Why Salons Stop Growing [EP:208]

In this episode of the Hello Hair Pro Podcast, Todd and Jen unpack the Evolution Trap — the danger salon and barbershop owners face when they stop evolving their business. 

Complacency might feel comfortable, but in reality, it leads to shrinking profits, bored staff, and clients who notice when nothing changes.

Drawing from their own salon experience and mentoring work, Todd and Jen share practical strategies for staying adaptable, auditing systems, and keeping your business fresh — without overwhelming yourself or your team.

Key Takeaways:

• If you’re not evolving, you’re regressing — because inflation, client expectations, and staff goals are always moving forward.
• Stability often equals stagnation. Your business can look “fine” while actually losing money and momentum.
• Staff want growth and opportunity. Without it, your best people will outgrow your business.
• Clients value consistency but also crave freshness. A business that never changes feels stale.
• Small, consistent nudges toward improvement compound into massive long-term growth.

Timestamps:

• [00:00] – Intro & Labor Day recording
  Todd and Jen kick things off on Labor Day
• [02:00] – Staff complaints vs. staff goals
  Jen explains why owners should ask their staff about their goals instead of assuming laziness or a lack of work ethic.
• [05:00] – Defining the Evolution Trap
  Todd explains why saying “my business is fine” is a red flag — stability without evolution equals stagnation
• [07:00] – Systems that need revisiting
  Examples: cleaning lists, product lines, and small changes that create energy and accountability in the salon
• [10:00] – Why owners resist change
  Comfort and fear make it easy to default to “just doing more hair” instead of leading
• [14:00] – Mistaking stability for growth
  Why repeating the same playbook for 5–10 years leads to declining profit margins, bored clients, and high staff turnover
• [17:00] – The hidden costs of stagnation
  How failing to evolve affects money, staff retention, and client experience.
• [20:00] – Creating opportunity for staff
  Why your best stylists will leave if they can’t see a path forward — and how to give them leadership or education roles
• [25:00] – Signs you’re stuck
  Haven’t raised prices in years, verbal systems only, repeated staff questions, or plateaued growth = trapped
• [27:00] – How to break free
  Audit your systems annually, update standards, seek mentorship outside the industry, and use “nudges” (small changes that compound)
• [32:00] – Lessons from other industries
  Todd and Jen share ideas borrowed from restaurants and hospitality that salons can adapt.
• [34:00] – Closing & challenge
  Final reflections and this week’s listener challenge: What’s one area of your business that hasn’t changed in 3+ years?

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Transcript

Todd: [00:00:00] What's up everyone? Welcome back. Happy Monday. It's Labor Day and we're here and recording. We're actually recording on Labor Day 'cause we're behind, but that's okay. We're still here. We still showed up and we had technical difficulties, which are just really freaking annoying

Jen: Very.

Todd: and I think we need to figure out some sort of studio setup or something if we're gonna continue this because.

It's annoying to have to set up and break down, and I feel like that's when you lose track of what's going on. But anyways, here we are, and this week we're talking about evolution in your business or resilience or fortitude or innovation change, whatever you wanna call it. And I wrote about it in the na, in the blah, the last newsletter that I published this week.

Technically last week now, and I already asked you, you said you didn't have a chance to read it, but

Jen (2): I did not.

Todd: get in there for people that are [00:01:00] interested in a little more than what we're talking about here. I break things down, business insights and stuff like that and it's been pretty fun. So let's dive in.

Let's make this a quick one 'cause it's Labor Day and nobody's probably listening, but maybe. And we always start with our opening takes and you were going first, Jen, right?

Jen (2): I am I'm organized, I guess.

Todd: Perfect.

