Why smart salon owners know it's OK to fail AGAIN

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? Looking beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. How on earth do you do it? Here we are right at the very end of January, and before we jump into talking about all things productive and productivity related, let's unpack the winter a little bit, shall we? That time of year, my dears, when I wonder why on earth do I live in England at all? Why on earth do I live in the UK with these short winter days and long cold nights? Oh my goodness, I'm solar powered. I honestly was born in the wrong continent. I'm absolutely convinced of it. But I have noticed that we're getting closer to 5pm before sunset now, rather than the 4pm that we had at the beginning of the month. So there is hope. I can see glimpses of hope that will keep me going, hopefully, until the spring. And spring, of course, is my favourite season. Lots of opportunity and growth and excitement. And I love those acid green colours that we see all the way through nature. Anyway, how was January for you? Mixed bag from my tribe, I have to say. And some very impressive results, given what lots of people would describe as quite a flat December. January has been much, much kinder to lots of my salon friends. And they've reported some excellent financial results and some pretty hopeful pictures looking for February as well. So how was it for you? Perhaps you'd like to offload? Why don't you off your load into my email inbox? Phil at buildyoursalon.com I would love to hear how business is treating you. Anyway, I've deliberately left this episode, darlings, until the end of January. Because this is, by now, most people have abandoned all their New Year's resolutions, you see. And I wanted to put a little bit of a spin on that. Because lots of us will have made resolutions around being more productive, using our time more productively. And I'm not really a big fan of the phrase productivity. I think it rather smacks of industrial revolution and trying to get your looms working a little faster and harder. When actually, what we're really looking for is effectiveness. And we can have hours in our day which are not at all productive. But certainly not in the business sense productive, but are hugely effective. So, for example, an hour spent completely present with your children may not actually produce anything apart from some happy memories.

But as far as effectiveness is concerned, your parenting has been an absolute triumph for that hour. Though I've noticed my children now at 10 and 13, you see. And as they get a bit older, an hour is becoming more and more of an ask of them. And our limit is about 35 minutes, which is two games of Uno some evenings. Anyway, back to productivity. Lots of people have set their resolutions around productivity and making more of their time. And this is a topic that keeps popping up again and again. And actually, one that has lined my pockets well over the years. As it's got to be said, you know, I've helped lots of people with productivity through my coaching activities. And a quick search reveals that there are around 80,000 books on productivity available on Amazon. And let's not forget the ones that aren't available anymore. So there's been a huge amount written about this. And then I jumped into the App Store and there's about 100,000 apps which are productivity related. Now, I didn't go through all of them, darling, and make sure that they were productivity apps. But whatever the case, we can see that there's a huge appetite for people becoming more productive. And that's, of course, because time is limited. We can't really extend our day any more than the 24 hours that everybody is given. So I wanted today to unpack a few things that have not worked for me as far as productivity is concerned. I want to shift your focus on failure around productivity. And if you've dropped off the wagon as far as some productivity methods are concerned, today is going to be the time when you are forgiven that. And I'm going to hopefully give you a bit of positive thought around that failure as well. And then I will share just a few techniques that are working for me at the moment. So what hasn't worked for me in the past? What have I tried and failed? And the first one, of course, is multitasking. And we know that multitasking is ineffective. And it used to be something as a bit of a badge of honour if people could multitask. If they could achieve so many things at the same time, then they were going to be infinitely more productive. But, of course, we now realise that we're not actually multitasking. In multitasking, what we're doing is task switching. And each time we switch tasks, we lose a little bit of productivity. And multitasking means that you're dividing your attention and there's more of a tendency to make errors. And research has shown that multitasking actually decreases productivity, but increases stress levels.

