New Zealand salon owner Tania McGonacle, one of twelve new salons to join the WSM Inner Circle marketing & mentoring program and receive her own copy of the Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit, plus coaching, at this week’s Salon Profit Secrets seminar in Auckland
I’m going to keep my travel arrangements secret in the future. Back in April, Michelle and I arrived in the UK the day the Icelandic volcano erupted and shut down Europe’s airspace for weeks. On Saturday, we landed in New Zealand on the day the Shaky Isles experienced their worst earthquake in decades.
No doubt emergency services all over the world are now nervous about us visiting fire and pestilence on them too.
There was no nervousness among New Zealand’s salon owners however. Despite – or perhaps because of – the less than robust economy in the land of the Kiwi, we welcomed a dozen new members to the Inner Circle Premium marketing & mentoring program during yesterday’s Salon Profit Secrets seminar at the harbourside Hilton Hotel in Auckland.
New Zealanders are an almost universally optimistic people. Of more than 100 salon owners and staff in the room, there was none of the ‘woe-is-me’ attitude common among small business owners of say, the USA.
When I urged the Kiwis to ‘go out and sell something, your country needs the business’, it was met with nodding agreement and enthusiasm.
Our New Zealand distributors, Chris & Rachael D’Aguiar-Sanders did a great job of attracting salon owners to fly in to Auckland from all over the country for this event, including at least 15 of our existing members whom I’d never previously met.
Among them, IC member Paul Davis of Pureskin Clinic in Ponsonby could barely wipe the smile from his face as he told the audience his salon had just enjoyed its best July in five years.
Phil Newman and partner Nikki Smith only joined the program and got their Toolkit in July, just as they started their hair salon in distant Wanaka, in the southern alps near Queenstown.
“It’s amazing,” says Phil. “We just followed the program exactly, and our sales immediately tripled. I’m a numbers kind of guy, and I’ve worked out that for every $1 we spend on ‘Toolkit-style’ marketing, we get no less than $12 back.”
