End the Salon Slump [EP:167]

Business Growth Strategies: Avoid Discounts and Focus on Value

Jen and Todd discuss common complaints about slow business periods and share strategies for maintaining and growing your salon business.

They discuss personal experiences and emphasize the importance of consistent efforts like SEO, online booking, and expanding staff.

They caution against discounts and suggest leveraging current clientele for growth.

Practical tips include maintaining a strong online presence and delivering the best experience possible.

Todd also highlights the benefits of joining his newsletter for weekly business insights.

Todd's Newsletter

00:00 Introduction and Opening Remarks
00:08 Addressing Business Concerns
01:44 Dealing with Anxiety in the Workplace
03:58 The Importance of Adaptability
06:56 Strategies for Business Growth
14:39 The Role of Online Booking and SEO
17:28 Strategic Hiring and Flexible Workstations
18:40 Maximizing Business Potential: Expansion Strategies
18:57 Aligning Online Presence with Client Experience
20:11 The Pitfalls of Discounts and Alternative Strategies
22:09 Leveraging Client Relationships for Business Growth
24:06 Client Feedback and Business Improvement
27:50 The Power of Word-of-Mouth and Client Referrals
33:59 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Links and Stuff:
Our Newsletter
Mentoring Inquiries

Find more of our things:
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Transcript

167
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Todd: [00:00:00] What is up, everyone? Welcome back. Happy Monday. How's it going, Jen?

Jen: Good? Mm

Todd: Nice.

Jen: hmm.

Todd: So today we are, today we're talking about something that we see a lot of, which is people complaining about how slow it was, specifically October. And I see this in a couple different groups on like Facebook and stuff that we're in, and I kind of just scroll through there, and when I notice patterns, I investigate it, because there's obviously something going on there, right?

All right.

Jen: hmm.

Todd: And so I started looking into, well, how have our numbers been? Because I haven't looked in I don't know, probably a couple months. I usually, like, every quarter I look at them and then, if there's something that needs attention, I'll dive in sooner or more often or whatever. Things have been consistent and there wasn't a really need for me to check them.

So anyways, I checked our numbers and our numbers told a completely different story and then I wrote about that in our newsletter and then I [00:01:00] talked about it with some of our staff and then I just started coming up with ideas and I was like, Jen, we need to record about this because I might be able to help some people listening.

Jen: for sure. Alright, that's the hope, right?

Todd: Yeah, definitely. You don't want people, unless you want to close your business, you don't want to see people struggling or closing their business, no matter what. It's just, it's not good for anyone, and yeah, it's just, the economy is stronger when it has small, it's run by small businesses, so we need that.

Jen: Correct.

Todd: And if we can help some people, then we'll help some people. What do you have for an opening take?

Jen: ready. I just came up with it in my head. Okay,

Todd: Oh, cool.

Jen: my opening take is I do this with the staff often, and I, I see, I don't know if we have a younger staff. I don't know if it's just a younger generation thing or whatever, but the, the people, the hair pros are under our roof. They have major anxiety all the time. [00:02:00] Stuff that's probably real and stuff that's definitely not so anyway, I go

Todd: So, when you say major anxiety, I I feel like there's different kinds of anxiety. You mean, like, nervous about, like, everyday situations?

Jen: I

Todd: do you mean actual, like somebody that has, like, panic attacks?

Jen: I mean anxiety that keeps people out of work. They have to call out. They can't even get off their bed So

Todd: Okay.

Jen: that is for them though. I'm using the word loosely. I'm not a doctor So

Todd: I'm just asking for people, for people listening.

Jen: medication and they have their therapist So they're doing all the things to try to get them in the healthiest mindset that they can But

Todd: Gotcha.

Jen: everything starts failing, right?

So one of our, our hair pros was coming in for me to do a huge new install of extensions. So I go in early Friday morning and she was basically having a meltdown cause her hair, she got her colored the day before it wasn't, didn't come out the way she wanted. Basically like her whole world's collapsing, right?

