Time is Money — Jon Gonzales

Do you manage time, or does time manage you?

Do you sometimes feel overwhelmed due to lack of time?

Get the feeling there is never enough time between business and your family? Don’t feel bad, this is just one of the many challenges of owning your own business.

In today’s competitive economy, salon owners must wear many hats. Working salon owner, human resource expert, advertising and marketing expert, bookkeeper, mentor, leader, business person, educator, referee, manage people, working long hours behind the chair, the list goes on and on.

How do salon owners find the time to become better businessmen and women and improve salon growth and profitability, manage people, and still have a personal life for yourself and your family?

Here are a few tips that will help you manage your time more effectively:

Clearly define what will make you happy personally, professionally, and financially. If you don’t have goals and know how to manage yourself and your business, you will surely not know how to form a better balance between business and your personal life.

Without clearly defining what will make you happy, you’ll just go around in circles wasting a lot of time and energy. My book Creating Your Salon will help you in this find time.

Evaluate Your Strengths and Weaknesses — with an open mind, evaluate your  business strengths and weaknesses. We sometimes have to look in the mirror.

I have put together a salon owner’s quiz that I know will be helpful. Scroll down.

Set Goals — divide your goals into personal, professional, and financial goals. Goals casually set are usually abandoned at the first set back.

Prioritize Your Goals — list your goals, break them down by your immediate tasks and goals and your long term goals. Lack of planning and organization takes up all your time.

Write Them Down — list your goals in the order of importance. Write your list every night before you go to bed. When you cross off tasks accomplished on your list,set new lists. A great feeling of accomplishment.

Organize and Structure what is your plan of action for saving time? Do you have a staff development program in place? How about a staff retention program? Do you have an employee hand book? Do you have an employee training and development program? Do you have quality control guidelines in place? Do you have a client retention program in place?

These are just some of the models you need to have in place so you can manage your business instead of your business managing you.

My salon management book series will be very helpful.

Your Employee Hand Book should be the foundation to developing your championship team. Your employee hand book will help you improve staff performance and productivity.

Your employee hand book will save you a tremendous amount of time and  frustration when monitoring employee performance. You will save valuable time when your staff knows of your expectations and how they will be measured.

Delegate — set up your management team. Salon coordinator, director of education, accountant, graphic designer, copywriter, assign tasks to staff as part of their job description, don’t try to do everything yourself.

Get Help — help is available, keep learning especially if you want to develop powerful business management skills. Take advantage of my complete salon educational programs that are already in place.

Take advantage of the educational resources Hairdresser Career Development Systems offers. As a salon owner with over 43 years of experience I understand your educational and business needs. Make sure you attend one of my  2 day crash course business seminar in Las Vegas .

Avoid Procrastination getting in the habit of saying I’ll do it tomorrow will just make matters worse. Define your challenge and immediately try to find a solution.

The key to time management is to simply organize , plan , and structure your business so you can manage your business instead of your business managing you. I do hope you review my salon owner’s management books that I know will be very helpful. Please view my complete Salon owner success resources. I invite you to visit my website.