This week at the Conscious Salon, we're thrilled to share the buzz from our Conscious Salon masterclass and the upcoming Conscious Business Retreat that's shaping up to be a transformative haven for beauty industry enthusiasts. Plus, don't miss your chance to chime in on the Hot Girl Hotline—we're all ears for your thoughts on beauty, hair, and the conscious lifestyle.
As we wrap up another episode brimming with personal anecdotes and industry wisdom, we're sending out a virtual hug to you, our fantastic listeners. The community we've built together is the heartbeat of this podcast, and your engagement on social media brings us immeasurable joy. So hop on over to our Instagram, @the_conscious_salon or @aheadhair_, and let's keep this beautifully authentic conversation going. Ready for a dose of reality with a sprinkle of inspiration? Press play and let's get chatting.
To follow our journey:
Instagram @aheadhair_
@the_conscious_salon
This podcast has been produced and edited by Snappystreet Creative
This week at the Conscious Salon, we're thrilled to share the buzz from our Conscious Salon masterclass and the upcoming Conscious Business Retreat that's shaping up to be a transformative haven for beauty industry enthusiasts. Plus, don't miss your chance to chime in on the Hot Girl Hotline—we're all ears for your thoughts on beauty, hair, and the conscious lifestyle.
As we wrap up another episode brimming with personal anecdotes and industry wisdom, we're sending out a virtual hug to you, our fantastic listeners. The community we've built together is the heartbeat of this podcast, and your engagement on social media brings us immeasurable joy. So hop on over to our Instagram, @the_conscious_salon or @aheadhair_, and let's keep this beautifully authentic conversation going. Ready for a dose of reality with a sprinkle of inspiration? Press play and let's get chatting.
To follow our journey:
Instagram @aheadhair_
@the_conscious_salon
This podcast has been produced and edited by Snappystreet Creative
Here at the Conscious Salon, we acknowledge the traditional owners of the land in which we stand today, the Boon Rung people of the Kula Nation. We pay our respects to the elders, past and present, and extend their respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Conscious Salon.
Speaker 1:Welcome back to the Conscious Salon party. Thanks, nikki, love being here. Have you done that for 2024?
Speaker 2:No, so we'll just go with it one last time. And now you don't get another shot until 2024. Oh, I haven't agreed to that at all, wouldn't have thought so, anyway, tess, great to have you here, and so let's get straight into it.
Speaker 1:Great to be here. Thanks again. I'm here every week.
Speaker 2:Oh, goodness me.
Speaker 1:We are doing things a little differently. We're in our salon today Because we had some tech issues, which has always a hoot yesterday.
Speaker 2:Love, love, the tech problems we've been facing in 2024.
Speaker 1:But here we are Well, we have them in 2023. They're following us through. We had the yeah, like things around us really don't want to. Is there like?
Speaker 2:some sort of energetic? Yeah, it will be.
Speaker 1:Mercury or be Immertigrade. For sure Should I Google that, can we?
Speaker 2:get someone on the podcast who, like, is spiritual or something along those lines, and can tell us what's actually happening in the world at the moment, because something doesn't feel quite right with the technology and love to know more about that. But we're here with a new episode, tess. Stop googling. What's wrong with Mercury and Retrograde or whatever that is.
Speaker 1:I just want to confirm we're still at it. Oh, we're finished. Actually, january 1 was the end, but it starts again in April, the first. Excellent, so a couple of weeks free time everyone.
Speaker 2:We're just booking the renovation for the salon in April.
Speaker 1:So that'll be crazy. That's really going to go down in trees, excellent.
Speaker 2:But we're back with another great episode and hopefully, and if you agree that it is a great episode, five stars review wouldn't go astray. But we are back. We're here with another app, tess. The week. That was our first segment. How's your week been? Yeah, pretty good.
Speaker 1:Oh no, I'd be challenging. Actually, if I'm honest, Missy had Fleas which she's nine years old.
Speaker 2:Never had it, my sweet angel girl. That's my dog.
Speaker 1:My first born, the love of my life. She's somehow got Well. Actually, I'm assuming. Look, as you might have heard, nikki had did move last year.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've heard so many rumours. I've heard so many rumours.
