The smallest but most compelling book in my large and diverse business library is this one. It’s by a long-time mentor of mine, Dan Kennedy, and while the title is deliberately funny, the message is a serious wake-up call for any small business owner or entrepreneur.
Kennedy talks about the thousands of marketers and copywriters he’s mentored (including me) who have gone on to create extensive, proven marketing systems for their own particular niche markets (including me, in the salon & spa niche.)
( The farting cat title refers to the kind of business owner who blames everyone and everything other than themselves for their problems.)
The very first chapter sets the tone:
That Big Brick Building You Drive By
“There’s a little convenience store at the corner of my neighbourhood street and the town’s main street. One morning, as I stood in line, I listened to the counterman tell his tale of woe to the customer in front of me. The counterman is about 40,. His story, as Sinatra sang, is one too commonly told: hates his job, can’t get by on what he makes, has a car in disrepair, lives in a bad apartment building with biker neighbours, and rues his lot in life.
“When I got to the counter, I asked where in town he lived. After he told me, I said ‘You know, about halfway between here and your apartment, there’s a big brick building on the right hand side of the road. You pass it twice a day. In it are the answers to every one of your problems and frustrations. That building is called The Public Library’.”
He said he hadn’t been inside a library since high school. Precisely.”
(These days of course, hardly anybody goes to the public library. For most, it’s been replaced by Google. But the point remains valid.)
Kennedy goes on:
“You can divide the population into two main hunks. those who search, hunt, go after the information they need to fix whatever’s ailing them, and those who don’t. There are about 5% of the population in the first group, 95% in the second. And there are about 5% of the population who do very, very well financially, and 95% who never achieve wealth. Co-incidence?”
So how does Kennedy’s contention relate to you? It’s this: the information you need to succeed has never been more freely available. It has been collated and curated by many people, including me, in systems that take away the tedium of spending days, weeks, months gathering it and making sense of it yourself. Many years ago, I studied and put into practice the direct response marketing teachings of Mr Kennedy and others, and created a system for salons & spas that would make the marketing of their businesses a much, much easier and more effective process.
It was called The Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit, and the main component of it, the Simple Salon Marketing manual, is still available today, instantly downloadable, here.
Key paragraph from Kennedy:
“The first thing you should know – ‘it’ works. Questioning the efficacy of these Systems is like insisting the world is flat. The time for such an argument has long since passed.”
He goes on:
“If you’ve gotten your hands on one of these Systems recently, it’s the perfect opportunity to wipe the slate clean, re-design your business, refresh your marketing, and rediscover your enthusiasm for your business.”
For all the hair stylists, nail techs, beauty therapists and massage therapists reading this – something to think about.
How long did it take you to become good at your trade? How many years did you spend studying, on-the-job training, attending professional development seminars, doing exams, going to demonstrations?
In Australia, for example, a hairdressing apprenticeship is three years. That’s just to become a competent technician.
And yet every year, all over the world, as if by magic, tens of thousands of hair stylists and beauty therapists suddenly wake up, find a shop somewhere, hang out their shingle – and overnight, they’re in business.
Exactly how so many expect their transition from highly-trained technician to zero-training business owner to be somehow painless remains an enduring mystery to me.
After many years supplying marketing and sales tools and training to thousands of salon and spa owners all over the world, it still makes me shake my head when I ask a salon owner what self-education in business she’s put herself through, how many marketing seminars she’s attended, what business books she’s read, and so many reply,
“Er…well, nothing really. I just opened my business and hoped everything would sort itself out.”
Of course, this remarkable disconnect is in no way peculiar to the hair & beauty industry.
At the height of the Global Financial Crisis, a TV documentary chronicled the breathtaking collapse of Iceland’s entire banking industry.
Iceland had been a collection of fishing villages for centuries, the skills of seamanship and fishing taught to sons by fathers for generation after generation.
As the world drowned in cheap money in the salad days just before the GFC, Iceland’s fishermen walked off their boats and re-invented themselves as bankers.
Questioned on this glaringly-obvious disconnect, one of these fishermen-turned-financiers paused tellingly, and answered
“Mmmm….yes, I see your point.”
Perhaps you’ve just started your hair or beauty business. Maybe you’re just about to. Or, like so many salon & spa owners who finally make a decision to educate themselves with systems like Worldwide Salon Marketing’s My Social Salonmarketing & mentoring program, you’ve been in business for years, making the same mistakes over and over again.
If you fit into any of these categories, take a moment to ask yourself some questions:
It takes years of study and training to become a competent technician. How can it NOT take years to become a competent marketer, an accomplished hirer, trainer and motivator of staff, a sensible financial manager???
And did you become a good stylist or therapist all by yourself? Of course not. You had teachers, mentors, trainers to guide you along the way. Expecting that knowledge of how to market and run a profitable business will somehow fall out of the sky like a Fairy Godmother is almost a definition of insanity.
There are many, many stories among Worldwide Salon Marketing’s member salons around the world of how a change in the way they think about their business turned their salons – and their lives – around completely.
Marnie sold her salon business for a big payout
Marnie Kallmeyer is just one of them. Five years ago, Marnie was on the brink of bankruptcy. She lost her house, her marriage was shaky, you could fire a cannon through her salon without fear of hitting anybody. Fast forward to 2013:
“Oh gosh…how things have changed,” she says. “My business has tripled, just in the past year. In fact, a hand injury back in January forced me ‘off the tools’ completely – and yet the business is making more money now than ever before. It’s fantastic, it’s emotional, it’s just so wonderful, and I can’t express my gratitude enough for what being part of Worldwide Salon Marketing has meant to me, my family and my life!
“And yet, it might never have happened if I hadn’t bitten the bullet, and actually picked up the tools that WSM had given me, and put them into practice.”
In fact the change has been so dramatic, Marnie took a cue from those popular ads on TV…and bought a Jeep!
For how long do you wish to remain a willing inmate of the Insane Asylum?
Thinking of selling your salon or spa? In this video, Worldwide Salon Marketing founder Greg Milner explains the HIDDEN value in any hair or beauty business – and few salon owners ever realize it.
Want to bring in a PILE of cash to your beauty or hair salon business, but don’t know where to start?
Louise Adkins of Lavish Skin in Benalla, Victoria has been a Member of WSM’s Client Attraction System for 10 years, but she’d never tried selling memberships to her clients like this before.
In this video, Louise describes how she followed the Membership strategy, added a few flourishes of her own, downloaded one of the Salon Membership Promotion Templates from the Client Attraction System– and got to work!
Result: $31,000 in one-day sales, plus more to come.
Here’s how she did it…
Now, for just ONE DOLLAR, you can TEST DRIVE the exact same system Louise uses to drive her salon’s marketing.
The smallest but most compelling book in my large and diverse business library is this one. It’s by a long-time mentor of mine, Dan Kennedy, and while the title is deliberately funny, the message is a serious wake-up call for any small business owner or entrepreneur.
It was called The Essential Salon Owner’s Marketing Toolkit, and the main component of it, the Simple Salon Marketing manual, is still available today, instantly downloadable, here.