And to some people you might be like, it's your hair, who cares? But to some people it's a big deal, right? Your hair is a representation of who you are. It makes you feel certain [00:03:00] things. Anyway, my first question to her was, well, first I said, chill out. I got you. This hair is going to look amazing once you put it in.

And it was beyond amazing. But second, I was like, have you had anything to drink this morning? Have you had water? Have you eaten? And she's like, no. And I said, okay, so we're going to do this install. And when you get done, you are going to go get a salad. You're not going to go to McDonald's. You're not going to nurse.

I want you to eat a salad. Salad and drink some water. And later in the day, she sent me a picture of her eating a salad. And she's like, I never even thought about that. I'm like, you need something healthy to fuel your body. You've been in panic mode since yesterday or however long we need to fuel you so that you feel better or you're just going to crash and you have to work tomorrow, whatever. And she just said, thank you. Thank you. And sometimes I think, you know, your, your, whatever's going on, it feels like there's nothing going right. But sometimes just to drink water and eat a healthy meal can make you feel so much better and let you gain back some control over that day or that moment. So sometimes you just need to eat a salad.

Todd: Alright, eat a salad, wise words. So my opening take is super simple. We recently watched the [00:04:00] Martha Stewart documentary on Netflix. She said something that I feel like we say all the time, but she put it in a Martha Stewart sort of way she said when you're through changing you're through and the reason I wanted to use that for my opening take is because a lot of the salons that we see complaining about Being slow or not growing or not being able to attract stylists or not being able to keep up with the times or whatever are choosing that life because they're choosing not to change.

And I think it's important to realize that time is sort of irrelevant. And what I mean is time, your time doing something, unless you're actively doing it. Pursuing a goal or you're actively pursuing growth, like just because you owned the act of owning a salon for 20 years, doesn't [00:05:00] make you successful.

It doesn't make, I mean, you know, a lot of businesses close before the 10 year mark, fine, cool. So you made that, but. If you're stressed out constantly and losing money, or you're working to work, or you're working to pay everyone else's bills, if that's your strategy or that's your whole thing, it's not, like, that's not successful to me.

It's stressful. And I don't know why people wouldn't Try something new. I keep seeing the same stuff and it's, it's it's frustrating. Cause they're probably the people that need sort of this podcast and the stuff that we put out and the stuff that other tons of other people put out are the people that are least likely to be receptive to it.

And yeah, just going back to my point with the time, like if you, if you've owned a business, say for 20 years and you haven't really done anything after like the five year mark, you were like, Oh, [00:06:00] we're all set. This'll just run itself. And you've only really put in five years. It's not 20 years. So that 20 year number, cause I see a lot of times too, like as an owner of a style of a salon for 20 years, or.

As a professional, whatever. It's like, who cares? We don't need that as of,

Jen: Yeah.

Todd: you know, so you got to get with the times and stop fighting them because you're not going to win.

Jen: No,

Todd: You're definitely not. Let's dive in. Let's talk. So

where do you want to start?

Jen: I think the analogy. go ahead.

Todd: some of the long term stuff? So people, people are struggling. What can they do to get busy? People are, I actually saw recently that some people were struggling with stylists. They were like, I They're not growing. It's the holiday season and they're still not growing.

I don't know what to do. Some people are like, there's no money coming in and I had the worst October ever, and actually let's start with this. Let's start with our October. So if you're still listening, we're at about what, [00:07:00] seven minutes in. If you're listening, here's our, here's what our October looked like.

I compared it to I compared it to the previous October

Jen: And I

Todd: and we were up,

Jen: that too.

Todd: we were up by 54%. So 50, 54 percent is a big number. And so the things that we're doing actually work. So if you're listening, don't be like, oh, that's cool. But that wouldn't work for me. Think about stuff that would like use us.