Speaker 1:And yeah, I'm not used to bush living, and apparently neither is she she's loving it but I've been living in the bush as well, mate, and we've never had Fleas.
Speaker 2:Well, I was trying to work out who patient zero was, because Marty's got them as well, and I was like, was it Missy that gave it to Marty or Marty that gave it to Missy? I'm sure that it would have been Marty giving it to Missy.
Speaker 1:I wouldn't have thought so, because, also, you're forgetting that this week, talia and I decided to go on a bush walk together in the rain, as you do in the hills. She was really getting a school holidays and I think we'd been. She just was desperate to do it.
Speaker 2:And 10-year-olds are just full of life and adventure, aren't they? Totally so. You know, we don't have raincoats.
Speaker 1:We've got a couple of quite flimsy umbrellas that kept flipping inside out. But, yes, absolutely, let's go Off, we pop. So she literally didn't. She was like oh, I've also left my runners at mum's. So I was like terrific. So she came in with like dog martin boots, but like they were squee, they were squeaching and you're making that really like I was like, oh no darling, you'll want to come home in five minutes time.
Speaker 1:Can't remember what we eventually worked out, some sort of. It was like a. What I can only say is like a hip hop shoe. She, just Like you, know the ones like I, literally know the ones.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're like the pretend air maxes, yeah. So we decided that they were the best ones and I rocked. I did have runners, but that was it for the wet weather gear. You know, we got walking through. So the bush walk that we do is actually quite overgrown. Like they must have a break in, like the. First of all, if anyone from the general council's listening stop cleaning that place up, because everything is so overgrown up there Like snakes, would be loving it. All of the.
Speaker 2:Well, you do need to be aware of snakes in summertime, because you guys haven't had the summer in the hills yet. So, you do need to be aware of snakes. It's not abnormal just to see a random snake.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm aware of snakes, but I wasn't anticipating. So there's a lot of bushes and we're walking through them. Of course I was first, so I was the one that was like clearing the path but then kept forgetting to hold the branch. So I just hear it wet all year in the face You're out of your fingers, You're out of your fingers. It's like just do the worm, Keep it through. But yeah, so that was great, Really parenting at a really high standard then. And then when we did get out of the bush, after being completely covered in like God knows what and absolutely saturated, I then was like, oh, my leg's quite itchy. Oh yeah, just about 50 leeches around me. And then also Antalya, who was freaking out, which is a 10 year old. I was freaking out as a 34 year old. What you're?
Speaker 2:supposed to like light them on fire. I don't know if this is like you meant to have salt or like a match. Yeah, fire seems quite like Traumatic I wouldn't do that. A leech cremation.
Speaker 1:I was like, just let them, like have a drink, and then they'll fall off when they're ready.
Speaker 2:And I went oh, I wouldn't have thought so, and I'm also going to tell you but mum is such a people pleaser to be like let them do what they want.
Speaker 1:I'm not going to disturb them. I kind of get that I probably would have. But you know I've got a child and I was like cool, I can't lose it because.
Speaker 2:So you just said that you're not okay with snakes, but as leeches, I mean you're okay with snakes, but you're not okay with leeches. But a leech is like a tiny baby snake.
Speaker 1:I was referring to the fact that I was trying to calm Taliya down. So I said it's just like a mosquito, that's a worm or a slug mosquito, except for the fact that it's not.
Speaker 2:But don't you think when they barrel it? But then when I?
Speaker 1:pulled it off, I was like bleeding. So she was like really traumatized by this point. So I was like great, it's going really well. I've got her in the hip hop shoes, soaking wet now, covered in leeches. We wrapped that up pretty quickly and got them all off anyway. And then we did get home and Missy had had a couple of One sort of. I did let them like without my knowledge, my knowledge, oh my God. Let me start this part again. I did, I wasn't aware of them, so they had the full drink that Alison was recommending. We let them do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but you're acting like Missy needs to buy the wine, the blood transfusion or something. It's just a little bit. I thought she did.
Speaker 1:When it came off it was like this fat, what's that big slug in like a bug's life? And it's like enormous, very niche reference. It's like the king of the. Is this like a Sumo one? Should I get the Guinness World Records on? It was enormous. With how much blood did it take to be her?