Jen (2): So I just wanted to touch on we see a lot of people who are leading salon, salon owners, or who ever leading the salon just complain about. There's staff staffing issues. No one listens, no one wants to do anything. Everyone's lazy. Nobody works like we did in the beginning, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I'm sure this resonates with a lot of you. And my advice here is are you asking your employees or people who are under your roof what they want out of. Working for you, with you, your business, their future, their vision, because I would assume you're not, so you don't have a pulse on what this current generation wants out of their career, out of their [00:02:00] life, out of their future. And that's why you are feeling of these things about them that are basically untrue. So. advice is for those of you who this resonates with, ask your staff individually what the goals are that they would like to see for themselves, and then maybe explain a little bit what you'd like to see for them, and have an open, honest conversation. Conversations aren't always the easiest, but they're the best way to get to the basics and get to the problem and find the solution.

Todd: Perfect.

Jen (2): Thanks.

Todd: My opening take is I saw this post from somebody that was a previous friend of mine on Facebook, and I say previous because I had to unfriend them with this one. I don't know why I got annoyed from it, but it was somebody under, it was somebody explaining their process. And then somebody commented and they wrote something back, like, what everyone needs to understand about me?

And I was like, Nope. Goodbye. See you later. No, thank you. What would actually [00:03:00] make you think that everyone needs to understand you? I, I think that's such a harmful mentality and I think that it's a men mentality or a mindset that creates weakness. You're so fragile that you believe the entire, or maybe you're not fragile, maybe you're just narcissistic, that you think that the entire world needs to understand you, and that's like a, that's a massive problem.

First of all, why do you think that? Probably because you're spending way too much time watching other people or thinking billions of people out there are watching you. Our brains aren't even wired. Hu, human beings. Didn't evolve to know that even all the people on the planet exist, let alone be able to watch what they're eating for dinner.

It's just such a weird thing, and I think that. If we went back to, [00:04:00] I, I'm not saying disconnect 'cause I know that's a popular thing to be like, you know, disconnect or take a social media cleanse or whatever. That's, whatever do you if that's what you wanna do. I just think if we focused more on our communities and the people that are like immediately impact or influenced by us or the people that influence and impact us, that our lives would be much happier.

Jen (2): True.

Todd: That's my opening take

Jen (2): Like it

Todd: and I have room for one friend now on Facebook.

Jen (2): She'll get some requests then.

Todd: I hope not. All right, so let's talk about evolution. I think we talk about this a lot and evolu, I was brainstorming the other day and I was like, I wanna switch it up and start using evolution as the focal point. Instead of, we usually talk about complacency. So if you're not evolving, if you're not evolving, you are stagnant.

You're complacent. And [00:05:00] that is when your business begins to regress. And if you, when I say that, if you think something like, no, my business is fine. 'cause I see that a lot too. I had a conversation with somebody on Facebook recently and they were like, my business is just fine. And I'm like, that means that it's not doing well because just fine is stagnant.

It's just okay. And so the reason that that happens is the rest of the world is continuing to move forward. I'm not even talking about just the prices of things. We could look at the prices of things increase constantly. So if you don't evolve and change your prices, you are move, you're losing, you're moving backwards.

You could look at inflation. Inflation is gonna be a constant for a long time, forever. So if you are not adjusting for that, you are regressing. If you are not looking around and saying, how do clients and customers want to interact with businesses today compared to 30 years ago when [00:06:00] I started? You are regressing if you are not looking around and like kind of what you're alluding to, Jen, with your opening take.

If you are not making changes, what do people want now? What do employees and staff want now? What's valuable to them? What would make them want to even be here?

Jen (2): Right.

Todd: Let alone thrive here. If you're not asking those questions, you're losing.

All right. I'll just keep talking.

Jen (2): Doing

So I know what you want me to say.

Todd: no, that's all, that's just all I had for sort of, I guess, an intro. You know, I think people fall into.

Jen (2): go

Todd: I, I was just gonna say, people fall into what's comfortable and what's comfortable is, yeah. It'll work for a little bit, maybe like six months to a year tops, and then you start losing.

It's just how things work. So you've gotta come out of that mindset. And I, Jen and I, we probably look at, I don't even know how many different variables or things to try in our business, whether it's new products, new [00:07:00] systems. We were just talking about a system that we have in place that's, it's working fine, but we're like, Hmm, it's working fine.

