– Episode 291Antony Whitaker

Episode 291: Transcript

[00:00:05] Antony Whitaker: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Grow My Salon Business podcast. I’m your host, Antony Whitaker, and it’s great to have you here with us today. This is the weekly podcast for the ambitious stylist and salon owner, and every week I, I either bring a guest on the show or I’ll dive into a new idea or revisit the foundations of what it takes to succeed.

[00:00:25] Antony Whitaker: In the salon industry today, and we’re gonna feature new startups and new ideas as well as initiatives from established people and brands. And some of them might at first sound a little bit too niche, but we’ll explore while they’re worth keeping an eye on, and how they’ll reshape client expectations and how they’ll be central to the future of the salon industry and perhaps even become the new normal.

[00:00:48] Antony Whitaker: With every episode, I aim to bring you practical and actionable opportunities that you can run with today.

[00:00:55] Antony Whitaker: On a final introductory note, I’ll strive to have a relentlessly positive outlook, although that’s harder than ever in today’s world of fake news and half-truths I don’t need to add to it. And there are more than enough challenges to deal with in daily life and business anyway. Instead, we’re unashamedly going to be celebrating the ideas and the people making the salon industry better, greener, safer, fairer.

[00:01:20] Antony Whitaker: And more professional for everyone. So with that said on with today’s show, I’m in and out of a lot of industry Facebook groups and like many people, I’m often just a voyeur scrolling through and looking at what’s going on in the industry and what the challenges are that both salon owners and hairdressers everywhere have.

[00:01:40] Antony Whitaker: And one of the things that constantly comes up is how badly employees are paid, whether we’re talking about apprentices’ assistance or stylists, and that isn’t country specific. It’s a general trend of people feeling that they’re hard done by to the point of being exploited. But here’s the thing, what I never see as comments about how bad the productivity levels are.

[00:02:07] Antony Whitaker: Of the average hairdresser. And obviously that’s part of the problem because what you earn is always going to be a reflection of what you produce. And so if you wanna earn more, then you need to find a way to produce more. And as a generalization, if your productivity increases and you don’t get paid more, then you are probably working in the wrong salon.

[00:02:29] Antony Whitaker: And if your employer doesn’t pay you properly for what you generate, then leave and go elsewhere to find someone who will. But don’t be one of those stylists that are so naive that they leave because they underestimate what it costs to run and build a business, and as a result, they just keep demanding more of what they generate in revenue because, well, they don’t understand that running a business is expensive and there has to be a profit in it for the owner as well.

[00:02:56] Antony Whitaker: Or why would they bother? Now, I know that if you are a stylist listening to this, you might be saying, or thinking to yourself something along the lines of why is it always about money and productivity? I didn’t get into hairdressing for that,

[00:03:11] Antony Whitaker: But here’s the thing, it’s all about money and productivity because, well, as a generalisation, you want and need to be paid more money. You just don’t like digging into where that money comes from.

[00:03:23] Antony Whitaker: But in order for the business to be able to pay you more money, you need to produce more money because the business can’t pay you what isn’t there in the first place. Now, I understand that if you’re a stylist working for someone else, you might think that you should be paid more just because you turn up every day.

[00:03:39] Antony Whitaker: But here’s the uncomfortable truth. The world doesn’t owe you or me a living. In fact, if you are someone that thinks that you should be paid more just for turning up every day, then you probably also think that there’s some sort of secret cabal of salon owners that prevent stylists being paid what they should be.

[00:03:59] Antony Whitaker: But I’m sorry to tell you because it just is not like that. And if you think it is, then you’ll usually believe that your boss is making a huge profit off of the back of your labor. And once again, I’m sorry to tell you, but it’s just not like that. And I can say that with great confidence because I work with salon owners all over the world, and so I get to see the inner workings of many salons and the finances of a lot of salons and very few salon owners are.

