Phorest FM Episode 128: The #SalonSummit Roadshow To Stop In Philly

Killian Vigna: Welcome to the Phorest FM podcast, episode 128. I’m Killian Vigna.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: And I’m Zoe Belisle-Springer. This week we’ll be discussing the details around the second instalment of the 2019 Salon Owners Summit Roadshows. For the occasion, we’ll be joined by Sinead Carroll from the Phorest PR and Events team as well as Ashley Toliver-Williams, salon owner, National Chairman at Eufora International and speaker at the event.

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. Good morning, Zoe.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Good morning, Killian. So you remember a couple of weeks ago we had Abigail Walsh? For anyone who’s listening to the monthly roundup, I think it was in June… She had joined us on the show talking about the UK events, and we were messing around asking who would be on the show next between her and Sinead, and I guess, here we go, this is the competition, it starts. Sinead is back on the show today!

Killian Vigna: It’s like US vs EU, isn’t it?

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah! For those who don’t know, Sinead now leads Phorest’s salon software events and PR activity in the US market. You’ll see her attend many industry events throughout the year. You’ll catch her say at Modern Salon’s Data Driven; she was there… Intercoiffure’s Spring and Fall Ateliers, or even Eufora Global Connection, to name a few anyways.

Killian Vigna: Yeah, but for anyone who is only tuning in for the first couple of episodes, most people would know Sinead for being the driving force behind both Phorest’s Salon Owners Summit, the flagship conference here in Dublin and the new Salon Owners Summit Roadshows taking place in the US.

Introducing Sinead Carroll [01:42]

Zoe Belisle-Springer: So first things first welcome back to the show Sinead and this time tuning in from Philly, where the second Salon Owners Summit roadshow instalment has been announced. How’s that going?

Sinead Carroll: It’s a really exciting time! We’ve just announced the second instalment of the Salon Owners Summit Roadshow, which is happening in Philly, as you said. The feedback we got after the Chicago event was fantastic, so we said we absolutely need to organise another one this year. The location for the next Roadshow is Philadelphia, where our Phorest US office is.

Killian Vigna: Nice and close to home, so?

Sinead Carroll: Yeah, not too far.

Salon Owners Summit Roadshow Philadelphia: structure, & speaker lineup [02:17]

Killian Vigna: Other than the fact that this one’s going to be in Philly and not Chicago, what can we expect from the structure? Are they going to be kind of similar? Or are there any changes, any differences?

Sinead Carroll: Yeah, I mean the structure will be fairly similar to the one in Chicago. I’m not sure if many of you listening were at the Chicago event, but the feedback we got from Chicago was fantastic, and some good points were made and the feedback as well, which we have adjusted for this event. So as I said, it’ll pretty much be the similar kind of format as the Chicago event. So we’re going to have a full day of education, and then we’re going to have a networking cocktail reception as we would ordinarily do with all kinds of Phorest events. We’ve reduced the number of speakers for this instalment and the reason for that is so that the speakers can fully deep dive into their chosen topics. That’s the only real change. Other than that it will be still the same vibe, still the same atmosphere as all our other Salon Owners Summit events.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: You mentioned it earlier, an announcement just went out last week about the Roadshow. Let’s talk about the lineup! There are quite a few familiar names in there, who can people expect onstage this time around?

Sinead Carroll: We’ve got a stellar lineup of speakers announced for this event. The first of those is Olivia Smalley. Some of you may know her better as OMGArtistry. Olivia is going to be talking about all things social. Her topic is going to be the “Social Savvy Stylist.” In her class, she’s going to help you understand the inner workings of social media and how to use it as a stylist and salon owner to grow your business. She’ll also give you the tools and the knowledge to be confident when creating content, writing captions and posting on social media, which I know that some people are a little bit hesitant and unsure of sometimes. This is going to be an amazing class, and there’ll definitely be some key takeaways that you can implement straight away almost I’d say, even while you’re at the event. So really excited to welcome Olivia.

Next up, we have Jay Williams. You may have seen Jay Williams… He did speak in Chicago and due to outstanding demand we’ve invited him back again. So his topic is going to be “Values-Based Leadership.” So I’m really excited to see this topic as well. His topic in Chicago was “Trust Is The New Currency,” and it got great feedback. So I’m excited to hear the “Values-Based Leadership,” because as Zoe and Killian you know, we’re big on values in Phorest. It’s a really hot topic and I’m excited to see what he’s going to share with our attendees.

