– Episode 294Tom Bentley-Taylor

Episode 294: Transcript

GMSB 294

[00:00:05] 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, and whether you’re watching on YouTube or listening as you walk the dog, or perhaps driving the car or running on the treadmill, or whatever it is that you’re doing, I just wanna start off by saying thank you for being a listener.

[00:00:24] Antony Whitaker: Our podcast is growing and we always need your help to continue growing because we wanna get to help as many people as we possibly can in the industry. So if you’re on YouTube, give us a thumbs up, subscribe to our channel and share it with your friends. And if you’re listening on your favorite podcast that then give us a five star review and a follow, and that would be very kind of you and very much appreciate it.

[00:00:46] Antony Whitaker: So with that said on with today’s show. Now my guest today is a returning guest, Tom Bentley Taylor, who amongst other things originally got the salon software brand shortcuts established in the UK and is currently managing director at Vish in the uk. But in today’s podcast, we’re not really gonna be talking about that.

[00:01:06] Antony Whitaker: We’re gonna be talking about. The importance of using data in business. Today we’re gonna talk about what the most important data is to be tracking in a salon business, and what are some of the low hanging fruit when it comes to data management in the salon industry, and lots more. So without further ado, welcome back to the show, Tom.

[00:01:28] Tom: Thanks very much Antony. Thanks for having me, and great to see you.

[00:01:32] Antony Whitaker: Now really good to have you, uh, on the show. I know you have been before for our listeners who aren’t aware, Tom, uh, was an early guest on the show quite a long time ago. I actually can’t remember off the top of my head, uh, what date it was, but we, we spoke intensively about, uh, Vish, which is a brand that you are responsible for in the uk.

[00:01:51] Antony Whitaker: But today we’re not really gonna talk about Vish and, um, uh, because I think we’ve covered off on that, but I, I weren’t aware how diverse your experience is, not just in the hairdressing industry, but in the world of business. And so I thought it would be really good for us to, to, to dig in with, into that.

[00:02:09] Antony Whitaker: So I figured we’d sort of start off with perhaps something that’s obvious and that is that in the salon, um, industry, the salon business, data or data depending on where you live in the world. Uh, and hairdressing don’t usually go hand in hand. In fact, it’s often the sort of Achilles heel of a lot of salon owners.

[00:02:28] Antony Whitaker: So I just wanted to ask you, why do you think that is? Because you’ve worked in different areas of the hairdressing industry, so why do you think it is and uh, and why should that, and is that starting to change?

[00:02:41] Tom: That’s, it is a very good question. Um, and I think, you know, from, from my side, I suppose it’s like, you know, we’re in a wor world now where data is everything, right? Every business is a data business to a degree. If you want to get ahead, you, you need data and things. I think as an industry, having sort of been putting technology into salons and running tech businesses in, in the salon industry for sort of 25 years.

[00:03:06] Tom: Um I found, you know, I started my career, sat at the end of a bed calling salon saying, stop using your paper book. You need this wizzy computer system, right? And it’ll give you all this data and it’ll do all this stuff and there’s automation and blah, blah, blah. Um, people are very sort of, um, slow to adopt in the industry, and I put it down to us being a creative industry, um, where, and it’s a very human industry, so you know, people

[00:03:35] Tom: typically are, and I’m gonna generalise now, but people are, you know, behind the chair, they develop their careers, they want to earn more money and you know, whatever. And so therefore they open a salon, they become a business person, they carry on cutting out. They typically in those the majority of locations, you know, that’s what the majority of the industry

[00:03:55] Tom: if, if you’re a salon owner, um, is that right? You’re probably still the main breadwinner for the salon. You’ve got limited time and all that sort of thing. And um, and really it’s about the creative art. If I do well at retaining my guests and I cut hair really well, I’m gonna have a successful business, you know, whereas actually

[00:04:15] Tom: successful businesses are, are, are really about other elements. You know, controlling costs, maintaining margin, not tying up cash in the wrong areas. You know, those, those sort of three pillars to success if you like, um, and I’ve, in my careers, lots of people I’ve spoken to where I’ve said to them, look, you really need to come off the floor for two or three days and start analyzing your busy even when they’ve taken on technology, you know, and they have data there

[00:04:44] Tom: that can drive their business. They don’t invest the time in in looking at it. And whether that’s just because they’re not sure, I think that kind of probably leads onto the value of business education. For me, it’s kind of, I’ve always viewed business. You know, my background in education, I was a windsurfing instructor in my late teens, early twenties, and then sort of fell into business development, started my own business, and it, I just loved the people side and educating people on these cool, these things I thought were really cool and that could help them, right,

[00:05:18] Tom: which was technology and computers. Um, and I think, you know where, where you go, right? Okay. I’ve always viewed business as a sort of, um, it’s a, it’s a creative endeavor. Business, you know, the world is ever changing. You can see it rapidly changing now with AI and tech and all this sort of stuff going on.

