The Top TEN ways to kick off your 2025 was the MOST downloaded episode to date! Go give it a listen and what things did you stick to so far? What needs to change or stay the same! Tell me what has been working for you!

 00:00:05 ]Welcome to the Hair Hustle Podcast. I' m Heather

Podlesney, your salon coach dedicated to helping stylists master the business

side of beauty. Whether you' re starting your journey behind the chair or you'

re a seasoned pro looking to level up, this podcast is for you. Each week we'

ll dive into the tips and tricks you need to run a successful salon business

with topics that will change the way you work and earn. From budgeting hacks to

help you keep more of what you make, to time management tips that will keep

your schedule stress-free, and the strategies for boosting your retail sales

and nailing that next promotion. Get ready to build your dream business without

burning out. Together we' ll cut through the noise and get to the root of what

makes your salon thrive.

[ 00:00:47

] So grab your shears,

turn up the volume, and let' s hustle. Hey, hey, welcome to episode six of the

Hair Hustle Podcast. Thank you so much for being here. I definitely have to

celebrate a little bit with you. So with just five episodes, I have had almost

150 downloads. And so if you are here, I really truly want to say thank you so

much. If you feel like these are helping you in your hair career, please feel

free to share with any salon owner, any stylist. I am so happy to help and I' m

so happy you' re here. Let' s dive right into it. Today we are going to go a

little bit longer because we are going to talk about the end of the year

follow-up and coming up with a tracking guide for yourself.

[ 00:01:38

] One of the biggest

things that I have learned in my sales career is when you get to the end of the

year, it' s simply looking at everything that you' ve done over the year and

reflecting. In the beginning of the next year, it' s simply about what worked

really well and what didn' t. And reflecting on those two things can really

help you to be a little bit better in your business for 2025. With that, we ve

got about 10 different things. I know that that' s a lot for me, but they' re

all very important and it' s all something that I want you guys to take away.

So take one of them. Take two of them. Take three of them. Take four of them.

Take five of them.

[ 00:02:26

] Take all 10, whatever

you have to do. I want you to make sure that you are at least 1% to 2% better

after this episode and that this is something that you can implement for 2025.

We are coming up into November, which is so crazy and I know how busy each and

every one of you get behind the chair. That is why I feel like it' s important

to talk about it right now. This way, you can take it and as soon as the hustle

and bustle and craziness of being behind the chair during the holiday season

starts to fizzle, this is something that I want you to be able to take. Okay?

And maybe you don' t have a super hustly and bustly holiday season in the books

and that' s okay too.

[ 00:03:15

] Maybe it' s something

that you wanted. Maybe it' s something that you didn' t. However, if it' s not

super busy and it' s something that you wanted to be super busy, these are all

things that you can take and you can reflect on for 20/25 or maybe you can even

take them and reflect on them in your last three months and start implementing

them today. So let' s dive right into it. We are going to go over your year-

end follow- up and your tracking. So the first thing that we' re going to do is

pretty obvious. We are going to review and analyze our sales data. Wah, wah. I

know no one likes to talk about that. Here' s three things that we' re going to

do.

[ 00:03:55

] We' re going to look at

our top selling products. So if you' re a salon owner or a commissioned salon

owner, you are literally going to look at what SKUs in retail sold the most. We

want to break it down by, did you sell the most hair care? Did you sell the

most skin care, hair care, shampoos and conditioners? If you don' t know, that'

s okay. That' s why we' re here. Styling products. So that' s like your hair

sprays. That is your styling aid, your smoothing products, things like that.

We' re going to break down what categories sold the most. Next up, we' re going

to go into our top 10 SKUs. The most important thing about your top 10 SKUs is

if you do not have at least five to six back, which means five to six in

inventory or on your shelf, that' s what needs to happen for ' 25.

[ 00:04:42

] If you don' t have the

retail budget for it, we' re going to try to figure out how to get the retail

budget for it. We typically say we need at least two to three SKUs of each

product on your shelf. Why? Because no one wants to take the last one. So if you'

re a salon owner, you' re So typically three is what' s recommended. This was

shared with me years ago, and it' s one to show, one to go, and one to grow. So

even if you can only afford one to show and one to go, that' s what we need. So

we do not want onesies. We want at least two to three products. And then of

your top selling SKUs, you need at least six to eight.

[ 00:05:19

] Does that mean that if

you only have three of your top sellers, that' s terrible? Terrible? No, but

that' s just a goal that you need to build up to for 2025 for your retail area.

Next part is to track what happened with each of your promotions. I have a

really great year-end promotional calendar that is a freebie. Please, you can

reach out to me. I will actually leave the link right here in the show notes.