Next up, we have Rachel Ringwood. Rachel is a hairstylist and a speaker and also a former guest of Phorest FM. Some of you may have heard her a few weeks ago – a fantastic episode. I really, really enjoyed it. We’ve invited her to come along to speak at the Salon Owners Summit Roadshow, and her topic is going to be “Safeguarding Your Passion.” Basically, you don’t want your body to burn out before your passion does. She’s going to give you tips and insights about how to look after yourself because that’s very important in this industry because often people think that time is money and yeah, you just burn yourself out. So looking after yourself and looking after your body and your mind.

So really excited to see Rachel and we have Josh Hafetz. Many of you may know him from Art of Business. He is the president of Art of Business. What Art of Business does is helps salons succeed through offering industry-leading products and education. The topic Josh is going to be speaking about is “The Science of Motivation.” Really looking forward to seeing that topic as well; it’s something that I think we can all learn a little bit from. Whether it be motivation yourself, more space in your staff. Really excited to see Josh as well.

Introducing Ashley Toliver-Williams [05:55]

Zoe Belisle-Springer: And of course, today’s main guest, Ashley Toliver-Williams. Ashley is a salon owner, the co-founder of Fuse Republic and also National Chairman at Eufora International. It’s a pleasure and honour to have you join the show Ashley! Welcome to Phorest FM!

Ashley Toliver-Williams: Thank you!

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Did yourself and Sinead meet at Eufora Global Connection? Is that how this all happened?

Ashley Toliver-Williams: No, I actually met Phorest at a different industry event back in, I think it was 2017. We got started with Phorest and sort of exposed a lot of our friends in the Eufora network to Phorest, back at the beginning of 2018 when we launched with Phorest in January.

Killian Vigna: So a client for a bit of a while now.

Ashley Toliver-Williams: Yes.

Killian Vigna: Cool! Well look, Ashley, the talk you’ll be delivering at the Salon Owners Summit Roadshow in Philadelphia is titled, “Go For Broke.” Tell us a bit about that. Are you essentially on a mission to eradicate average results?

Ashley Toliver-Williams: Right. So ‘go for broke’ is a term that’s used a lot in gambling. It’s like if you throw all your chips in, you go in and go for broke, you essentially say, “I’m going to go all in, and I’m going to make it and hit it big, or I’m going to go broke.” What we find across this industry is that there are so many people who are good with good. They’re good in this sort of stalemate place.

A lot of times, we don’t even realise that we’re in a stalemate place. We are where we are. I can remember, I had a $1 million salon, and everybody was saying that I was so good, I was so good, I was so good. Then we had a natural disaster hit our city, and it ended up knocking our client count down and it took our huge salon with all these great numbers that the industry had been telling us were so good and we’re like, “We’re so good.” And it took us to a space where we almost lost the business in one second.

“Go For Broke” is about going all-in because really at the end of the day, the option of going broke in this industry is such a big, great reality with seven out of 10 businesses operating unprofitably anyway. So why not go all-in on everything, some things that we know about already and some things that we don’t and give it every single thing that we have? If we stay in that space of good, we’re at high, high risk of not being good anyway.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: How do you avoid being complacent, whatever role you’re in?

Ashley Toliver-Williams: How do you avoid being complacent? I love that question, and I think that if your mind is not constantly looking at what can I do more and what can I do better? And you’re not constantly questioning whether or not this is the best you’ve got, and then you have to look around because you probably are already complacent. You’re probably already sitting in a space, in a world where you’re just fine, and you don’t even realise you are. The worst of it comes when you get to a specific place in this industry, let’s say a lot of people talk about six-figure hairdressers, they talk about million-dollar salons. You get to that place, and nobody’s talking about anything else, so you’re good, and you do find yourself at the “top,” quote-unquote. But in reality, you find that happy space of complacency where you’re fine, and you just stop. So how do you get out of that space of complacency? You constantly have to be in a mindset of moving forward and making something bigger happen for yourself, even if you don’t necessarily know how to do it yet.

Killian Vigna: You talk about having a good salon, or the six-figure salon and then we talked about getting out of complacency. For you, was it that disaster that was that kind of wake up moment? Or did you always have that, I suppose, go for broke mentality?

Ashley Toliver-Williams: Definitely, the natural disaster was what smacked us in the face. I don’t think we realised that we were as complacent as we were. I think we thought that we were trying to get better, but one of those ways just as a salon owner where complacency lives, where you don’t even recognise it or realise it is like… Let’s say you take your top performers, you have those top performers who are doing well. They’re not broke; they’re not hungry, they aren’t starving. In fact, some of them live amazing lives. They’re driving nice cars; they own homes, they have fat paycheques and you kind of stop looking at them. You stop thinking about them, and you focus on everybody that is broke. Well, there’s a huge gap there that you’re missing if you’re no longer looking at how you can elevate those people too because you’re thinking, “Okay, they’re fine.”