Speaker 2:drink.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they had a drink, and that's where I think the fleas have probably jumped on. They probably would like yeah, great, let's pop in over here.
Speaker 2:They took inspiration from the leeches and thought this could be a good host.
Speaker 1:Well, I've found them the next day. That's when I saw the fleas To be fair, the flea as Mick keeps reminding me it's We've had a very, very, very minor case.
Speaker 2:But the dogs didn't see each other.
Speaker 1:So this is what I mean. This is where we're doing our own. There is a plague in the hills at the moment, I know, but we're doing our own contact tracing together and we're like, who was patient?
Speaker 2:zero, it's definitely Marty. It's definitely Marty.
Speaker 1:We weren't involved in the COVID ones, it would have been an absolute bloody nightmare, absolutely, but anyway. So that's what I've been dealing with fleas. And for someone like me who's like a clean freak, it didn't. I found the fleas at like 11 o'clock at night and I was like right washing on dry, going vacuum cleaner. Don't care that the 10 year olds asleep.
Speaker 1:This is absolute panic stations we need to get into Like should I get a hazmat on? So, mickie, you're banished, don't come anywhere near me. So it's been a pretty tense couple of days but we've recovered. The fleas have come off as about 10 in the end, but still I've taken a chance. As soon as I saw those little things on it, I was absolutely frenzy. So fleas have gone and you know just another.
Speaker 2:Another story.
Speaker 1:Another tale for the it is different, though.
Speaker 2:Living in the hills Like it is, You've got to be aware of different things for sure, Like we found the oh just the Funnel Web Spider Nest in our kitchen.
Speaker 1:Which is really good. Oh yeah, that was really fun.
Speaker 2:But they literally make a web that looks like a tunnel I mean, hence their name Funnel Web Spider. The FunnelWeb spiders are like, extremely deadly, and they only live in two places in Australia far north Queensland and the foothill of the Daniel Rangers in Victoria Perfect. So I said to Pete, I'm pretty sure this is a FunnelWeb. I could see like a big. It was like a big, juicy, hurty looking spider and I was like this is definitely a FunnelWeb. Googled it Yep, same picture and then all of the FunnelWebs. So we had to get rid of that. Oh my gosh, it's just different living.
Speaker 1:It's a whole host in the windowsill. So yeah, it's dangerous guys.
Speaker 2:But it's been a big week for us here. Yeah, it's been such a good week.
Speaker 1:Do you want to give the report rake up or?
Speaker 2:My week's been great. You know country living as well. Chickens Like one of them just recently started crowing.
Speaker 1:So yeah, we're pretty convinced there's a rooster there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was really good. It's not, yeah, so that was good.
Speaker 1:Does anyone have a chicken that crows? It does sound like pretty niche.
Speaker 2:Pete had the nerve to tell me that some chickens do crow. He probably has?
Speaker 1:Yeah, he probably has researched it, to be fair.
Speaker 2:Potentially if they're around roosters, but these guys are literally, I'm told, just around chickens. And I said to Pete, I can hear some crowing and I think it might be coming from our backyard, specifically in our chicken pen. And then I was on a client call the other day and I could hear just cockadoodle do and I thought, oh, this is not good.
Speaker 1:Didn't Pete tell us as well that the guy really was trying to push for Pete to take the rooster?
Speaker 2:Pete said he was quite insistent actually.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I think he has.
Speaker 2:So I said to Pete did you keep the receipt?
Speaker 1:It's got to be coming back $40 on the door. Well, I don't. We're already discussed. It's cheaper than the hot chocolate, the cold I don't want.
Speaker 2:I don't want a rooster, I mean this is my kind of surprise. I understand.
Speaker 1:I don't want a rooster, I don't want chicks, but what are you going to do? You're not going to send it back and you're so not going to kill it, no, you're not, I'm not. I'm going to do this as solid. You're going to do this as solid.
Speaker 2:Wait a second, I was vegetarian for 12 years. I don't think I'm going to come in and kill a chicken as my first like no, it wouldn't have.
