Mario Verrilli
“When I first considered joining the money course I let my ego get in the way. I've taken so many courses in the past, and my ego was telling me, “I know this stuff”. And then I stopped for a moment. I thought, you know what? Hold on a minute. That's a dangerous place to be.
So I decided I’m going to do this because even though I thought I knew this stuff, I wasn't really applying it. So I figured I'd take the course and it would maybe help me to put it into action.
As a salon owner, there's so many hats you're wearing. One day you’ll think you've got a handle on maybe the finance, but then you're focused on marketing. And now the finances start to slip, and so taking a course is a great way to just immerse yourself back into it and get back on track.
One of the things I loved about the money course was the calendar, a simple breakdown of the modules and the lessons in each module which encourages you to look at your own schedule and make time to work through the course and do the work.
Having the course online worked for me because I'm a busy dad as well as a busy salon owner. So having the flexibility of the course being online meant that if I couldn't commit to a regular time but I had driving time, I could still listen because I had the audio version as well to reiterate what I was doing within the course.
The Money course has helped me take my salon finances seriously. I've taken so many of these courses on financial management but I don't think there's been one that has as much detail as this course and spoken in a way where I could really understand and connect like I was talking to a peer. Someone who's been through it all and really knows their stuff.
The biggest thing for me was the ‘Cash Flow Forecast’ spreadsheet and filling it in weekly. Previously I had a 12 week version and I was doing it monthly, but I'd always get sidetracked. So doing it weekly held me more accountable. And as a result I saw profits go from 10 to 15 percent and beyond.
I've always been fairly good at keeping a profitable business, but I’ve now had weeks where we are running at 24% net profit which has been amazing and it’s because I'm focused on checking the numbers on a weekly basis.
When it came to the service pricing exercise. I've got a high price point in my area, but the pricing exercise really got me looking at it from a different perspective. And there's always a little gem you get from another person's perspective. So that was great.
The Money course also really helped me communicate with my accountant more effectively, and as a result we revised the layout of our financial reports to reflect that and we were able to work together to create something that now we both understand.
Whereas before she was just working off her own spreadsheet and I had to kind of make sense of all that. This was a great way for her to understand our industry and the finances from a salon management perspective as well.
After going through COVID the most important KPI for me was the profitability of the business, because we've had to do more with less, and in the money course there were so many ideas on cross training employees and that in turn saves costs because labor is the biggest expense.
So now we're fully utilizing our employees and there was no backlash, they actually liked being given more responsibility which uplifted the team to work together.
And that came from some of the ideas in the course on how to cross train employees. The team is always happier when they’re working together as a team and helping other departments.
And the benefit of that is the cost savings with labor being the biggest expense.
Some weeks I saw my profits go up to 24% which is outstanding in this industry and I haven't seen that in 23 years of running a salon.
You can't put a price on this. I actually don't think you’re charging enough for this course! Not that I want you to raise the price but what you're getting is 10 X what you’re charging for this program.
This course is like doing a mini MBA. It really is. But the difference is you can do it in a 12-week period. I've got colleagues that have done their MBAs and they look over this and say they're learning this in an MBA but this is salon-specific. And if you were to pay for an MBA, you're looking at $60,000 minimum!
As I said earlier, I was initially concerned about investing into another course because I've done several courses that I thought were similar, but I can tell you there's nothing that's been this detailed. And for the cost of the course, if you apply what Antony covers in this program and really take this seriously, you'll make that back in the first week.
I've got so many little gems, and because of the amount of detail the course covers, you always find something new. And, Antony delivered on this one 10 times over! 10 X.
Thanks Antony for putting these courses together. I got so much out of this, and I don't think anybody's delivered what you have here. The courses, the podcast and all the resources are pure gold.”
