Are you hiding your business personality under a paper bag?
Two emails, from opposite sides of the planet, got me thinking this morning; what is it about personality that makes so many business owners do everything in their power to hide it from their customers and potential markets? It seems to me that most salon & spa owners bend over backwards to use their ‘professional’ image as a shield, deliberately protecting their own life stories from the people who give them money. Or want to give them money.
One email came from a WSM Member and owner of a large and very up-market spa in the Middle East. My team and I had been working with this very talented and driven businesswoman on an extensive re-design of her online and offline marketing. At my request, she’d sent me absorbing details of her up-bringing in Russia, her childhood love of all things fashion, beauty and glamour, her move to Dubai as a young single mother knowing no English or Arabic, and the fascinating story of how she finally shunned the party life and established her now-successful spa in the heart of the city.
I wrote her a new biography based on these ‘personal’ details, complete with pictures of her with famous people such as Ariana Huffington of the Huffington Post, and Italian fashion guru Roberto Cavalli, for use in all kinds of media, online and offline. She wrote back,
“Can we skip all that personal stuff and keep it only professional?”
There followed a long, detailed and incredibly bland ‘shopping list’ of her achievements and business milestones. I wrote back:
“I disagree. It’s precisely that lack of ‘personality’ in most company executive profiles that makes them all so ‘beige’ and dreary. People in business are generally so afraid of exposing any sign of having a real personality or personal history, hiding it behind a purely ‘professional’ front, that they all tend to blend seamlessly together in a blur of sameness. Do you really think Sir Richard Branson would be where he is now, do you really think Steve Jobs (Apple) would have been able to create such a huge company, if it weren’t for their willingness to put their private lives out there, to allow people to see who they were as humans (and very flawed humans at that), not just ‘professional’ business operators?”
The success of Apple, and of Virgin, and of thousands of other business household names, wasn’t because they merely created great products or services, or had excellent ideas. It was people bought the story of their creators.
The problem – and the obvious solution – is this: people want to do business with people, not merely faceless, professional, one-dimensional entities. The more you cover that up, hide it behind mere ‘branding’, the more difficult it becomes to differentiate your products and services from a thousand other ‘me-too’ competitors.
The second email was a request for my comment on the ‘re-branding’ strategy of a nationally-franchised spa chain. I’ll preface this by saying that the entrepreneur behind this chain is obviously driven, talented, progressive and the owner of a very sharp business brain. But my opinion was sought purely on the re-branding exercise he’d just spend a not-insubstantial amount of money on. So I replied:
Well, on the face of it, re-branding a business is all terribly important for the owners of that business. Years ago, the Commonwealth Bank paid a consultant more than $1million to design a new logo, of which the bank was extremely proud, but I doubt any of the bank’s customers gave much of a toss about it. They care about what interest rate they’re paying on their mortgages, and the service they get from the people at their local branch or at the call centre.
As always, people put self-interest first, and there’s daylight between that and anything a company does or says about itself.
Which is why I’ve never paid the slightest attention to our own brand imagery. A graphic designer threw our logo together in half an hour years ago, and I’ve never bothered to change it, because I don’t think any of our Members pay any attention to it. The fact that our systems and processes help them make more money is really our brand.
From a pure branding point of view, it’s probably more important to your franchisees and prospective franchisees, because (presumably) it makes them feel they’re part of a more polished organisation.
But in the overall scheme of things, no, I don’t believe spending large amounts of money on pure branding exercises can ever be measured in terms of Return on Investment. I’ve always taught people to spend money on the things that measurably bring customers through the door, which is direct response marketing (online or offline), lead generation, upselling and cross-selling, and branding should always be a by-product of that process. Unless of course you’re a big publicly-listed company and have lots of shareholders money to spend.
Now, it would be mere dogma to claim that ‘branding’ has no place or value in small to medium businesses. But in isolation, absent any measurable, complementary and supporting systems and process for getting customers through the door…and absent the essential ingredient of personality…branding alone cannot do all the heavy lifting.
The entrepreneur came back with a very well-argued case for ‘brand-awareness’, particularly for the benefit of franchisees and employees, and ended with “Let’s revisit this conversation in 6 months and see what the results are:-)”
Yes, let’s do that. But whatever the results, it’ll be damn-near impossible to look at any figures – positive or negative – six months from now, and say with absolute certainty that ‘re-branding did that’.
Have you ever put all your eggs in one basket, all your hopes for success into a single event, or campaign…and suffered the bitter disappointment of having it all fall apart when matters beyond your control flush it all down the toilet?