Why is it not really helping us? Why is it not, why are we not able to push it in certain ways? So now we ask ourselves how, how do we fix this system? Or how do we replace this system? And I would say if you're an owner listening, you might be like, this is a lot. Well, yeah, you're a business owner. It's your responsibility.

I would say about 95% of everything we explore never makes it to our staff's ears. They don't even hear it. We look at so many different product lines. Our staff would be overwhelmed that, and they would probably be like, get that one, get this one, get this one. 'cause people are wowed by, you know, packaging and marketing and everyone thinks, oh, well J LO's Hairstylist did this, so I'll be a billionaire if I do this.

You have to pick and choose. You have to curate for your team the things that they want and distill that down into what you can actually make, make sense for your business. What were you gonna say, [00:08:00] John?

Jen (2): I don't remember exactly but on what you're saying. I think if you are. If you're owning a business, you are working constantly. Todd and I, I would imagine seven days a week at least, talk a little bit about hello, where it's going, where we want it to go. It comes up and it's important because we want to always be evolving so that we are operating in today's world and we are also operating for the staff that we currently have. Just said it might be something simple as switching up some systems or switching up your cleaning lists. Like if you've had the same cleaning list with the staff for the last two years, then rewrite it, reorganize it like you have to change it up, or you will create laziness in your business and it will be your fault. things need to always change. Like Todd said, we just recently brought in a new product line. We just need to switch it up. We needed some, we needed to change. We needed to spice, we needed to get excited. So it was easy to be like, all right, that product line's kind of sitting there. Let's bring in something else just to have fun and get the staff excited. It was an, a simple change with a lot of legwork behind, like [00:09:00] Todd said, you know, kind of. Sort of finding the right product line and then bringing in a few sample products to then get their opinion so they feel part of it. But it's very funneled into, I could have brought in, I guess, five different ones and that would've been, like Todd said, overwhelming.

They would've wanted everything and would've just failed. Instead, it was kinda like, Hey, they trust us, so this is what we're bringing in, and they. We're excited to be part of it and it created some fun and like I said, some excitement, some spice. You gotta switch it up. all the time.

Todd: I like the spice.

Jen (2): Spice a little

Todd: It's gotta be a little, it's gotta be a little spicy.

Jen (2): Yeah.

Todd: Yeah, it's a good balance. So why, why do people fall into this complacency and fail to evolve? What do we think here? I think

Jen (2): Well,

Todd: one thing is just comfort.

Jen (2): I was gonna say, and it takes work.

Todd: I, I, so that's what I was gonna follow up with. It's comfort and it's just easier to not [00:10:00] do it, but it's always easier to not do something that's not gonna improve your business though.

Jen (2): Most people get very uncomfortable with any type of change, literally any type of change. We just changed up, so we just changed up the layout of our back bar, so all the shampoos and conditioners that are behind our sinks, we changed that up. And we have one stylist who legit does not like change. Every time we change something, it's like she has to tiptoe to like get used to it. This change now. So I could, we could freeze and be like, well, if we switch this up, this girl's gonna be upset, so we shouldn't do it. Whatever. No, we, we want the business to always evolve. Change needs to happen. Risk falls on us, and then if we need to explain it, cool. Anyway, the stylist had come in and she pulled me aside the other day was like. I really love the way we just switched, how this looks back here and I dunno why we didn't do it from the beginning. And it was kind of cool because as much as she doesn't like change, she's starting to roll with the change and she's evolving.

She has grown. She's definitely not the same person then when she first came in with us, because we're always changing. So she's learning how to change with us. It's very cool.[00:11:00]

Todd: That's so funny that whoever that was said, why didn't we do. This in the beginning? Well, if we did do it in the beginning, we would be changing it again now. That's the whole point. Nothing should ever stay the same. I like how you brought up, we're, we're gonna talk about how to kind of break free you of getting stuck in this complacency loop.

But I like how you brought up the cleaning list. Our cleaning lists, we evaluate them probably once a year, and you have to think to your, I mean, you don't have to. You can do what you want. I would strongly encourage you to look at something as small as your cleaning list and go, how can I improve this 1% better, 5% better, whatever.

