How do you feel when you think about your Salon and your Salon team, when you think about your week ahead? Are you excited and motivated, or is there a part of you which is a little bit fearful, or anxious about the week ahead? I’ve had my own Salon for fifteen years now, and on three separate occasions I have been guilty of allowing my team to hold me hostage. There are some warning signs if you get into the stage of what I call the more, more, more decease then you are probably being held hostage by that member of the team. You need to be very careful about how much you give that member of the team. Also if you’re finding that there are members of your team that just aren’t carrying out your instructions then they’re chancing their arm. What they’re saying to you in a very unsubtle way is that they believe you won’t take measures if they’re not carrying out services how you’ve asked them to. Now I need you to be brave if this is happening to you, the situation has to be sorted straight away, and we’re going to evoke our old friend the disciplinary procedure for this. So the way I would handle it is as follows: You need to speak to the member of the team informally about the work that they’re not carrying out. Sometimes that would be enough but sometimes it isn’t enough and you’ll have to go down the disciplinary procedure, and get rid of that member of the team. You need a plan in place in case you need to get rid of that member of the team. Now if you do get to a stage where you have to get rid of somebody, you won’t have to get rid of many more. It sends a strong signal to the rest of your team; it shows that you’re to be taken seriously as an employer. I hope that’s been useful to you, if it has please don’t forget to subscribe. I do a broadcast like this every single Monday and I would hate you to miss out on the content that I’m sharing. If you’ve already subscribed I’ll see you next week. Take care.

Hello and Welcome. Do you ever get frustrated with the relationship that you have with your suppliers, manufacturers and their representatives when they come into your Salon. I think it’s an under-utilised relationship and they could be adding value to a lot of businesses in a lot of different ways. So let’s get stuck in, five ways your rep could be helping you more: Free training – if a rep comes in and they have a new product that they would like you to stock, I always ask the rep to come into our team meeting and explain the product features, the benefits and the best way to sell that product through to your customers. Promotions – train your rep, what you want is a phone call, Facetime or a Skype conversation with that rep, the day or the day after they hear about that cycle of promotions. Stock control – get your reps to help with stock control. At the beginning of a supplier relationship, they will know the products that are easiest to sell; they will know the ones where you might need to stock an extra few items. Espionage – you will not get a rep to come in and tell you about what’s going on in the Salon down the street, but what they will be able to tell you in a very anonymous way how things are working in other Salons. Honestly it’s an absolute gold mine when you get that relationship right. Staff incentives – anytime you have a new product which is being added to your range, I would definitely ask them for some sort of staff incentive, get them to talk through the new product, talk about the feature, the benefits and by the way we’ve got this fantastic staff incentive as well. I hope that’s been useful to you, if you’ve got anything to add to the conversation head over to the Build Your Salon Facebook page. Don’t forget to hit subscribe, I do a broadcast like this every single Monday and I would hate you to miss out on the content that I’m sharing. Until next week, take care.

Hello and welcome, actually this week it’s Hola y bienvenido because I’m speaking to you today, very early in the morning before it gets too hot, on my roof terrace in my new house in Spain. This week my message to you is that I’d like you to slow down, take a bit more time. I’ve seen a very distressing trend in Salons over the last few years and we’re getting addicted to express services, we’re getting addicted to these little nuggets of service that we’re passing onto clients at a very low cost, and banging them out at a very rapid rate. Now I’m not suggesting that we get rid of all express services, they are what I see as a profit maximizer, so they’re an add-on; they’re a filling for those little gaps that you get during your day in your column. They shouldn’t be something that we rely on day in and day out and this is what’s happening. So I want you to ask yourself when you’re doing an express service, is this the very best job that you could do for that client? If she’s having an express service, have you got all the time that you need to pass on the information and aftercare advice that you need to. In an express service have you got time to make her feel special, I don’t think you have. The danger I think over time is that we’re not paying attention to our craft anymore. What we’re not doing is actually the best job that we can to impress people, with the experience that they can get. I’d like you to pay attention to what’s going on in the barbering Industry, because barbering has had a massive resurgence over the last two to three years and it doesn’t look like it’s slowing down anytime soon either. Now this massive resurgence that’s happening in barbering isn’t happening off the back of very quick clipper cuts, it’s not even happening off the back of cheap services. It’s happening off the back of people paying into their craft, so they’re retraining in ancient barbering techniques, in excellent cutting skills, and they’re pushing out higher priced service in many instances to a much bigger audience and the audience is absolutely lapping it up. I think we could be transferring that into the hair and beauty industry as well. I think we need to pay attention to our craft, pay into the training, keep developing yourself and your team so that you’re skills are absolutely fantastic. The other thing that I think is missing particularly in Hairdressing is there’s no history, there’s no culture, with a lot of Stylist anymore. Go back, have a look at the people that formed our Industry and turned it into the trade that we’re applying today. So slow down and start moving away from the express services, push the experience, build your training, and build your craft. I hope that’s been useful to you, if it has don’t forget to subscribe. I do a video like this actually maybe not quite like this every Monday, and I would hate you to miss out on the content that I’m sharing. Until then take care.

