Welcome to the Salon Owner’s Podcast, Phorest FM Episode 59. Co-hosted by Killian Vigna and Zoé Bélisle-Springer, Phorest FM is a weekly show that puts forth a mix of interviews with industry thought-leaders, salon/spa marketing tips, company insights and information on attending Phorest Academy webinars. Phorest FM is produced every Monday morning for your enjoyment with a cup of coffee on your day off.
Phorest FM Episode 59
What does it take to grow a business? How can one have a clear understanding of how the salon/spa has done over the past year? Which is better: to set goals, habits or intentions for the year ahead? Join Killian, Zoe, Paul Dave (Davey Davey, Hairdressing Live), Jennie Lawson (Mimosa Beauty) and Sean O’Sullivan (Customer Success Team at Phorest Salon Software) as they try to find common ground in the above questions and dig into the reviewing process of a business’ efforts to grow.
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Transcript
Killian Vigna: Welcome to the Phorest FM Podcast, Episode 59. I’m Killian Vigna.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: And I’m Zoe Belisle Springer.
Killian Vigna: So this week’s episode is all about reviewing your salon business and how you go about creating a new strategy for 2018. And for the first time ever, we actually have it in front of a live audience.
Zoe Belisle-Springer:Â So joining us today on the show, thank you, so, joining us on the show today, we have Paul Davey from Davey Davey and Hairdressing Live, we have Sean O’Sullivan from, actually our own customer success team here in Phorest and Jeannie Lawson from Mimosa Beauty in the UK.
Killian Vigna: So grab yourself a cup of coffee, sit back, relax, and join us weekly for all your salon’s business and marketing needs.
Zoe Belisle-Springer:Â How do you feel? I’m excited.
Killian Vigna: Really excited, like we say every week, it’s usually a Friday or a Monday or something, myself and Zoe, we go into this little studio and we talk to a laptop, or we talk to someone over the phone.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Seriously, you should see our set up downstairs, it’s hilarious.
Killian Vigna: We were like, if people are coming into the office, why not, let’s just get guys up here, we’ve got the sound system and everything, and actually do it live!
Zoe Belisle-Springer: First of all, let’s give a warm welcome to all of our three guests here today.
Of course, yes. Well, Paul…
Paul Davey: You can hear me there, can you?
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Oh, is that mic working?
So, Paul, we met for the first time, last year at the summit. It was great, it’s great to see you again, bumped into yesterday. Thank you so much for joining us on the show today.
Paul Davey: My pleasure.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Jenny, same thing, we had you on the show, recently actually, just last year, and so it’s great to have you here in person.
Killian Vigna: And we also have Sean, so Sean is from our own customer success team and when you were at the Summit yesterday, you might have seen little stands that they had all over, where it’s a business analyst. It’s all well and good listening to experts in your own field, but sometimes it’s nice to have someone from an outside perspective looking at your business. Thanks for joining us, Sean.
Zoe Belisle-Springer:Â Let’s play a little game, because I know it’s… there’s a lot of people at the Summit, there’s a lot of networking going on, you might not know everyone’s faces, so, if you had, you guys, to describe yourself in a tweet or an Instagram bio, what would you say about yourselves?
Paul Davey: Okay, I’m not gonna go first with that one. [crosstalk 00:02:28] Ladies first.
Jennie Lawson: Right, I guess for me, I go straight in with the multi-award-winning salon owner. 2014 and 16-
Paul Davey: Don’t hold back!
Jennie Lawson: Why? We all try and dull ourselves down, and actually, in an environment like this, there’s absolutely no point, you’re standing there as an expert, that’s the whole conversation that yesterday was about. When you are a skin specialist and an award-winning salon owner, you kind of just have to…
Killian Vigna: Well you have to let them know.
Jennie Lawson: Wave about it. That’s me.
Paul Davey: I totally, totally agree with you.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Good luck following up on that.