[00:05:39] Tom: Um, you know, and to be good at business, you’ve gotta evolve with that. And you’ve gotta be continually, um, reinventing yourself, right? And re-analyzing, analyzing, re-analyzing, um, thinking critically about stuff, you know what I mean. And I think, you know, we invest very heavily in the creative side, the education of hairdressing, but we don’t, and that’s a creative endeavor, but we don’t typically invest in our own education in business, which is also a creative endeavor.

[00:06:11] Tom: So I think this sort of concept that while I’m a creative, I do the creative side, you know, and the, and the business side is sort of just the numbers that sit over there. I think, you know. You’ve gotta kind of start taking an interest in data and it tells a story. Do you know what I mean? It isn’t boring, it’s just understanding the story it’s telling you, and then decisions that you can make around it and, and how you do things.

[00:06:34] Tom: So I think, you know, from my side, I. You know what, back to your question. You know, why, why, I guess kind of from a tech standpoint, WI think we’re slow to adopt because we, well, you know, yeah. That’s, that, that just sort of, you know, sits there. It’s our point of sale or whatever it may be. Um, and I think, you know, and particularly now with a lot of the tech technology that’s out there, it does phenomenal things.

[00:06:56] Tom: So. So actually you need to get education around that. You know, go on courses, invest time and effort in that, and you’ll find it transforms your business. It’s actually really interesting, you know, when you get to the nitty gritty of what data means. I think the other thing is, you know, if you’ve been behind the chair and suddenly you’re getting into business and that sort of thing.

[00:07:14] Tom: Can be very overwhelming the amount of data that’s there and what do I do with it,

[00:07:19] Antony Whitaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:07:20] Tom: I think for, for as a technologist, it’s really about going, okay, what are the two or three things I can do now? To try to, to make a difference to my business. So how do we get all of that data and boil it down to these are the things I need to focus on.

[00:07:37] Tom: And I think that’s, that that’s really what we need to sort of teach people. I’d love to see there being more business education and more salon businesses. Investing in business education as much as they do on the, as the creative side, because that is, there’s a complete imbalance there. And then, you know, for, for me, we’re in a, a, a very low margin, high volume business, so.

[00:08:04] Tom: You know it, ’cause of that small margins, you know, minor changes can make a big difference one way or the other. Whether we’re gonna keep our doors open or not, you know, so, so we really need to get into the detail, get into that granular level of detail to be able to affect things.

[00:08:21] Antony Whitaker: Alright, well we’re gonna dig into a lot of what you’ve just touched on. Um, I was thinking as you were talking about that the, the amount of time that you’ve been in the industry, obviously there’s these generational changes and I think one of the reasons why, you know, you were, you said you were sat on the end of your bed calling salon owners and trying to get ’em to, you know, start to do online booking or

[00:08:43] Tom: They thought I was completely mad by

[00:08:45] Antony Whitaker: course they did. Yeah. Some of that’s a generational thing. So I was sort of wondering, you know, with a, a 20-year-old, a 25-year-old, a young person today opening a salon of their own, they’ve never known a world without tech. They’ve, you know, all their life, they’ve had computers and they, uh, you know, most of their life they’ve had, uh, social media to whatever degree.

[00:09:07] Antony Whitaker: And so I was just wondering about that because. There’s obviously a lot of salons out there that are, are still not computerized. It’s very difficult, if not impossible to get accurate data about certain things. But you know, I think you’d probably be lucky if there were 50% of salons that were, fully computerized.

[00:09:24] Antony Whitaker: There’s still a lot of them that have got a, a drawer and a, you know, a, a pad and pencil for an appointment book sort of arrangement. No matter where you are in the world. There’s a, a heavy dose of that. Um. So, so what are your thoughts about that in terms of the, the new, generation of salon owners now?

[00:09:42] Antony Whitaker: Are they just like, yeah, of course you’d do online booking, of course you’d have a, you know, a salon management software system. Of course you’d use a, a colour management system like visual or whatever. Uh, are you seeing that, or is it, is it not so such a generational thing?

[00:09:58] Tom: I suppose there’s a couple of things there. I think, you know, from, from my perspective, yes, you would expect the younger generation to adopt technology better and everything like that. I think, um, you know, my experience of different generations and technology is older generations of just as good with technology as, as the younger generations.

[00:10:17] Tom: And. But they’re just, they’re, they’re more methodical. If you look at users taking on new technology, you know, if you’ve got somebody who is an older generational, um, uh, stylist or something like that, using a piece of tech in their salon, um, they tend to. They tend to be slower, they won’t press everything.

[00:10:35] Tom: Right. And they’re more hesitant to use it, but they will learn, you know, and they get it and they’ll use technology. Um, and I think whereas the younger generation and new, new people coming onto the floor will fly at stuff at a million miles an hour and probably make a lot of mistakes, right. So I think from a user perspective, there’s that sort of thing.

