by Greg Milner | Aug 23, 2011 | Featured, The Smell of Success
What works in Australia, New Zealand or…Finland, works in Canada too. From Kleinberg, Ontario, salon owner Robert Amado of Amado Salon writes how his membership of the Worldwide Salon Marketing Inner Circle marketing & mentoring program has changed his whole view of what success in business really looks like.
Robert Amado (Canada) is finding inspiration and instant results as a Member of the Inner Circle Premium marketing & mentoring program
“I have been a hairstylist for many years, 15 of them to be exact. You can get really good at doing your craft as an artist, but then one day you get a brilliant idea of opening your own salon. You think to yourself ‘heck I’m tired of making everyone else money it’s time I make it for me.’ Here’s where it all starts!!!
When you go to cosmetology school they teach you the art of hairdressing which is GREAT but what they don’t teach you is how to market a successful business.
This is where World Wide Salon Marketing comes into play.
I opened my doors in the early part of 2010 and that’s pretty much it. I knew how to do hair but then there’s the paper work, then there’s managing people and the hiring and firing and making orders and so on and so on. I was headed for the crazy train! I made a few calls to find out about WSM and what they were all about and decided that I was going to do this.
Candian salon owner Robert Amado and staff with their award for the best salon in their area – “I wanted to share this with you and tell you that this will be my third year in business and I have just won an award as being the best in Vaughan. Holy crap, Amado salon has just be voted as the best in our community and with all the other salons around us that is quite the honour!! Thanks WSM!
What was even sweeter was I had 90 days to try it… but once you try 30 days and you see the great response you get, then who cares about a 90 day trial?
WSM gave me my personal coach, Alberto Cirillo, who mentored me for a year giving me tons of ideas and how to operate properly, and I couldn’t have achieved any of it with his guidance. What made me feel comfortable was that Alberto also owns and operates a salon (like all the WSM coaches.)
I will never forget the first words he said to me which opened my eyes. He said if something were to happen to me where I wasn’t able to do hair anymore what would I do?
I had never been asked this question and with having a family of my own to provide for, it was the most important question ever asked. At that moment I knew that Alberto Cirillo and the entire WSM organization was here to help me in any way possible.
The first promo I did was a $270 value for only $99. This promo brought me 29 new clients at almost 1 new client a day calling in to the salon for a total of $2900 in services. So now I knew it was working and so was my staff!! The whole program is almost impossible to finish, actually you can’t finish it just keeps going and going. If you want to be ‘Pierre the Artist’ this is not the program for you, BUT if you want to be an entrepreneur, if youwant to run your business instead of your business running you, IF you are willing to work on your business instead of in your business then now you are definitely willing to do something brilliant!
I will honestly tell you that there is no easy way! It’s work and its fun, and if you can learn to eat an elephant one bite at a time then you’re on that right track! I would recommend WSM to anyone that wants to succeed!”
Robert Amado, Amado Salon 905-893-3686
e to discuss your application.
by Greg Milner | Jul 21, 2011 | Marketing Superstars, The Right Mindset
Kerri Ryan’s Water Lily Day Spa in Clonmel, Co Tipperary has TRIPLED sales – including 717 new clients in the past three months alone
If you’re all too ready to blame ‘the economy’ for your salon or spa’s miserable sales, empty chairs, unused treatment rooms, this report with either
1) make you want to punch someone, or
2) inspire you and light a beacon of hope.
Ireland was once the ‘Tiger of Europe”. But, like Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece, the Irish economy is now on the ropes, saddled with debt they can’t repay, on the edge of bankruptcy.
Naturally, the Irish aren’t spending any money, largely because they don’t have any. Really??
That’s a surprise to Kerri Ann Ryan, owner of Water Lily Day Spa in Clonmel, Co Tipperary. Kerri joined the Inner Circle marketing & mentoring program in October, 2010. As she reports in this long email received this week, her sales and new client figures have gone through the roof.
“January until now, turnover has tripled already compared to last year’s figures.
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Water Lily Day Spa – thriving in the heart of economically-ravaged Ireland
717 new clients in the last 3 months due to the ‘Queen of Referrals program and loyalty card system. (Tried Queen of Referrals last year and it didn’t work. I offered vouchers worth 75 euro to my regulars and I couldn’t understand why clients weren’t interested. I was so frustrated as I believed this was such an amazing offer. Anyway, changed the idea around – now I offer 100 points on their Loyalty Cards and business is booming with referrals. I know you said if it doesn’t work one way try it from another angle.)