33. Could YOU be the reason your salon isn't more successful? by Phil Jackson from BuildYourSalon.com

For more help and info, go to buildyoursalon.com Hello and Welcome. Today we’re talking about Salon Memberships. If you’ve ever struggled with cash flow in your Salon, or to stand out from your competition locally, I think Memberships could be really helpful for you. So what I’ve got for you today is five pointers to set you on the right track: Pricing - What I can tell you is that from the customer’s point of view there needs to be a financial incentive. They’re going to need some kind of discount, but it doesn’t need to be as big a discount as you think. There is a certain amount of value that you can build in by making it feel like a club, like something slightly more exclusive that has value to it, so you don’t need to discount quite so much. A small element of your clientele will pay because it’s a predictable stream for them; it’s a lot easier for them to budget if they’re on a predictable monthly outcome. Tiered plans - Now if you’re only offering Membership in one form, I’m afraid you missed the point. What you’ve got is a really limited range which is appealing to a small amount of your clientele. It makes absolute sense for you to offer different Membership tiers. It’s still true that twenty percent of your customers will buy a premium version of your product or service if you make it available to them and it makes good sense value wise. So make sure that when you’re doing your Memberships you have more than one tier to offer them. Keep it simple, really simple - You have to keep it achingly simple, not only for your customers, but also to help your staff sell Memberships. The simplest way to do it I think is to make your Memberships unlimited. If you sign up to one of the Membership packages in my Salon, you are entitled to for example as many haircuts as you like in a year. Yes, it can feel a little bit scary but after a couple of months you start to find a pace and a rhythm with your spend and it’s a pace and a rhythm with your frequency of visit. Don’t be afraid, keep it simple. Leave room for upsells - In year one on our very premium version, you were allowed as many haircuts, hair colours, in Salon conditioning treatments and free retail products as you wanted. Now if you’ve got targets in your Salon one of those targets may well be on upsell. The problem was if you were coming in on my Premium range on my Memberships, there was nothing left to sell you. So we scaled back, took out a couple of those elements so that there’s still room to upsell and maximise profitability. Allow cancellations - It’s really tempting to sign people up in an iron clad contract and make sure that they’re paying you this retained income for the next twelve months. You need to check your regulations locally – here in the UK if you don’t allow people cancellations, the contract changes in nature and it becomes a contract of credit. There’s a lot more regulation around credit contracts, so make sure it’s an ability for your customer to get out of the contract if they really need to. I hope that’s been useful to you, throw your comments below if you’ve got any questions. If you haven’t subscribed already please hit subscribe now, I do a video like this every single Monday and I would hate you to miss out on the fantastic content that I’m sharing. If you’ve already subscribed I will see you again next week. Take care.