Don't just copy what we're doing. But use it as inspiration because it can be done. You can build a business and you can rebuild a business and you can rebuild it a third time. That's just how it goes. So our numbers, I looked at the, I looked at October and from I think 2021.

Jen: Mm

Todd: 2020 is the year we opened.

I sort of scratched that it was a pandemic year. The numbers are all messed up. They're all way lower than they should be.

Jen: Mm

Todd: So 2021, we really kind of started. And if I looked at our October compared to [00:08:00] 2021, we're up like 110 percent or something like that. So we've doubled our sales through three years.

That's a big jump. Especially going up 54 percent from the last year. So. I projected us to beat our busiest year ever, which was last year. And my rough estimations were, we're gonna beat our busiest year ever by about 45%, I think it was, or maybe it was 44.5, something like that.

Jen: hmm.

Todd: So again, that's a big number.

The average business, like a good business growth growth would be 10 to 20%. 20% I would, I would say, is like, awesome. You're doing great. So

Jen: Then there's the

Todd: what have we done? I

Jen: why, why is that working? Like, what are you doing? Yeah. I actually, I think I'd sent you a list the other day. I don't have it in front of me, but I, I'll, I'll go through a couple of things that

Todd: can pull it up if you want, and I have it [00:09:00] right here

Jen: And these are

Todd: next to

Jen: I like where Todd's going to go after because he'll give you some, some really great insight on some short things you can do if you're truly like, I need to make money now. We'll give you some tips and tricks for that too, just so that, you know, there's some stuff you could probably do immediately. These are definitely long term and they, it, it, you have to get Patience and grit and fortitude to do these things because it wasn't like we were just hopeful like, Oh, I just hope new people come in and we have lots of clients like that.

Never. That doesn't do anything like you can hope. But what were the actual steps you took? So we knew we had to grow our team, right? So we shift the chairs, which means we have morning shifts, afternoon shifts. We're open seven days a week. And the goal was to fill those shifts as much as possible, which meant we had to have a bigger staff.

In the beginning, didn't love that idea, but it was what it was. And we're up to, I think, 13 or 14 staff, including Todd and I, I think it's 16. And that's a lot of people to manage, but [00:10:00] that's what we needed to do to Get to where we are today. So we had to hire, which meant we had to get out in schools.

We had to interview constantly. We had to come up with a hiring process that has been always revolving or evolving, I should say to where I feel the last person we hired, I really liked the system we went through and the training system we went through. And it took us this whole time to get there. So constantly in schools, constantly talking to our staff about hiring, constantly asking them to, you know, if you know anyone that's looking for a job then it was really, this was Todd kind of came to me.

We had tried some stuff with some mail, like kind of coupon type things that just didn't really go anywhere. And. We needed to hire someone and get our website and get our presence on Google out there. Because if you're not out there in front of people more often than not, they don't know you exist just because you open a hair salon.

Doesn't mean anyone besides the few businesses or people that maybe walk by your sign. If

Todd: [00:11:00] Okay.

Jen: our social media presence. And through our Google presence, the SEO is not cheap running stuff through Google is not cheap. And at the time we didn't have the money to do either one, but if we didn't do it. We would have died and we would not still be here. So we understood in today's world, like you're marketed all the time, whatever platform you're on, looking at whatever you're seeing ads three or four times, if you pause long enough, they're aware that you've paused on that ad and now you see it even more.

And eventually you're like, you know what, I do need that. Whatever it is that that ad is Showing you [00:12:00] and you end up clicking and you buying it. The hair world is the same thing. Don't say you're different. You're not, you're the same. So you need to be in front of the buyers, the clients you want in your salon. 3, times. And then finally they're like, I do need to go to that salon. I need to be in that salon getting my hair done. And then you need to do the next step was when they come in is giving them the best experience possible of whatever your mission statement says that you. Are the, whatever it is that you're giving. And these steps took time. It took us, I think, was that three years ago, Todd

Todd: If I had to guess on the spot, yeah, about three years,

Jen: So again, and the end of year one, our

Todd: that's about where I started tracking for this conversation. It was, it was either the end of COVID or, or a little while after that. So yeah, 2021 ish.