If it's over the course of a year, how can we improve this? What's working, what's not working? Then by rewriting those, it gives you a reason to talk to your team and say, Hey, we rewrote these. Please make sure you check 'em, because it's really easy for your team to fall into complacency and go, I've read that list a million times.

I don't need to see it again. And then they start missing stuff. The list is there for a reason. [00:12:00] We're at a point now where we're actually gonna switch up our entire process with those lists. I have everything ready to go. It's in the garage, so I'm gonna get over there. We're gonna switch it up, and the team, they're gonna have to pay attention.

Because it's a, it's a new system. Is it more difficult? No, it's actually easier, but it's going to force them to pay attention for a few weeks in order to get everything done, in order to be able to check off what they need to check off. Right. And it's not, it's not that it's more work, it's just that we're organizing it and structuring it in a different way.

You're gonna be responsible for. Letting us know that you cleaned your station, for example, in a different way than you're responsible for doing it. Now why is that? Because we've had this system in place for over a year,

Jen (2): for

Todd: and it's become stagnant. Now, I'll go in and check sometimes when I, when I notice something's off and I'm like, Hmm, no one signed this list that they're supposed to sign.

But it's, it's not on them. It's not. It's on us as [00:13:00] leaders. So. We have to get in there and adjust stuff. So think about in your business, what could you adjust? What are you frustrated with? It probably needs to be adjust, adjusted, adjust. You know what I mean?

Jen (2): back to the cleaning list. Just 'cause some people will reach out like, Hey guys, how, how do you do this? Like, and how do you get your staff to buy in? This is not something that. Like Todd said, he's got everything ready to roll out, that we just throw up there and we're like, Hey guys, check this out.

It's new. Do this. Now. This has been something we have talked about. We talked about it in their one-on-ones. We have, they know that it's coming. We've explained why we went through a bunch of exercises with them so that they know that it needs to change. And I think nine out of 10 were like, yeah, this system, this is where it trips me up.

So we also listened to them, took some of what they gave us, like their feedback. And that has what, that's how we curated this next part of cleaning that we're gonna roll out. But it won't be a surprise when it gets in there 'cause they're, they're basically waiting for it. They know it's coming and they're kind of excited for the change too.

Todd: I have one more why it happens [00:14:00] Point or kind of one and a half, I guess. I think a lot of owners out there confuse stability with that, with sort of stagnation

Jen (2): Okay.

Todd: they think that this is, this is working, this is working, and 5, 10, 15, 20 years can pass real quick and you're still doing the same thing going, this is working, this is working, but it's not.

You're seeing less profit if you're even seeing profit at all. You are seeing, which we're gonna talk about in a minute, but your top people leaving to go do whatever they're gonna do. You are seeing clients probably less fre frequently. They're kind of bored. Who wants to go to the same exact thing over and over again?

I just, we were at dinner recently, Jen, and you probably remember, and I said, I wish this place would switch up the menu. I don't know if they've ever switched up the menu. And I've known, I've, we've been going there for, what, 20 years.

Jen (2): Yeah.

Todd: And I noticed that we go less and less and [00:15:00] it's fine. They can do what they want.

But if I'm thinking that other people are thinking that too,

Jen (2): for sure.

Todd: and so I think it's just important to switch things up. Not just to switch things up, but that is part of it.

Jen (2): Absolutely.

Todd: There is value.

Jen (2): for forever. And if you've done something for a long time, like this still works. Mm, I'm gonna assume it probably doesn't or not as well as it did when you first started, which means that's when it's time to switch it up.

Todd: The the, I said I had one and a half. The half thing is, I think a lot of owners fall into this, and I, I believe you used to think this too at your last business, but it's the technician over the owner mindset. It's the mindset that is when something's wrong, the owner will just work more. I'll just do more hair that'll fix it, because that's your default.

That's what you know how to do. You don't have a lot of skills in business, so you don't know what to do when it comes to business. You know how to do freaking hair 'cause you've been doing it forever. So you're like, I'll just double down and do more hair. That doesn't work.

