Focus is the key to a successful business

 

 

Are you a salon owner that’s also a hairdresser working on the shop floor?

 

Are you spending and making the most of your time wisely?

 

Do you want to grow your business?

 

Then stop what you are doing!

 

Running a successful business takes a lot of hard work and focus, and if you aren’t focused on running a successful business full-time, then you are bound to find growing your business a challenge.

No change = no change

 

Salon owners working full-time on the shop floor are great hairdressers. But what time do you really have to then also run your business, invest in attracting new clients, or implementing ideas and campaigns for continual growth?

 

What you focus on is what you get good at, so if your focus is always on hairdressing then that is where you will excel. Leave your business backend to fend for itself, and it’s unlikely to go any further.

 

You may say, and believe, that your reputation is already recognisable and focusing on cutting and styling hair brings you in enough money. It’s even true that usually the salon owners are the busiest in the salon doing clients. But no matter how well you are currently doing, I’m sorry to tell you that it can’t last. Without a real competitive edge, your salon business will inevitably lose its client base and find itself unable to contend against other local salons that are doing it right.

 

If you are a hair salon owner with only one stylist, you, then of course you need to be both hairdresser and business owner doing it all. But if you have already put in the hard graft and grown your business to employ more stylists, then you need to trust in them to be doing their job, allowing you to step back and take on the all-encompassing role of owner to lead from the front and start taking your business to the next level.

 

In my opinion, you have only two options available to you to grow your business:

 

Option one

You, as the business owner, need to stop cutting and styling hair on the shop floor. Don’t want to stop hairdressing completely? Instead, cut down your time styling – drastically – and slowly move your focus from cutting to obtaining new management, PR, marketing and general business skills.

 

The more time you spend focusing on these elements of a successful salon business, the quicker you’ll discover the knack to expanding it and learn to enjoy (maybe even love) the ‘boring’ business side. It is after all yours to make it what you want it to be.

 

Option two

If you really don’t want to give up hairdressing or even cut down, and you can’t stand the number crunching, business and marketing side, then get someone in who does. Whether that’s someone else in the salon, a friend or family member who wants to take it on, or a salon coach who can guide you in the right direction towards financial success. You don’t have to do it alone.

 

My approach

Personally, I love hairdressing, I always have, and I didn’t want to give up the skill it took so long to hone just to sit in an office and do the numbers. So I haven’t. I spend one day a week, of my choosing, on the shop floor doing what I was trained to do and being with my fantastic team and wonderful clients. The rest of my week is spent working on my new passion of marketing and business coaching. Yes, I learned to love the number side of my business and have made it all the stronger for it.

 

It’s been a radical change and one that has encouraged a mind shift and new focus towards successfully marketing my business. It, to this day, continues to grow and develop, and each year my net profits and drawings increase as well. In simple terms, I stopped being a doer of hairdressing and became a planner of success.

 

When I’m not hairdressing, I am taking care of the backend of my business and focusing on what matters. It gives me the time to:

 

• Analyse the business numbers so I can make informed decisions that support the continuing growth of the salon.
• Create, analyse and adapt our marketing strategy, whether physical with in-house displays or advertising; or digital with Google Adwords, Facebook pages and campaigns, website updates, informative blogs, or digital advertising; all of which the results I can scrutinise with Google Analytics to see what works and what needs changing to turn interested parties into bums-on-seats clients.
• Create award-winning presentations for my salon that make us award winning and boosts our standing in the hairdressing industry.
• Branch out into setting up a new business coaching other salons with best-practice marketing solutions.
• Be creative in new and exciting ways that I didn’t think possible.

 

But most of all, it gives me the time to spend with friends and family that I didn’t have before. Learning to delegate and turn my attentions to focus on growing the business rather than holding on to doing it all myself, was the best decision I ever made.

 

We all have the same number of hours in a day, and all it takes is a little encouragement to learn how to make the most of those hours.

 

Here at BOOST we can help you to make those changes, to find out where your focus needs to be, to get you in the right frame of mind to take the challenge on, and to get you on your way to growing your business. Contact us today for help with your business focus and make your time the best it can be!

 

HappyBIZness

 

Carey