Jen: So our accountant of the first year is like, you're spending this much money and he just lumped it all into advertising and marketing. Are you seeing a return on that? And so, you know, we kind of laid out with him like, no, not yet, but this is the goal. This is where we're at. And he's like, I see where you're going with this.

Okay. And like I said, could we afford it? No. [00:13:00] Sometimes The SEO bill I was putting on a credit card, like, but I understood the importance and I, I knew if we put in the work consistently, that this was going to pay off and was going to get it so that we were in front of clients in the towns we picked more often than not.

And then they'd be using our online system and then they'd be showing up into our salon. Then it was our job to retain them. And that truly is, is what's catapulted us into where we are today.

Todd: I actually, I texted you the list that you texted me the other day, so you have it on your phone if you need it. I just, my newsletter last week. So first of all, get on my newsletter. If you're not, I write a newsletter every week and it's a three, two, one style where I share three business insights and then I share two either stories or quotes, and then I end the newsletter with a question or a challenge for the reader and thank you.

And I put a lot of effort into it. And everything that I write in there is stuff that we've done. None of this is like theory or on paper stuff that we're like, Oh, this would work. Like, no, this [00:14:00] is stuff that we've actually put into practice and we've built, and I am always sharing stories in there about my failures, my failures, just in business and helping manage businesses in owning my gym and owning the salon in just life in general.

So, because I think it can help people. And I think it's good for us to reflect on those things too, because it brings us back to like, what have I done in the past? What have I tried already? And it keeps that stuff. Fresh. There's always lessons there, right? It's never a failure unless you don't learn from it.

Jen: from those,

Todd: So in my newsletter, I had three business insights. I'll share them here. So SEO, which you already talked about, and then online booking. So I lumped those together. If you're not online booking, you have to do that. There are so many times where Jen will look at a day and go, wow, it's really slow tomorrow.

Excuse me. And then we wake up in the morning and it's full. The day's full. How does that happen? Online booking. We don't have somebody at a salon taking, taking calls [00:15:00] overnight, but sometimes. A man might sit down and go, Oh, shit. I was supposed to book a haircut. I've been wanting a haircut. Well, you want them to wait until you open, or do you want them to book it right then and there?

So it's all done because they wake up in the morning and guess what? They forget again, or they have a new errand. Same thing with a woman, let's say, or even you, Jen, sometimes it's nine or 10 o'clock at night. We have three young kids. We have a business and a staff of whatever you said, 14, whatever it is.

And sometimes it's 10 o'clock and you sit down and you're like, Oh wow. Time. Okay. To go to bed. But also this is the first time I've had to get something done that maybe I need to get done.

Jen: for

Todd: maybe you're looking at 10 PM and salon isn't open. So online booking is an amazing way to just have, have technology working for you.

A lot of people are going to say. Well, what if they book the wrong thing? Look, if that's your issue, if you don't know how to do a consultation, you've got a lot of other stuff going on. Because we have people come in for consultations all the time that we have to either turn [00:16:00] away or say, Hey, we can do this, but not in this time slot that you booked for.

Do you want to come back tomorrow? Or do you want to come back next week I have time? Or whatever. And if you're not in the position to do that, or you don't think that that's a, A small price to pay, then you're probably missing out on a lot of other stuff. Anyways you already talked about,

Jen: too, of people who book online that it's the wrong service more often than not. It's going to help your business. Like you'll have a few of them, but that's just normal. I mean, some people could call on the phone and book the wrong thing. It's the same thing. It's just going to happen from time to time.

Todd: especially with social media, people don't even know what they want. They're looking at these AI generated photos and photos with all these filters and edited, edited hair colors. And they're like, Oh, I can have this. Like maybe, maybe not either way. Just do the consultation, but get people through the door and into your business.