Well, that’s one of those spaces of complacency that you live in when you are in a quote-unquote, “high performing salon,” where you have these high performers, and you’re not looking at them anymore because they’ve already passed all the industry benchmarks that everyone has told us are the height and the highest of the high.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: That’s interesting because wouldn’t that lead to those high performers to eventually leave the salon and go chase something else, another opportunity elsewhere where they feel more challenged?

Ashley Toliver-Williams: When you allow them to be in a space of complacency?

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah.

Ashley Toliver-Williams: Absolutely. If you want to know why your high performers leave, why do they walk out the door? It’s because the business has nothing for them anymore.

Ashley Toliver-Williams at the Salon Owners Summit Roadshow [11:20]

Zoe Belisle-Springer: So what is your talk at the Salon Owners Summit Roadshow going to entail? Are you going to give tips around how to get out of that complacency or kind of talk about your story? Like, give us a little bit of a-

Killian Vigna: Are you going to give people a kick?

Ashley Toliver-Williams: Well, we’ll definitely give people a kick, but one of the big things is, I don’t want to inundate… You know we have a finite amount of time on that stage, and I do not want to go up there for this specific amount of time in just rattle off 5 million things for somebody to take away. I have been to so many presentations where you’re drinking through a fire hose, and someone’s talking through all of the content that they have, and everything that they could do to fix your business and you want to do all of it, and you walk away overwhelmed.

So we’re going to focus on one huge factor, and it’s actually something that Phorest can help with a lot, because it’s part of your software, something special in your software that really allows us to track something specific, that deals down into the depths of what really matters in regard to benchmarks for a salon and one specific benchmark that people should be paying attention to, that no one in this industry is paying attention to. I’m not going to reveal it here because I want them to come to the Roadshow…

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Of course, of course!

Ashley Toliver-Williams: [inaudible 00:12:40], but we’re going to dive into a huge actionable shift. It’s not just a shift that you can focus on for your business, for the salon owner, but it’s something that will change the mindset of your team in regards to sales, especially in regards to retail, but also in regards to service and into how they look at their lives in this industry and what they can do to create something higher and bigger for themselves and how you can be a part, and the catalyst to be able to do that and help them get there no matter what level they’re at.

Killian Vigna: Sounds amazing! While you said that Phorest does have an attribute there, you don’t have to be a Phorest client to still get massive value out of your talk, do you?

Ashley Toliver-Williams: No, not at all. In fact, the reason why it’s so important to mention that Phorest has that benchmark is that it’s there clearly in a report, but it’s one of the most simple things that you could ever track, ever. Literally, all you have to do is count people, that’s all you have to do.

Killian Vigna: We just make it easier.

Ashley Toliver-Williams: Yep.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: If you had to think about say, one thing that you wished people took away from your talk, what would that be?

Ashley Toliver-Williams: The one thing that I wish people not just would take away from my talk, but people would wake up to, is that we have been living in a space in this industry that really is average. A lot of people will get frustrated when I say that because they’re like, “I don’t want to be average, and I would never sign up for average.” I’m like, “I know, I get it! I didn’t either! That’s not what I wanted.” It’s not what I want now, but the reality of it is, we’ve been living in this space with an industry who believes that stylists won’t do a lot of things, salon owners won’t do a lot of things. There are all these conversations going on around what the people of the industry won’t do, and part of it is us, because we haven’t been willing to do it, or we haven’t known how to do it.

So the biggest thing that I hope people take away and really just start looking at a little bit differently, is the responsibility, the commitment, and the opportunity that’s available for them in this industry if they start looking at themselves in a different way. We’re always waiting for someone else to see us differently, but the first thing that we’ve got to do is see ourselves differently.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: I love that! But yeah, looking forward to meeting you and looking forward to hearing your talk. Of course, thank you so much for joining on the show today. Hope everyone is as excited as we are!

Killian Vigna: Thanks so much, Ashley.

Ashley Toliver-Williams: Awesome. Thank you. I’m excited too!

Salon Owners Summit Roadshow Philadelphia: essential information [15:12]

Killian Vigna: So to reiterate the details, the Roadshow is taking place at The Lucy on Broad Street in Philadelphia on Monday, October 21st, 2019, is that right Sinead?