[00:10:53] Tom: I think from a salon owner perspective, I think it’s, I, I wouldn’t necessarily put it down to generational. I think, you know, the, There’s a sort of, if I’m just opening a salon and I’m a young person, I’m gonna open the salon. What am I gonna get for that salon? Well, I’m gonna get what the salon I’ve just been in has, you know, because that’s what I’m used to.

[00:11:15] Tom: So it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re gonna adopt the next technology and John domain and be open to that. I think within the industry, we are not very good at sort of taking our blinkers off, if you like and saying, right, okay, let’s look at other industries and how they do things, or, you know, how can we evolve and innovate what we’re doing?

[00:11:35] Tom: You know, if I look at the way we price for services, for instance, we are doing it the same way that we were in the sixties. You know, um, it’s a, it’s a fixed price service. Um, typically, you know, for the different services and we’re paying a price based on the skill level. Um, probably experience of the stylist.

[00:11:55] Tom: Okay, so I’m a senior stylist or a director or whatever it is, and,  and for my half head, this is what I’m charging. Where, whereas actually, you know, the reality is we’ve got data we can actually go well, okay. We’re delivering a personalized service to every single guest. Every single guest who comes in, in, in the vish world, we’re talking about color and things like that, will require a different amount of color, right?

[00:12:20] Tom: For that service. It might be a half head of whatever, but there’s a certain amount of product. That I’m using for one person versus another, versus another. It’s all different. It’s all personalized. We sit down, we have a personalized consultation. We discuss what we’re doing. We look at the hair, we look at the thickness of the hair, the what are we trying to achieve?

[00:12:39] Tom: We’re working out the different products that we’re using. There’s different amounts of those. That all of that stuff is personalized, right? And yet our price is not personalized. Our price is fixed. Well. We should be innovating around that, right? That’s not good for our business. If you look at hospitality or something like that, which I would say is the, is is the equivalent if we wanna look at other industries and what are they doing?

[00:13:02] Tom: Again, it’s a, it’s a low margin, high volume business. You go to a restaurant, uh, you know, they’re feeding lots of people, you know, two, three, whatever, sittings. Um, an evening and, you know, it, it’s really kind of right, okay. They may have a fixed price, but then they’ve got a fixed amount of product, right?

[00:13:21] Tom: They’ve got a si fixed amount of, you know, meat and vegetables and potato, whatever, whatever’s on your plate, and rice and whatever, you know, so, so you know, they can have a fixed price because they’ve got a fixed cost. Whereas in our industry, we’re selling time and we’re selling product, and each guest requires a different amount of time and product.

[00:13:41] Tom: So therefore, personalized pricing should be there, right? A lot of our world now with tech. Is personalized, right? You go onto your social media, it’s all personalized to you. Specifically. You, based on what you’ve said, touched, clicked, all those different things, right? Where you’ve been, your phone is tracking all of these things and you’re getting personalized stuff coming straight, and you look at your phone, right?

[00:14:07] Tom: The app, everybody’s phone looks different when you look at it. They got different apps. It’s, everything’s personalized to you. And I think, you know. Our industry needs to evolve into, right? This, we’re delivering, um, amazing experiences for our guests and, and our staff, hopefully, right? Because that will retain them.

[00:14:26] Tom: And so let’s make that more personalized, you know, because there, as we’re living in a world of personalization.

[00:14:33] Antony Whitaker: Yeah. Okay. Um, you’ve sort of answered some of this already, but I’m gonna ask, uh, ask it again anyway. Uh, and, and that is that I, I weren’t aware that you. We’re responsible for launching shortcuts, uh, salon management software in the UK and building it to have a significant presence. Uh, so between shortcuts and now you are managing director of Vish in the uk.

[00:14:59] Antony Whitaker: you’ve had a lot of exposure to a lot of salon owners over the years, specifically in the uk. So what I wanted to ask you about is what are some of the common myths. That people have about, uh, about data and about tech.

[00:15:15] Tom: Yeah, I think, um, I mean I think the biggest thing I would say is Leo, that the tech doesn’t run itself right. And I think there is a sort of element of, right, I buy this and it’s just gonna work. I. And tech doesn’t work like that. Okay. It’s sort of, you’ve gotta have inputs to get the right output.

[00:15:36] Tom: It is a tool which you use. So I think the biggest, um, misconception that people have is they invest in tech and you stand it up, you train your staff and it’s just gonna work. Um, whereas actually you need to give the inputs to get the right output. And I think that’s, that’s sort of one of the key things.

[00:15:57] Tom: So, you know, and it can be overwhelming if you’re putting technology in and it’s like, right, I’ve got all this data. I think the good businesses out there, I wrap the services around it to help you. And you need to invest the time and effort in looking at the data. Right. Actually, they’ll help you go through it all.