I don't understand how that is ever a bad thing. The more people in your business, the better. Yeah you already talked about expanding, so what I think you should [00:17:00] do is, oh, actually, so on my newsletter, I always, the business insights, I always end with a try this. So try this, do some research on SEO experts and contact a few.

If you compare them based on metrics, not on your emotions or how things feel. Also try this, get booking software now, literally before you finished reading this newsletter, if you already have an online booking streamline it. And then I wrote pro tip SEO isn't an overnight fix. It takes time, blah, blah, blah, blah.

So moving into expand we've intentionally slowed our hiring. Because we're at a position where we only want to work with the people we want to work with. And so we get to be choosy. And when you operate this way, this is coming right out of my newsletter, you can, you give yourself the freedom to avoid the, I need to hire everyone trap because that's where a lot of salons, that's where a lot of businesses in general are.

They just need just help. And they think that's going to solve their problem, but there's other problems there. We'll dive into a different time. No one's working full time because of the job, the, the current job climate. [00:18:00] And that's okay because we shift our chairs. So you don't have to work full time, but you don't get to claim a station.

At Hello, the station is not yours. The station is ours. You can use it for a shift. You can use it so you can keep your things in the station if you're coming in for the next immediate shift. And it keeps things wicked clean, which clients notice keeps organized. It keeps you on top of your equipment.

It keeps you maintaining stuff because you're constantly handling it. It's not just sitting in the drawer. We're open seven days a week. I think you mentioned that, Jen. Most salons are closed on Sundays and Mondays. And let me tell you, those days always fill in for us.

Jen: Yeah.

Todd: I wrote, try this take a look at where you could expand, don't react, think on this, weighing the pros and cons, and then when you're ready to try when you're ready, try one thing at a time.

Maybe Sundays wouldn't work for you, but shifting your stations and hiring additional staff will. The other business insight I had, I called Matchy Matchy to be fun. And I wrote what your online presence looks like needs to match the actual experience you're delivering. [00:19:00] This is important. I literally wrote that.

Thanks. Every claims that their luxury or offer an experience in lieu of services. And the problem is the public isn't stupid and you better understand that your social media isn't fooling anyone. Try this, find your identity. This comes from laying out a solid business foundation. Your mission tells people why your business exists.

Your vision. Is where your business is positioned in the future and your core values drive your decision making processes. The problem I've seen is that people are either not doing this or not putting an honest effort into the work. And again, if you don't know what you stand for, how were your staff and how were your clients?

Jen: Everyone will be confused. And the last

Todd: Yes,

Jen: that's like, found you, they're coming in and they're expecting here, and then they're like, Oh, like I'd rather them come in thinking it's going to be here and then be like, Totally wind and dine and like, that was the best experience ever. But if you're telling people that you are the best and you are luxury or whatever words you're using, you best make sure that that [00:20:00] level of what you're saying you do, you actually do deliver. And I think a lot of people fall short there.

Todd: for sure. So I will share one of the stories that I put in the newsletter because it's this newsletter was written around this topic. So it relates. So I wrote I hate and then I wrote in parentheses. Maybe that's a strong word discounts. So I don't like discounts. I never understood why when a business needs to make more money.

Their first thought is to lower prices. When I opened my gym, I played around with a ton of low level marketing ideas. Because I had no idea what I was doing. I signed up for one of those coupon things. The idea was that the marketing company would sell heavily discounted memberships to my gym. I got a tiny portion of that money and then had to retain the new clients.

Sounds good in theory, right? Because you're like, Oh, they do all the marketing. They get in front of all the people. I even get a little bit of money. And then I have clients. Here's what actually happened. My gym filled with new clients taking attention away from my loyal ones. My numbers were artificially inflated for a few months and then guess what?