[00:04:28] Antony Whitaker: Raking it in, so to speak. In fact, many of them struggle to keep the doors open and the lights on. That’s another problem for another podcast, and that’s always been the reality for many people in small business and for many salon owners as well. And to make it worse, I’ll often come across salon owners who pay some of their team more than they pay themselves.

[00:04:50] Antony Whitaker: And in most countries there’s usually some sort of minimum wage, and in what I refer to as the lucky countries, there is also a range of employee benefits, such as holiday pay and sick pay, and healthcare and pension funds, all of which comes out of the revenue that’s generated behind the chair. So where do we go from here?

[00:05:11] Antony Whitaker: Well, let’s start with an expression. It’s an expression I really love. It’s quite thought provoking and this is what it is. You don’t get what you want. You get who you are. Let me say that again. You don’t get what you want. You get who you are. Which to me means if you become more, you will get more.

[00:05:31] Antony Whitaker: And if becoming more. It is not on your list of priorities and accept that what you will earn will be reflective of that regardless of what you do for a job.

[00:05:42] Antony Whitaker: So if you think that the amount you are paid isn’t what it should be, let me ask you this. What is your productivity like? So for example, what do you generate each week in total sales? What percentage of your clients rebook their next appointment before they leave the salon? What percentage of your clients have a colour service?

[00:06:01] Antony Whitaker: What are your client retention percentages like? What percentage of your clients purchase home hair care? How many hours a week are you working? Is it 20? Is it 25, 35, 40, or whatever? How many in salon treatments do you do in a week? Do you talk about and recommend treatments or are you too busy talking about whatever you’re watching on TV at the moment?

[00:06:22] Antony Whitaker: And what is your average bill? How many new request clients do you get each week? What new skills have you learned in the last year? Now, don’t just think of all the excuses and justifications for whatever your answers are to those questions, because that means that you are missing the point, because the answer to those questions, as much as you might not want to hear it, is what determines what you get paid.

[00:06:48] Antony Whitaker: But now let’s look at the flip side because as much as there a stylists and salon owners that are struggling financially, and I get it, and as much as there are some terrible managers and poor leaders that probably shouldn’t be in business in the first place as much as all that’s true,

[00:07:04] Antony Whitaker: despite all of that, this is still a great industry with many great success stories. And I know of some stylists and salon owners that earn a ton of money as hairdressers, and do you know what? I absolutely love that.

[00:07:19] Antony Whitaker: In fact, if you are a regular listener to my podcast, you may have heard me talk to stylists.

[00:07:24] Antony Whitaker: Then I put in what I call the half million-dollar Club. Meaning that they generate in the region of half a million dollars behind the chair every year, and as a result, they’re paid a ton of money and so they should be, and we should all celebrate that. Now, I’m gonna put the links to those podcasts of stylists and the Half Million Dollar Club in the show notes of today’s episode so that you can check them out if you haven’t already heard them.

[00:07:49] Antony Whitaker: But I’m not gonna pretend that it’s normal or easy to produce that sort of revenue behind the chair. In fact. The people that do that are extraordinary bordering on being unicorns. But why I reference them is that they show that it’s possible. I’m not saying that it’s easy to do between 400,000 and $500,000 a year, but if you wanna be in the top 5% of income earners in the country, not just in the industry, but the country, then all I’m saying is that it’s possible as a behind the chair hairdresser.

[00:08:23] Antony Whitaker: But I don’t want to dwell on the unicorns because for many people that simply feels unattainable. So let’s go the next level down and talk about a much larger group of stylists that don’t produce half a million dollars a year behind the chair, but instead maybe produce an average of 200 to $250,000 a year behind the chair.

[00:08:46] Antony Whitaker: And if we divide that 250,000 a year by, say, 50 weeks in the year, these are the people that are generating an average of $5,000 a week and total sales behind the chair. Now I should just say that I generally reference US dollars. So just for context, us $5,000 a week is 3,800 pounds or 4,500 euro. Or in Australian dollars, it’s just over 8,000 Australian dollars or Canadian dollars, just over 7,000 or New Zealand dollars, it’s 8,800.