And I used to be guilty of this when I was working in the salon. I used to be the person who was kind of power mincing from one end of the salon to the other. So I was the one who always looked very frantic and very busy because I thought that's what a manager had to look like. And actually what I've found over the years is it's more inspiring if we can glide around our salons in complete control and in a state of unruffled productivity. And multitasking is the exact opposite of that, of course. Second, to-do lists. I'm not a very big fan of to-do lists. I have to say they're useful for collecting tasks. And I always have a little, you know, those little policeman notebooks. I always have one of those about my person somewhere. But I don't really use it to keep lists in the longer term. It's just somewhere to capture things. So if something occurs to me, for example, while I'm recording this podcast, I can quickly jot it into my policeman's notebook. But it doesn't stay there because I don't find to-do lists very useful for organising tasks. I think lists can become very overwhelming and unwieldy very quickly. And also I don't think they're terribly useful for prioritising our tasks. And in fact, my trap with to-do lists was always to pick off the easy wins. So if I had a list of 40 things in front of me, I'd do the ones that I could get done really quickly and get, hopefully, those little bumps in motivation and those little dopamine hits. But it didn't really translate into momentum for getting some of the trickier tasks done. So I don't think they're particularly useful for actually getting trickier tasks done and certainly not very useful in the planning process. Next, time blocking. Now, I've got a mixed relationship with time blocking. Basically, time blocking is dividing your day into blocks of time which you dedicate to specific tasks. And it was made very popular in the 80s by a chap called Brian Tracy. And Brian Tracy's written some amazing stuff on productivity over the years. And time blocking has been hugely used by not just people, not just individuals, but by businesses as well in an effort to improve efficiency. And time blocking does at least eliminate multitasking. But it's very inflexible. And I find that as a creative person, and we're in a creative industry at the end of the day, it can lead to a lot of stress. And I also find that time blocking doesn't really involve much in the way of contingency.

So if something comes along in my life, time blocking can actually increase stress because I'm pushed away from the task that I was supposed to be blocked out for. And as a very busy business person, but also as a parent, I find that those curve balls seem to be coming along a lot more frequently. So I do time block, but I don't really see it as a time blocking exercise. I see it more as an appointment setting exercise. And these are appointments with myself. And I'll talk a little bit about how I organize my calendar later in today's episode. Biggest absolute car crash of a technique for me was the Pomodoro technique. And I don't know if you've heard of the Pomodoro technique. It was developed by a chap, Francesco something. I can't remember his surname. Again, it was a late eighties thing. And basically he told us to use a timer to break our work into Pomodoros. And a Pomodoro was a 25 minute interval. And then you're supposed to have a five minute break. So basically you're chopping your day into 30 minute segments, 25 minutes of work, and then five minutes in between. And lots of people swore by it, but I found it terribly restrictive. And also 25 minutes wasn't quite long enough for me. And I think this actually comes from years and years of working in a hair salon. Because if you work in a hair salon and you're a stylist, then your day is usually taken up with cut and finish or cut and blow dry services. And a cut and blow dry service in my salon was 45 minutes, which is kind of the industry standard, at least is over here in the UK. It's what we're taught when we're at hairdressing college. And my brain seems to work in these 45 minute segments. So a Pomodoro of 25 minutes, I'd only just got going, darling. I'd only just got past the foreplay, let alone into the main event. And I found it very distracting. Also, I was kind of waiting for the timer to go off. It was almost taking some of my attention, wondering how long was left on the 25 minutes. And I tried it as a phone app and I tried it as one of those little kitchen timers. Of course, it had to be tomato shaped, being the Pomodoro technique. Lots of people swear by it, but it honestly didn't work for me. And one thing that I'm also really struggling with is using these tools that we have to eliminate distractions. So putting on your noise cancelling headphones or things that block social media. I have to say, I don't really find that they're tackling the underlying issue. And what I really need to do in my day and my week, and I suspect it's the same for lots of you as well, is get to the cause of the distraction. What is it that we need to get out of the way so we've actually got some clarity?

So we've actually got some space to think, some space to create. So it's important that you realise that even though I have once earned the title of Queen of Implementation, and this was given to me by a local business networking group, it's important to note that these techniques and these tools don't work for everybody and they certainly didn't work for me. I think it depends on you, it depends on what task you're trying to accomplish, and it depends on what the rest of your day looks like. There's no point in having these small bursts of intense activity and huge organisation. If the rest of your day is completely chaotic, it's not going to sit well. What you're probably better to do is take a slightly lighter touch, but use that touch across your entire day. My Salon Owners Retreat is a unique event where you get to create the agenda. This isn't a retreat of boring presentations in conference rooms without windows. The entire programme is a mix of group coaching, mastermind sessions and one-to-one coaching with me, your favourite salon coach. There's also time built in for implementation. Yes, you're going to leave the retreat having actually got some important work done on your business with our support. Our spring 2023 retreat is now sold out, but you can be the first to hear about the next Salon Owners Retreat and get the very best early bird pricing by heading to buildyoursalon.com and joining our wait list. I can't wait to see you on Salon Owners Retreat. Don't forget your speedos. So now you know I've fallen off the wagon again and again and again as far as productivity techniques are concerned. I've tried new ways of working, trying to be more productive, trying to improve my personal, my professional life, trying to strive towards those incredible goals that I set every single January. And I fail, so why am I not beating myself up about that? Why is that not hugely demotivating for me? Why am I not throwing the baby out with the bathwater and abandoning my goals altogether? Well, it's because I've got a different attitude to failure. I've seen failing as a very natural part of the process and I've tried to see failure as an opportunity to learn and to grow. Now, of course, this is work in progress. Of course, there are times when I fail, when I can absolutely see that there are lessons in there. I think it's a chap called John Maxwell said, you can't learn a lot from success, but you can learn a lot from failure or something around those words.