Jen (2): I

Todd: That will never grow a [00:16:00] business.

Jen (2): exercise here for those stylists or barbers behind the chair that are running a business. Imagine you just couldn't do hair anymore. Imagine whatever your contribution on the hair side to your business was taken from you in any aspect right What would you do? How would you run that business? You could be the additive, you can be the spice on the business. That's gonna be my word of the day. But you shouldn't be the whole business. Otherwise it could collapse. So it might be time to change your mindset of running your business, running your staff, working with your staff, and you are literally like the spice on top of that.

Todd: So what are some costs of keeping things? This is just the way they are. This is how we've always done it.

Jen (2): Hmm.

Todd: gonna change. I definitely think declining money.

Jen (2): Yeah.

Todd: Your profit margins are gonna shrink

Jen (2): Mm-hmm.

Todd: keep things the same every year, you're making less money. Even though you think it's the same.

Your haircut hasn't gone down, so how are you losing [00:17:00] money? Because everything else has gone up. Sally, it's really not that difficult to understand, but people get stuck in it. Something I thought of earlier in, I think I put it in my notes here, but I don't see it anyways. It was like, what works with like a $30 haircut?

Two or three staff members is not the same thing that's gonna work for $80 haircut and 12 staff members.

Jen (2): Right.

Todd: have to be willing to change as your salon grows and changes too, or else where were we? So declining profit margins. I think staff frustration is a big one. So we, how often do you see like, I can't keep people, people just keep believing.

And what do you blame? You blame things like rental. You blame things like salon suites. You blame all sorts of stuff. Say it again.

Jen (2): I said it's you. It's always

Todd: Yeah, you, you blame everything except you. Why would somebody work at a place that's not growing with them? It should be the other way around. You should be looking for, [00:18:00] yeah, you should be looking for staff that's willing to grow with you, not the other way around.

You have to constantly evaluate what you're offering to people

Jen (2): Yes.

Todd: what that looks like. Your highest performers are gonna outgrow you. How can your, how can they not or how can you keep it so they're not outgrowing your business? I want our staff to outgrow us. I want our staff to be better at hair.

That is the point. I want them to be able to run a business. If they wanna run a business, I'm not afraid of them leaving. What I'll do for our people that, that are good is I'll put them in leadership positions. We'll bring people on and move them to educators, or we'll move them to management or we'll move them to whatever.

As the salon grows,

Jen (2): and

Todd: don't really have need for everything all at once. When we were starting out, we didn't need managers. We didn't need [00:19:00] educators. We, we needed to open a business. We needed to get it up and running. We needed to discover if we could make it what we had made it in our minds and on and on paper.

We needed to understand if we could build it into reality, and we have, and since it's growing, we have to constantly adapt. If we just put our heads down and just did hair, our staff would just quit

Jen (2): Right.

Todd: as they, as they should.

Jen (2): I think what's important here is if you have staff that's leaving all the time. I'll say at the higher level, like those that are, like you said, your top level stylist, the reason why they think it's better to go rent or do something else is because they don't see the next opportunity. So, like Todd said, we have people that they know if they were on their own, they would never charge what they're charging in our salon.

So they love us for that. We have people that we've put into positions where they can educate in the salon. On a different foundation of bringing in people from the outside and educate to all different stylists around, they would never be able to do that on their own. But if [00:20:00] we don't keep evolving these programs and make it so that we always make sure their their pricing is always where it should be and keep pushing that, if we don't give them opportunity to do different things that might be fun for them, then yeah, of course they're gonna look at other places.

But at this point, right now where we're at. Everybody has the understanding of like, wow, I would not be the person I am today if I wasn't pushed by you guys. I need you guys to help, help elevate my game all the time. And right now, that's the opportunity we can focus on. Next year could be completely different.

It's not gonna stay the same. We're not like, oh, we've, we've done it. Let's go take a vacation. There's no time for that. So now Todd's in our con conversations are based on, okay, how do we push this person to something else? How do we push so and so to something else? We're always looking to like. What's the different avenue we can take with them to show them more and more opportunity?