[00:09:24] Antony Whitaker: So now you might know someone or work with someone that produces that sort of money because, well, there’s a lot of hairdressers in that category and that is still an incredible achievement to be able to do that consistently week in, week out. And hairdressers that are in this category are not just generating a lot of revenue, but here’s the thing.

[00:09:44] Antony Whitaker: They’re generally earning a rarely good income too. And if you are earning the average wage or above, whatever the average wage is in your country, not in the industry, but in your country, the average wage, well, what’s wrong with that? Because we should rarely celebrate that too. But perhaps when you hear or see people like that, it makes you feel exploited because you are not earning close to what they get, but you don’t earn close to what they get because you don’t generate the revenue that they do.

[00:10:15] Antony Whitaker: So how do we change that? Well, the first thing is to stop blaming your boss, or the government or the country, or the town or the city that you live in, and please stop harping on about charging your worth because if that’s you, then you’re actually missing the point completely.

[00:10:31] Antony Whitaker: So what do you do? What is it that sets those stylists and the unicorns that I mentioned earlier, apart from what is the majority of hairdressers everywhere? Well, let’s start by looking at the stylists that are producing in the region of 200 to $250,000 a year and ask, what are the main character traits?

[00:10:51] Antony Whitaker: That these stylists have, what is it that they have in common? Because it’s not that they’re more naturally talented than you are, or that they have the gift of the gab or that they have a hundred thousand followers on Instagram or have a list of celebrity clients, or because they charge $500 a client.

[00:11:07] Antony Whitaker: It’s not all that stuff. So what is it? Well, I’ve come up with a list of 15 points that all the most successful stylists I have ever met all have in common.

[00:11:18] Antony Whitaker: And spoiler alert, it ain’t all fun and it ain’t easy either. And it requires self-discipline, self-motivation, and it takes time and a lot of hard work. Sorry, but that’s just the cold, unvarnished truth. So let’s get on with my 15 points and I’ll put a link to a handout in the show notes so that you can download this list so you don’t have to write it out.

[00:11:40] Antony Whitaker: I’m gonna call this list 15 Points to Financial Success as an employed salon stylist. So let’s go through it one by one. So at number one, they’re stable, meaning that the thing these people all have in common is they don’t job hop from salon to salon. Instead, they’re loyal, they build a clientele and they nurture that clientele in the one salon.

[00:12:04] Antony Whitaker: Secondly, they’re consistent, meaning that they don’t blow hot and cold. They give every client a hundred percent every time, regardless of what else is going on in their lives. The third one is that they don’t call in sick excessively. In fact, there are times when they definitely shouldn’t have been at work, but rightly or wrongly, they don’t want to let the salon or the clients down.

[00:12:29] Antony Whitaker: At number four, they understand that it’s not just about the haircut and color, but it’s about the experience and the relationship, and so they make sure that whether it’s the client’s first visit or the 100th visit, either way, they make sure the client gets a great experience every time. At number five, they’re always looking for opportunities to learn, whether it’s learning from colleagues or by attending courses or social media or reading books, or simply learning from their own experiences, they never stop learning.

[00:13:00] Antony Whitaker: At number six, they own their level of motivation, meaning that they’re not dependent on anyone else to pump them up every day. Instead, they just get in there and they do it even when they don’t feel like it. At number seven, they’re team players. They don’t think of themselves as being the star of the show.

[00:13:18] Antony Whitaker: They happily build up others around them and help them to achieve their goals too. That brings us to number eight, which is they’re competitive and goal orientated. Even if they’re the number one producer in the salon, they’re constantly working to improve their personal best. Whether it’s a personal best for a day or a personal best for a week, a month, or a year.

[00:13:42] Antony Whitaker: And at number nine, they’re nice people. They’re not out of control egomaniacs, but they’re nice people that make other people around them feel good about themselves. Number 10, they pay attention to detail, whether it’s the hair that they do or the words that they use or the way that they look, they’re always looking for the 1% that makes a difference.

