Seven Business Mistakes Salon Owners Must Avoid

“Some of the best lessons we ever learned,we learned from our mistakes and failures.”

The beauty industry is rapidly changing. Business costs continue to rise, it seems like it is getting more difficult to find quality hairdressers, an economy that is struggling, staff turnover, price and commission wars, and the list goes on and on.

With the abrupt closing of 56 beauty schools by the Dept.of Education due to alleged fraud and other violations,which I feel is just the beginning, beauty schools are jeopardizing the loss of school funding by the department of education, salon owners will be facing other challenges. It’s difficult enough finding good help.

Salon owners are especially vulnerable to these challenges, with a shrinking labor force. Learning how to meet and overcome these obstacles by trial and error is just unacceptable. If we are to avoid these obstacle we must identify what they are and then seek out solutions.

I have to ask the question who’s at fault?

 I have outlined a few reasons why this is occurring as well as offering a few solutions.

Denial ––Far too many salon owners want to stay in their comfort zone due to a resistance to change, because it requires effort and new thinking. Sometimes we must keep an open mind and be willing to admit our faults and mistakes and seek out solutions. Overcoming the fear of failure is a challenge many owners are unwilling to take.

You have two choices; you can do nothing and hope your challenges will go away,or you can do something about it by taking action.

Complacency —– it is much easier to keep making excuses to fail rather than put apply the effort to meet the heavy challenges of salon ownership.Over my 45 year career I have seen salons booming one year and go out of business the next year.

It doesn’t take much for salons to fail,turnover, poor management, competition, rising business costs ,the list goes on and on.

 Failure  to Seek Out Help — especially in the area of developing powerful business skills. There are many excellent resources and business coaches available that can help you.Meeting these challenges alone can be frustrating and extremely costly.

 Failure to Develop Your Business Skills: Most of you already have developed your artistic skills, but how many of you know how to manage your team and promote your business cost effectively. Owning a salon is a business and must be run as a business. A recent study showed that 94% of all business failures  were due to poor business management skills on the part of the owner.

Poor Hiring Decisions — hiring the wrong people can be devastating and lead to salon walkouts. Make sure you have your own staff development program,training program and employee handbook. or follow mine.

 Lack of a Client Retention Program — failure  to monitor your customer return rate, and implementing a client retention program through  negative word of mouth advertising is a huge detriment in trying to build and grow your business.  

Poor Planning and Organization — Lack of careful planning and organization is a huge time waster. A trial and error approach to building a successful business is just too costly in terms of time.money and energy spent.

Salon owners face difficult challenges, learning by trial and error is just too costly. I do hope some of these tips will be helpful. If you want to help and want to take your salon to a higher level.