I hosted a round table at the Salon Growth Summit last weekend.
At the start I asked those in attendance if they all thought that working less and earning more was even possible.
At the start they weren’t all convinced… but by the end they absolutely were.
I’m considering running an online version of the same workshop to help others given how well it went down, but in the meantime I thought sharing a few pearls of wisdom might help.
For now though, here’s a couple of key concepts which you absolutely need to get your head around.
The first one, pretty much everyone hates – however ignorance is not bliss. Less that ever in fact with the current government.
That’s knowing your numbers.
You absolutely need to know which services make you the most money – and believe me when I say that all services and treatments are not created equally.
The idea that “a booking is a booking” is terribly outdated and frankly wrong.
Lemme demonstrate;
Let’s say service A makes you £20 profit for one hour and service B makes you £30 profit.
They may even both be priced to the customer the same, but one is more profitable than the other due to the cost of delivery.
Let’s say you deliver 5 of these each day.
Let’s also say you open 5 days per week and are open 50 weeks per year.
That’s all pretty conservative.
If you worked alone that’s a difference in profit of £12,500 per year.
That’s enough for a small car!
Or a couple of amazing holidays.
Or a few of those crazy expensive handbags I see people flaunting on social media.
Oh, and that’s assuming a team of ONE.
Got a team of six? That’s a difference of £75,000 in pure, beautiful profit EVERY YEAR.
For delivering the same number of treatments to the same people.
Has that got your attention?
I sure hope so.
This is what happens when you start to look more closely at this sort of thing – and also when you stop confusing revenue for profit.
That’s another biggie; too many are chasing the wrong metrics.
They are trying for a “six figure year” or a “five figure month” but that’s a nonsense for the most part.
Bringing £100,000 into your business is pointless if your costs are £110,000!
I’d rather bring in £75,000 and have costs of £25,000!
That’s one of the problems with social media.
Influencers are getting people to chase the wrong things… or things which they don’t fully understand.
That’s dangerous down the line when the tax man wants his slice and there’s nothing left in the pot and you’re scratching your head as to why not!
This all falls into one other main category I’ll share with you here;
That’s the switch from thinking and acting like a therapist or a stylist – to thinking and acting like a business owner. Like the CEO of your salon, which is what you are.
Now I know that many salon owners never thought they’d own a business. Maybe never wanted to. Certainly never went to business school or anything like that.
But as the business owner – planned or accidental – it’s on you to educate yourself and get a better understanding of some of it. Even a really basic grasp – and a tweak to how you think – can pay massive dividends and put you way ahead of the chasing pack.
Seeing yourself as “just a therapist” – as many do – is likely to lead to a future of long hours with less reward. I don’t want that for you, and I suspect you don’t either… otherwise you may as well just work for someone else without all the stress and associated responsibility!
Brilliantly, at the end of the session, one of the ladies in attendance – who I’d never met before and absolutely wasn’t a plant or anything – announced that she’d done just about everything I’d spoken about… and her business had gone through the roof.
In fact it had allowed her to follow her dream of travelling the world and since the pandem:c she’d travelled to more than 70 countries… and she only had a small team, too.
Not bad, eh?
Just shows what’s possible when you’re not afraid to do things a little differently from the chasing pack.