And I try very hard to unpack failure in my journal, find those lessons, find those nuggets, see that failure as a step forward rather than a step back. But of course, there are times when I fail and I feel like I've been beaten up a little bit and I'm just... This horrible, gibbering wreck on the ground waiting for someone to come along and rescue me. So this is still work in progress for me as well. But one of the biggest benefits of looking at a new way of working is not so much what we achieve, not so much what we strive for, not so much the new way of working, but the fact that you've realised that you need to leave something behind, the fact that you've realised that you need to break out of some old habits, some old routines that may have become very stagnant and may not be serving you very well anymore. So by trying new things, by experimenting, what we're doing is not only discovering new ways of working, but realising that our old ways of working are not serving us anymore. And I think that's the key to this. It's not so much what we achieve, it's what we leave behind. It's shaking off those old habits, those old values, those old beliefs in an effort to increase our results overall. Failure is a natural part of almost any process. Despite our very best intentions, our very best efforts, sometimes new ways of doing things don't give us the desired results. And it can be disheartening and it can be frustrating. My goodness, can't it ever be frustrating? But that failure is just part of the journey. It's your opportunity to learn. It's your opportunity to adjust your approach. And I love the analogy when we're goal setting of a plane flying from London Heathrow to JFK. That plane does not fly in a straight line. It's continually adjusting course. Now, what it doesn't do is say, Oh my goodness, this old course was a massive failure. I'm really demotivated. I'm going to turn around and go back to Terminal 5. What the plane does is just adjust course to its destination. It's continually monitoring and adjusting along the way. So we'd need to see our failure as a form of feedback. And there's a lovely quote from C.S. Lewis of Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe fame. Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement. Love that. That's on my office wall. So feedback, that kind of feedback through our failures is essential for our growth and our development. And it can provide huge valuable insights into what's working and what's not. So please, rather than beating yourself up, seeing failure as a setback, you need to start using it as a springboard.

Start seeing it as an opportunity to learn and an opportunity to improve in the longer term. 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 enough about failure, Phil. For goodness sake, throw us a line, throw us a bone. What's working for you at the moment in your massive success? Well, my darlings, some techniques that I'm currently using. And again, these shift, they change. And sometimes we just take one or two little ideas that stick and then move on to the next one. But a few techniques that I'm using continually at the moment. The first is called the Eisenhower matrix. Eisenhower of presidential fame, of course. And essentially what you're doing is chopping your tasks into four quadrants. So you put them on a chart, you map them out. Essentially, you're ranking your tasks according to their urgency and their importance. So those things that are urgent and important, we do straight away. Those things that are important but not urgent get scheduled for later and so on. So you can do your own reading around this. I'm not going to do a deep dive into the Eisenhower matrix. But it's something that I actually print out. So I've set it up as a template on my computer and I print it out about once a week. And just make sure that I'm categorizing my tasks and prioritizing. Because we do waste a lot of time. And that's not that we're not being productive. It's just that we're not very good at organizing and ranking things according to their importance. So we end up working on things that aren't actually moving our lives and our businesses forward.