Please go grab that, and that actually takes you right into January and

February. You can start a promotion today with that sheet. And the other thing

that we' re going to get started with that promotion, that promotional sheet,

is we are going to then, after all of our promotions are done, we' re going to

look at how did each promotion go.

[ 00:06:01

] So if you' ve been

doing your promotions since January, it' s now November or December, how did

your January and February promotion go? Did you have to pivot? Did you try pick

a kiss in February and it was a flop? Did you try scratch-offs in March and it

was like, yes, we are doing this again? Great. So we' re going to go through

and analyze all of that data and our promotions. Do you have to be completely

tech-savvy for all of this? Absolutely not. When it comes to tracking

promotions, I always suggest at the end of each promotion, simply run your

reports on how sales went from this year to year prior, especially if you' re

new to this, and you can take handwritten notes.

[ 00:06:46

] You can put them on

your laptop in one file, whatever it is that you need. It does not have to be.

It doesn' t have to be crazy, but those are all things that you' re going to

want to track. Also, on that promotional planner and you' re tracking that success,

it' s not just retail. You also need to be checking out your add-on services.

Did you do an add-on service in that time period and how did it go? Did you

maybe have too many things going on in that time frame that no one even focused

on the service promotion? Or was a specific service promotion a complete

success and then you look at the product line and realize, it was a super

success in March, but here we were in August and that line completely died down

in our sales.

[ 00:07:32

] Did we just stop

talking about it? Do we need to have two animations a year along with that

service? Do we need to have two animations a year with that service add-on? All

of those things, we need to sit down and we need to figure out so that we can

come up with a really great plan for 2025. The next step in your year-end

follow-up is going to be about your clients. We' re actually going to gather

our client and guest data and any insights that we need to know. There' s a

couple of things here. We do need to make sure that we' re running reports for

this one specifically. We' re going to look at all of our clients.

[ 00:08:07

] We want to look at our

top-selling guests because that' s also something we could do some type of a

campaign even now. If we looked at our top-selling guests and we did a

gratitude campaign for our top 10, top 20 guests, that' s always really fun.

They could get entered to win something. We want to make sure that they' re

getting a credit. It' s something that just makes people feel good. Is it going

to drive sales necessarily? It will drive a positive outlook around your

business and if you have the budget to do so it will drive sales in the future.

Is it going to have like that turnaround return? It' s not. So, if that

Something that you need, maybe that isn' t something that you do.

[ 00:08:45

] But that' s always a

really great one. So if you can find a dryer or a curling iron or something

that' s been sitting in that back room or a thing of products that' s been

sitting in that back room or a thing of products that' s been sitting in that

back room, you can put together in a basket and simply do a gratitude campaign

for your top 10 people they' re your VIPs. That' s always a great one, okay?

That' s how we' re gonna identify those repeat buyers and that' s how we' re

also going to come up with a promotion that you can start right now. Now that

you Ve gone through and gathered all of your guest data, client data, and you'

re checking things out a couple things, two things that are really important.

[ 00:09:17

] Number one is your

average service ticket; this is is key when it comes to wanting to help your

stylist or if you' re an independent stylist make more money and it also helps

you to understand your business more. What is the average service ticket? That

means is how much on average the guest is spending, simply look at your service

sales so we' re going to add up all of our service sales and we' Re going to

divide that by the number of guests that we have, you can simply set a goal to

raise your average service ticket and that will help to make your salon more

popular, profitable, so we can dive deeper into average service ticket but

that' s a number that we want to know, so then this way we know what we need to

do um how we know exactly how much our guest is spending and then what we would

need to do for 2025.

[ 00:10:05

] The other thing that I

want to keep you guys in the loop on is the average order value, which is

called AOV in the retail world, and what that simply means is how much on

average is your guest spending on retail; but something that people don' t

understand is that the average service ticket is the average order value of the

client um I think that' s what AOV is it. Actually, the average purchase value

and then if you' re thinking about the average order value that people don' t

typically track is actually your average order value, so your aov you want to

be able to look at what people are purchasing in your retail area and what the

average order value is for that.

[ 00:10:32

] It' s not just to know

how much people are spending but it' s also how you can plan your promotions

for the next year. So, for example, if you' re looking at your average order

value in retail and it' s $59, and maybe you did a promotion back in June that

was over $60, then you get something for free. Maybe that didn' t go well. If

you would have looked at your average order value at $59, you would see that

$75 may have been a better incentive because it was just a little bit closer

and it was like one product away or one item away from getting them to that

$75.