Welcome, and today we’re talking about individual team member targets. What I’m going to share with you is three targets that I set my own team here, in my award winning Salon. Now it may well be that there are times when you need to add more targets, and that varies according with the performance of the employee and also the stage of the career they are at. It’s really important that your team know what’s expected of them. So these are the big three that I want to share with you: Average bill - Average bill or average ticket value is one of the most important key performance indicators or KPI’s in your Salon. An average bill covers an awful lot, so if you can see that someone’s average bill is very low, there are parts of her job that she’s just not doing. An average bill that’s on the increase indicates somebody who’s taking retail seriously or that’s also very good at selling additional products or services when somebody comes in to your Salon. So you want to see a nice high average bill, set a benchmark for the level that the person is at in their career and also monitor it over time. Retention - I think client count is slightly old fashioned and what I’m more interested in is retention for this reason; I can increase your client count by promotional activity and I will see a bump in the number of customers that come into the Salon. The retention rate shows me how pleased my customers are with the Stylists or Therapists performance, so that’s what I’m interested in. If you’re starting to see retention on the slide, you need to intervene really quickly because somebody with very low retention is not an asset to your business. Utilisation - This is how busy a person is, how much of the day that you’re paying them for are they actually occupied making you money. The reason we look at utilisation is because your marketing activity has a huge impact on utilisation of your team, but it may not be impacting on the average bill. Utilisation can be impacted purely by the marketing spend that you’re putting into your business. So we monitor the utilisation, if you’ve got somebody who has continually low utilisation despite your marketing efforts, again perhaps you need to address that in a slightly more aggressive way, it may even be that it’s time to move that person on. In my Salon we have two bench marks for utilisation; we have an eighty percent target utilisation. Below sixty percent we have what is called an intervention. If there’s still a problem with utilisation after six weeks of intervention, we would start looking at your contract and potentially reducing your hours in a hope to increase that utilisation number. I hope that’s been useful to you, if you’ve got something that you’d like to add either pop it in the comments below or head over to the Build Your Salon Facebook page where I would love to hear from you. I hope you’ve already subscribed, if you haven’t hit subscribe now. I have a video and a podcast out like this every single Monday, and I would hate you to miss out on the content that I share with you in the future. Until next week, take care.

Welcome, and today we’re talking about one to ones. So these are the individual meetings that you’re going to be having with every member of your team to help them hit the targets that you need to, so that you can achieve Salon success. Today I’ve got five tips for you on running one to ones: 1. These are called one to ones and not meetings so call them one to ones, keep the meetings for the capability and disciplinary process. 2. Frequency and format of the meeting - How often you meet with a member of the team would depend on where they’re at in their career and also their performance against their targets. 3. Feedback - The beginning of each meeting you should be feeding back the performance of the team member over the last period. Summarise what it is that you’re expecting from them, but make sure you end on a high. 4. Targets - I expect a member of the team to set themselves an easy target, those targets need to feed through and add up to what you need the Salon to achieve to hit your goals. 5. Keeping records - You need to make copious notes; firstly to refresh your memory and remind yourself what it is that you agreed; secondly you’re starting to cover your ass a little bit. I hope that’s been useful to you, if you’ve got something that you want to add, please head over to the Build Your Salon Facebook page or pop it in the comments below. If you haven’t subscribed already, hit subscribe now I put content like this out every single Monday and I would hate you to miss out on what I’m sharing. If you’ve already subscribed I will see you next week, take care.

Get the MP3 and transcript here: http://buildyoursalon.uk/living-working-partner Welcome, and today we’re talking about working and living with the same person, how we’re going to run our businesses and our relationships successfully when your partner at home is also your partner in the business. If you get it wrong it can have dire consequences not only on the business front, but it can end a relationship as well. I’ve lived and worked with the same person for about twenty years now. Now there are some amazing benefits, but there are a lot of down sides as well; you’ve got to be really careful. Firstly you’ve got to start with the end in mind. Are you going to be selling the business at some stage, is the idea that one partner leaves the business, what happens if you split up? You need to have these difficult conversations before you embark on working together. Sometimes they are hard conversations, but you have to get an agreement in the end. Secondly you have to agree on the big stuff, you have to be pushing your business in the same direction. You will destroy your relationship and your business if you’re pulling in different directions. If you agree on the big stuff, the strategy for the business, the long term goals, when you have arguments all you’re arguing about is how you’re going to get there. You’ve agreed on the destination, you’re only arguing about the slightly different routes that you want to take. Point number three is you need to be crystal clear on your roles in the business, not only for your own sanity, but also if you’re not clear on the roles there’s a real waste of resource because you end up with two people doing something that one person could do a lot more effectively. This is particularly important if you have staff; they need to know who it is that they go to otherwise they’re very confused and end up not communicating effectively with the Management team at all. Point number four is you have to manage or be managed. In every element of your business someone needs to be in charge. If you’re not willing to be in charge, then you’re going to have to hand over control to the other person and not interfere. There are times when you have to toss a coin to figure out who’s going to be in charge of an area of your business and this happens with personal relationships in the Salon, because there will be times when you’d have to have difficult conversations. So you have to be that clear about your roles, you have to manage or be managed. And finally say what’s on your mind, when it occurs to you. It is impossible to put artificial boundaries into your home and work relationship. If you put these artificial constraints, what you do is you put undue pressure on your relationship. So if you need to get something of your chest get it out there, and then you can put work behind you and start focussing on your personal relationship instead. I hope that’s been useful to you, if it has please don’t forget to subscribe I put content out like this every single Monday, and I would hate you to miss out on what I’m sharing with you. If you’ve got a successful work and personal relationship with somebody, put it in the comments below or share it over on the Build Your Salon Facebook page. Until then I’ll see you next week.

