Overcoming Time Restraints
Salon owners must wear many hats while trying to build a profitable and successful business. Marketing expert, human resource expert, managing people, book work, and the heavy duties and responsibilities of owning a business can seem overwhelming , especially working behind the chair 10-12 hours a day.
How does one find time to accomplish all these tasks? In the beauty industry time is money. Your ability to manage all these tasks and become astute business men and women can be daunting. The key to finding more time is simply to structure and organize your business so you can manage your business and team,not the other way around.
The following guidelines will help ease the heavy duties and responsibilities of owning a successful salon:
Organization — Have you developed a staff development program ? Have you developed a client retention plan? Do you have an employee handbook? Do you have your business and marketing plan in place?
Do you have a simplified employee training program in place? These are just a few guidelines you must develop if you want to manage your business instead of your business manage you.
Planning — Few of us entered business with a clearly defined business plan when we opened our business; most of us focused all our attention on developing our artistic skills and failed to develop our business management skills. Unfortunately many of us have had to learn the hard way by trial and error. You may want to step back and pretend you’re opening a new business, and measure your strengths and weaknesses.
Delegate — get your staff involved; give them a little responsibility like assigning job duties such as clean up duties, director of education, salon coordinator, manager etc.
Seek Out Help — from people who have real world experience and have succeeded in business. Attend a time management class . I urge you to also attend my business classes when one comes to your area. Click here.
Education — lack of business management skills is one of the leading causes of business failures. This need not happen to you. Learn as much as you can on how to develop powerful business management skills. Help is available.
Employee Training — invest in your salon’s greatest asset, educate your team. If you select, educate, and train them correctly, you will dramatically ease the heavy duties and responsibilities of salon ownership. Make sure they share your goals, vision, and educational guidelines in the beginning of their employment.
My educational resources offers a proven road map on how to build a successful and profitable business. Click here.
Salon Coordinator — your receptionist or salon coordinator can be invaluable in helping you ease the heavy duties and responsibilities of owning a business. Read my chapter on how to hire a salon coordinator in my book Growing Your Business. Click here.
Owning a hair salon doesn’t have to be that difficult if you have an open mind to learning.
It took me 43 years to figure it out, you may want to take the easy way out my following my proven and successful experiences as a salon owner.