Speaker 1:also, absolutely not. I'm not quite ready for that. I don't think you could do that to Sully, though, because he's attached to her.
Speaker 2:I'm just going to say all right, sully, we're just going to say goodbye to one of the chickens.
Speaker 1:Do you know who I'm going to tip? The rooster is what? It's Poppy, so I'd keep it if it was Poppy.
Speaker 2:I think Poppy's the best one.
Speaker 1:Poppy's the best one, but Poppy's the leader. Poppy's the one that they all follow. Yeah, poppy's the one that allows us all to like pat her.
Speaker 2:But yes, it's been here.
Speaker 1:So anything that's.
Speaker 2:Pete Young certified. I've always got a bit of a red flag over, but Pete comes up with these ideas and if I'm not involved in the planning or the execution, often I'm like.
Speaker 1:It does always go to itself. Sorry, pete, I love you. I just think you've like the bow to the canoe ride. Oh yeah, what about when he booked the hotel in Wollongong? That was the hotel was the wrong, it was.
Speaker 2:We arrived in 2021, june the 1st 2021 and he booked it for June the 1st 2022. That was a good day. It was a good argument with reception I had to have. Yes, we're definitely booked in for today.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, yeah, they love that. They love when people come in really strong as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, anyway, so here we are, moving on.
Speaker 1:Excellent. So yeah, great, that's something that's not like reports driven or like results.
Speaker 2:Well, we had a great week at the Conscious Home we ran our first masterclass which is beautiful.
Speaker 1:Thank you for asking, tess, we ran our first masterclass we did, and we had 45 people in there, which was amazing. We were looking for masterclasses, haven't we?
Speaker 2:No, no, no, as in single masterclasses just based around one topic.
Speaker 1:First one oh, there we go. First one, the rest of the Conscious.
Speaker 2:Containers where it's like a big.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, yeah, a big jump. That was quite random the way that we did it too, wasn't it? We had originally just designed it for our private clients, and then he was like I think we should take this out to the public, can I?
Speaker 2:say this yes, so we run little different activations and different workshops and masterclasses and things for our private clients so that they can get as much information from us as possible. So different things like planning days, marketing, calendar planning, which is obviously what we did. And then we're also running which I'm a bit excited I don't know if I'm allowed to talk about this, but I'm going to. Anyway, we're also running our first Conscious Business Retreat, which is very exciting. So this is an event just for our private clients. So we work one-on-one with different hair and beauty and skin clinic owners to build their businesses and we are bringing all of our one-on-one clients together in March to do some business planning. We're taking them away for three nights in a stunning property in Country Victoria and basically we're going to do some really intense, deep diving, personal development, personal life planning, a little bit of business planning in there, and it's going to be a really transformative weekend. So we're very excited. But I do want to talk about it because we do have one-on-one clients cannot come, she's heavily pregnant, she can't fly, but we do have one spot available for the retreat that we are opening up. So if you would like to apply for our retreat, then feel free to DM us and we'll send you an application form. But we do have one spot that is available for our retreat, and that's all I'm going to say on that. Second of March, no, first of March, sorry. First of March, three nights it's going to be stunning.
Speaker 2:Anyway, moving right along, first segment what's it called, tess? What do you do? Hot Co Hotline. So, if anyone new around here, we run a segment each week on our podcast. It's called Hot Co Hotline. We pop a questions box up on Instagram and ask you for your business troubles, your woes, whatever's keeping you up at night in the business world, and then we offer our advice around it. Absolutely, tess. What's today's question?
Speaker 1:All right. Today's question is I have no social media presence. My team is super resistant to showing their faces on social media. What can I say slash do to help them? I would really appreciate any help. That's a good question.
Speaker 2:I feel like, even when we answer this, even people who have a social media presence but maybe aren't clear on their social media presence and how intentional they're being on social media with their businesses will benefit from this. So this is a really, really interesting one. Well, I think, first of all, I would definitely recommend jumping into a learning. So, whether it's with us I mean shameless plug to our recent masterclass which is available for purchase of the replay but jumping into a learning, whether it's from us, I'm going to give a couple of recommendations of like social media people. No, we're not. We're going to stick with us.