So they're always wanting to be part of what we're creating at. Hello?

Todd: Part of it too is asking better questions

Jen (2): Yes.

Todd: So we, [00:21:00] part of owning a business means that eventually you're gonna have to let people go.

Jen (2): Mm-hmm.

Todd: And sometimes people aren't willing to grow with you. They're, they just want to do it their way, not your way. And in some cases, we allow people to do what they want.

We allow the creative flexibility and all that stuff. But we ask that if you're going to work for, hello. You follow the few rules that we do have because they're very important to us and we explain that eventually it comes time to let someone go. And that's never fun, but it is what it is. Person's not gonna grow with you.

You've made the choice, you move on. I would say probably the majority of people would blame the person. I don't, I don't blame anybody. I just think it was time to part ways. And then I ask questions like, what could we have done different, if anything?

Jen (2): Mm-hmm. Always.

Todd: could we have, how could we have made that person understand why these things were important to us?

And maybe the answer is, you couldn't. [00:22:00] 'cause some people out there are just never gonna be a good fit for you. That's not what I'm saying

Jen (2): But it's a

Todd: sometimes.

Jen (2): or reevaluate for sure.

Todd: Yeah. That's, that's all I'm getting at, is that you should be asking yourself those questions. And if you're not, if you're just like, oh, that person was a shithead, so I fired them.

Cool. But why? Why were they there? How did they slip through their cracks? How long did you have them before it came to a head that you had to fire them? Now, how, how much has their attitude seeped into your everyday business, your culture, those things. The last thing I had for the cost of avoiding evolution or changing was that your clients are definitely gonna notice, and I pointed that out with the menu from restaurants, but think of when you go somewhere and you're like, this is the same, over and over.

It's just the same thing. And I understand consistency, but there can be consistency with change. For example, I saw somebody that asked questions about shifting stations, Jen, and I said, that's what we do at our salon. I explained how it keeps the stations clean, how it keeps [00:23:00] people moving around, how it keeps clients kind of guessing.

They're still coming to the same business, they're still getting the same hair service,

Jen (2): view.

Todd: they're still getting the same hospitality, but now they're getting a new view. Exactly. They're sitting, they're like, oh, you're on this side today? Yeah. How often do you hear that? Oh, you, oh, you tripped me up. I thought you were over here.

Yeah.

Jen (2): years and I still have clients that say that. Oh, my guys, I'm always sitting somewhere different. I don't know why you haven't caught on yet.

Todd: Right. But I, I watched people in the comments that were like, this would never work for us. Our staff would quit, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, okay, you're letting your staff run your business. That's dangerous. 'cause what happens when your staff gets bored with what they have because they thought they knew more than you.

Jen (2): Mm-hmm. That

Todd: can only really be one person steering the ship or you know, in our case we're partners, but we still default. There are still things that Jen's like, this is on your plate because this is in your wheelhouse.

Jen (2): Mm-hmm.

Todd: still things where I'm like, when, when we bring products in, Jen talks to me about it, but I'm like, what do you wanna see out of this?

It's sort of like your wheelhouse.

Jen (2): [00:24:00] The product one's a good quick change that affects both sides. Your staff gets excited and your client's like, oh, you have new product in here. Like the, the line we just brought in, it sold through like five or six products and I was like, wow, this is great. People that haven't bought anything for a while are just excited about something new. So that's an. Easy kind of switch up again, as an owner, you're always gonna take risks. You're always gonna get pushback. That's just part of doing business. You gotta get over that. The risks need to happen in order for you to evolve and change.

Todd: For sure. So what are some ways that people. Would recognize that they're in this trap because it's sometimes difficult, especially for the owners that are behind the chair every day doing hair. It's really difficult to to step back and look at your business and see flaws because we all wanna be like, nah, our business is great.

Things are going great, or it's just fine. So if you haven't raised your prices in years, you're complacent,

Jen (2): When was the

Todd: especially. Especially if you are a [00:25:00] hundred percent booked. If you are a hundred percent booked for years, you're missing major opportunities, and that means that your business is probably suffering.