People who [00:21:00] chase coupons chase coupons. So when the gym down the road ran a deal, everyone took off for the lower price instead of signing up for at my normal rate. Sometimes it's not you. Sometimes people just want the lowest price.

Jen: Mm

Todd: So when you play, Oh, and I wrote this too. Oh, and people who look for the lowest price often bitch the most.

Literally about everything. You don't want that in your business. And again, there's nothing wrong if you're like, well, I use coupons at the store. That's, I'm not criticizing you at all. The people that tend to chase coupons though. Aren't the type of people that you want in your business, because you're going to have to constantly bend over backwards and cater to them just to keep them.

And they want a discount. I would much rather you see if you were like, I want to try something, Todd, but I don't know what to do. I'm going to try a discount. And I had this conversation yesterday with some of our staff, just in brief. And I told them we'd pick it back up. Someone suggested, what if we, [00:22:00] what if you ran a deal?

And then I was like, no deals. I would much rather see you do something like comp complimentary.

Jen: Mm hmm.

Todd: So how can you help your current clients help you? Well, you could say, Hey, why don't you look, I, first of all, you've got to realize that your clients want to help you. They want you to succeed. They don't want to find somewhere else to go.

They have you and they love you. And odds are, if you have clients that you've had for any amount of time, they're loyal to you and Again, they don't want to have to go find someone new. So if you sat down with them and said, look, and I've done this, I'll talk about it in a minute, if you want, if you said, Hey, I need to expand my business.

I'm looking for more people like you. You're cool. I want your friends or whatever, maybe through the holidays. Like maybe if you're worried about the holidays being slow, you can't come at me I'm too busy to do that because it's got to be one or the other. So maybe you say to your client, you know, bring in a friend [00:23:00] and I will I'll charge, like, I'll charge you as my client and I'll blow dry your, your friend for free.

Just to get people through the door, because if you have the time to do that, pick something that's not going to cost you a ton of money, don't be giving away a ton of products, unless again, you say you work with a distributor and they're like, here's some products you can give away, then fine, go ahead and give it away.

But I see some of these deals that are, I know how pricing works in the salon industry and I'm like, you made 6. That's a lot of work for 6.

Jen: Mm

Todd: I would rather, and again, because people chase coupons, people that want deals want deals. People never get used to free. So if you give something for free, it's like a thank you.

So you're, I'm helping you help me. You're bringing a person in. But you, your client also gets to be a star in the show too, because they get to bring a friend in, and their friend gets a free blow dry. So it's like a win, win, win here. And if you start to be creative and leverage your clientele, you will [00:24:00] attract more people like them.

Jen: hmm.

Todd: What was the other story I was going to share from the gym?

Jen: This was one where this is like a, this would be a short win for a lot of people just sitting down with your clients. You talked about.

Todd: Yeah, so it's

Jen: And I think for people that are listening and you're like, I need to make money now this just requires your effort and conversations with your clients and it will immediately start to work for you.

So this one I think is really great for that person that needs stuff like right now.

Todd: sure. So what I did was I, I pumpkin planned my gym. And if you don't know, go back and read the book. I think it was Mike Michalowicz wrote that book. Good book. What you do is you make a list of say 10 clients or whatever that pay you the most money. So these are your high, high value clients. And then you make a list of the 10 clients that are That bring you joy that make you happy that you, when you see their name in your schedule, you're like, yes, it's going to be a fun day.

Right. And we all know you, [00:25:00] you just thought of someone in your head. And if you're listening, you just thought of someone and you're like, yeah, I haven't seen Betsy. I can't wait till she comes in or whatever. Right. And so what you want to do is compare those two lists. And what you'll find often is your highest paid client or your highest.

Paying clients are often the people that bring you the most joy. It's simple because they're not like, or it's, it's simply because they're not complaining about price. They probably have disposable income there, whatever, whatever their reason might be. And I could be totally off cross examine those lists.