This week I’ve seen a prime example of just how dangerous for business that reliance on one ‘big thing’ can be. You put all your marketing hopes in a single mailbox flyer, or one ad in the newspaper, or a radio campaign…and ‘it’ doesn’t work. You’re convinced that this one big thing is going to go gangbusters, that customers will stampede through your doors….and then…and then…nothing happens!
Well, such massive disappointment might have happened to me this week, if not for my ingrained fear of the most dangerous number in business. The number ‘One’.
With my other hat on this week, as CEO of 1Truth Australia which controls the distribution of the new anti-ageing skin serum OneTruth818 throughout Australia, I’ve been escorting the world’s most prominent telomere scientist in a frantic round of promotional media appearances, seminars and meet-n’-greets in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.
(Dr Bill Andrews PhD is head of Sierra Sciences research lab, and the man behind the telomere-lengthening compounds in Isagenix’s Product B, TA Sciences’ TA-65, and the man who discovered the most powerful telomerase activating compound of them all, the TAM-818 molecule at the heart of OneTruth818 skin serum.)
And I can tell you from personal experience that like a hot air balloon, it can blow at any seam. Today it almost did, thanks to a cyclone called Marcia. But…aware of the Danger of One, PR specialist Anna Rizzo and I and the team at Inskin Cosmedicshad spent months planning a series of events to maximize Dr Andrews’ (very expensive) trip to Australia to help launch OneTruth818. It started with a live interview with popular media doctor Ross Walker on his Sunday night radio show on 2UE. The following morning, another radio interview, and that night, a live presentation in Sydney to scores of Inskin Cosmedics salon owners and staff.
Channel 7’s Dr Andrew Rochford interviewed Dr Andrews for his TV segment the next morning, and right after that we flew down to Melbourne where Dr Andrews presented his scientific discoveries to more than 140 salon owners, doctors and staff, and up to Brisbane the next day for a similar event that evening.
Weeks of relentless PR work by Anna paid off the next morning in Sydney. By catching a 5am flight out of Brisbane, Dr Andrews was just in time to present his research – and the OneTruth818 product that carries his age-slowing molecule – to more than 30 journalists and bloggers, including Vogue Magazine, Harpers Bazaar, Woman’s Day, Channel 9, Men’s Style, Beauty Heaven, the Daily Telegraph and a score more high-profile media, followed by a presentation last night to a room full of Isagenix devotees, who regard Bill Andrews as something of a cult figure.
This morning he was booked to appear on Channel 7’s top-rating breakfast show Sunrise, and right after that, with Ita Buttrose and the panel on Channel 10’s Studio 10. And if we’d hung our hats on that one glistening jewel of free publicity, television, the entire launch would have fallen flat.
Nothing gets TV people excited much more than a good, juicy natural disaster. Planning blanket coverage, Channel 7 called first to cancel Dr Andrews’ Sunrise slot. So we made our way to the nearby Channel 10 studios, where Dr Andrews was quickly ushered into makeup. Two minutes before he was due to walk onto the set, a profusely apologetic young production assistant told us Cyclone Marcia coverage had blown Dr Andrews’ segment out of the water.
Having worked in television for 20 years of my career, I was hardly surprised. But I was extremely grateful that the lessons learned in many years of business marketing had stood us in good stead. Never, ever, ever rely on One Thing!
Stand by for a massive run of publicity over coming weeks and months as all those magazine articles and bloggers do their stuff.
Australia’s biggest beauty industry trade magazine features ‘The Man Who Would Stop Time’, Dr Bill Andrews PhD – click here to download the feature article in the January/February edition of Professional Beauty magazine…and book your seat to see him LIVE in Sydney on Thursday February 19 at the Reginald Theatre, Seymour Centre, University of Sydney…
Public Seminar Booking Information
Price: $59.00 per person Date: Thursday 19th Feburary Venue: Reginald Theatre – Seymour Centre
University of Sydney
Chippendale – Click for map Time: 5:30pm Registration
6:30pm Start
NB: If you are a InSkin Cosmedics salon or looking to distribute 1Truth, please call them on 02 9712 818 for more information about the salon distributor meetings happening in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.
Years ago I used to work with someone who was full of ideas. No, I mean, many of them were really, seriously good ideas. Okay, some were klutzy, ill-researched mere brain dumps, but there were many that had real merit.
They’d tumble out of this person’s mouth in a torrent, like confetti. At first I was mildly amused, sometimes even interested. But eventually it got to the stage where I dreaded hearing of yet another great scheme, another towering, money-making skyscraper of a proposition.
It wasn’t because I’m a negative kind of guy. On the contrary, I wouldn’t still be in business now if I was the type who stuck a pin in every balloon that floated past my face. The trouble with all these great ideas was just that; they were only ideas.