Sean O’Sullivan: I’ll keep it a bit more demure, I’ll say it’s just business, analytics and a probably a small bit of insanity thrown in at the same time.
Paul Davey: Again, I do agree with yourself on that one, it’s actually, you’ve got to promote yourself in that regard… cause social media is very much an avenue for you to promote yourself as much as you possibly can. If you can take advantage of that, it’s amazing that you can. I guess I’m a little bit more conservative. I actually just say it how it is, as in I’m a father, I’m a creative, I’m a stylist, but I also have… I’m the founder of Hairdressing Live. I’m soon going to be an author of a book, so that’s going to be coming out soon. I’m a creative, artist… everything like that.
Killian Vigna: Nice one. Let’s just get straight into it. I suppose the first question is, how do you actually go about, typically reviewing your year? Do you have a process? Even something like locking in your room for a whole day, a week, anything like that. What are the first few things that you’re gonna look at?
Paul Davey: Well, I don’t lock myself in a room. Not at all, no basements, no… pull the blinds and everything like that. I generally… I go in, literally, usually on Christmas is our day and when I go home, I break for… it’s the only time you can actually switch off, and the world is actually switched off, isn’t it? Christmas day is like, everything switches off.
Sometimes when you go away on holiday, there’s background noise in the background, you got emails coming in, there’s messages, it’s like social media coming in, everything like that. It’s the only time you can switch off and actually review your business and review that sort of time.
I totally… what I look at is obviously figures, that means an awful lot. One thing that stands out to me is actually the return rate, clientele, obviously, the volume of what we’re trying to achieve each year is obviously very, very important for… like for us, we wanted to do more colour, so more colour orientated, I assessed that, and that seemed to have grown for our business, which is really, really good.
It’s the re-bookings as well. I have a fascination about that, making sure that people are still re-booking with us, and the time between each re-booking is getting narrower or it’s getting bigger. It’s just to know trends.
I generally, over Christmas time, I know it may sound a bit lame and a bit geeky, but I actually do sit down and actually review our year over that time. That’s what I do.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: That’s great. And what about yourself, Jennie?
Jennie Lawson: I didn’t do that. We shut down the whole salon and we didn’t re-open until the first week back in January. I tried not to look at anything. The only thing I did was go back over my customer journey.
I actually did it with my whole team. We have magic whiteboards all over the walls and I did… we went through every single month that happened last year and then went into what we’re planning on doing this year.
For us, last year was really, really different. Last year at the Summit, we were… Rachel and I, my PA, were here in about… we were in the middle of a refurb, refurbing into being 100% eco salon, taking on a team. It was a completely different year.
For me, looking back, it’s purely just, where, what did we do? Because I’d never done it before, I’d spent five and a half years on my own. I’d never looked at… I’d just done it, I did my job, I did it really well, I was booked two months ahead. I never had to worry or think or do anything.
Last year, it was going back and looking at, what worked, what didn’t, where the issues were, how we’re gonna move forward into 2018 and where to excel at it.
Killian Vigna: So from a data point side of it, then, Sean, would you have any-
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Even tips and tricks for a first time?
Sean O’Sullivan: Both of them. That’s entirely… both ways I would do it. It’s very important to analyze the actual statistics within your business, but also get your team involved in it. Cause without both of them together, you’re not gonna be able to achieve your goals as a business and grow and further everything.
The other thing is, we generally look at, more from… to drill down into more information, is checking that it has your cost percentage is still the same as it was previous year. Costs tend to always rise, so you want to be checking, are my stylists still bringing in enough money for the wage that they’re coming in? Have my costs of doing all my services, the cost of the products, has that increased over the year, is there a price change necessary this year?
Of course, you don’t want to get to the stage where -and it can happen- you’re really busy, you’re booked out, but you’re not making money. It’s not a place you want to look into.
It’s a great time of year, around December, to also look into, do I need to do a different increment in my price this year? Do I need to look for other suppliers for getting a better deal on some of the stuff?