And then what you do is you invite them for coffee. So I said to people like, Hey, would you mind meeting me 30 minutes before your class? And I, I just want to make you a coffee and ask you a few questions. And I asked them like, why do you come here? You know, what's your reason for coming here? Because you want to see what you're good at because you want to double down on that stuff.

I could go around and say that I was the best gym because I had blah, blah, blah. But again, if it wasn't true, what was the difference? What did I do? I brought [00:26:00] people in just for them to be confused. And when people are confused, they tend to leave. So that wouldn't have worked. So you want to find out what you're good at and not what you think you're good at, but what people say you're good at and pay you.

That's what you're good at.

Jen: it from their perspective, right? Like maybe there's stuff you

Todd: Yeah,

Jen: realize you do well because you've done it for so long. Like, Oh, wow. That's a big deal. Okay. I'm hearing that over and over again.

Todd: definitely. I think about, I think I wrote about this in a recent newsletter to the same story. The other question that I ask is if you could change Anything in the industry, you snap your fingers and something would change. What would it be? Or something like, what is your biggest frustration with the hair industry or whatever?

And what that does is it gives you, or it presents you with people that you trust and you have a relationship with. It gives you their insight and how they're looking at things. It's a very different for a hair pro or salon owner, anybody to look at the industry objectively, because we're in [00:27:00] it,

Jen: All the

Todd: So your, your feelings, your emotions, all this shit overrides this stuff and it throws your perspective off and you're like,

Jen: comment

Todd: to think things that just simply aren't true.

Jen: name's not

Todd: so by sitting down and having these conversations and then you could say, look, I'm, I'm struggling to build my business. Just be real with people. You don't have to. Like I'm closing, you don't have to open your books. You don't have to be dramatic, but like, Hey, I'm struggling to build the business that I want.

Even that is, it's nothing negative. It's just, I believe I can build a business that's bigger or that's more successful, however you define that or more profitable or whatever. And I want to attract more people like you, because frankly, I like you. I want more of you. I want to service you. Is there anything that I can do?

Like, maybe ask for referrals, maybe ask for whatever. Word of mouth is still really powerful. I do believe that, yeah, those are the best, but I don't think that you can sit around waiting for your clients to do that because the moment they leave your salon, or your [00:28:00] barbershop, or whatever business, your bakery, they aren't really thinking about you.

I know we all love to think that they're going home and they're talking about us all day long. I love you. They aren't. They have kids. They have families. Oh, I'm sure they are. Definitely. No.

No. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's, it's, it's just how we are. Think about, like, I can think, right now, I have to bring my truck to I have to get an inspection because it's the end of the year, and do an oil change and all that stuff. I like talking to those guys. I chat with the guys at the shop all the time.

When I'm there and hang out and they have like a little lounge and whatever, like, but I don't think about that outside of this time of year when I do this stuff, you know what I mean? And it's not to take away from their, the experience that they provide. So anyways, I think that leveraging your clientele is extremely undervalued because I don't see really talking about it in the industry [00:29:00] at all.

Maybe they are. I listen to a lot of podcasts and I. Read a lot of stuff and it's usually it's people want to promote discounts. They want to promote some sort of retail and they want to like just offer deals on stuff, you know, buy two, get one free. Like, and I don't understand how that makes you money.

It's all artificial. It's, it feels good right now, but. Anyways, back to my story when I did this by within like the next month, I was, or within a few weeks, I was attracting better clients. I was finding people that I could have conversations with because we had similar things in common. And then what that did was it sparked a little bit of hope in me.

And I was like, Oh, I can do this.

Jen: that is

Todd: And it's not really that overnight I had a million dollars coming into the gym because I didn't, the fact that I was generating some new revenue was exciting and that's enough often to get us moving because, you know, once you see some progress, [00:30:00] it's a dick. You know, and you, you get that spark of, of joy and excitement and positivity instead of going on like a Facebook group and everyone's like, Oh, it just sucks.

