– Episode 258Antony Whitaker

Episode 258: Transcript

[00:00:00] Antony Whitaker: Hello and welcome to today’s episode of the Grow My Salon Business podcast. I’m your host Antony Whitaker, and as always, it’s great to have you here with us today. Thank you for the compliments regarding the podcast. I really do appreciate it. And if you’re one of those people who haven’t yet left us a review for the podcast, I would really love it if you took a couple of minutes and did just that.

[00:00:25] Antony Whitaker: Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and they do matter in the rankings of the show and it helps other people to find my podcast. And of course, I also love to hear what’s been helpful for you. So all you need to do to leave a review is go to the Apple Podcast app, search Grow My Salon Business, scroll to the bottom of the page and leave a review and you’d make us very happy.

[00:00:48] Antony Whitaker: So with that said, on with today’s show. When I was a kid, maybe around the age of five or six I think, I learnt that I needed money to have the good things, or anything really, that I wanted in life, and to have any form of independence.

[00:01:05] Antony Whitaker: But at that point in my life, I obviously didn’t have a job, so the nightly ritual of saying goodnight to my mum and dad was giving them a kiss on the cheek, and depending on the mood my dad was in, I’d simply ask him, have you got any? And when I asked, have you got any, if he was in a good mood and had a few coins in his pocket, he’d put his newspaper down and perhaps dig out a few copper coins, or if I was really lucky, maybe it would be silver in colour and I’d be on my way to financial independence.

[00:01:40] Antony Whitaker: Now, hopefully, when you were growing up, you were as lucky as I were in that you had a good dad too. Now, I love my dad, he was a good dad. He worked extremely hard and he did his absolute best to provide for his family. This was in the 1960s, and so large families were commonplace, and I had four brothers and two sisters, so there was a lot of love and a lot of fun, but not always a lot of money about.

[00:02:04] Antony Whitaker: Now, my dad was a French polisher. If you don’t know what a French polisher is, it’s a trade that specializes in restoring furniture, often antiques, to their former glory. And because he was a really skilled craftsman, he always seemed to have plenty of work to do. Despite how hard he worked and how talented he was at his craft, the reality is that his business cash flow was, let’s just say it was erratic at best.

[00:02:34] Antony Whitaker: And so, when we were growing up, money wasn’t plentiful in our household. I guess that little story is part of my money story. There’s a money story that we all have, and obviously for me there’s a lot more to it than that, and to whatever degree it formed my relationship with money and what it meant to have money and what it meant not to have money.

[00:02:59] Antony Whitaker: And like most people listening to this, I have very definitely experienced both ends of that spectrum. But now, when I look back at my dad’s business, and knowing what I know now, I’m not so sure that he should have had his own business. Because I think that in many ways, he would have been better off financially

[00:03:19] Antony Whitaker: If he was working for someone else, and I say that with love and respect, because although he was an excellent craftsman and he worked hard and was always busy, the fact is that as I grew up, I realized that he wasn’t always good at managing the financial side of running a business. Now, in that respect, my dad was like many people, me included, in that he started his own business because he was good with his hands and he had a skill that he was good at.

[00:03:47] Antony Whitaker: And although he started out working for someone else, he reached a point where he obviously made the decision to go out on his own in business. I imagine he made the decision in the expectation that he would make more money, have more freedom and flexibility about how and when he worked, and be master of his own destiny.

[00:04:12] Antony Whitaker: And I, and probably you, have probably trodden that same path, whereby we decided to leave whoever we were working for and instead open our own salon and work really hard in the hope that we would make more money and have more freedom and flexibility. That supposedly comes with being your own boss. And so the pattern repeats itself and the same opportunities are presented and the same mistakes get made.

[00:04:41] Antony Whitaker: And the mistake is that people assume that because they’re good at their craft or trade or profession, that because they’re good at the work that gets done in the business, that they’ll be good at building and running a business that does the work. And pretty quickly, hopefully most of us realise that nothing can actually be further from the truth, because the reality is that running a business requires a totally different set of skills to doing the work that happens within the business, whether that’s the work of the French polisher like my dad, or the hairdresser like me, or you, or the builder, or the photographer, the fashion designer, or whatever the work is.

[00:05:23] Antony Whitaker: You see, when you work for someone else, you are usually blissfully unaware or protected or isolated, or maybe it’s just that you’re not interested in the skills that are needed to succeed as a business owner. They’re just something that goes on in the background, but the skills of the business owner are the skills of management and marketing and financial control.

[00:05:47] Antony Whitaker: But most new salon owners underestimate the importance of them and just approach their business from the basis of, if I work really hard, in our case as a hairdresser, behind the chair, the money will come and I’ll be able to pay the bills. In other words, They just hope that through hard work they can out earn their stupidity.