All of that stuff together really sets you up for a good year ahead.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: I’m curious, you’ve been doing this for years, you’ve been reviewing your business for years, have you ever noticed something that you look at every year and you… it might have initially had a really good impact, but now you’re just kind of doing it because you’re doing it and you don’t know if it has that much of an impact anymore?
Paul Davey: I mean, obviously it’s my business, and I understand it, and I want to understand it, and it’s very important that we do understand our business and you don’t neglect it.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah.
Paul Davey: But, like what you did say there, now, I mean, you just find yourself very, very busy all of the time. Sometimes hard to sort of look back upon it. If you’re really, really busy all the time, you’re doing something right, you know? It’s only when you’re not that busy in certain areas that you have to delve into those areas.
It does come second nature now. I’ve been doing it for quite some time now, a certain amount of years, so it does become second nature.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Paul Davey: To just review your accounts and sit down with your accountants every quarter. We do it quarterly, I’d love it every week actually, but quarterly and just review all your accounts and go through them thoroughly, because, sometimes what you don’t see, your accountant sees and highlights.
Zoe Belisle-Springer:Â That makes a lot of sense.
Paul Davey: We are hairdressers, we’re creatives, you know all beauty, so basically, it’s not our field, so it’s nice to have professionals to support you that way.
Killian Vigna: Kind of the externals looking in.
Jennie Lawson: Especially with the VAT. As soon as you get into the VAT, you need to be on it, really on it.
Paul Davey: -Still a bit… like a long time, and it’s still a bit vague, how that all operates.
Killian Vigna: Cool. I suppose then, the crossover from, as opposed to reviewing, moving into the new year, the whole “New year, new me”everyone goes on about goals, resolutions, stuff like that. Myself and Zoe were chatting away and going, well what goals are you setting yourself?
We’ve always looked at it as, I set myself a goal and work really hard to achieve it, once I’ve achieved it, it gets dropped, you move on to the next thing. We were talking about, alright, maybe be more habitual, more habits. Making small changes every day that will all add up.
When you’re moving into the new year, is it kind of big targets, resolutions, or is it just your day by day to help grow it and improve it? I know there will always be KPI’s and targets, but do you set yourself any major goals throughout the year? You were saying about, the kind of retention?
Zoe Belisle-Springer: And the colour.
Paul Davey: 100%, I totally do. Above that, most of our goals become visionary targets. Almost, how do we change our business, how do we… I mean, there’s businesses opening up all around you all of the time. The world is moving faster than it ever has been before.
Business is evolving all of the time, technology is evolving all of the time, so we have to move with it. I’m fighting, sometimes we get left behind, and I don’t want to be left behind, so we have to stay on top of it.
There’s one thing that is more apparent to me, even in yesterday’s presentations, was customer service. Customer service is a massive, massive thing, so how do we evolve that and change that?
My vision, or my targets or my new year’s resolutions are basically, how do we change Davey Davey and become the leader in the market? What we do? I mean, yeah, we’ve got specialists in all areas, I’m very happy about that, we continuously do training. How do we up the little things? I mean the little things that we do, in service, whether it be teas, coffees… we do that anyway, and I think everybody does that, so how do we take that up a notch? We constantly review that, as we are reviewing right now. D’you know? Give more back to our clients. That’s what it ultimately is, giving more service back.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Of course. And I mean, for yourself, you’ve just transitioned into a whole new world with the eco-innovative salon, so…Â
Jennie Lawson: With the eco, and with the team, I guess for me, I am really not a big resolution fan. I’m more of an intention setter. Especially for January, everyone’s like “New Year, New You,” whereas I believe it’s “New Year, Nourish You”. Bring it back to self and how can you make yourself better in terms of fine-tuning what you’re already doing.
For us, and for me, my team, it’s just nailing team. We have a really good nuclear team, and its just, how do we get better, how are we happier at work, how do we make sure that what we’re giving people is the best that we can possibly be, because, we are the best that we can possibly be, in terms of our attitudes and looking after ourselves.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: That makes absolute sense.