Like everything sucks. The younger generation just doesn't get it. They'll never work as hard as us. Let me tell you something, Sally, they're fucking busting their ass and they're trying. And a lot of their anxiety and shit comes from you

Jen: Yeah.

Todd: stupid rules and your, all your stuff is like, it's so stressful.

I wouldn't want to work for you either. Anyways, I digress. What else do you got, Chan?

Jen: I think for the short term you're, especially if you have some clients, it's very like you're, it's a missed opportunity if you're not trying to talk to them all about how you're trying to build, there is definitely an assumption from clients that some people are too busy and maybe don't have room for clients.

I've had people reach out to me like my friend wants to come see you. Are you taking new clients? I will. I'm like, wow. They, you don't have to ask. I'm always taking new clients. It's just if they can fit in my schedule and, and [00:31:00] whatever openings I have, if they, if that works for them, I would love to see your friends. And like, oh, okay, cool. So, you know, there's, there's that part too. Like you may need to let people know that you are looking for new clients, you are trying to expand your, your clientele. If they don't think that that's something that you are looking to do, then. Again, it's a missed opportunity. I think if you are struggling that bad, it's the clientele.

If you, I, we've seen this on the page. We talked about this this morning.

Todd: So the

Jen: and you have two or three on shelf and it's okay if you run out for, for that week.

But the goal is to sell, sell

You do if you're

Todd: [00:32:00] Okay.

Jen: But right now just might be a different world for you. And if you don't adjust all around, you're literally just drowning in that or barbershop. That's not running well. Not all of that's fun, but it is what it is.

And the minute you can start making some changes. if it is uncomfortable, it will help you get ahead of where you need to be.

Todd: For sure, I'm so anti discount and I know I keep coming back to that because I keep seeing people that are like, come in and get a free product, come in and get this, come in and I'll do a deal and I'll give you half price on this. And it's wild because if. If you're saying it's slow, why are you giving stuff away?

That's not, it's, it's been, it's been, it's also been proven time and time again that it doesn't work, you know? So [00:33:00] if you're going to give something away, give it away fully and couple it with something else so you get that triple win effect that I talked about earlier we don't do discounts for any reason at hello.

With one, the one caveat being, you can call it a discount if you want. I, I would disagree with you, but is that we have a pricing structure for education. So if somebody's doing a model or something like that for education, we have a price for that. And often the way that that comes across is our staff will say, you get this much off.

It's not that they're getting anything off. That's the price. It's a lower rate because you're learning because you're,

Jen: it's going to take

Todd: you're working slower because you're taking pictures because you're having someone come over and check your work. That's why it's a lower rate. So I guess you could look at that and say like, well, that's a, that's technically a discount.

And if you want to argue with me, I don't have time. I'll be busy building a profitable business. So I don't know what to tell you, but no, being a smart ass aside, if [00:34:00] anybody needs help, I don't know if we're wrapping up because we said we were going to keep these short and then here we are at however long in wrapping up, I would just get on my newsletter.

It's free. It comes out every Thursday. You can do that by clicking the button in the show notes. You can do it by going through our website. You can do it by hitting me up on social media and just many aprons. Go on there or hello hair pro and just shoot me your email address and your first name and I will add you to our list.

You can unsubscribe at any time and I don't get offended. I don't care. And if you want to chat with us, we always do a free sort of call. There's no pressure. We just listen. We learn a little bit about you. And we try to come up with ideas to solve your problems in real time. And we give them to you.

We're not like keeping anything. We're not trying to, you know, sell you on anything. If you want to move forward with working with us for mentorship, we talk about what that looks like and what that commitment looks like. And if you don't, we're probably going to reach back out to you after we've had some ideas arc and just give them to [00:35:00] you because that's how we roll.

So. If you need help, reach out. Those are the ways you can do it. What else, Jen? Anything?

Jen: No.

Todd: All right, let's get out of here. Bye everyone. Thank you.

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