There's not as much profit as there would be. And for anybody that's like, it's not all about money, why else would you open a business?

Jen (2): Yeah,

Todd: There are plenty of other reasons, but A But ask yourself at the end of the day, why would you open a business? It's to profit. It's the only thing the business owner gets.

I guess we get the joy of putting together a team, creating opportunities and all that stuff, but if I don't have money, I can't do those things. You need the money part first, and money and profit's not just gonna, this is probably going down a rabbit hole, so I'll be quick. It's not just gonna magically appear one day because you're like, oh, I have to do 20 haircuts and then I'll be profited.

That's not how it works. You have to build profit into your pricing structure. Get with an accountant. Figure that out. If your systems are just verbal and they're not documented anywhere, [00:26:00] you're in the trap, you're in the evolution trap or whatever I called it in my, in my newsletter, I called it something like that.

I think yeah. You saying stuff like, oh, my staff just knows.

Jen (2): Ugh.

Todd: No, they don't. No, they do not. How would they know? If your staff is questioning you constantly. Repeatedly over and over about the same things. And I'm not talking about questioning in a negative way, but like, how do we do this? How do we do this?

You're not evolving.

Jen (2): Hmm

Todd: You should build a system around that.

Jen (2): There's

Todd: They're literally what?

Jen (2): There's clearly a hole in it if they're, if everyone's asking the same thing.

Todd: Yeah, I was gonna say, they're literally asking you what to do, but

Jen (2): or a procedure.

Todd: yeah, people want rules. They want structure.

Jen (2): do.

Todd: And then the last thing I had on my list, 'cause I want this to be sort of quick, we can wrap up soon, is that if your growth is plateaued. So if for example, you're charging, say you're charging $75 for a haircut, I don't know, just throwing that out there [00:27:00] and you've been charging that for three years and you are not making any more money,

you're plateaued. I mean it's, it is what it is. You gotta train. Yeah, it's, you've gotta change something up. So how do you get, how do you break out of this? How do you break out of the, the trap? I think probably you mentioned it, Jen, like just audit your systems

Jen (2): Yeah. Make a change

Todd: yearly.

Jen (2): simple. Whatever.

Todd: The, not even everything will need a change every year, but I would agree with Jen that probably about once a year.

We'll go through. You wanna look at your pricing. We do that probably multiple times a year. You wanna look at your onboarding process. We do that at least once a year. You wanna look at things like adding hospitality. We've been doing that a lot more recently. You wanna look at whatever and any sort of system.

Your cleaning list, for example, that's what you had in the beginning. If you have an [00:28:00] education program. You do not wanna run that year after year, after year after year, the same thing. How many times have you been to some form of education and you're like, I've already seen this slideshow. They just give you the same stuff all the time.

You're like, yeah, this is the la The last time I came to your event, you had the same slide show on, that was four years ago. Yeah. This is boring. Updating.

Updating your standards is one. So your business is gonna grow and you're going to need as you grow. I would say more constraints around that. The more people you have, the more rules you're gonna have to have in place because you have to manage those people. That's just part of it. It's not a negative for the people that were there.

You're not punishing people by giving them new rules. You're just providing structure. The more structure you can provide, the more creative they can be within those walls. You say that [00:29:00] all the time, Jen.

Jen (2): Absolutely.

Todd: Another way to break out of it is to work with somebody. Get some sort of a business mentor. Go to a local business group, call a local business owner and be like, can I buy you coffee or cocktail, which is even better?

And pick their brain. Share what's worked for you. Share what's not working. What are your frustrations? What are theirs? Genuinely try to help somebody else. And I think you'll learn a lot from that. And then you'll be like, oh, I can implement this. And they don't have to be in the same industry. Stop thinking that.

Jen (2): Right. It's

Todd: I don't know why so many.

Jen (2): be not,

Todd: Well, it's so much better to be not,

Jen (2): insight looking at someone else's industry versus ours.

Todd: I always see stuff that's like, I'm looking for an accountant, but I need someone that's is, understands hair. And I'm like, no, you don't.