Speaker 1:No, no, no, no, you can dig in for it.
Speaker 2:No, I'm not going to stop. No, no, no. Tess people who teach social media Us. We've just done it. We don't teach social media, we teach. We just did a marketing thing. Well, I've sure we've learnt a lot, so you can too.
Speaker 1:No, I'm absolutely sorry, I'll put a foot down. We're going to stick with us for the moment. Any further ones we can do a very little shout out, but not much, okay.
Speaker 2:I'm just going to do I'm going to do a shout out of someone who taught me a lot of tactics in terms of showing up on social media and how to create reels and things like that.
Speaker 1:We don't teach that. We don't teach that Good, good, good.
Speaker 2:So she's on Instagram as Elecate, Elecate Media oh yeah, we've shared her a lot. She does social media management as well. Little mini masterclasses, things like that. That's stuff that we don't teach, but either way, we just want people to have the results, don't we?
Speaker 1:Always. But you know, I'm also like what a star review would knock Australia.
Speaker 2:I get it.
Speaker 1:I get it.
Speaker 2:But, yeah, I would definitely recommend getting into if you, if you were feeling confident or you don't feel like you've got a really clear strategy and you're like crystal clear, you and your team, about what you're doing on social media, what you're doing in your marketing, what you're doing even in your in-cell and promotions jump into a container or a learning with someone who has a structure.
Speaker 2:We actually talked about this a lot recently. So typically, our industry attracts people who are really creative and usually artistic, and naturally, we don't have the side of the brain well, we have less side of the brain that's active, that works in the logistics space. So what that means is people who are really, really creative tend to have less structure and less of a logical brain, so they have trouble executing things. They can have all the visionary ideas, they can do all of the ideas and the planning, but then actually executing and getting shit done can be really difficult for people like us, absolutely. So that's why we need to invest, enroll, put energy into containers that give us a shit lot of structure. That would be my first piece of advice. What do you think?
Speaker 1:I think just do our course. It's great, Like honestly it's so good.
Speaker 2:It's so good.
Speaker 1:It's two and a half hours. It's meant to be two. It's two and a half hours. It's great, it's very good.
Speaker 2:It is a creative side that can't stick to a time frame.
Speaker 1:Plenty of really great minds in there, really great ideas, great collaborators. Yeah, I think I would be recommending our platform to be doing it on, but basically, I think with any social media Nothing humble about you, jess.
Speaker 1:Right, I'm like, yeah, I could give shout outs to like, yes, I think, if there's something you really like At the very beginning of getting onto social media, absolutely doing containers, specializing in that 100%, If you were like, oh, I need to bring more of a presence in there, or like up leveling my social media or getting my team on board with social media, I definitely think doing our marketing plan that was the whole purpose of it is to help support people to do that. So, 100%, I will be shameless in that. It's a brilliant, brilliant activation that we've created.
Speaker 2:Can you share how you support new team members? I think this is really valuable. You talked a little bit about this on the call. Can you share how you support team members who are reluctant to get on social media and how you build them up?
Speaker 1:The first thing I really want to normalize for everyone is we are not social media presences. We are hair and beauty experts who have an obligation now to become experts in social media as well. It's not necessarily how I think things should be, but once we kind of understand that that is not essentially what we've set out to do, we can normalize if we're not perfect at it. One of the big things I always like to remind people because this is something that comes up a lot when working with salon clinic owners is that team are resistant or that they just have the ideas or the intention to do it and they might forget about it or like that under the structure, whatever it is. The thing that I really want to normalize is if your team or if you are someone yourself who does not love getting on social media, that is okay. It is okay.
