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 | 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 | Mar 3, 2011 | The Smell of Success
New templates for Inner Circle Member salons – see below.
The New Zealand economy – never robust since the onset of the GFC – is bracing itself for another hit in the wake of Christchurch’s $12 billion earthquake.
But for salon business owners like Cathy Davys, of Cathy Davys Hair Design & Day Spa in Wellington, such awful disasters are all the more reason to do what true entrepreneurs do best – in times of trouble, market harder, sell with more enthusiasm;
In other words, she abides by the advice of veteran sales trainer Zig Ziglar:
“Go out and sell something. Your country needs the business.”
“We did a special Christmas offer – we took it from the Members Only website – and took $30,000 from that one promotion. Along with a couple of other promotions we ran after Christmas, it gave us our best January/February ever!”
writes Cathy.
“In January we ran a special Diamond membership promotion, with a ticket price of $1,800 for a $2,400 value. We limited numbers to just 12, and sold them all in a week! That alone brought in $21,000. Clients love renewing, as they all run out at different times now its great for cash flow. Just need not to spend it:-)
“Now we’re about to launch a Platinum membership offer, $6,999 worth of hair & beauty services for $4,999. I’ll let you know how that goes, but if all 7 of them sell as expected, that’s another $34,993 in cash up front.”
Christchurch earthquake fundraiser
But it’s not all about cash for the business. Like many entrepreneurs, Cathy is discovering the benefits of ‘community responsibility’ to drive sales for the salon, with a special promotion to raise funds for victims of last week’s fatal earthquake.
“We are doing a fund raiser for Christchurch through our email to non-returning guests for a $30 cut and blow wave with funds going to help Christchurch Hairdressers. This will also help to get 2 new stylists up and running.
“I love Worldwide Salon Marketing!”
by Greg Milner | Jan 19, 2011 | The Smell of Success
Listen in to this audio interview…
There IS a phenomenon among certain types of entrepreneurial salon owners. A phenomenon that, once triggered, creates more activity, more business, more profits, than they ever previously imagined possible.
Such a phenomenon has just happened to one of our long-term Inner Circle member salons, Blush Professional Beauty Touch, owned by Nicole Bertrand, in Sale, Victoria.
In just one year, Nicole’s business has grown from takings of just $30,000 in December, 2009, to a staggering $144,000 in December 2010.
Even better; her entire quarterly sales in 2009 averaged just $45,000. That’s considerably less than a single month’s takings now, just a year later.
Now, for those readers who immediately scoff and think ‘oh, that’s probably because her salon is in the middle of a wealthy, free-spending city area…. think again.
Her salon is in a little country town over 200 kilometres east of Melbourne.
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Press the ‘play’ button and eavesdrop as Nicole explains exactly how she grew so big, so fast…
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by Greg Milner | Dec 9, 2010 | The Smell of Success
Maria Haanpaa of Studio Highlight in Finland ‘doubled sales in three months’ with the marketing Toolkit
Recently our sole salon in Finland won a major prize at a salon competition in Paris. “How do we use that win to our advantage?” asked salon owner Maria Haanpaa.
I advised her on a couple of strategies, and didn’t hear from Maria for a couple of weeks. Last week, she emailed…
I have to thank you for your response about our world champ-marketing.
I called the local newspaper and they made a story of us and at the same newspaper we ran an ad (the Hollywood package) but it was called the ‘World Champs’ package.
With that ad we’ve got 26 new customers at 79€. We’ve
taken all their information and also gave them 5 of the Queen of Referrals
and they are bringing more new customers to us.
Since we started the Queen of Referrals (from the Toolkit) we’ve got about 50 new customers in a month! We’ve been doing that just 2 months now and I did a
competition on that. Whoever gets the most customers to us by the end of March will win a 1000€ gift certificate.
I’m now using our World Championship ‘Silver Medalist’ message on everything I print and it seems that it works so well.
I have also built up Facebook pages and I update that every week because if it stays still it loses its value and people don’t go there to look anymore.
Anyway, thank you so much for everything, I wouldn’t be here without you guys! We’ve doubled our sales within only 3 months and I still want to double that within the next 6months….
Sincerely,
Maria Haanpää
Studio Highlight, Kielotie 4-6
01300 Vantaa
Finland
by Greg Milner | Nov 19, 2010 | Canada, The Smell of Success
New Inner Circle member Shola Olorunleke of Quinn’s World Salon in Canada – inspired and lifted by the instant results of her first ‘WSM-style’ marketing campaigns.
I’ve often pondered what the ‘real’ value of the Toolkit and the Inner Circle program is to struggling salons. And it’s clear, going by feedback like this from salon owners like Shola Olorunleke of Quinn’s World Salon in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan (Canada) that the real value is not so much the proven tools, templates and strategies the system provides, but the sense of motivation, direction and sheer inspiration that lifts the spirits of so many.
Here’s what she writes:
“Since our last coaching call some amazing things have been happening. I got the glamour package flyers printed (10,000 copies). I was lucky due to a promo at the printers, I got them printed for 2c each instead of 4c this cost $200.
I put everybody at the salon to work folding the flyers when they weren’t busy. We finished folding and bundling the 10,000 on Sunday. I dropped them off at Canada post distribution center for delivery on Tuesday morning before 11am. Wednesday morning our letter courier mentioned he had our flyers for delivery and before 12noon we had started getting calls and booking new clients.
It has been a week and we are still getting calls. So far we have 20 new clients booked from the flyer. The cost for getting the flers out was canada post 12c each = $1200 and printing 2c each= $200, this totaled $1400. From the bookings we have so far this cost is already paid for.
I just signed up with an online marketing firm that offers coupons to their subscribers as daily deals, before I wouldn’t have done this as I would think that I will be losing money. I jumped at this opportunity because I now underdstand the life-time value of the guest.
We are offering a winter hydrating package (haircut and hydrating treatment) a $65 value for $32. There is no out of pocket cost because the company designs the offer, sends out the emails to subscribers in Saskatoon, and sells the coupons.
I am also sending the poster to be printed for the Christmas gift certificate offer.
We have also started the Queen of referral program and I plan on doing a contest in the new year for our guests. The newsletter has been a hit with our guests.
But here’s the clincher. There’s no doubt that success breeds confidence. It’s amazing how so many members of the Inner Circle program suddenly develop backbone and resolve – to run their businesses with their heads for a change.
The morale in the salon is better, my 2 stylists are excited as they are busier.
I have also taken a firmer stand as I have one stylist who comes to work late and 2 Saturdays in a row didn’t show up for work. We were scrambling to take care of some of his clients and call the others to reschedule their appointment. I had a meeting with him and let him know that his behaviour will not be tolorated any longer (this is after 2 warning letters) and that if it happens again, he should just come in and get his stuff as I would assume he had quit.
I have already put an ad out for a hairstylist and will be interviewing 2 potential stylists in the next few days.
Before I joined WSM I was frustrated, stressed out and constantly worried but now I know what to do to get the results I want to take Quinn’s World to where it should be. It is a lot of work and a lot to take in and do but with the amazing materials in the Toolkit and online, the work is a piece of cake. I am more focussed and I cant wait for what the new year has in store as I know that this will be my best year yet.
THANKS TEAM WSM, Greg and my coach Alberto.
Shola Olorunleke
Quinn’s World Salon
Saskatoon