[ 00:11:15

] So you would have

increased your average order value throughout the year, but also the promotion

may have landed a little bit better and it would have sweetened the deal a

little bit more. Those are all things to look at. We' re going to look at our

clients. We are going to see who is buying, how much they are buying in

services, and we' re also going to see how much they are spending in our retail

area. Next one is we' re going to look at and evaluate our marketing channels.

This one is huge and you can go very deep into your marketing channels. We are

going to talk about two and it' s social media and email marketing. If you are

not doing any of these, it' s okay.

[ 00:11:59

] We are an open space

here. You can start wherever you are. However, if you' re not doing anything,

your goal in this category of your marketing channels is simply going to be to

start and maybe you do need to hire someone. So if you have it in your budget,

you' re going to be able to do that. If you' Re not doing anything, you could

look into hiring someone to simply have a social media presence. You don' t

necessarily have to hire an entire marketing company at $1,500 or $2,000 a

month, but possibly looking at something that is within your budget that starts

to get you a presence and just kicks you off from where you are could be what

you need.

[ 00:12:40

] And maybe that' s even

paying a team member that you have to start getting going on your social media.

Now, if you are posting on your social media, we' re going to go through all of

our insights and we are going to go through our profile and we' re going to

look up what posts and or and or reels had the most engagement. So we need to

look up to see what did have the best engagement. So what are people liking to

see? Did you, did you possibly do a campaign and people absolutely loved it?

Did your guests love it? Did you get new guests? Was there, and this is also

when we' re kind of going to start looking at, okay, so when we' re evaluating

how many, new guests we had, maybe we had a spike in June, but maybe we also

did a social media new guest campaign.

[ 00:13:25

] So we need to make sure

what worked and why. Those are all the things that we' re going to look at when

we search in our marketing channels. The other thing is email marketing. I know

some of you are like, Heather, I do not want to do email marketing. I am going

to urge you to simply even something as simple as a weekly or monthly

newsletter. It does not have to be anything crazy, but if you are at zero and

you do not have an email list, let' s start with a weekly or a monthly

newsletter. Something that is super simple, super easy. At the end of the day,

social media is rented land on your business, okay? It can, anything can

happen. They can take things down, all of that kind of stuff.

[ 00:14:08

] At the end of the day,

you are your own voice and it is owned land. When you have your own email list,

you own all of those emails. You have the permission to use them so we are

going to use them and we are going to speak directly to them. I know that you'

re like, does anyone even open emails? Guess what: you can sign up with an

email service provider for free and you can go check that click rate if that is

if that' s what you' Re- thinking because that' s literally one of the biggest

pushbacks I get, and I think to myself I did used to think that way then I had

an email list, and then I realized how many people are clicking, and how many

people I get to talk to specifically for that.

[ 00:14:47

] I am going to challenge

you for this year coming up if you do not have an email list to simply start

with a monthly or weekly newsletter that simply shares your promotion with your

guests; Number four: we are going to measure our guest' s retention and their

loyalty. We want to know how many times our guests have been coming in, on

average, so are they at four weeks, are they at six weeks, are they at seven

weeks? This is all a standard measure, so then this way we can compare it two

years past. So for example, if you had your guests coming in in 20' 23, they

were coming in on average every four and a half weeks, and then we look at '

24, we see that on average our guests are coming in every six weeks; those are

really key points in your service sales, and they could definitely take a hit.

[ 00:15:41

] So we need to make sure

We look at our demographics as well when it comes to measuring our client

retention, because why do we have younger guests now? Maybe younger stylists

that are servicing younger guests that are doing more lived- in looks. Because

then maybe we need to think about how we run our promotions as well or are our

regular guests extending out their appointment? That' s something else that we

have to look into, so those are two things that we have to look at when we' re

looking at repeat visits up until next time. We are looking at the list for

referrals okay let. S move into the regional vin category of guest retention

and loyalty, we need to actually look at our referral and our loyalty program;

how long has it been since you revamped that referral program?

[ 00:16:24

] Because I am going to

tell you all of the accounts that I' ve been in they' ve been running the same

referral program since lord knows when. And I think can I never find anyone who

did a referral when I' m holding my own way of doing referrals. So maybe it' s

more digital. Maybe we' re going to literally text our guests that are sitting

in our seats and say, ' Can you please send this to five friends? Because I

absolutely love having you as a guest.' Or are we going to give them cards?

What does all of that look like? And we need to figure all of those things out.

Also, your loyalty program: How much are you spending on your loyalty program?

Make sure you' re going over the budgets.

[ 00:17:11

] That definitely needs

to be done monthly and...