[00:16:16] Tom: You know, we, we, I do a lot of work with salons, looking at how their pricing things, what are their commission structures, you know, those sorts of things. I’m very passionate about. If we can make a salon business very profitable. Then we can actually invest that money in creating careers for staff. It isn’t just a job.

[00:16:35] Tom: This is a career and how do we do it? So I think, you know, uh, I think the first thing is, you know, you invest in, in. In technology that isn’t just a monetary investment, you need to invest your time. It will be, it will give you a massive return if you do that, okay? And a lot of the, the quality businesses out there in the industry are there to help.

[00:16:58] Tom: They will support you. And say, okay, what are you trying to achieve? Let’s start. It goes back to that. Give me a couple of things to focus on, right? And focus on those things and, and, and make your team aware of what you’re doing and those sorts of things. So actually it becomes, okay, right now I can look at this data and what are we trying to achieve and how do we do it?

[00:17:18] Tom: You know? So I think technology isn’t there and data isn’t there, just for data’s sake. What we want is an outcome. We were talking earlier about, a friend, who has a salon group in the UK who’s very data driven and I would say. You know, if you become data focused, you get more and more into it, and it’s actually, it’s showing data visually.

[00:17:39] Tom: For me, it’s about behavior change, right? A lot of the time I get this data, how can I then get my team to change behavior to get a better result? Or this person, or how can I give my guests a better experience, et cetera, et cetera. So how do we actually change and evolve? What do we do? So the visualization of data I think is really, really important because people do struggle with seeing, oh, all these numbers and things like that.

[00:18:07] Tom: Um, but I think, you know, a lot of the technology now is very visual. Um, and I think, you know, my advice to people would be. Invest in whatever software you’ve got. A lot of people will get software and then after a while they go, oh, it isn’t really working for me. And they’ll either change to another provider or stop using it, and they’ve not resolved the problems that initially set out to resolve, right?

[00:18:32] Tom: So a lot of the software that you’ve got, if you invest time and effort in it, you will get the outcome, you will get the return. You need to invest the time. Just swapping to another provider or stopping using it isn’t gonna solve the problem you initially set out to do.

[00:18:46] Antony Whitaker: Yeah, exactly. Okay. Um, I’m glad you, mentioned I was gonna talk about him right now. Uh, Toby Dicker, who, was the friend we were talking about before we started recording. And, for the audience listening, I’m gonna interview him on a podcast tomorrow, which will come out a, a couple of weeks after.

[00:19:04] Antony Whitaker: Um. We were saying how Toby, is, and I, I don’t apologize for using the phrase, he would probably take great pride in it. He is a bit of a numbers or a data nerd, and I think that that probably would apply for you as well. And that’s a good thing. There’s nothing wrong with that. Uh, it’s often what’s

[00:19:23] Tom: I wear that badge. I wear that badge proudly. Yep.

[00:19:27] Antony Whitaker: And, um, I’ve had him on the podcast before, but we’re gonna have him talking about a totally different topic, uh, in a couple of weeks. But I was gonna ask you, so I’m asking it for you now, and you can reference his salon if you want, which is, can you sort of paint a picture of a salon that uses data really well?

[00:19:47] Antony Whitaker:  what kind of things would you see them doing differently to. What other salons don’t?

[00:19:56] Tom: I think it is another great question. I think, um, I think, you know, back to that point on visualization. I think probably more than that communication. So, you know, data’s good, but you have to communicate then to whether it’s a user and you want them to change the way they’re doing, things to get a better result

[00:20:15] Tom: Or, or maybe it’s just speaking about the data to your team. I think, you know, the, that communication. Is key really the good people are good at presenting data and talking to their team about it and what it means. So if we’re talking about someone like Toby, I would say he’s very clear and transparent with his team about what’s going on, what they need to achieve, like visually showing them what they’ve achieved, where they need to be, and.

[00:20:46] Tom: As they progress in the business, what’s the data they need to get to get to the next level to progress their career? Right. Not many salon businesses do that. It’s kind of, well, my progression in the salon is because I’m super busy, right. And, um, and I’m friends with the owner, you know, as opposed to Right.

[00:21:07] Tom: Okay, well let’s have a, a progression based on data. If we have a certain level of retention, if we have a certain level of utilization, at that point, we will then elevate you to the next. And you’ll start earning more money. You know, I, I’m quite big on, right, okay. Other industries, we have career progression in the salon.

[00:21:30] Tom: We’re working and earning a percentage of what we bring in. But is that actually a career? Where’s my progression? What does that mean? And I think that’s where some salons really struggle with retaining staff is because it’s not clear, the data’s not really presented or it’s not even defined.

[00:21:48] Tom: What that progression is. So I think, you know, for me, that communication piece is key to any successful business. All the successful businesses that I see who are very data-driven, are good at not only analyzing the right things, but presenting those to people, having clarity and transparency about what it means, and, in, in the case of staff like that, how you progress in the organization.