- Super Summer Offer (Hollywood Woman) Package: took in over 3000 euro in 1 week. Offer is available Mon, Tue & Wed only so it has filled up slack times, clients have upgraded their packages so my early week takings are sometimes better than the weekend now.
- Printed 5000 flyers with same offer last week. (Luckily I got your CD set in the post and on it you reminded a guy that if something works, do it again until it stops working. He seemed shocked at the idea and it made me realise what a bloody idiot I was for thinking the same way) Believe it or not, I wasn’t actually going to do this offer again for another while as I wanted to keep it “special” and “limited”. As soon as the huge tax bill came in the door I got the finger out fairly lively!! I intend to do a weekly drop to different housing estates in the area. (So far 10 new bookings and 4 bought the package also.)
- Off the tools finally. Still in Salon a lot, but now I finally have a chance to look around me and see what steps I need to be making for the future of the business. Also it is great to be able to give my clients my full attention and sort out any issues quickly.
- I am expanding the salon as I mentioned, to keep up with demand. I have hired a Manager now to deal with the staff and running of salon while I focus on Marketing. I am in the processes of implementing Julies Toolkit.
(Julie Piantadosi’s Total Salon Solutions polices, procedures and staff management system. Not yet available to non-Inner Circle member salons)
- To be honest I have done very little with the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit® so far. I haven’t even scratched the surface and I am thrilled with the results. The potential is HUGE! Half the battle is changing my mindset. When we first spoke last year you said to me that I should be aiming for March this year to be off the tools. Honestly, I thought ” I wish” but had at least a 100 reasons why it wouldn’t be possible. Originally I didn’t imagine myself being off the tools for another few years. Of course business is very hard in Ireland right now but if the customer service is right and you are implementing different ideas and offers at the same time, there is no reason for it not to work.
My goal is to get over to Australia next year to one of your Bootcamps. The facebook forums have been a godsend as they keep you motivated and add new ideas to the mix. I am delighted I joined WSM. I have come across a lot of other members and yourself also, who I now aspire to be like. Can’t wait to get all the Toolkit into motion and start planning a prosperous future.
Kind Regards,
Kerri Ann
Congratulations Kerri Ann. You’re an inspiration to all salon owners, and particularly your fellow Irish business owners.
by Greg Milner | Apr 21, 2011 | Advertising Tips
The article that reveals the truth behind ‘scam ads’ created by ad agencies. Click to show a full-sized image
For years I’ve been warning salon & spa owners that entrusting their advertising dollars to the so-called ‘creatives’ at ad agencies is akin to standing in the shower tearing up $50 notes. Now, here’s proof, if any more were needed.
In my local paper this week, a long feature article from the head of one of this country’s best-known advertising outfits, The Brand Agency. Managing director Steve Harris out-and-out admits that
Ad agencies create ads to win awards, not to sell your product.
His very first paragraph is a killer:
“Creative advertising awards have long been the currency by which advertising agencies and their creative staff measure their success and ability.”
Not, you will note, by the quantity of actual sales the ad produces!
“Creative awards have no relationship whatsoever to the delivery of results to advertisers, the companies which pay for the ads to be developed and produced.”
And to add insult to injury,
“To produce these ‘scam ads’ the agency often finds a willing client to approve the workd and then funds the advertising production and pays for the advertising space to run the ad…these clients are taken on by the agency purely for the opportunity to produce an ad that will hopefully win an award.
“To win an award an ad must be the one most liked by a panel of advertising ‘creatives’, based on a set of creative criteria. It doesn’t actually have to sell anything…”
Well gee, roll me down the road and call me dusty.
It’s a refreshing admission from within the mysterious world of advertising itself that the smart business owner will keep his or her own counsel, continue to advertise and market their salons & spas ‘our’ way, and don’t get sucked in by the fools so willing to take your money to stroke their own ‘creative’ egos.
As famous ad man David Ogilvie was fond of saying,
“creative is what sells”
He might have added, “Not what wins awards.”
by Greg Milner | Apr 20, 2011 | New Zealand, The Smell of Success
Every salon owner loves the thought of getting more new clients through their business. It means an increase in turnover, profit, more product sales and so on. But what it also means for a lot of salon owners is more time ‘on the tools’. And that’s scary when you are already working 50 hours a week trying to run a business, make appointments, do the GST, pay the wages, do the marketing and everything else on top of that!
Hana Snowden, Owner of Ataahua Day Spa in Lower Hutt, NZ
But for WSM member Hana Snowden of Ataahua Day Spa in Lower Hutt near Wellington, getting 10 new clients a week means FREEDOM.
