IDENTITY FOUNDATIONS
Scaling requires a particular mindset. Your treatment services and your retail products are NOT where your ‘selling’ needs. Your ‘business’ is ultimately the product for sale. Anyone can sell treatments and products. Scalable businesses sell so much more, and getting clarity on what that is, is critical to scaling. It’s about having a clear grasp of exactly what it is that you do, what makes it unique to the market.
Clarity on who you serve is equally critical. The internet has changed EVERYTHING by providing unlimited access to information, competition, reviews, and opinions. This has massively altered consumer behaviour and the buying process, shifting all the power to the consumer. What’s required is a more personal approach. A much more customer-focused approach. Have you ever heard of the marketing term USP; Unique Selling Proposition? Yeah, well it’s time to forget it. That’s now outdated. Today it’s about the UBA, the Unique Buying Advantage, meaning it’s all about why your client should buy, engage and be loyal to you.
Truth is, you can’t be all things to all people so nailing down who you are, who you serve and even who delivers what you serve, needs to be your new #1 focus. For some of you, it’s about getting clarity around the product (your business), but for others, it might be about developing the ‘product’ where none existed before.
This is the most important foundation to nail as everything you do hinges on your identity.
EMPLOYEE FOUNDATIONS
Employees, by far are the biggest challenge any business owner faces. But here’s why this challenge MUST be met and overcome…….It’s the people you employee who are directly responsible for generating the revenue. Not you! Why? Because employees are scalable but you are not! There is only one of you.
Scaling your employees is first about maximising their efforts. In a skin focused salon, skin clinic or medspa, maximising efforts means that every therapist produces around $250/hour. In a year, a full-time therapist has the opportunity to generate $437,000 dollars. If you haven’t yet watched my video called ‘Proof Positive Being a High Performer is Easy’, then click here to watch it. You’ll be blown away.
Unfortunately many salons are sitting at half that level of productivity which means the opportunities for their business are yet to be realised.
Once you’ve learned to maximise the output of your therapists, then you’re in a position to duplicate and scale ever further by employing more therapists you’ll turn into high performers.
This foundational pillar is critical to your success. Learning to to lead, train, mentor and retain high performers is what this pillar will offer you.
BUSINESS FOUNDATIONS
Michael Gerber wrote 'The E-Myth’, a book that changed my career and financial standing. Building a ‘turnkey’ business was the premise behind Gerber’s book. Turnkey defined as a highly profitable business, that if sold, is ready to be taken over and remain equally profitable by a new owner. All they need to do is simply turn the key to unlock the doors to continue the momentum of profit.
If tomorrow you had to move overseas and uproot your whole life, would your business be ready to sell for a great price? No? Then you don’t have a turnkey business. You need operate with the mentality of a turnkey business, a business ready for a profitable sale, EVEN if you don’t want to sell it.
Turnkey businesses are built on processes and profitable scalable businesses are a process-dependent businesses, NOT people-dependent businesses.
Processes are systems, policies, procedures, and protocols, for ALL to follow. There’s a set of processes for your team to follow and an altogether different set for you, the business owner to follow.
The set for the team safeguards the business runs like a well-oiled machine, every day, with or without you present. The set for you, covers profit and management strategies to put into place in the day-to-day running of the business. Processes that move the needle and keep the business moving in the right direction.
This pillar of scale is the most foundational pillar of all and forms the basis of scaling. Without processes, your business will be a grind, overwhelming and stressful for everyone. The absence of processes and will keep YOU, shackled to the cash register, eluding you of freedom, money, and peace.
GROWTH FOUNDATIONS
Before you embark on paid advertising, you need to nail the most foundational marketing vehicles used to promote your business; from the messaging on your website, email marketing, content marketing and all the way to your social channels.
This is so very important because if and when you do turn to paid advertising, the prospects will first seek these marketing vehicles first, comparing you to others, much like scrutinising business’ ‘resumes’. Get that wrong, and your advertising dollar will be wasted.
Here's what’s important. Whilst many business owners spend their money on advertising discounted promotions, they’re missing what the client really wants and is willing to pay for. Your clients are looking for results, value, service, honesty, authenticity, and personalised care way above the lowest price. This pillar of scale will minimise, if not eliminate the need for desperate, often reactive highly-discounted promotions and will help you build your business on reputation and quality delivery. You’ll learn to conduct promotions to enhance what you have built, not replace what you have lost.
In addition, developing retention strategies to capture the client’s attention in the short term, and retain their attention in the long term, is also part of the Growth Pillar. Apart from the fact that selling to existing customers is many times easier and cheaper than selling to new customers, the beauty industry business model (with the skin journey being a long one) demands the focus to be placed on the long term.