[00:22:13] Antony Whitaker: Yeah, I, I actually heard. Toby saying something, uh, very recently, you know, sometimes you, hear the same thing, but you just all of a sudden it has a different meaning. It really impacts on you. And he was talking about profit and he said that, what you have to remember is if a salon is only making 1% profit and there’s plenty of salons that are already making 1% profit, he said, you’ve got to be doing another thousand

[00:22:41] Antony Whitaker: dollars or pounds or euro, whatever your currency is, you’ve gotta be generating another thousand dollars to make $10 back as profit when you, and it was sort of like when he said that, I was like, oh my God, he actually didn’t say a thousand. He was talking about a hundred. He said, you know, if you want a dollar profit, you gotta produce a hundred.

[00:23:02] Antony Whitaker: You know, if you’re only running at 1%, and it was just such a simple statement that sort of slapped me around the face a little bit as like, oh my God, that is such an important visualization to understand what that looks like. It’s hard to produce another thousand dollars, and if I’m gonna do all that work.

[00:23:22] Antony Whitaker: Only make $10 profit out of it or 10 pounds or 10 Euro it sort of really makes you rock back on your heels a little bit and think, okay, I need to get serious about this ’cause I’m not working that hard for 10 bucks,

[00:23:34] Tom: exactly, exactly. And I think it’s a good point, right? we, as an industry, we focus on being really busy, having our chairs filled and revenue, and I think, actually, I. Although revenue’s a factor in any business, profitability is absolutely crucial. You know, so, so actually, okay, if I’m bringing in, um, you know, a hundred thousand of whatever it is each year, you know, in whatever currency, well actually, what’s my profit on that?

[00:24:02] Tom: And actually once you start getting done, the good thing about, you know, the thing about data is you can get to a granular level. So. I’d wanna know out of that a hundred thousand. Okay, well let’s have a look at all of the people and all of their bills and what’s our profitability on a per guest basis, right?

[00:24:18] Tom: And we wanna maintain margin on every single one. So when, when I’m analyzing data and businesses, I’ll look at, okay, again, looking at the three pillars. So are we controlling our costs? You know, and how do we control our costs, right? So that is, we’re selling time, we’re selling products. Let’s use the right amount of time and the right amount of product.

[00:24:40] Tom: We’ve got eight hours or whatever it is, or 10 hours of of work today. Let’s make sure every single hour we’re maintaining our our, or we’re controlling our costs, right? Because that will have an impact on our profit margin. And if we let that go and people are running over and running behind and you know, all that sort of thing, and we’re not charging by time.

[00:25:00] Tom: Then actually suddenly it’s very easy for the business to be at a loss on that guest. So the proportion of guests, when we’re looking at data at Vish, there’s about 20% of color guests that aren’t profitable by the time you’ve paid a member of staff and all that sort of thing. So. So profit is key.

[00:25:18] Tom: Controlling those costs is a key thing. I think the other thing is then the maintaining margin. If actually that guest does need an extra 15 minutes or an extra half a tube of color or whatever it is, we need to know exactly what that cost is and we need to pass that on. In some shape or form in terms of an upcharge to the guest, how, however we, and there’s various different mechanisms doing that, but that will then maintain our margin.

[00:25:45] Tom: So I think controlling costs, maintaining margin, so charging accurately is what I call it. Okay. And I think then the third bit is really about. We get a lot of, a lot of money tied up in areas of the business where, and it just, you know, particularly stock where it just sits there, right? So, so actually that’s not good.

[00:26:04] Tom: You know, you wanna maintain cash flow and that is not tying it up in stock. So, so I think those three things are the key things that you need to look at. It isn’t just your revenue and how busy you are. I know lots of salons, particularly at the moment, not just in the UK we’ve got salons in the us, Australia, et cetera, um, who are incredibly busy and not making a profit or making a very slim profit.

[00:26:28] Tom:  and you know what? When you actually start looking at the data, if you don’t increase your profit margin. You’re gonna need an an another, you’re gonna need to double your start number of stylists to generate additional profit. So it’s not really just trying to get busier and busier, we’ll run everybody into the ground doesn’t create a successful business.

[00:26:49] Tom: We’ve gotta, we’ve gotta make sure that every single guest that comes in. Is actually delivering profit to the business. And then we can start getting a healthy business where people were working you know, a reasonable number of hours, getting paid a reasonable, um, salary. Um, and away we go.

[00:27:05] Tom: so, that’s really how I approach things is, you know, a lot of people like, oh, we need more guests, we need more guests. You know, this drive to have your seat full the whole time. To me, it’s kind of, and I’ve talked to Toby and lots of other people about this before, it’s, it’s almost like right, if I’ve got good retention, I’m doing a great job and I’m over 80% utilized, why don’t I up my price by 10%?

