I have to say this cost of living crisis thing, I'm starting to get a bit cynical about. It's really lovely that when I get to the end of the week, the fridge is empty, the cupboards are bare, but there's been very little food being thrown away. And I really, really like that too. So do yourself a favour. Do yourself a meal plan for the week. Now, if I could make it a healthy meal plan for the week, and maybe a listener out there who's listening on a beach somewhere, maybe could reach out and let me know how I just have the discipline to make sure that I'm healthy at lunchtime.

Do you know what part of the problem is? Is we have a sandwich van. So I've got an office that I rent. I don't work from home every day. And there's a sandwich van that comes around at 11. And it's sent round from the local bakery and everything's still warm and all the bread's still crusty. And oh my days, it's just too much for me, darlings. It really is. So perhaps I need to make sure that I'm out of the office at 11 o'clock when the sandwich van comes. Anyway, a few things that I've tried to cut back on, a few routines that don't serve. One of them is social media. Now, if you see me posting on social media every day, which I certainly try to do, I will not have done that post live. It will be scheduled. I batch all of my social media to make sure that I'm doing something every single day. But I certainly don't post to social media every day. I think it's a bit of a fallacy these days that social media is the key to success. Now, there are lots of people telling you that social media is the key to success. But these are the people that make their money out of social media. These are the influencers. These are the people whose job is to post to social media. Your job isn't to post to social media. Your job is to promote your business, by all means. It's to make sure that we've got a stream of future customers. But actually, your job is to manage your business day to day. And I don't think social media has to be part of that at all. And I know there are lots of people that have said that I'm giving you permission to post less on social media. And my days, the relief that floods across these poor people's faces because they're finding it such a struggle. I think there are other ways we could be promoting businesses apart from social media. And so if you're going to post to social media, I strongly suggest you use a scheduler. And there are lots and lots of them around. Because if you're using a scheduler, you're not getting distracted. You're not on Instagram or you're not on Facebook seeing photos of puppies and people shampooing carpets. What is it with me watching videos of people shampooing rugs? I could do it for days, honestly. Those Instagram reels are absolutely my addiction, my crack. So I try and keep away from social media feeds as much as I can. And a scheduler just puts a bit of distance between me and the feed. And I know that there are people that will say, well, the algorithms don't like it. And Facebook and Instagram don't like it when you use a scheduler. I don't care. For the little bit of percentage reach that I'm sacrificing, I promise it is saving me so much more than that.

In terms of distraction and wasted time. Similarly, I have scheduled times for checking my email. Again, this is a work in progress. My thumb has a little bit of muscle memory in that I can't seem to open my phone and lock my phone without suddenly hitting the email button and checking for emails, which is ridiculous. So what I'm trying to do is have set times each day where I check email. Once in the morning, once at lunchtime, once before I put my day to bed. I think that helps me keep my schedules, my routines, my inbox full of things that are moving my business forward rather than other people's priorities. But again, it's a work in progress. Nobody's perfect. And then the final thing that I'm trying very hard not to do is to respond to messages outside office hours. And again, this is a work in progress. I have a few people who I can't seem to resist responding to, but I'm getting very good. And this is about setting expectations. And I know this is a problem for lots of you that have your own salon and beauty businesses too, where customers are messaging you at all hours of the day and night on Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp and expecting a response. And that's because you've set the expectation that they will get a response. And I promise you, if they are a loyal customer, the fact that you're not responding to Facebook Messenger at 11.30pm is not going to lose you that customer. And I think that there's something to be said for just making it really clear what times you will get back to people. And we did this with our phone. So we sacked our receptionist. And for a time, we had an outsourced reception service. So we had a telephone answering service. And then as we promoted online bookings, we now just have an answer phone in the salon. What happens when people leave a message is they expect you to get back to them 30 seconds later or a minute later. So what we've done is made part of our answer phone message the times when we're going to get back to people. So the answer phone message says, we check these messages at 11am and 3pm, which is when somebody will return your call. Then somebody can leave a message and they're not expecting you to get back to them in the next 30 seconds. They're expecting to wait until 11 o'clock or 3pm. So we've set that expectation. There's no anger when we call people back an hour or two later because that's what we said we were going to do. Now, of course, you've got to make bloody sure that you do it. And it is booked into people's columns

that somebody each day is going to check those calls at 11 o'clock and 3pm and return any calls as necessary. But most of the time, that's not a problem. We've got into a habit with that. So I think if you set that expectation with your Facebook Messenger and there are ways that you can automate this and you know I'm a nerd, you know I'm a geek. So I use a piece of software called ManyChat to respond to messages. You could say that outside these hours, we'll get back to you as quickly as we can in the morning. And that would suddenly free up that expectation that you're going to get back to people straight away. Now, you might well say, well, what if it's a new client? What if they're shopping around? What if somebody gets back to them first? Well, do you know what? If they have zero respect for your work-life boundaries, if they have no respect for your personal time at all, if the only thing that's deciding between you and another salon is the fact that they get back to them in the evening and you don't, well, I'd say firstly, your marketing needs looking at. But secondly, do you really want that customer? Do you really want someone who has no respect for your personal space and your personal time at all? As a regular customer in your business, my dear, you can do better than that. So there we have it. Seven and a half little daily and weekly habits that help me move my business forward with confidence. And three things that I'm working on to try and eliminate in my day to make myself more productive and maintain those precious boundaries. I hope that's been useful to you. Ultimately, what I'm asking myself during the day, again and again, is what would the best version of me be doing in this situation? So when I wake up in the morning and I kind of go, oh God, I really don't want to get out of bed and I've got a bit of a headache and I'm ever so thirsty and it would just be so lovely to take a glass of water and go back to bed for half an hour and decompress. What would the best version of me do in that situation? And honestly, I ask myself this mentally, repeatedly during the day and it works really well for just realigning me with the things that I've said that I'm going to do and the things that are important. Now, I don't want you to get too hung up on that because by asking yourself what the best version of you would do, you're also implying that you are not the best version of you. And I don't want you to start hurting your self-esteem, but just maybe every now and again have a little mantra that you can kick in that just gives you a gentle slap to say, come on,

let's get back in alignment. Let's get back into these better habits and better ways of living. If it's been useful to you at all, please reach out or reach out with ideas for future episodes. Phil at buildyoursalon.com. You know I adore hearing from you, but you know what will put me in an even better mood is if you share this episode with someone who you think could use it and take two seconds to give me a rating. Five stars look best on the screen, I always think, and I promise you, a five-star rating will absolutely make my day, make my week. Yes, I am that easily pleased. Just seven short days until I'm coming in your ears again, and until then, 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.