[00:06:09] Antony Whitaker: And I call it stupidity because what else can you call it when a business owner, whether it’s me or you, doesn’t know what their weekly break-even point is.

[00:06:21] Antony Whitaker: That they don’t have budgets in place. That they don’t know how to properly work out how to price their services, pay their team or manage their cash flow. And look, I totally recognise that it’s not your fault. That you weren’t taught how to take control and manage the salon’s finances, but it is your fault if you don’t do something about it.

[00:06:43] Antony Whitaker: You see, I learned to be a hairdresser, a very good hairdresser. You probably learned how to be a hairdresser too. But now you need to learn to manage the financial side of your business with the same level of confidence and skill that you have with a tint brush or a pair of scissors in your hands.

[00:07:01] Antony Whitaker: Don’t make the mistake of saying, but Antony, that’s why I have an accountant, surely. Well look, it’s the accountant’s job to do your accounts. That’s what they’re trained to do, to do your taxes, to make sure you are legally compliant, and to file a set of accounts with the tax authorities at the end of the financial year.

[00:07:20] Antony Whitaker: The role of the accountant and the bookkeeper is to focus on documenting your transactions and creating a rare view snapshot of what’s already happened in your business. It’s their job to correctly record and categorize all the income and expenses that have happened in your business and to ensure that you are paying the correct amount of tax.

[00:07:44] Antony Whitaker: And it’s their job to then submit a set of financial accounts to the tax authorities on your behalf at the end of the year, summarizing what’s happened in your business from a financial perspective. But the accountant is not trained in how to price your salon services. Or how to pay your people. Or how to develop a budget that works for you and your salon.

[00:08:07] Antony Whitaker: The accountant is not trained in how to increase your sales and reduce your salon operating costs. They’re not trained in how to increase the productivity of your individual team members or your salon as a whole. They’re not trained in how to make you and your salon more profitable. All of that is your job.

[00:08:27] Antony Whitaker: And if you don’t do it, then well, basically it simply isn’t getting done because it’s your job as a salon owner to manage your finances and grow your salon business. And to do that, you need to understand the numbers in your business and what those numbers mean so that you know the information you need and you know what questions to ask your accountant.

[00:08:47] Antony Whitaker: And if you have a good accountant, not only will they help you understand what the numbers are telling you. But your accountant will also be a valuable resource to help you succeed in growing a profitable salon business. And as a business owner, if you don’t get to grips with the numbers and the financial side of your business, Well, unfortunately, then, statistically, the odds are stacked against you succeeding.

[00:09:15] Antony Whitaker: Now, let’s just be clear about this. That doesn’t mean that you have to become an accountant or a bookkeeper or a total numbers nerd because, well, you don’t. You didn’t start out to do that. You started out on this journey of salon ownership to have a successful salon business. And you can. You need to learn to understand the numbers in your business and what the numbers mean.

[00:09:40] Antony Whitaker: Then the numbers will no longer control you. You will start to control the numbers. And then you start to see what you need to do to increase the money coming into the business and what you need to do to reduce the money going out of the business. And as a result, you’ll build a business that’s not only more profitable, but is a business that is more rewarding for you and for everyone who works with you.

[00:10:05] Antony Whitaker: When you have a business like that, you not only have more money, but you also have more choice.

[00:10:11] Antony Whitaker: Choices like whether or not to expand. Or perhaps it’s choices about whether you should sell your business. Or choices about whether to work less and earn more. Or choices about how to spend your time when you’re not at work. Or whether you can retire early. Or how you can give back to those less fortunate.

[00:10:31] Antony Whitaker: Or choices about the opportunities you can create for you and your loved ones. As a business owner, you have a responsibility to build a successful, profitable business. And that doesn’t just happen on its own. It happens when you take control of your business, finances, and understand what you need to do in order to create a financially successful and profitable business.

[00:10:56] Antony Whitaker: As I said before, I totally recognise that it’s not  your fault that you weren’t taught how to take control and how to manage your salon’s finances.

[00:11:05] Antony Whitaker: But it is your fault if you don’t do something about it. And that’s where I can help you. Because my online money course is currently open for enrolment. So for those salon owners who are listening and recognise that money is an essential topic to master, then visit www.growmysalonbusiness.com/course/money

[00:11:24] Antony Whitaker: Because when you get clarity and have the confidence that you need to handle the financial side of your business, that will be the best investment that you have ever made. So, if you want to find out more, then go to www.growmysalonbusiness.com/course/money

[00:11:44] Antony Whitaker: And I’ll also put that link in the show notes for today’s podcast. So with that said, thanks for listening. And I will look forward to seeing you with another episode of the Grow My Salon Business podcast next week.