[00:27:30] Tom: Right? I probably can based on that data, right? And I may lose 10% of my guests, but guess what? I’m making as much money, if not more, and then I’ve got 10% more time to sell at that higher rate. So suddenly we’re getting into a position of becoming more and more profitable. So I think, you know, the, the, the, the natural inclination is to be really, really busy and not, you lose any guests.

[00:27:56] Tom: It’s not a bad thing to lose guests based on, right. Actually, we’re at a point where we can raise our price and go up a level and, and we lose a few guests. Right? Okay, fine, but you want the right guests sat in your seat, or you need to charge the right amount for what you are delivering.

[00:28:15] Tom: If I don’t know what the cost is, then I’m in big trouble. Right. Because Yeah, and I think that’s the thing. That’s where the data comes in. You need that data to be able to then maintain your margin. Back to that point is, is right actually in the sixties. Well, yeah, we win on some, we lose on others, but actually people weren’t losing on others back in the day because the cost of product now, as a proportion of the service that we charge, the cost of product is inflated at a far higher rate than what we’re charging.

[00:28:49] Tom: So the cost of product, for instance, is a much higher percentage. Of what we’re charging than it was 10, 20, 30 years ago. So I think you’ve seen cost of product go up like that. What we’re charging has gone up like that. And that’s where we’re in a, in a, it’s a, you know, people, less people are, are doing really well in the industry.

[00:29:12] Tom: And it’s not to say that nobody’s doing well, but, but I think less people are doing well, you know, than they were 10 or 20 years ago because, because of that.

[00:29:21] Antony Whitaker: Yeah, and you know, in line with what you’re talking about then with the product thing and the economy being a bit tight for a lot of people, they’re stretching out. Their time between appointments. So of course the client then turns up and instead of having a half inch regrowth, uh, for a root touch up, she’s got a one inch, uh, regrowth.

[00:29:38] Antony Whitaker: So now twice the amount of product’s gotta be used and she needs to pay for it. Um, so it’s sort of a false economy in a lot of ways for the clients to, to stretch out the time between appointments unless they’re being charged for that extra.

[00:29:51] Tom: Yeah, and well, yeah, and I think, and and I, but I think also, right, there’s a communication piece attached to that. Again, it sort of goes back to that same thing of, well, actually, if my guest understands, they come back within six weeks, their roots are like this, therefore this is the price we charge.

[00:30:10] Tom: If they then don’t come back for 12 weeks and we have to charge them more, well, okay, they understand that, but there’s a choice then for that guest, because we’ve communicated. So do they now return within six weeks and get the, get, get that price that we, that, that we tell them? Or, or do they stretch it out?

[00:30:28] Tom: Okay. And, but if I’m breaking it down, here’s the cost for the extra product and we’re, and we’re, we’re saying exactly here’s the breakdown of what you’ve had today. I think that helps with that communication, the transparency. It may have taken you the same hour. To actually do that service that it would’ve taken half an hour in the case of a root touch up.

[00:30:48] Tom: You know, let’s say it takes you half an hour, it’s the same half an hour, but now it’s gonna take me twice the amount of product. If we separate that out, people understand it. Right. Well, you, I needing more product because your roots are massive and you haven’t come back for 10 weeks. But if, if you come back in six weeks next time then right.

[00:31:04] Tom: Well, you’re not gonna have that huge cost of extra product.

[00:31:08] Antony Whitaker: Yeah. Yeah, the education bit essential, isn’t it? Okay. Um, one, one of the things I wanted to ask you about was, you know, I’m always telling salon owners that you need to track your numbers, et cetera, from, from your perspective,

[00:31:21] Antony Whitaker: not just Vish, but like knowing salon owners and knowing how the salon industry works, uh, from, from a, you know, a broader level. If you were talking to someone who was, you know, a bit overwhelmed with the numbers side of things, what would you say to them? The, let’s say the top three, you know, these are the three things you’d need to be all over.

[00:31:44] Antony Whitaker: What, what would you say that they were, and I know you’ve already spoken a little bit about the three pillars, but try and sort of drill in on that. What, what would the three, you know, metrics be that you’d be saying you need to look at whether you are computerized or even if you are, you know, not computerized.

[00:32:02] Tom: Um, I th I think it, it’s sort of, for me, when you start looking at data and things and there’s a sort of kick pe kickstart people with looking at data, I think you need to have an understanding of sort of benchmarking. Like, where are you right now versus other people? You don’t know what good looks like to a degree.

[00:32:20] Tom: So what do I focus on? Okay. So, um, what I mean by that is, what does good retention look like? For a stylist for instance, you know, um, what is, if I look at my cost of color, uh, if I’ve got my Vish hat on, there’s a cost of color, and then my color revenue. Well, do I break out in my, in my P and L, right?

[00:32:44] Tom: My color cost. So not including retail and everything like that. And then look at, um, look at my color revenue, right? And now we’ve got a percentage that we can look at. So I would say that’s a, from a vish perspective, that’s a really good metric. What percentage cost to revenue purely on color,

[00:33:03] Antony Whitaker: And, and what do you find the, the sweet spot is with that?

