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 14, 2011 | Salon Goalsetting
Just before Christmas, I took a call from a young salon owner who was clearly in some distress. It soon became clear why.
“I’m due to have my first baby in 6 weeks,” she said. I congratulated her and said she must be excited, wow, wonderful and other such supportive small talk.
“More terrifying than exciting,” she said. “I’m still working 5 days a week behind the chair, I’m the main money-earner in my salon, and I don’t know how I’m going to survive when the baby comes. I just don’t know what to do….”
Crikey. Six weeks to go, and no back-up plan? Without wishing to state the bleeding obvious, childbirth isn’t something that kind of sneaks up on you without warning. Like, about 9 months warning.
But this young lady’s story of woe is hardly unique. Thousands of salon owners – who are, by nature, mostly women – face this (very) common problem. Yet so few seem prepared for it.
So this week I interviewed three prominent Members of ourInner Circle Marketing & Mentoring program who are, or have recently, faced and solved that precise problem.
Rachael D’Aguiar is not only a very successful salon owner, she and husband Chris Sanders own the WSM business in New Zealand. As of the time of writing, Rachael is 10 weeks away from the birth of their first child (a girl) and is passionate about ‘being organized…’
Amy Mitchell already has two-year-old Macy. As she picked up the phone to join in on this interview, she was literally a few days – even hours – away from the birth of her second child. As she reveals here, a year ago Amy’s business was on the brink of failure. But suddenly, there was a light at the end of the tunnel – and it wasn’t an oncoming train.
Tegan Messineo gave birth to twin boys two years ago. She still under the age of 25, yet now owns two successful salons, and like Amy, decided to open the second business after the birth of her boys. Here she describes how the arrival of babies can actually be a spur to working smarter, and more productively…
Below is the first 7 minutes of an exclusive CD of the Month all members of the Inner Circle Premium program receive in the mail – just one of the many benefits of Inner Circle membership….
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by Greg Milner | May 11, 2010 | Increasing Retail Sales, The Smell of Success
Marketing Your Salon Business – How to Think Outside the Box; includes example
Most owners of small businesses get that ‘can’t see the wood for the trees’ feeling from time to time. I’m no different, so I know that when you’re wearing the blinkers, it’s hard to recognize opportunities even when they hit you over the head.
Mark & Shelly Gibbs owned a struggling hair salon in Melbourne, Victoria….Inner Circle membership and the Toolkit not only gave them the tools to get their salon pumping, it gave them the confidence to look ‘outside the box’ and branch out into other money-making ventures – like motorbikes for junior clients to sit on!
Not so for Mark and Shelly Gibbs, Inner Circle Premium members of Shellmark Hair Shack in Kilsyth South, Victoria (Australia).
As Mark says,
“When we joined WSM 12 months ago, we were in deep s**t, I couldn’t pay the bills or the rent, and the computer was in ‘sleep’ mode most of the time.”
How things can so quickly change. A year on, Mark and Shelly have not just one, but THREE successful businesses – the salon itself, an associated business selling kids’ cutting chairs in the shape of mini-motorcycles (see downloadable pdf) and a car washing business!
“You saved our salon,” says Mark.
To merely accept Mark’s plaudits with gratitude would be telling only part of the story. What Mark fails to acknowledge is the fact that all we at WSM did was give him and Shelley the tools; they provided the motivation, drive, enthusiasm and persistence.
It’s worked, brilliantly; for example, when they put the motorbike ‘chair’ in the front of the shop, their takings for kids’ haircuts soared by 84%.
Mark & Shelly did a JV deal with their software supplier, in an editorial-style iinsert in a big trade magazine, promoting both the software AND their new kids’ chair business. Right click on the picture and ‘save as…’ to download the complete story in pdf format.
And check this out: Mark and Shelly bought some software to help run their salon more efficiently – and then did a Joint Venture deal with the software manufacturer to promote the software – and the kids’ hair chairs – via a special double-page spread in a major trade magazine.
That’s doing some serious ‘outside-the-square’ thinking. (Right-click on the pic and download the full magazine feature story.)
by Greg Milner | Mar 3, 2010 | Marketing Superstars, The Right Mindset, The Smell of Success
Inner Circle member Lisa Zwart of Honey Body in Manly, Sydney.
Salon Web Template: From Struggle Street to Stardom – Lisa’s Story
South African-born Lisa Zwart was like most salon owners; struggling to keep the business afloat while she was drowning in the pressure of work. Lisa bought her Honey Body Salon in the northern Sydney beachside suburb of Manly 15 months ago. But it wasn’t until she attended a Worldwide Salon Marketing seminar in September 2009 that the ‘lights went on’ – and her life took a dramatic turn for the better.
Two months later, she was standing in front of 700 guests to receive the local Manly Business Achievers award!
“This is my first business I’ve been running by myself and I bought it and obviously it was a growing concern. It wasn’t doing really well, which is why I had to go get clients, and I’ve just literally had to build it up. I felt like I was building it up from scratch and I think we’ve just done really well. I’ve put in a lot of time and a lot of effort and now I’m putting in a lot more smart time…So, yeah, this is my success story.
Lisa and her team, picking up their freshly-minted Business Award
I never used to give myself time to market the salon business, until I went to my Worldwide Salon Marketing seminar. On my first coaching call, my coach told me just to shut the door. You get told to shut the door and literally sit down and do your budgeting and marketing plans. Because I really wasn’t making any time before that. So, now I’m more conscious of the time, forced now to leave my business to have good marketing strategies in place.
I’ve taken a lot of the guidelines that have kind of been given to us, like the ad guidelines, how to set about doing an ad, and what not to do in an ad, and what to do in an ad, and how to make things eye-catching. Obviously, taking tips from other people. If something didn’t work for them, I can say, “Okay, well it didn’t work for them”. They’re about the same as me. I’m not going to try anything like that. I’ll try something which has worked for them, or I like to see what everyone else is kind of doing and pick up ideas. Not necessarily copying them, but definitely taking ideas off what they’ve done and trying to use the guidelines that have been shown to us.
Also, I’ve been reading a lot about the hiring staff and I’ve taken that onboard. Because that was one of my biggest issues before I just wasn’t getting quality staff. Now I’m at a really good point where I’ve got great staff and I think it’s thanks to looking at those guidelines. Also, retailing and all of the tips and guidelines. There’s just so much information in that kit. I can pick it up today and I will read something that I didn’t read two months ago.
Lisa’s hard work has obviously been working.
“I took my whole family on safari to South Africa in December!”
