The stuff I Wish I’d Known as I opened my 1st Salon

As a fresh faced 19-year-old salon owner, I would have loved to pick the brains of an experienced salon owner to help me on my way. If only I knew then what I know now! So, in the interests of helping other salon owners (new to owning a salon or not), here’s some stuff I wish I’d known when I started out as a salon owner.

I started out without any knowledge whatsoever of what it was going to take. I didn’t even know what VAT was (UK for GST or sales tax) to own a great salon. I quickly learnt (plus many other things) that leadership is a skill that can be taught, practised and continuously developed and is one of the most important things I discovered along the way if you want a great team .

Starting this development earlier rather than waiting to learn every lesson by the mistakes you make, will build you a great foundation for everything else in your salon. Good leaders engage their team and take them on the journey with them. The sooner you start that journey together, the sooner this happens the sooner you start to see a great salon start to appear.

When I’m asked how I sustained a successful business that stood the test of time, the answer is clear – if you don’t adapt and evolve, you fail. And our world is moving faster than ever. Trends evolve. Technology changes. Techniques adapt. Team members change. So do your clients. What’s right for today may not be right for tomorrow? By embracing the change and keeping up to date, you stay relevant to your clients and to our industry. As I got more experienced, I focused on educating myself by attending courses, reading books, asking heaps of questions to all the salon owners I met and joining in on industry events. It was fun and it kept me relevant and stimulated, which in turn, kept my clients and my team interested and engaged.

I am running an ever-adapting, ready-for-the future salons.

Going from employee to salon owner is a huge step. Overnight, I had to switch hats – from a creative individual to practical, sensible small business owner with big responsibilities: profit, sustainability, breaking-even, pricing and building a team.

My advice is to seek learning early. Educate yourself however you can. Seminars, books, industry peers and a good reliable accountant are great resources. You need to know your numbers.

If you don’t have a business head (or hat), you won’t last long as a salon owner. Just being a good hairdresser won’t carry you through. To get in control and enjoy long-term success, you need to slap on  lots of business hats every single day.

Know And Grow Your clients Average bill. (by far the quickest way to grow and boost your salon profits)

One key business number can tell you more about what’s happening in your salon than any other KPI. Your average bill is critical to the profitability of your salon.

Understanding the why, and the how of improving is absolutely 100% critical  if you want to boost your profits.

Work with your team to identify focus areas. Recommending services, educating your clients on products and developing your retail are all effective ways of increasing revenue without expanding your client base.

When you truly understand this KPI, you’ll be forever finding new and innovative ways to improve it.

Clients Belong To the Salon (Not to your team members).

Over the past 30 something years I have employed many people. Staff leave they have babies. Some move away. Quite a few left and went into competition with me. It happens – people moving on is a natural part of business and life.

The thing that eventually made rolling with the changes easier for me was instilling a culture that our clients belonged to our salons, not to the individual team member.

Sure, most clients prefer to be looked after by a particular team member. But there are many ways to make sure clients have a sense of the wider team sharing in looking after them.

By clearly and consistently communicating this expectation and setting up my salons practices to reinforce this concept, I became more confident that team members wouldn’t take a chunk of our client base with them as they walked out the door.

When you own a salon, you learn lessons every single day. Some are obvious, slap-in-the-face realisations while others are more subtle. But every lesson is an ingredient in creating a successful, sustainable salon business as long as learn them and move on.

Sometimes it helps to have someone look at your business and remind you, teach you, or just pull you back into line and refocus your efforts. I was lucky to have a handful of great mentors along the way – I certainly have them to thank for many successful years in business.

Don’t know where to start to get your salon kick-started, book my free strategy call.