Without implementation, they were…worthless. I would say to this person “That’s a really good idea. Now, go and get it done.” At which the retort would be something like “Well, I don’t know how/don’t have time/I’m the ideas person…”
And that’s where everything fell in a heap, dissolving away as a lone snowflake melts when it hits the ground. I find this happens in a lot of salon businesses. I call it “Implementation Reluctance.” During a mentoring session with one of our My Social Salon program members recently, I referred to my notes from our previous session, during which she’d excitedly told me about all her marketing plans for 2014, and all the ideas she had.
“So, two weeks ago you gave me a list of strategies you’re going to put in place this year,” I said. “What have you done about this one?” And I detailed exactly what she’d told me she was going to do.
“Oh, actually I got a bit busy…”
Okay, what about that idea you had about competitions?
“Um, well I told one of the girls about it, I don’t know if she’s done anything yet…”
It was much the same dithering for half a dozen other ‘great ideas’. In short, precisely nothing had actually been done. Sometimes, even when fully-equipped with all of the brilliant online and offline marketing tools, advertising templates, processes and systems contained within the world-famous My Social Salon program, it’s sometimes surprising to find salon owners paralyzed into inaction, enriched with excuses as to why they can’t get things done. Now, if this sounds kinda familiar to you, you’re far from alone. According to Harvard Business Review authors Robert Kaplan and David Norton, “…failure rates [for planning implementation] are reported in the 70 to 90% range…”
Here’s the Big Fact:
The ability to execute strategy is more important than the strategy itself.
A brilliant plan without implementation is actually worse than a so-so plan implemented with passion and persistence. And over-analysis is one of the biggest implementation-killers. I see this all the time, salon owners tying themselves into knots of inactivity by trying to second-guess every possible permutation of possible outcomes, even if there’s a minute chance of ‘Situation C, D or E’ actually happening. The Second World War in Europe might well have been over by Christmas 1944, instead of May 1945, if the Allied generals had not so often replaced aggressive action with over-cautious, paralysing inaction. (In fact, the Germans fought better than the Allies almost right to the end. The Allies eventually won only because of their overwhelming superiority of men, machines and supplies, not because of better implementation.)
I’ve lost count of the number of times over the decade since I founded Worldwide Salon Marketing I’ve been approached by ‘entrepreneurs’ (i.e., opportunity seekers) who’ve been excited by the possibilities of licensing WSM’s systems and intellectual property for other non-salon market segments (e.g., chiroptractors, or veterinarians, or landscape gardeners etc etc). No sooner have I confronted them with the size of the task of implementing their ‘get-rich-quick’ scheme – the infrastructure that has to be put in place, the sheer amount of material that has to be written, the online and offline processes – they quickly fade away into the shadows.
Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke. “What we have here, is a failure to communicate.”
Back in 1967, a young Paul Newman starred in Cool Hand Luke, plating a recalcitrant prisoner who refused to knuckle to the rules, and was punished relentlessly. The chief prison guard made the now-famous observation “What we have here, is a failure to commuuunicate.”
In business, what we have here is a failure to implement.
Here’s how I get things done (implemented). It might help. Presented with a new idea, a strategy, any kind of ‘action plan’, I first write down a comprehensive, very detailed list of what has to be actioned to implement the strategy. Let’s say, for example, that we want to promote a series of education seminars to salon owners.
1) I write down, or print out, a list of our potential attendees – their names, salon names, addresses etc.
2) I (or one of my staff) set down on a calendar the proposed dates for these events.
3) Then we work backwards from those dates, making a ‘timeline’ of what has to have been done by certain days/weeks, for example, venues sourced and booked, deposits paid, speakers alerted etc.
4) The marketing of any product, event or service is actually more important than the product or service itself. So I spend a lot of time working with my team on what has to be put in place to market these events. For example:
a) It’ll need its own website/blog/Facebook fan page. So, who’s going to actually set these up and write the content for them? This is one of the most time-consuming but important tasks of all, requiring a wide range of skills. It can’t be done haphazardly.
b) How are we going to drive traffic to these landing pages/order forms/fan page? Who’s going to do what, by when? All of this goes on the main calendar, and reminders set in the online calendars of all individuals involved, so there are no excuses like “I forgot” or “I didn’t know about that bit.”
c) Print media – eg magazine advertising. Which magazines? What are the artwork/copy deadlines? Who’s going to write and design the printed material, by when? (Again, diarised.)
5) Event co-ordination, ticket sales, name tags, travel and accommodation; allocation of responsibilities.
6) Post-event marketing and product/service delivery requirements.
This is just a partial list – there is much more to it, but it gives you an idea of framework. You can apply this whole process, for example, to any kind of salon birthday event, ‘client appreciation’ evening etc.