Jennie Lawson: It’s what I preach.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: I did follow your 25 days of gratefulness, gratitude.
Jennie Lawson: Thank you.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: So, Paul, then, in your opinion, you have a lot of courses on Hairdressing Live and you’re obviously collaborating with a lot of salon owners out there, is there… do you find there is an area that is kind of overlooked by salon owners in their business strategies?
Paul Davey: I don’t know whether, if we’re talking about education here, are we talking about-
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Just in general, it could be education if-
Paul Davey: General. Look, I… One of the main reasons why I wanted to set this up was to give accessible education at the price people can afford, right?
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yep.
Paul Davey: But more… Above that, is to offer personal development. Personal development is exactly what motivates all of us. If we can’t see ourselves developing, then we get demotivated and we don’t see progression within our lives and in our careers, socially and professionally.
I just wanted to offer something where we can offer education because, there’s some people who basically don’t have large teams, that can’t send people up on training expeditions, and it costs you money to travel, costs you money to put people in accomodation. First and foremost, you have children, I have children myself, to leave your children and go out and do education things, it’s a little bit harder. I just wanted to bring education more accessible to everybody at… not to sound cliché, I just said it there a second, at the price people can afford, but that was basically what we wanted to do. We wanted to bring it to people so they can see.
I want to bring amazing talents and anybody that’s got something to offer and put them on the platform so they can educate our industry and bring it to a whole new level. It can have a profound effect, I believe.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: I think so… You had a question for Sean.
Killian Vigna: Yeah, I did. I know you’ve just kind of touched off the reports in your reviewing stage of it, but ongoing and everyone that’s using Phorest here, there’s over a hundred reports in the system, there’s the most, I suppose, recommended ones, but what do you, from looking outside of the salon industry, do you see as the… I suppose if you were to pick five of the top reports, for you, for ongoing monitoring, and then, which reports do you feel are the most under utilized as well?
Sean O’Sullivan: There’s quite a few, it’s like I was saying. There’s a lot of reports and I think everyone tends to go with the top ones that you can see in each section within Phorest. It’s as well known what information you can get from each one. The one that I always harp on about to every client that I talk to, is the… it’s the Salon Trend summary and also the Staff Trend summary. It’s the same information, one’s for the whole salon and one is for staff by staff.
It gives them a really great breakdown month by month of what type of clients are coming to you, is it just new clients, is it ones who are regulars with five plus visits, and then, what, especially for the hair industry, how much colour services are coming through, how much of your technical services are coming through, and break it down then, at the very bottom, into revenue per hour and cost per hour and contributions to the salon.
For me it covers the three most important things, are you giving good service, so clients coming back into you. Are you generating revenue, and are you profitable for the business. It’s a great one to see over time.
It’s very hard to know what staff… especially in, probably larger salons, I would say, or even smaller ones, you don’t have time to step back and look over it. Has someone’s performance dropped over time? It’s very easy to miss, you might not always recognize it with people. That for me, gives a very brief look on how are they doing.
Is someone suddenly… is regular clients dropping away from a certain staff member, and maybe we can sit down and… what’s happening, how can we get you back to where you used to be?
Other ones then, would be kind of standard ones like utilization to see, are you over staffing the salon or is… it helps as well, recognizing when salons are quieter when it might not seem to be… it happens a lot in salons where you might have small gaps, five minutes between appointments, but if you have five minute gaps between every single appointment, you’ll notice utilization dropping down to well below 70%, because of those tiny little gaps. They really add up.
It’s a good indicator of, are you rostering efficiently, are the front desk booking in people at times when they should be? They should be maximizing all the time. Cause, really, their job isn’t just to give good service, it’s also to maximize the profit for the salon, but doing it in such a way that makes an amazing experience for the client, gets them to come back in to you.