Speaker 1:If you don't have the confidence or the resistance is okay but, how we can create things so that it will inspire your team to want to do better, or even yourself to do better, is just fucking doing it. Simple as that. Just starting and doing. Don't worry about if you make a mistake, don't worry if you look like a dickhead, don't worry about any of the things. Just starting it and starting that process will start like you will get better and better at it. So the first thing that I really recommend to anyone, I'm going to stick with team, because I feel like that's easier for me to talk about. If you have a new team member and they're really anxious or nervous about jumping on social media, stand with them. So what we always do whenever we're introducing a new team member to our community online, we grab a team member to do it with them. So rather than just being like, okay, go on, introduce yourself and say hi to everyone, we get someone to introduce the team member and then get the team member to speak.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, we actually do that strategically with lives as well. We always pair up two people so that they have each other to back up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, collaboration and like two people showing up and like partnerships with that really does create like, first of all, more of an insight into your team and the community and they can see, like your community can also observe, how your team interacts and communicate with each other, which I think is again a really great insight, to like a window in to show how they, like you know, play together, laugh together, like have fun, all of those sort of things. Yeah, it's a really great tool to be able to get a little sneak peek into your business, to potential people to bring into that business, and if you are really intentional with your marketing and your social media, you can really draw in the exact client that you want to be bringing in Absolutely. With that saying so, I think really normalising that and not trying to just be like, oh we'll just. You know we all have to do it, get over it, but really been like I totally understand.
Speaker 1:I know that it can be really daunting, really overwhelming. You're feeling really apprehensive about this. Let's do this together so that then we can start like really bringing that down and starts feeling really, really good and we start losing that fear, panic, anxiety, the stress. It just starts getting less and less and less and just becomes part of them, just kind of jumping on and, hey guys, you know I'm going to talk to you about this today, or whatever it is that you want to have your team out there and doing. Yeah, so that would be for me. Anyone that has apprehension or team that are not comfortable with it. Talk with them, find out what it is that they're scared of and then support them. So, whether that means showing up with them, talking things through with them, doing it together, however it looks, that would be my piece of advice with this. Yeah, love that.
Speaker 2:My piece of advice, especially with social media and Tess. I want to take this a step further and I'm going to give my piece of advice and then I want to share just an overview of what our five step formula is. So this is what we teach in the masterclass, it's what we teach in the Conscious Salon and it's what we live by in both companies, and we're very comfortable with social media. Fun fact in the Conscious Salon, we actually don't have a website yet. It's being built at the moment but we have grown our entire company. We only started this company less than 12 months ago and we've grown our entire company sold out masterclasses, sold out Conscious Containers. We're at capacity for one-on-one clients and with a massive wait list, and we've done this. I'm not heated, like you know, boast about that, but I'm saying we've done all of this just through social media, like literally just through social media, building trust, talking directly to the person that we want to bring into our business.
Speaker 2:We have not done this with any promotion, any paydads, any website. So the power of social media is so huge and if you're not on it, you need to be on it, absolutely, I think, the biggest thing that I've learned this year, and I love learning about social media and understanding it better. But the thing I've learned this year is really really choosing quality content as opposed to quantity. So I used to really feel obliged to, you know, just post like three posts a week.
Speaker 2:We need to do three posts a week or we need to do five posts a week or whatever I sat with, whereas now I go okay, cool, what is our? We first start with ideas and then they grow into bigger pieces of content and then we really look at themes. So really feeding those themes and making sure that every single time we're showing up on social media, our intention is to really give value and educate just one person. So I think choosing quality over quantity wins every single time. I want to take you guys through our five step formula very briefly, because obviously I'm giving respect to the fact that people have invested in the course. We're not going to give it all away, but this is a little taster of what we did in our course.
Speaker 2:So we have a five step formula that we do all of our content planning and this is basically. This five step formula allows you to create what's called a marketing calendar. Marketing calendar sits out in your back room. Your team will understand it and know what's going on. Your front of house or admin team create their content from there. All of your activations or promotions that you run in your business relate to the marketing calendar and it's basically your whole year in advance. So we create hours in September, between September and October, for both businesses, and then we run these marketing calendars for the entire year.
Speaker 2:So our five step formula step one is setting really clear objectives. So what this looks like is setting a goal. I'm going to give an example of a goal that we set last year 2023, we really wanted to, by July, the first, change our team's hours. So our team previously we used to work to a five o'clock on a Saturday. Then we wound back to four and our goal was for our team just to do a half day, like a small five hour shift on a Saturday, so that they could have better work-life balance and then they could enjoy two and a half days off every week. So for us in 2023, our goal was to draw in more clients that were going to be working better in those hours.