Welcome, and today we’re talking all about work life balance. As far as work life balance is concerned though I think I’ve got three strategies that could really serve you well. I have a problem with the expression work life balance; I think it puts pressure on us as human beings that we should be spending fifty percent of our energy and effort on our businesses and the other fifty percent outside having some kind of other life. I think that where you set your percentage is entirely up to you, stop beating yourself up, stop trying to move to this fifty-fifty Utopian world. Firstly, you need to know what’s needed. This goes back to your goal setting. You will never achieve work life balance where ever you’ve decided to split unless you are crystal clear about what it is that you’re trying to achieve in the areas of your life. Once you know what’s needed it’s also much easier to figure out what’s not needed. Where are you willing to spend your time, your effort and your energy? Where you set those percentages is entirely up to you, but then what I want you to do is revisit your goals. Somebody much cleverer than me once said you can have it all, you can’t have it all right now. Secondly you’ve got to plan, and plan to death and be ruthless with your planning. Once I take on a new Salon for mentoring we go through a goal setting exercise similar to what we’ve discussed in item one. Next I give them two weeks after we’ve done the goal setting, I pick up their journal and I should be able to see what goals that person has for themselves. They have these ambitious goals, they really want to achieve at home and in their business, and when I open their journals I see a to do list of things that have just come along that day or the day before. You can’t plan that way, once you’re really clear about your goal setting, I want you to block out time on a weekly basis, get really disciplined with your planning so that you can start moving towards those goals. But also it means that you are going to get really good at saying no. I do all my planning on a Sunday evening, it takes me about an hour to revisit my goals, allocate my time and make sure that everything is as it should be for the week coming up. If anybody calls me with anything during the week unless it’s a dire emergency or a golden opportunity to move me much closer to a goal much quicker, I’m afraid it’s a no and you need to be that ruthless as well if you’re ever going to achieve that balance. Lastly you play the long game. Just because you’ve set those percentages for your time, effort and energy does not mean that you have to spend it like that every week. For example, when I get at the end of my three-year plan, I should have allocated the right percentages in the right direction. So as long as you’re playing the long game, as long as you’re achieving that balance over time, it’s okay for one area of your life to dominate in the short term. I hope that’s been useful to you, if it has don’t forget to subscribe. I’m putting a video like this and a podcast like this out every single Monday, I would hate you to miss out on the content that I’m sharing. Take care I’ll see you soon.

Welcome, and today we’re talking all about how we can use Facebook advertising as an effective tool to help us recruit into our Salons. What I’ve put together today you can use as a checklist next time you’re doing Facebook advertising for recruitment or a trouble shooting list to see where you went wrong last time. Market - this is your audience in Facebook terms, first thing though you do realise you’re going to pay for this right? I still think Facebook advertising is a cost effective way of reaching your audience. How do we reach the audience with Facebook? You have to know who you’re talking to and also use your Facebook advertising tool called interests and behaviours, so that you identify your target market by the things that they’re interested in. I do limit my adverts geographically, but don’t limit yourself too far and don’t narrow your search to far geographically. Don’t limit it by age, keep it broad as far as age limit is concerned, focus on the interests and behaviours instead. Now the message: try to engage with your audience on an emotional level and start to push the features away from your advertising a little bit. Media - we need to keep it very light, bubbly and social. You will increase your engagement of Facebook advertising if you keep people on platform. Marketing is about building a relationship slowly and over time, do not go from your Facebook post to a full on face to face interview in one step. Keep it light and casual. Do something eye catching on Facebook. People will connect to you in a much better way. Lastly keep the conversation alive even if it’s bad timing, because when you may need staff you’ve immediately got a pool of people who you can call on to start to fill those positions. I hope that’s been useful to you, if there’s something that you would like me to cover in one of my video’s, please get in touch. Send me an email at [email protected] or find me on Facebook or Twitter. The recruitment video I reference in the podcast is at https://youtu.be/Gg-8c3Racrw I hope you’ve already subscribed to this channel, if you have I will see you again next week, if not click subscribe now because I would hate you to miss out on the content that I’m putting out every Monday. See you soon.