Other ones then, the retention reports. You’re saying it’s the most important thing in the salon. The industry in general runs on retention. If you have a high retention, it doesn’t cost you more to bring them back in again, you’re not marketing out to people, you’re not doing discounts, special offers, in general for them. They come to you because they love you and they want to keep coming to you because the quality of service. That’s incredibly important for everyone.
You generally find in salons as well that their older clients, you have about 60 to 70% retention, new clients tend to be about half that, in general. You want to find there… what I always recommend to salons is, you find your top performer. Who is the best at keeping new clients coming back to you and getting the old ones coming back in, and paring them up with the worst performer.
It’s not an exercise of making someone feel bad, you want them to improve. Maybe they’re missing the skill set, maybe they haven’t got that knowledge yet. I think that one would be really beneficial.
That’s four, but that’s all you’re gonna get.
Killian Vigna: But it kind of touches base on what Gavin Hoare was saying yesterday. Just cause you’ve got someone up here who’s banging out loads of appointments all day and then someone who’s unable to get through a few. You’re not saying one’s better than the other, you’re actually comparing and trying to find a happy medium between the two of them.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: How do you feel about that, you guys?
Jennie Lawson: The trends, I think, is fabulous, because that’s how… when you go from work, cause I was working on my own for so long, when you go from what you’re average spend… you know that you need to be bringing in 50 pound per hour, and then you go back and you look at all the trends and you see how it’s gone up and gone down and you can kind of watch it.
The trends for me, as well, what I found when I was working on my own, was, it shows when I took some holiday. You can tell when it goes down, cause I’m like, high, high, high, drop, really high, cause I’m back and I’m working 9 till 9.
It’s really good to be able to just watch and track it and to see what’s going on and see the difference from when you go from being on your own, taking, five grand a month to taking on a team and you’re taking on 17.
It’s those kind of things, also, when you’re then looking at business plans and you’re looking at actually getting investment and all that kind of stuff. They’re the things that you print off and go “Look, here’s my growth, done.” It makes life so much easier.
Killian Vigna: This is good.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: He always looks at me like that when we’re recording the podcast downstairs.
Jennie Lawson:Â Haha, I was going to say “What does that look mean?”
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Okay, so let’s say you’ve identified areas in the salon that you want to improve on for the year, you were saying last year you wanted to improve on the colour and stuff like that, how do you go about sharing it to the team, getting the team to embark in the vision and, getting towards that goal, towards the end of the year?
Paul Davey: Communication. I mean, look, we do have regular talks. Maybe not as often with meetings as we possibly should, but we should have more five minute little huddles and get together and just review each day as it comes.
We are getting better. I think it’s just something, whenever you have so many plates spinning, it’s just trying to juggle all that. I think communication is the best way to do, and keep everybody transparent.
We monetize… our management team actually puts in a structure work, all the guys fill in, they know each week what they’re taking in, what retail their doing, numbers, numbers. They see it in a review sheet over months, which is great. It’s monetizing… look, how do you monitor people’s progression? How do you manage people’s progression? You have to monitor it. People have to know it by almost physically putting things in and they see it tangibly at the end of every week, where they go, “Oh, God, I did a really good week that week or I did a bad week.” But if you don’t do anything at all, then they don’t know and it’s forgotten about. You know?
It’s forgotten about. It’s having to see something weekly and know that their own personal growth and their own personal development. Ultimately, we are a commission-based industry, obviously the more commission that they… the more money that they turn, the more money they earn.
Killian Vigna: It keeps them on top. I find it interesting that you’re saying that, cause our last question was actually, do you get your team… so, based off the #30Days2Grow that we did in July, a lot of the feedback was, that salon owners were impressed at how engaged, their team actually got on board with the ideas and was more involved and it increased morale.
I know you were saying you do the whiteboards, with your team already.
Jennie Lawson: Yeah, we do that all the time.
Killian Vigna: You’ve always done that.