Speaker 2:So our bigger goal was to change our team's hours. And then we were looking for a client that would fit into those hours, so school moms who do drop off after 9.30 and then were able to come into the salon. But the biggest one that we focused on was Hootest Corporate girlies, corporate girlies. So we were looking for corporate girls who had the flexibility of working from home. So then, a lot of our content became based around. Come to the salon. We have this incredible co-working space that you can bring your laptop and work from the salon. So coming up with a really clear objective of what you're actually wanting from your marketing. What result you're wanting from your marketing? If we were to wave a magic wand and all your marketing went according to plan, what would the result be? Step two probably the most important one I mean, we don't play favorites around here, but this is definitely the most important one Understanding your ideal client or the person you want to draw in. So how did we do this with the corporate girls?
Speaker 1:So it's really like getting clear on, like, their age, their type of jobs, like what they like to spend money on, like getting really specific about what they like. You kind of almost dream up the perfect client and then we need to make kind of carbon copies of them. So getting really specific on what type of things that they like, what they're drawn to, how they like to be educated or like even communicated with.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, getting really, really clear rather than just saying, like you know, anyone from age 20 to 40, that's not specific that's talking to a huge amount of people and we're not able to get really clear on the type of person that we actually want to bring in.
Speaker 2:Yes. So when you do this exercise and we I feel like we've done this in so many different learnings of people saying like give us your ideal client and who is your ideal client, who's your client avatar, whatever We've always given a really broad statement. But when we started this particular exercise that we included in our masterclass, it gets so specific on who that person is so I can tell you their age, their occupation, how much money they earn, what they do with their spare time, what their values are, what's important to them, how they consume social media, how they make financial decisions as well. So even things like do they look at reviews in order to make a financial decision? Do they talk to the people in their lives to make a financial decision, or do they just come up with an idea and they just trust themselves enough to make that financial?
Speaker 2:decision so it gets so clear on that and I feel like our process around the prompts that you get asked to actually get the client avatar is really, really important, because from.
Speaker 2:There we can start to understand how we're going to deliver the content and our marketing to that person, to be able to draw them in Step three, choosing monthly themes. So this is something we came up with like three years ago and it worked really, really well in our business, because what we found was a lot of the content that we were putting out was we would talk one day about cleansing your skin, then the next day about how to use a hair straightener, then the following day about an event we were running. Yeah, it was kind of random, random and just really inconsistent. So some of our community would our community would start to receive the information about straightening hair and then, by the time we put out a next piece of content, they hadn't even absorbed what we were talking about there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's kind of too many ideas with no real direction and no real as Nikki said theme or topic that was continuing, which is kind of random thoughts, just kind of all over the place.
Speaker 2:And it didn't allow for any consistency, but it also didn't allow us to deep dive on that topic. So when we're picking a theme, for example, SPF, we might pick SPF as a theme. If we're picking SPF, we can use that entire month to deliver the content to our community. That could include how to apply SPF, the difference between chemical and physical SPF, the fact that SPF is should be our last form of defense against the sun.
Speaker 2:We should choose other defenses against the sun as well the fact you know melanoma awareness, things like that, so we can use that entire month to talk about one thing which is going to educate our community in a completely different way, Absolutely. So definitely, choosing monthly themes has been hugely beneficial. I feel like the other thing that we need to talk about with monthly themes is that you can also pair your activations in salon, in clinic, in spa Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Around things, Marrying them together. It's a great. It's like a for-proof method with doing that Marrying them together and then creating like excitement, buzz and consistency. Talking about that.
Speaker 2:It will absolutely.
Speaker 1:It's a for-proof method.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Step four to our five step formula. We choose our marketing channels. This is really important, as Tess said before Understanding once you understand that client avatar and who that person is, you're not going to deliver. If your ideal client is 60 years old, retired, has, you know, great income as in. They have plenty of savings, they prioritize their skin, they're noticing the signs of aging. You're not going to put all your content up on TikTok.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:So really being smart about choosing the marketing channels and streams that you have which don't just look like social media they can look like paid ads Facebook and Google ads email marketing text blasts, text blasts, influencer.
