Back to the Drawing Board

After I resigned from my position, there were three things that I knew for sure:

1. I wanted to be able to bring my son to school and to put him to bed at night – So I needed my own hours. I absolutely could not be an employee again.
   
2. I had led lots of successful campaigns for my clients, which got them results and helped them grow – So I knew that I was a competent leader, mentor and strategist.
3. I loved the beauty industry, so why not focus on this under-served industry in particular?

What I learned was that the real money was in skin treatments. In just 60 minutes, a therapist could perform a facial. In 30 minutes, a peel. Both go for $120, which is more than double what a therapist would make giving a half-leg and bikini wax that also took 30 minutes. When you fill a therapist’s schedule with skin treatments instead of beauty treatments, there was suddenly lots of potential. Not to mention, that skincare is all about getting results, and in order to get long-lasting results, clients need to invest in the right skin care products. This was another potentially lucrative revenue stream, and a way to create loyalty and customer retention – the lifeblood of a lucrative business!

Over the course of my 15 years as a salon owner, I made my fair share of mistakes. And along the way, I fine-tuned the strategies and protocols that actually did generate substantial and recurring profits. Along the way, I dropped the focus on beauty treatments and dropped some offerings off the menu altogether. Gradually, my business developed a reputation for being a results-driven skin-focused salon. The minimal beauty treatments that remained existed solely to provide an all-round service to skin clients.

It wasn’t until my last 5 years of owning the salon that I saw real profits being produced consistently. During the first 10 years, I spent a lot of time working in the business as the manager and receptionist, but in 2005, I no longer had to do this. I had finally built my business into a system-based operation that ran like a well-oiled machine without me. It’s the models from those last 5 lucrative years and similar protocols that I now teach my students. I Was Finally Ready to Be A Business Coach

With all of that experience under my belt, I finally felt ready to start my coaching business. So I jumped in. My first live workshop attracted 5 salon owners. I’ll never forget setting up the chairs in the reception area of my salon on a Sunday afternoon. It may have been an intimate affair, but I knew I had made the right decision. As I talked about my experience, and what strategies were needed to elevate a salon business to the next level, I was hooked. This was my special sauce, the place where all of my talents and experience coalesced. I had so much to offer, and I was so excited to share it with others.

Over the next twelve months, I grew so that I was attracting 100 to 200 salon owners to my workshops from across Australia and New Zealand. Finally, success felt more in line with my life and purpose. I wasn’t overworked; I loved work. And my teachings were helping business owners get real results.

Now, I’m Known For Bringing Strategy Into the Salon

From working in the industry and now watching others in the industry, strategy has always been a huge missing element in the salon business. Salon owners usually are great at two things. They are great service providers because they spend so much time tending to their clients. They make you feel comfortable, cared for and right at home. And they’re really well versed in the science of all the skincare that they’re providing. They’ve got all the knowledge on what’s going on with your skin and how to fix it.

What they overwhelmingly don’t have, however, is a strategy for bringing all of that goodness together so that they are consistently making a profit that leads to a high quality of life doing the thing they love.