Jen (2): you

Todd: You need to understand business.

Jen (2): Yeah,

Todd: You need somebody that understands business works like this across the board for any business. Dollars come in, dollars flow through, dollars [00:30:00] flow out.

That's it. That's how business works. You don't need to be a, you don't need to know how to formulate or how to do the latest balayage technique to look at a p and l. It doesn't make sense why people are so stuck on that. So if you can find a business owner that's not in your industry, pick their brain.

Especially if they're somebody that's an innovator, especially if they're somebody that's progressing, try to get in the room with them. Might not even be easy to get in the room with them 'cause they're busy and why would they wanna hang out with you? Right?

Jen (2): Hmm. True.

Todd: busy running their business. But oftentimes what I find is the people that are in those positions are very generous with their time.

They wanna help others. That's why they do this. It's problem solving and they wanna help you problem solve.

Another way to get out of this because it can seem really, really overwhelming, is to just make, I call 'em nudges. You wanna make little changes in your business over time. That [00:31:00] stuff compounds, and it's not gonna frighten your staff and it's not gonna overwhelm your clients, and it's not gonna make you not sleep at night

Jen (2): I was gonna say, it's

Todd: if you,

Jen (2): you a panic attack.

Todd: yeah, if you try to overhaul your business in like a week,

Jen (2): No. Oof.

Todd: everyone's gonna leave.

Jen (2): Yeah, baby

Todd: You have, yeah, you have to make those small changes. And again, rather than making all these changes, having a ton of mistakes to deal with all at once and being completely overwhelmed. Taxing your staff, taxing your clients. Not nobody wants this. No. You're working backwards. Instead of doing that one little thing, let it go.

Next little thing, let it go. And that stuff compounds. And before you know it, a year or two later, you are where you wanna be. If you try to do it all at once, I will warn you, it will probably bite you in the ass. We've tried to make massive [00:32:00] changes before in the business, and we had one time our whole staff quit,

Jen (2): Awesome day.

Todd: staff quit, and it was awesome because now we have a problem to solve.

And guess what? We solved it. Here we are.

Jen (2): for sure.

Todd: And I, I think just reflecting on yourself, this was the last thing I had to say. Just look at yourself and what, like, look at your business. What systems, for example, do you have that don't serve you anymore? They could be changed. They could be improved. Just ask those little questions. Jen has talked about going into other businesses and observing.

What do they do here that I can steal?

Jen (2): Hmm.

Todd: What do they do here that I don't like? What do they do here that works really well that I've never even thought of. Putting in a hair salon and then format it for a hair salon and then plug it in.

Jen (2): Yep.

Todd: We learned stuff from restaurants, dentist office all sorts of different businesses.

We went out for, we had a little date night over last weekend, and we went to a [00:33:00] couple different restaurants and I was pulling all sorts of ideas

Jen (2): Yeah, it's really fun.

Todd: and stuff, and we, we actually find. I enjoy. We're not talking necessarily about Hello, but we'll comment. I like how this business does this. I like how this, like we went to one place and I was like, why is everyone so friendly?

They were over the top like, hello, second, you walk through the door. Welcome. People were walking by. I didn't even know worked for there. I was, I was like, is this like the, what's that movie? The Stepford wives where they're like fake or whatever. Because everyone was like, welcome, we're so happy you're here.

And then I was just like, oh no, that's a system built in. 'cause it was every single person. We sat down at the bar and I think three or four people came over and said hello. Little stuff like that.

Jen (2): They made you feel like you were a regular at their business, even though it's the

Todd: Yeah.

Jen (2): there.

Todd: Yeah.

Jen (2): cool.

Todd: What else do we have? I guess we can wrap up on that, Jen. I think that's good for Labor Day episode.

Jen (2): Love it.

Todd: All right, cool. Get on our newsletter and subscribe to [00:34:00] our whatever this is podcast and.

Jen (2): it.

Todd: Reach out if you need help. We'll see you next week. All right. Enjoy your week, everyone. Bye.

Jen (2): Bye.