[00:33:07] Tom: So it’s quite horrifying when you start looking at, you know, I think for owners and things, when you start looking at, okay, what does good look like? Most people would try and historically would say, we want that to be at 10%.

[00:33:19] Antony Whitaker: Hmm.

[00:33:20] Tom: I would say a lot of businesses are 20% or higher. We’ve seen businesses at 35%.

[00:33:27] Tom: I mean, literally, they’re gonna need to close their doors. Um, what good looks like is five. Alright So, and, and you can’t get there without technology. You just can’t do it. So back to your point, are we gonna hire a whole load more stylists and get them working for our 1%? Are, are we actually gonna get the, the technology in to be able to get us to a 5% cost to revenue, you know, control those costs.

[00:33:53] Tom: So for me, that’s a key thing that I would look at. Um, and then in terms of sort of, you know, if you’re looking at, uh, profit margin, profitability and everything like that, you know, again, you can do some of this stuff manually, but it’s gonna take you a very long time and you probably haven’t got the time, you know, so.

[00:34:12] Tom: You know, I would say, okay, if in a perfect world I’d get all of my team to write down how many grams of each product they’ve used for each guest, and then I’d figure out the cost per gram of each of those and calculate it and then go, right, is this profitable? Is it not? You know, well, they’ve already left the business and we can’t charge them anymore, and that one wasn’t profitable.

[00:34:35] Tom: Um, so I think, you know, that It’s really looking at that, you know, down to that granular level is right actually, which ones are profitable and which ones are not. Um, and I think then, you know, looking at how much money have you got tied up in, in stock versus your turnover over that. So if I go right, okay, well, how frequently are you ordering?

[00:34:57] Tom: I’m ordering monthly. Okay. So I order monthly. What’s my order value? And then looking at my order value versus the cost of the product I’m holding in stock and what does that look like? And then we can, you know, we would then give benchmarks for each of those. What do you need it to be?

[00:35:15] Tom: If, if we do these things, the profitability of the business. Is transformed so that it does go back to this personalization we’re in a personalized world. We need to be personalized in terms of what we’re delivering, you know, the experience that we’re delivering and what we’re charging for it.

[00:35:36] Tom: And if all those are personalized, you can have a very successful business, even with all the challenges around, you know, tax and, all those sorts of things going on.

[00:35:46] Antony Whitaker: Yeah, you touched on, uh, you know, the stylist, the team member, and what, what I wanna ask you about is whether you are like, regardless of what the tech is, when you start integrating more tech and more data into your business, what do you find, I guess the answer is something to do with accountability.

[00:36:07] Antony Whitaker: What do you find the resistance point is that the salon owner has, uh, and the staff member has, but first of all, I suppose that the salon owner has to you if you are trying to get ’em to take it because. And then what’s the point of resistance? A salon only gets from their team member to start with. The team member probably doesn’t understand it and gets overwhelmed with it all very quickly.

[00:36:28] Antony Whitaker: Oftentimes. How would you suggest that’s handled? What are your thoughts about that?

[00:36:33] Tom: Yeah, I mean, I think people don’t like change. Do they really? generally? You know, I think a lot of people don’t like change or, and part of that’s probably the, the unknown, right? I’m happy doing what I’m doing right now and if I change things, what’s gonna happen, you know, and all those sorts of things.

[00:36:47] Tom: So I think, it is about communicating to people what you’re doing and why. Um, and I think you’ve got to look at it as, uh, particularly with sort of technology, but change generally, you know, a lot of technology, it is about behavior and things like that.

[00:37:02] Tom: for me it’s really kind of the adoption side of things. It goes back to investing your time, right? You’ve gotta go, okay, look, let’s be realistic. We’re very realistic with stars.

[00:37:13] Tom: Look, you know, this is what you need to do. Okay? It’s gonna take some change. You’re gonna have to stick with it, but this is the result you’re gonna get when you come out the other side. It’s a bit like when you pick up, you know, a social media app for the first time when they first came out and everything.

[00:37:29] Tom: It’s like, how on earth do you use this thing? You know what I mean? But, but you sort of, you know. It sucks you in social media, it sucks you in, and you’re kind of like, right now, now we’re all addicted to it, but from that perspective, I think it’s just, I always call it a change hump, you know, so

[00:37:44] Tom: there is a hump when you are go, when you’re going through change, and that’s kind of right. Initially you are really excited and you start to use it and then you’re like, oh, right, well actually it doesn’t do this, or it doesn’t do that, or it’s slowing me down, or whatever the reasons are. And then you go over that hump and then you start to really see the outcome of the technology.

[00:38:03] Tom: It tends to not be a huge amount of time. You know, if I’m looking at salons adopting technology. It’s normally two to four weeks where you go through that period and then you can, and then people are like, well, I wouldn’t work without it now. We should have got this years ago. You know? So from a user perspective, it’s like that.