Paul Davey: How often do you have that, by the way?
Jennie Lawson: How often?
Paul Davey: Yeah. Out of curiosity.
Jennie Lawson: I’m looking at you. I don’t know, every two, three weeks? It depends what it is, I guess.
I’m really transparent. This is still really new to me, having a team, so when it came to going through 2017 and going through 2018, it was, okay, this is what we did 2017, is there anything I’ve missed? Kind of like, your brains are probably working better than mine. Then, let’s look at 2018 and look where the problems were.
We got in too late with teachers, we were doing treat your teacher in July, when actually, that needed to be in May, because people were already buying stuff. It’s just… It’s having… It’s knowing that you are not necessarily the smartest person in the room, because they come up with gems all the time. It’s only by allowing them to have that space to create, that you-
Paul Davey: Love what you’re saying, honestly, it’s amazing.
Jennie Lawson: There are times, when we have issues and stuff that happens, we have so many little meetings. Let’s put this together, we’re all gonna sit down, we all sit on the floor. If we have a problem, I lock the door and they’re not allowed out until we’re done with it. [crosstalk 00:22:28]
But then, I’m… it’s a women industry, you have to… I know that goes completely off 2018, but it’s… we have to be able to communicate. Sometimes, when someone’s having a really bad day, you need to know that they’re having a bad day and they need to come in going, hey I haven’t slept, I’m exhausted, I’ve got a full day of massage and I’m gonna be really grumpy today.
The answer to that shouldn’t be, okay, well I’m just going to leave you over there. It should be, what do you need? What do you need from me so you can do your job to the best ability that you can? We communicate on that level a lot anyway.
Then with the whiteboards… I’m a creative, my whole house is covered in them.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Is it actually?
Jennie Lawson: Yeah. I’m really lucky that I’m single. I’ve still got the mindmap from when I created Mimosa. When I created that, I’ve still got the mind map, I took it everywhere with me, any business even I went to, I’d put it up on my wall so I could add stuff to it.
I’ve then done, the last part of 2017, it’s all on the wall. I can then take stuff in… any training that we do, we write it all up on the wall, I take pictures of it, Rachel writes it up into a book.
Paul Davey: One of the most valuable things, I think what you said there, as well, was involving your staff. Do you know what, I think if you involve staff that way, they feel part of a team.
Jennie Lawson: We underestimate them. We really under estimate their brains. They are incredible human beings. Each one of us are and each person looks at life in a completely different way. You have to be able to give them that opportunity to have that idea, because, we, as salon owners, we are juggling a hundred and fifty balls and the one thing you haven’t thought about, happens to be the one thing that they are actually, they’re like, “oh, why don’t we just do this?”
We had a client whinge that I didn’t give them a cup of tea at the end of a 9pm treatment at my old salon. I gave it to the group, and my lawyer turned around and she went, why don’t we just get take away cups?
I was like, why don’t we just get take away cups? Well that’s a genius idea.
Paul Davey: Why didn’t you say it sooner?
Killian Vigna: It might seem so simple to them, and if you’re not giving them the opportunity to give that advice, or make their own decisions, they’re gonna think, oh it’s a stupid silly idea, she’s already thought about it so I’m not gonna give it. You’re actually giving that, you’re creating that environment for them.
Jennie Lawson: But you also find that if you don’t… if I go in full guns blazing, we need to earn this amount of money and this is how we’re gonna do it and I’ve created this whole gateway, cause that’s what I spent my whole weekend doing, and they go “Oh, alright.” They just look at you, whereas, actually if you go, how are we gonna… we need to be increasing revenue, and we need to be getting more clients in on my stuff cause I’m higher earning and I need to be giving you more of my clients, how do you want me to do that? How do we do this? And they go, like a point system.