Hana has been in our marketing and mentoring program now for 8 months and in that time she has seen her business grow and grow. Hana was a Beauty Therapist at the time of joining and has worked incredibly hard and taken lots of action to build her business. She soon realised the value of working ‘on’ her business instead of ‘in it’ servicing just one client at a time.
For those of you who have read ‘the E-myth’ you will be familiar with the concept of working more on your business as opposed to in it. For those who haven’t read it, it’s a MUST read so go out and get your hands on a copy asap!
Hana could spend an hour or 2 putting together her marketing campaigns that would bring her in lots of customers as well as thousands of dollars, instead of being in a treatment room making 50 bucks for a waxing appointment.
And this growth in turnover and customers allowed her the freedom to make the decision to pull herself ‘off the tools’ once and for all. She set a date (15th March) and told all her customers that as of that date she was a business owner, not a beauty therapist and would be handing her clients over to an employee.
Now I am not saying that being a beauty therapist or stylist is a bad thing. Rather being the owner of your business is a better thing, instead of being an employee/slave to it!
And Hana knows that should a staff member be sick, or someone leaves and has to be replaced then she can step back in, albeit temporarily, and cover for them – she has that option available to her.
And if Hana has been getting 10 new clients a week up to now, imagine what it will be like now that she can focus even more on the marketing.
10 new clients on average a week is 520 new clients per year. If each of those clients has a value to Hana of $1,000 each then she is looking at an increase in turnover of half a million this year alone. Heck, even if she kept just 50% of them that’s still a quarter of a million!
Too many business owners (not just salon owners) make the mistake of creating a job for themselves and becoming chained to their businesses. For many, the only way they feel they can make more money is to work more in the business so they can cover the bills. But the business will just continue to suffer if no time is being spent on the important stuff, the marketing and getting systems in place. And so the vicious cycle continues.
And I am talking from personal experience. Just over 4 years ago my wife Rachael was working as a Beauty Therapist in our salon D’Aguiar: hair.skin.nails in Auckland. She’d spend about 70 hours a week in there doing treatments, I would hardly ever see her, her hair was falling out due to stress and she was suffering severe RSI.
Just like Hana, we made the call (with the help at that time of Greg Milner) to pull Rachael off the tools, as nervous as we were that the clients would leave and the business would fail. Well, of course the clients didn’t leave, the salon flourished and today we own 4 massively successful businesses (including the salon which is run by a manager and we pop in maybe once a week).
If someone had told me 4 years ago that I’d be running 4 businesses then I would have thought they were mad and laughed in their face. But today, I understand the concept of working on the business, not in it. So I still have plenty of time to spend with Rachael and our new 2 week old baby. It’s all because of the world-famous Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit®
by Greg Milner | Apr 7, 2011 | Selling Salon Products, The Right Mindset
Inner Circle member Jane Mason of Pure Day Spa in Caloundra was facing a double challenge: not only was her primary market tourists – her spa is in a hotel, with little or no walk-by traffic – but she’s in the heart of the area devastated by the Queensland floods this past January.
As Jane writes below, she had to take MASSIVE ACTION – and used some classic “Sales Thinking” to come up with a clever twist on the famous Queen of Referrals system in the Toolkit.
It worked brilliantly – and Jane has generously shared the marketing pieces she uses in this campaign with other Members.
“It is quite basic and the letter could most probably do with tweaking. I rolled this out to 4 of my top hotels, as at a recent meeting they all said they were struggling and to be honest so was I (and looking at closing the door).
MASSIVE ACTION was needed. My salon has a 30/70 split in favour of the tourist due to us being inside a hotel and very little walk past. Although not directly flooded, a lot of my regular holiday clients are from Brisbane, Grantham, Toowoomba and the Lockyer valley.
The way it works is simple, I send the hotels 60 vouchers to the value of $25, which they can do with as they wish… Staff incentives, booking incentives, hotel Guests and residents.
When they run out they call and I take them some more. I keep track of the vouchers and at the end of the month the winning hotel gets a $100 voucher. Some of the hotels have gone to town with it, putting posters in lifts etc, others are a bit more discreet.
We gave out 240 vouchers in March and got back 67 (the girls also tried to upsell on the pedi’s so that in actual fact we didn’t give anything away).
The average spend per service $122.75. We have found that even if they don’t use the voucher the seed has been planted and they call us first without looking around town at what’s on offer.
We also had an offer that was value added that they couldn’t use the voucher on which the girls upsold (some were better than others at doing this). We have found that hotels that didn’t have them were phoning me to get in on the act so in April we have rolled this out to another 8.”
Now that’s what we call smart marketing. And obviously, getting results.
67 new clients at an average spend of $122 = YOU do the maths!
of the entire system.