[00:38:21] Tom: And I think, you know, from a, from the owner perspective, it’s really about. Results often take a long time. It doesn’t happen overnight if I make a change now, for instance. Right? Okay. If I say, okay, if, if I’m gonna get rid of the what color waste in my business, yep. I’m going to weigh the waste and adjust my formulas today.

[00:38:45] Tom: My guest doesn’t arrive back for 15 weeks, so I’m not gonna actually see a cost saving in my business for 15 weeks. When they return, and now I’m using less product because I’ve got rid of the waste. So I think that’s the other thing. You know, we try and be, we should be as realistic as possible. You will get the results and they’ll be permanent in your business.

[00:39:07] Tom: When you use technology, well, it’ll have a permanent impact on your business. You’ve gotta stick at it and it will happen over time. Some, there’s ways in which you can speed these things up, but we’re dealing with humans. You know, humans use technology. There’s a human element. Um, so how do we speed that up?

[00:39:28] Tom: It, because we’re all humans. It’s sometimes it takes a lot longer. Some of the things we want to do and achieve quickly. Our team just won’t do that, right? So we’ve just gotta be realistic over our timescale. It’s right that we put technology in for the right reasons, and maybe things will happen very quickly, but often they’ll take longer than we think.

[00:39:50] Tom: So I think it’s, if you’ve got that expectation, I think that’s, that’s, that’s really useful.

[00:39:55] Antony Whitaker: Yeah. Okay. And, and I agree with you a couple of things I wanted to say. First thing was to our American audience, when Tom said turnover. He meant total sales. Okay. Americans don’t use the term turnover for that. They turnover for them means staff leaving and

[00:40:11] Tom: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, sorry about that.

[00:40:13] Antony Whitaker: the whole equation. No, don’t apologize at all.

[00:40:15] Antony Whitaker: Uh, so, so that’s what, that was. Total sales and, and yeah. People don’t like change. If they aren’t aware of how it’s gonna make them better off, and that’s the key to it, isn’t it? If you’re a salon owner, you’ve gotta get that across to the team member how it’s going to impact on them positively. Because at the beginning it might be a pain in the backside for them to have to change their way of working, but if they can see that it puts another 20 quid or whatever, $20 whatever in their pocket each week, then it’s like, okay, I don’t mind doing this.

[00:40:46] Antony Whitaker: It works. You know?

[00:40:47] Tom: that’s it. I think it’s, it’s the what’s in it for me? You know, what’s in it for me? And I think, you know, it’s, um, you know, when we’re putting technology in the first, the start of our process for onboarding is, we call it delighting the stylist. All our goal, ’cause they’re the user of the technology.

[00:41:05] Tom: Our goal is to delight the stylist, right? What’s in it for them? And I think, you know, as business owners and managers, it’s really important, okay? What’s gonna motivate people to do this? What’s in it for them? Right? If you’re, if you’re putting technology in and it’s new, right? Actually, you can gamify it, right?

[00:41:23] Tom: Well, if you achieve X or Y. I don’t know. There’s a prize, there’s something extra in your paycheck, you know, et cetera. So, and I think, you know, technology will drive the business and deliver a lot of extra profit if you use it properly, okay? And, and revenue and all that sort of stuff, but really make the business more profitable.

[00:41:41] Tom: And so why not share some of that? Because actually you’ll get there much quicker and it’ll be much easier.

[00:41:48] Antony Whitaker: Okay. Alright, well listen, we need to, uh, wrap up. Whereabouts can people connect with you, Tom, on Instagram or any other social media channels or website? Website to.

[00:41:58] Tom: Yep. So, um, get vish.com. Um, so we’ve got a web chat on there. They can connect to any of the team globally through that. And myself, you know, we’ve got a very flat structure, so if any of the points that sort of we’ve discussed and things people are like, oh, like to know a bit, a bit about that, then yeah, just feel, feel free to go onto our web chat.

[00:42:18] Tom: Ask for me and I’ll, and I’ll get in contact.

[00:42:21] Antony Whitaker: Cool. Fantastic. Okay, uh, well, I’ll put those links, uh, on our website, grow my salon business.com, and in the show notes for today’s podcast, wherever you are, uh, listening for it to it, whatever app that you are using. Uh, so if you are listening to this podcast with Tom Bentley Taylor, and have enjoyed it, do me a favor, share it with people that you know would also.

[00:42:41] Antony Whitaker: Uh, enjoy it and more importantly, get some benefit from it. And don’t forget to subscribe and leave us a rating and review on the Apple Podcast. That. So to wrap up, Tom Bentley Taylor, thank you for being my guest on this week’s episode of the Grow My Salon Business podcast.

[00:42:56] Tom: Thanks so much an it’s brilliant love, love chatting to you as usual,

[00:42:59] Antony Whitaker: Yeah, thanks for being here.