A big one for me is the two minute rule. So anything that can be completed in two minutes or less, we do immediately. Now, I don't always do this because the temptation then is we slip into multitasking mode. And we've already talked about how that doesn't serve us well. But what I will very often do, if let's say I have, so my magic time is in the morning. I work 5.30 till 7 every day. Then I go home and have breakfast with the family and then get back into my work day after. So let's say in that 90 minute segment, let's assume that maybe I get 20 minutes at the end, which is not allocated 20 tasks. I get lots of these two minute tasks done. And I love it. It really puts a spring in my step for the rest of the day. It really gives me some motivation and some importantly, some momentum to get other tasks done. So these two minute tasks, I cluster together and try and find regular intervals during my day and during my week. And it stops these small tasks piling up. And these are the ones that can start to get a little bit overwhelming, even though they're relatively easy to achieve. Next up is one which I've been using for quite a few years now, actually. And this came from a book called The 12 Week Year. So this is essentially a way of managing your time that helps you achieve your goals. But instead of setting 12 month goals, we set 12 week goals. And it means that you have to set very clear goals. And but importantly, you get to create an action plan and hold yourself accountable. And accountability, as we know, is the secret sauce. And the idea is that increases focus, increases motivation. And ultimately, it increases your results by making you break your goals down into more manageable time frames. Now, what I love with the 12 week year is that instead of having that once a year chance to reset that once a year chance to take the temperature of your life and set those goals, we get four chances a year. And I love the this sounds very negative, but I promise you it's a positive. I love the idea of resetting. So if you have a quarter, if you have a 90 day stretch, which turns into an absolute bag of shite, the 12 week year means we get to pretty much tear that up and start again in three months time. So it stops us carrying those shortfalls, carrying those failures through our entire 12 month year. So I really like the 12 week year and it's available as an audible as well. So you can listen to it on audio book. Now, there's one called the four D's method. Four D's in a day. Can you imagine? And essentially what we're doing here is categorizing tasks. And the four D's are that we can let me just read from my list. We can do it. We can delegate it. We can defer it or we can drop it. Now, I don't use the four D's.

In fact, I have my own little system, which is around. I call it the dad. So basically we delegate, we automate and we delete. And this is part of my use this a lot as part of my reflection process at the end of my week. So I have a 40 minute session where I look at this week and then set my goals and my tasks for next week. And I do this on a Sunday evening. And as part of that, when I'm looking back over what I've achieved over the last seven days, I'm continually questioning what could I be delegating? What could I be automating? What was unnecessary and can be deleted from my future tasks? So look into the four D's method or use my dad framework if you want to. And it really helps you prioritize things and make sure that only the most important things can be worked on. And then finally, the big one for me, the big change in 2022 was jumping into bullet journaling. And this was set up by a very curious chap, actually. His name is Ryder Carroll. Bit of a dish, but a bit of a nerd as well, which is a fatal combination for me, darlings. And he basically developed this system of staying organized, staying on top of tasks and appointments and bigger projects. And he's been sharing it now for about 10 years, I think. And the method is huge. It's got a massive following. And what people like about it is that it's hugely customizable. So basically, you start your bullet journal on the very bare bones, the very basics of what Ryder came up with all those years ago. And then it becomes very quickly something that's very personalized and you have your own layout for different types of information. So your daily to do's and your monthly calendars and your projects. And basically, it's like a like a to do list on acid. I mean, it really does go a lot further than that. And it's a great way of capturing ideas, organizing ideas. But what I find really interesting is that Ryder Carroll was I don't know if he still is, but he was a digital product designer. He was a digital engineer. But the bullet journal, of course, is old school. It's a paper journal. And there are a few apps that float around the outside these days, of course. But essentially, it's still a paper and pen exercise. Jump into YouTube if you want a complete time suck. Jump into YouTube and search for bullet journals and have a look at how people have set their journals up. And with a lot of irony, have a look at minimal bullet journal setups because it's certainly nothing like minimal. But overall, I'm finding the bullet journal hugely flexible, brilliant way to stay organized.

And I'm really, really enjoying it. So that's the one that kind of stuck for me. And I've been bullet journaling now for about eight or nine months. So in summary, my darlings, please keep in mind that failure is not an option. It's going to be when people say failure is not an option. It means that you can't fail at all. What I'm saying is that failure is not optional. There will be failures along your journey. And I think my biggest message for you today, my dears, is that you are an incredible work of art. And a beautiful example of what nature can achieve. And that failure is not a reflection of your personal worth. It's not a reflection of your ability. It doesn't say anything about you as a human being or a person apart from the fact that you tried. Everybody fails. It doesn't mean that you're less intelligent. It doesn't mean you have less potential. It's your opportunity to learn from your mistakes. Grow as an individual. And turn into that glorious blossom. That wonderful, beautiful human being that, of course, you are destined to be. So I hope that's been useful to you. If it has, reach out. Phil at buildyoursalon.com You know I love hearing from my salon owner friends. And if there's a topic that you'd like me to tackle in the next season of the Build Your Salon podcast, then please reach out and let me know because, you know, I'm flying blind here really. Just guessing through my coaching conversations what might be useful to the world at large. If there's something that you would love to hear me talk about, then please reach out. Phil at buildyoursalon.com I can't wait to hear from you. Just seven short days until I'm coming in your ears again, darlings. Until we speak again. Take care. Sit down and see what's going on With the queen of salons Hair, beauty and more Successful tips for business owners Call on Build Your Salon