So we don’t do commission, we’ve just launched a points referral thing. I spent ages, ages, ages going back and forward, how am I gonna do this points thing, how many points is each person worth, and I spent a whole weekend planning it on the wall. Then I go in and I’m like, I’m gonna delegate this to you, you can earn points, and we worked it out, if you get a point for every single person you re-book, you get a point… acts of kindness and if you go and do a chocolate run, and all those kind of things, and how many points do you think it’s worth to get a half a day holiday? How many points do you think you deserve if you work it out and you’ve got two people an hour, you do 33 hours a week, you do 66 people, it worked out 265 points if you have someone every half an hour, you get 265 points a month. How often do you feel that you need to be rewarded for your job?
Zoé Bélisle-Springer: That’s brilliant. [crosstalk 00:26:13]
Jennie Lawson: Well it’s my idea, I’ve already sent it over, I’ve already sent you over my images… but I gave it to them and they were the ones that came up, they said it needed to be a thousand days for a half day holiday, it needed to be two thousand points for them to get a whole day holiday, I was like, oh alright then.
There was me going to give them five points for each thing, you want one point for re-booking? Great, done.
Killian Vigna: That’s brilliant.
Sean O’Sullivan: I think it makes them much more powerful, saying it’s one thing, especially from… when I really started support with Phorest, you’d hear quite a lot, the fear salon owners have of their staff, instead of getting them involved and really making them a part of the business, they’re much more, oh someone’s gonna betray me and take all my clients.
That will happen eventually in any business, something like that will happen. I think if you get them emotionally involved… money, you need money to live, that’s without a doubt, but when you get someone emotionally bought into your business, they’re not gonna do that.
Jennie Lawson: Our business doesn’t run without them.
Sean O’Sullivan: Exactly, you cannot. And I think having that fear –
Paul Davey: -working with cool people… it’s nice to have an environment where everybody gets something. Obviously there’s occasions where people have ups and downs, we’re human beings. To work in an environment where you’re working with great people and… it just makes the job a lot easier.
Jennie Lawson: Well, also clients notice.
Paul Davey: Yeah, they do indeed.
Jennie Lawson: Clients notice when, if I’m stressed about the numbers, everyone else is stressed cause it ripples, like tendrils out to everybody. If Jennie’s stressed about the money, then everyone’s stressed about the money. Whereas, actually, we have a day like Saturday, it’s like guys… whatever, let’s just have fun. So you have a day having fun, and it’s like, “Oh wow, look, revenue’s right up.” You think okay, well just stop stressing about it. And just enjoy each other.
Killian Vigna: Team involvement’s definitely a big thing.
Jennie Lawson: Hundred percent.
Sean O’Sullivan: It’s so important to a business.
Killian Vigna: You were saying… about fear of losing your staff, that brought us over to, I suppose it’s the last closing point. Salon networking, is that a big thing that you do? Cause I know there’s the fear of, why would I talk to this salon owner, they’re gonna take my ideas and might go and do it better, but, you’re part of a mastermind group, you were saying earlier on.
Is salon networking a thing?
Jennie Lawson: It’s not a salon networking group. It’s just a business one.
Killian Vigna: I know mastermind is a business one, but, do you do any salon networking other than something like this weekend?
Zoe Belisle-Springer:Â The Summit.
Killian Vigna: Would you do much of it?
Paul Davey: Yeah. I would consider that as my networking. I would consider… we go to loads of different events. I love sharing ideas, because, do you know what? There’s great good will out there.
And you know what? Everybody’s busy doing their own bloody thing, so you know what, you want to steal my idea? Knock yourself out. Honestly. In my opinion, it’s very much like, it’s the process that you have to go through to achieve those goals that stops anybody from doing anything.
In my opinion, by sharing ideas with other people, they share ideas back, and you get so much more in return. The more you give, the more you get back, in my opinion. I just give, give, give and trying and give information and network with people. It’s amazing to do that, rather than being a closed door, you close so many doors around you. I’m sorry.
Killian Vigna: If you’re not gonna share your experiences, why is anyone gonna share with you? Then how do you learn? How do you move on. Everything is stuck on your shoulders then.