Sinead Carroll: That is correct! We’ll be kicking off at 9:00 am on Monday, October 21st. So the education is going to run from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm and then from 5:00 pm to 7:00 pm, we’re going to have a cocktail reception. We’re going to have some networking, drinks, food, a DJ and just a bit of fun after the day of education.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: They always go down well those evenings, to be honest, like any of the Phorest Salon Owners Summit, whether it’s the flagship or the roadshow, it’s always the perfect ending of a night.

Sinead Carroll: Yeah, I suppose it’s something that’s kind of like iconic about our events, not to blow our own trumpet or anything, but people do enjoy our after parties. The fact that the event is taking place in Center City, it’s a really great part of town and The Lucy, the venue is absolutely stunning. Unfortunately, there aren’t too many pictures of it online, but it’s going to be a surprise for people too because the venue only actually opened in January of this year. So there’s very little buy it online but take my word for it, it’s stunning. As soon as I saw it, I booked it. I was just like, “Okay, let me sign up somewhere.”

Zoe Belisle-Springer: So for anyone interested in this, this is open to Phorest and non-Phorest clients.

Sinead Carroll: Yes, that’s correct. Some people might make confusion between our events. So in Dublin, we host the Salon Owners Summit flagship event, and this event, due to demand, is exclusively for Phorest clients, but the Roadshow events that we host are open to everyone. So, you don’t need to be a client, and you don’t need to use Phorest. You don’t even need to be interested really in software. These events are purely for educational enrichment. It’s not going to be about tech, it’s not going to be about software, there might be elements of it obviously, but that’s not the main focus of these events.

So it’s more about inspiration, education, the elevation of the industry. So yeah, it’s open to everyone, and we’d really encourage people from all over to come and join us for this event.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: What about the tickets? What can you tell us? Obviously, you’ve mentioned the after party, but we’re talking food in there, what are people expecting in terms of pricing and what does that pricing include?

Sinead Carroll: Yeah, so the tickets are priced at $350 per ticket. That’s including all the taxes and everything like that. We do have an early bird offer running for the next month, which finishes on August 31st. That will get you up to $50 off your ticket price. The discount code is on our website, so when you go to purchase the tickets, it’s just an early bird discount code, so that would bring it down to under $300 per ticket, which I think is a really, really, really good deal considering all that you get.

So, I’ll just run through a few of the things that the ticket price includes. Obviously, you get access to some of the best minds in the beauty business which I’ve already mentioned and actionable takeaways to implement in your salon. That’s a thing that we’re very, very passionate about, is giving people key takeaways to implement in your salon.

Whenever we do education, we ensure that each of our speakers will be able to provide key takeaways for attendees so that they can go back to their businesses, go back to their salons, and actually implement something for lasting change, which I think is really, really important, especially when you attend an event of this kind and invest money in going, you want to get these takeaways that you can actually use. There’s going to be exceptional networking opportunities, obviously with other salon owners and managers, but also with the people from Phorest, with the speakers, some industry press we have there, so lots of lots of networking opportunities.

Then, we will feed and water you for the day, which is always important. We’ll have breakfast upon arrival, then we’ll have two coffee breaks throughout the day, we’re going to have a lovely lunch and then afterwards, we’ll have a champagne reception, an open bar, which I’m sure all of you are going to hate! Then lots of lovely foods in the evening. As well as that, you’re also going to get a swag bag. It wouldn’t be a Phorest event if you don’t go away with a little bit of swag and education material. So yeah, I think it’s a pretty good deal! What do you guys think?

Killian Vigna: I was just thinking, for the food and drink alone, I’m in! But no, it sounds like a serious lineup. There’s a lot going on. With the amount of information you’re getting there from one action-packed today, the return on investment you’re going to get from that is tenfold.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: So just before we wrap up all of the information around the Salon Owners Summit roadshow, which I’m very excited about, we also have a giveaway running on Instagram, don’t we?

Sinead Carroll: Yes! So Paige, our Social Media and Community Manager, has set up an exciting giveaway. Basically, if you buy a ticket before August 31st, so if you buy one of our early bird tickets, which I’d highly recommend you all do, you’ll also be entered in to win a gift card for a Philadelphia restaurant and excursion of your choice, which you can use during your stay in Philly.

So if you’re making a trip out of it, and you’re coming to Philly for the weekend, then there’s a meal and already some tourist excursion for you. The rules of entry are: for each ticket you buy, you get four entries. For sharing the Roadshow posts on your profile and tagging Phorest Salon Software you get three entries. For each friend you tag in our posts about the Roadshow, you get two entries, and for sharing a post in your story and tagging Phorest Salon Software, you get one entry. So basically if you buy a ticket before August 31st, you will be entered into the draw, which I believe Paige is doing the first week of September.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: That sounds amazing. It’s the first time we do a big giveaway like that, it’s pretty cool!