Then – crucially – at the end of every single day, I write a bullet-pointed list of ‘action steps’, things that actually have to be done the very next day. It’s invariably a long list. And here’s a tip: if you ever get to the end of a working day and your desk is clean, every item on your day-list ticked off as ‘done’…then you haven’t put enough things on your list! Success is messy, chaotic, full of loose ends. Neatness and orderliness might be attractive, but it’s full of invisible holes.
(Back to that My Social Salon member above: if she’d done just ONE thing, taken just one action towards implementing her stated marketing strategies in the ten working days since I’d last spoken with her, she would have accomplished ten things!)
As entrepreneur and angel-investor Amy Rees Anderson writes, “Great ideas are a dime a dozen. People who implement them are priceless.”
Want help with ideas and how to put them into action? Each month, we accept just five new salons (worldwide) into the world’s most comprehensive online and offline marketing & mentoring programs, developed only for salons & spas.
I’ve taught a lot, written a lot about the enormous amount of ACTION required to make a real difference to a salon’s financial performance over time. It’s simply folly to rely on ONE thing to bring customers through the door. Success is doing a dozen different things – simultaneously, persistently, relentlessly.
Amber Clayton of Pearl of Beauty, Port Pirie, South Australia
Amber Clayton is a living example of this. In the back blocks of regional Port Pirie, South Australia – hardly a hub of economic prosperity – her beauty salon went from sales of $12,429 for the month of August 2013, to $21,764 for August this year…an increase of nearly $10,000.
But she didn’t do that by relying on merely email, or Facebook. Here’s a partial list of the marketing activity Amber undertakes as part of the normal operation of her business:
Newsletters – every month, written and posted in hard copy, as well as emailed. (From templates downloaded from the Members Only Resources Library)
Promotions via her Mobile App (built for her as part of her WSM membership)
Radio advertising – using the same direct response techniques applicable to all other media
Direct Mail – New Client letters and ‘Raise the Dead’ lost client letters downloaded from the Members Only Resources Library
In this video recorded via Skype, Amber details how she went from being a tiny, struggling salon in April this year when she joined WSM’s My Social Salon marketing & mentoring program, to being the busiest and most profitable salon in her town.
NOT A MEMBER?Go here to find out how to get a 30-day Money Back Guaranteed Test Drive of the entire My Social Salon program, including the famous Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit, one-on-one mentoring, hundreds of templates, done-for-you online marketing, a bonus Mobile Phone App and much more.
Myra’s new website, built as part of her Membership of My Social Salon (still being updated.)
Marketing a small, one-person salon in the suburbs can be a daunting, confusing experience. Tens of thousands of hair & beauty professionals start out this way, and most never break out of the ‘hobby’ mindset. But Hoppers Crossing (VIC) beauty specialist Myra Changtime isn’t one to limit herself to a hobby income, just because she’s operating from a home salon.
When Myra joined Worldwide Salon Marketing’s My Social Salon mentoring and marketing program in May 2014, she was struggling. “I was lucky to be doing $1,500 a week in treatments and retail,” she says.
But, in this video recording via Skype, Myra reveals how in just three months, her client visits, and turnover, have doubled.
I wrote her a new biography based on these ‘personal’ details, complete with pictures of her with famous people such as Ariana Huffington of the Huffington Post, and Italian fashion guru Roberto Cavalli, for use in all kinds of media, online and offline. She wrote back,
The success of Apple, and of Virgin, and of thousands of other business household names, wasn’t because they merely created great products or services, or had excellent ideas. It was people bought the story of their creators.
Weeks of relentless PR work by Anna paid off the next morning in Sydney. By catching a 5am flight out of Brisbane, Dr Andrews was just in time to present his research – and the OneTruth818 product that carries his age-slowing molecule – to more than 30 journalists and bloggers, including Vogue Magazine, Harpers Bazaar, Woman’s Day, Channel 9, Men’s Style, Beauty Heaven, the Daily Telegraph and a score more high-profile media, followed by a presentation last night to a room full of Isagenix devotees, who regard Bill Andrews as something of a cult figure.
Nothing gets TV people excited much more than a good, juicy natural disaster. Planning blanket coverage, Channel 7 called first to cancel Dr Andrews’ Sunrise slot. So we made our way to the nearby Channel 10 studios, where Dr Andrews was quickly ushered into makeup. Two minutes before he was due to walk onto the set, a profusely apologetic young production assistant told us Cyclone Marcia coverage had blown Dr Andrews’ segment out of the water.
Years ago I used to work with someone who was full of ideas. No, I mean, many of them were really, seriously good ideas. Okay, some were klutzy, ill-researched mere brain dumps, but there were many that had real merit.
Then – crucially – 