Paul Davey: Very true. And do you know what, the more you talk about it to other people, they come back with… you give something to somebody and then they come back and go, how about you do it this way or that way? You go, bloody, I didn’t think about that.
It’s amazing the way you can actually network and communicate with people that way. Honestly, there have been some great ideas that we’ve come out with recently, with the Hairdressing Live, and with the book. I can’t share that enough with people, as much as I possibly can. People say, “Oh people are gonna rob that idea, or people could have taken that idea.” And I’m like, yeah, but you know what? If they did, I would shake your hand and go, fair play for you doing it, cause it takes months and months and months to do it.
It’s a heartache, you nearly lose relationships over it, it’s a grueling job. The book takes about three to five years to do, so again, knock yourself out. If you do, I shake your hand and go “brilliant.”
It’s amazing, but that’s my opinion on it.
Killian Vigna: You’re in the exact same situation, because, when we came across, for the last episode, with you was about… alright, you’re 100% eco-friendly in the UK, the first salon, and we thought, we’ll interview Jennie, we’ll get a little bit of information. We were surprised about how much information you actually shared about it. Because, like that, it was a mammoth of work. It wasn’t something that someone could just.
Jennie Lawson:Â But I would say that about anything. There is not one thing… even the gratitude advent, someone said to me, oh I would have done, I was like, great, go and copy and paste it. If you copy and paste it, it’s my words. More people find it, more people will see it, more people will read it, awesome.
I have been burnt, I have had someone buy one of my domain names and link their website to it, so I am very protective. That’s brand, I’m protective over my brand, I’m not protective over the content that I have on it.
With the eco-stuff, my God, we’re trying to change the planet here, the more people that know about how to do it, get on it. It’s not hard.
I think when it comes to networking and sharing, a hundred percent, its very difficult within beauty because people are so protective. I came to the summit last year, purely with the intention of, I need to know how much people are paying their staff. I need to know what commission rates people are on, because I didn’t have a clue.
You get some people that are really open, you get other people that won’t talk about it. But how do you know what’s normal, if no one is prepared to talk about it? Because we all need help, we’re all employing people. You find the more you talk to people and the more … the issues you have about staffing, you mention one thing and everyone’s like, Oh my God, yeah, I had that… and then she found out she was pregnant, and you think oh great, again?
The thing I pick up from my mastermind is that actually; if someone can give you the information that means you’re not gonna fail, that one step, and you can overcome one hurdle because someone else has been through it, just spread it. People have to share their problems and the things that they find difficult because that’s the only way people learn.
Killian Vigna: So go knocking on doors.
Jennie Lawson: Yeah. But I ask… we’re getting waved at… I get asked… I ask people all the time, every single, anything I don’t understand, I’m like hey, do you know anything about this? No, okay next one. Do you know anything about this? How do I do this? How can I speak at Phorest’s Summit next year? How can I… I went around the whole room.
If you’re not prepared to ask, if you’re not humble enough to say, I actually don’t know the answer to that question, then you’re never gonna succeed.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: That’s brilliant. I think you’ve got some [crosstalk 00:32:53] I think you had something on that actually.
Killian Vigna: Our closing remarks were going to be on that, but you both just nailed it yourselves. It’s basically, go knocking on people’s doors. Don’t be afraid to share people’s experiences, because, like that, if you don’t share, no one else is gonna give you advice.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: I think you’re both two great examples of leadership in both respective areas, I think it’s great that you were on the show today. We have been waved at, so we have to leave the stage.
Paul Davey: I think I’ve got a client waiting for me. I really do, I’m not joking.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Thanks again for joining us on the show today. If you have any feedback, guys, please feel free to leave a comment on iTunes. We’re also on Stitcher this year. Don’t forget to subscribe, have a wonderful week, and we’ll catch you next Monday!
Killian Vigna: All the best.
Thanks for reading!
#LetsGrow
