Caroline Sanderson is owner of EGO Hair Design in Inverness, founder of consultancy Salon Jedi and one of our very own Salon Gold Superstars. Here Caroline shares her four pillars of business success.
Mindset
Mindset is the most important factor in your success as a salon owner. Mindset comes above your training, your skills as a hairdresser, where you have your salon and who you have working for you. The two types of mindset I generally encounter – fixed mindsets and growth mindsets. If you realise that you have a fixed mindset that is currently holding you back, don’t worry. As soon as you identify it, you’re one step closer to making positive changes that will make you happier and help your business thrive. I want you to understand that what you see in your world comes from within you. It’s a reflection of your internal circumstances and that’s why everything that comes after has to begin here. Your mindset is the foundation of your business. Your business is a reflection of you as the owner. You have the power to change your thinking, which will positively impact your business.
Marketing
Your mindset is the foundation, the core of your business, and that all starts with you. Marketing is about your clients. A lot of salon owners don’t do any marketing, or the marketing that they do is very minimal and they take a scattergun approach where they throw a lot of things out there and just see what happens. There are five steps you need to take to master your marketing and help you become more focused in your marketing activity
- Reveal – find your niche – who is your ideal client?
- Reel – hook your ideal client with your messaging and reel them in.
- Revenue – price for profits.
- Return – more visits/higher average spend.
- Retain – strategies to keep clients coming back.
Management
Everything you do to bring people in, from the offers to the reasons to return, needs to be managed. If you’re running a full column, doing the marketing, dealing with the finance and the operations and trying to manage the salon, is that really achievable? Someone has to manage the salon, the team, the targets and the systems that you put in place. That on its own is a full-time job. Consider the management of the systems that you want in place. One of the best ways is to have a dedicated salon manager. With someone in this role, your salon will run more smoothly and everyone in your team will know where they stand.
The three most important elements you need to manage at your salon are: staff, sales and service.
Maintenance
Create a culture within your business that focuses on your core values. Having this culture and being very clear about your mission and your vision is revolutionary. This is what defines the most successful businesses in any industry. Systems and automation is essential for time management and helping you to spend more time off the floor managing the business. It’s the systems that you put in place that provide that strong core. Measuring and tracking your numbers is another essential element to get right when it comes to maintenance, because it’s this that will prevent you from having any nasty surprises like an unexpected VAT bill. There’s a clear distinction to make between being a business operator and being a business owner. Managed businesses that don’t rely on the owner as the operator, and that have systems in place, are worth more. All of the other elements of maintenance feed into this, but the systems and automation are particularly useful when it comes to scaling. If you get all of this in place then if you want to scale you can scale, and if you want to exit you can exit!
If you have questions for Caroline around business and salon marketing just email members@salongold.co.uk
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