Sinead Carroll: Well, you know what, there are just so many amazing restaurants in Philadelphia, it would be such a shame not to share it with one of our special attendees. I would know, I’ve been eating my way around Philadelphia the last eight weeks!

Killian Vigna: Before you start going into the food and giving me food envy, we’ll probably wrap it up there so in that case! Listen, Sinead, thanks so much for joining us on the show and can’t wait to see more coming out of the Salon Owners Summit Roadshow over the next few weeks.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yes, and of course, as usual, we’ll also be tuning in live from that event in October, so look out for that on the podcast as well.

Sinead Carroll: Great. Thanks so much, guys!

Inside Phorest: reflections, upcoming events & final words [21:51]

Killian Vigna: This leads us onto our Inside Phorest segment. We’re going to kick it off with the Phorest Academy, which is your one-stop education shop. It’s an online learning portal full of fun, interactive and bite-sized self-taught training courses covering every area of your Phorest system.

What can you expect from Phorest Academy? You can expect interactive online and on-demand training, learning on the go with the mobile app, a library of regularly added and updated courses, to which we’ve just added two more this week, and interactive Phorest systems. Most importantly, you can get Phorest Academy certified. So if you are interested, email us at phorestacademy@phorest.com.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Perfect and then following suit, another learning opportunity here now open to everyone, Phorest clients and non-clients. The ultimate salon stock and budget webinar. This is specifically for Australian-based registrants, so you’ll be able to join Carl Keeley, educator and creative director of the multi-award-winning Chumba Concepts hair salon for the ultimate stock management and budget webinar. In this session, you’ll receive the tools and the knowledge to take control over your inventory and finally get a hold of those retail targets.

This is taking place on Monday, August 12th at 11:00 am, Melbourne time. If you want to register for this, you’ll have a link in the show’s notes. Just to bear in mind, this is a one hour webinar, it is free to join, and like I said earlier, you do not have to be a Phorest client to avail of this.

Next, we have the Salon Owners Summit 2020, so the flagship event in Dublin. Our first workshop speaker has been announced. This is going to be led by Phil Jackson, who is the founder and coach at Phil Jackson, Build Your Salon, and he is also founder and co-owner at Bravo Hairdressing. He’s a salon owner, speaker and author. You’ve heard them on the show before. Just earlier this year, he was talking about using Facebook Messenger to drive conversations with clients. So this workshop, he’s going to be talking about salon memberships. The workshop is taking place at the Salon Owners Summit 2020, which is happening on Monday, January 6th, at the Convention Center in Dublin, Ireland.

The description of his session is get paid properly, enjoy your business more and ditch the first of the month anxiety forever. You’re going to be hearing about how you can smooth out the highs and the lows in your salon income, how to set yourself apart from local competition, how to make financial planning a breeze. and then you’ll also learn how to stop the stagnation point and grow your salon profits.

Along with the Salon Owners Summit 2020, we also have an add-on event, for which spaces are limited. There’s an additional registration fee required, and this is the Inside Phorest, “The Future of Technology for the Salon Business.” It’s taking place on Sunday, January 5th. Now usually, we would have had Inside Phorest taking place the day after the Summit, but we’re changing things up for this edition. So Sunday, January 5th from 2:00 to 6:00 pm at the Morrison Hotel in Dublin, and it’s going to be followed by a drinks reception.

If you’re a Phorest client and you’re interested in attending the Salon Owners Summit 2020 in Dublin, you can follow the link in the episode’s show notes to request a callback for tickets for this event and you’ll then be put in touch with Emer Farrell, who’s in charge of the ticket sales.

Otherwise, as usual, we have the Salon Mentorship Hub available for you guys. If you have anything in particular that you want to discuss with a salon coach or consultant, get a second opinion on or see something from a different perspective, all you have to do is go to salonmentors.phorest.com and book a free 15 to 30-minute consultation with an industry consultant or coach. It is free as well, and you do not need to be a Phorest client to again avail of this.

Well, that’s all we got for this week guys. So as always, if you want to share your thoughts on this episode or have any suggestions, please send us an email at phorestfm@phorest.com, or leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. We genuinely love feedback and are always looking for ways to improve the show.

Otherwise, have a wonderful week and we’ll catch you next Monday.

Killian Vigna: All the best.

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