[00:14:04] Antony Whitaker: At number 11, they always give more than what they have to, whether it’s to the clients and their chair or the colleagues that they work with, they genuinely care about others and they go outta their way to show it. And in number 12, they hustle. Now, sorry, but the big earners are not afraid of hard work.

[00:14:22] Antony Whitaker: They’re not afraid to hustle. They fit people in. They make it work, and they don’t blame and make excuses. Now, I know that that’s not for everybody, but I promise you the big earners hustle and they still manage to get lunch and grab a coffee break and visit the washroom when they need to. At number 13, they look after themselves.

[00:14:41] Antony Whitaker: Whether that means that they get eight hours of sleep a night, or they get plenty of exercise. They eat the right foods, they drink plenty of water, they take days off, and they don’t fill their bodies up with poison at number 14, they’re professional and organized. They’re ready to go before the first client walks in the door and they plan the day ahead so that they can stay on track.

[00:15:04] Antony Whitaker: And that brings us to number 15, and that is that they work 35 to 40 hours a week. Now, they may do a four-day week, but it’ll be four 10-hour days, but they generally aren’t working part-time, doing a 25-to-30-hour week and expecting to be generating what someone working a 40-hour week would be doing.

[00:15:27] Antony Whitaker: Now feel free to add to that list, but let me ask you. Do you still want to earn more money? Because if that’s what the big earners do, then there’s nothing on that list that you can’t also do. But as I said, it’s not all easy. It requires self-motivation, self-discipline. It requires never ending learning.

[00:15:47] Antony Whitaker: It might require some sacrifice and some lifestyle changes, and it requires working with or for someone who is a good leader and a good manager. But here’s the thing, it is possible and you can do it too. Without having to be self-employed or having the responsibility of not just doing hair, but running a business too.

[00:16:07] Antony Whitaker: You see, no matter where they are in the world, the rarely successful stylists rebook their clients before they walk out the door. They get new request clients or referrals every day of the week. They recommend home hair care to the clients in their chair. It’s not that they’re some sort of slick salesperson.

[00:16:25] Antony Whitaker: They simply do it because they care. They run on time. They take pride in doing so. They look the part, they recognize that they’re a walking, talking advertisement for what they do as a profession. They invest in their own education. They don’t wait for someone else to make them great. They’ve decided to be great, and so they never stop learning.

[00:16:45] Antony Whitaker: They own their success and they’re proud of what they do and who they’ve become in the process. And as employees, they recognize that without the infrastructure around them, whether that’s the location of the salon they work in, or the decor of the salon, the assistants that are there, the front desk team, the marketing, the training and support that the leadership bring that without that, it’s simply wouldn’t be possible for them to generate the revenue they do or earn the living that they do without the responsibility and stress.

[00:17:18] Antony Whitaker: Of starting your own business as a self-employed stylist.

[00:17:22] Antony Whitaker: So here’s the thing, if you want to learn this stuff and train your team to become high revenue producers so that they earn more and your sell on profits, increase along with that, then visit grow my salon business.com/course/super stylist and find out about that online course that will help you and your team to maximize their productivity.

[00:17:47] Antony Whitaker: Now we need to start wrapping up, but share this podcast with those that you know who would benefit from hearing it, and don’t hesitate to jump into my Instagram or Facebook feed and make a comment and join the conversation. I promise you I won’t bite. So with all that said, we need to start winding this episode up, but before we do, we have multiple free resources on our website from our weekly podcast, which you’re currently listening to, to the two-minute salon manager videos, as well as our.

[00:18:16] Antony Whitaker: Paid for resources, whether it’s our books, our One-to-one coaching, or our online courses. And relative to today’s podcast, there are a couple of resources that I wanna point you towards. The first is my grow books. There’s a series of four books, uh, super Stylist, management Team and Marketing. And if you’re really serious about business growth, then check out my online Super stylist course, which is particularly relevant to everything that I’ve covered in today’s podcast.

[00:18:45] Antony Whitaker: So, until next week. That’s Bye for now.