Speaker 1:Letterbox drop. No, we did that a couple of times. We did that 10 years ago.
Speaker 2:Influencer marketing. It can look like collaborating with other small businesses in the area Referral systems. Yeah, lots of different platforms. And we actually do talk about that in the course as well and give quite a few examples. Number five this is probably my favorite one, which is creating the content calendar and how you're actually going to deliver the content.
Speaker 2:Lay it all out, lay it all out. So obviously it's a beautiful thing to come up with the calendar itself and choose your monthly themes and things like that. But actually understanding content buckets so the four buckets that we feel are the strongest for social media, four different types of content styles and how we found it best backs our industry up. So having those four content buckets and then understanding the content drops that we can use to fill up those buckets, so that's my favorite part of the masterclass because I feel like and especially when we explained what each bucket was, but also we showed examples of each of those buckets and how like an actual physical piece of content and an example that we could give our community for them to understand it, but also tangible things that they can use to actually create content whether it's email, text, messaging, video content, reels, youtube to actually fill up those buckets.
Speaker 1:That's super important as well, so good. Well, the marketing course is now available for purchasing Nikki.
Speaker 2:Yes, you can purchase the replay and you can get instant access, which is pretty cool. So it comes with a 34 page workbook. The biggest thing I wanna say about this is you can literally reuse this again, and again, and again, and you can use this in any business. So if you start new businesses, if you repeat this every 12 months, if you repeat this every six months, you can literally reuse this course because you get lifetime access. It's only $99, which I just think. I think it's under $100.
Speaker 1:You won't need to put in the pin for the if you're paying on a net cost.
Speaker 2:That's the worst thing anymore.
Speaker 1:It's not actually especially not if you're paying on your phone. It's definitely not.
Speaker 2:But yeah, it's a really look, it's a great price. We wanted to make sure it was accessible for everyone, because this is truly such a for me, because I'm in charge of marketing for both businesses. The relief, the mental relief that I have from doing this once a year is huge.
Speaker 1:Which just changes all of that, like flying off the seat of your pants and just kind of like gosh did, I haven't posted, I'll just do something like reactive content creation. It just has a really clear plan. It creates a consistency Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And guys look, 2024 is the year that we're getting organized. We are not doing the same shit that we did in 2023. This is the year to be organized. Have a clear vision, share it with your team, even for your team to understand what's happening each month, but do it with your team as well.
Speaker 1:Like work it out what they're inspired by, what they wanna be.
Speaker 2:like talking about educating people on Like it's great collaboration is key, absolutely, and I feel like you know, for two hours, you know time investment, you're gonna walk away with a marketing calendar and have a clear vision for your team. It's huge, Exactly right. It's available in the link in our bio on Instagram, so feel free to jump over there. Dm us for any questions. Tests. We end every episode in gratitude. What are you grateful for?
Speaker 1:I'm so grateful for all of the HODIs that showed up for the marketing plan. That was just such a vibe that day. It was so much fun. You'll see it in the replay for those of you that jump on. But I think also the collaboration that happened within the community, the sharing the learnings, the things that we've been sent through afterwards of people getting us to overlook their plans and asking for feedback and hearing how excited they are. I just love that shit. Like I feel like we're starting to flip the social media anxiety into the social media empowerment. So that's been bloody beautiful. What about you, d'amit? What are you?
Speaker 2:grateful for. I'm really grateful for the opportunity to teach this because I feel so strongly about it and I feel so grateful that we actually sat down all those years ago and nutted out a really clear formula, because previously I didn't really have a life because I would constantly be thinking about what do we post?
Speaker 1:What are we gonna talk about this month? How do we get more likes?
Speaker 2:Yeah, or I'd be like oh my God, everyone's doing a Black Friday, so I should, I do one too. Yeah, comparative, yeah yeah. Just like taking ideas from other people and not thinking in our own lane. And now what we have is just the mental relief for me. I'm grateful for Beautiful.
Speaker 1:Beautiful. Thank you guys so much. Thanks everyone. We'll see you next week. Stay conch.
Speaker 2:Thanks so much for listening to this episode and hanging out with us today To hear more about our journey. Follow us on Instagram at the underscore conscious underscore salon. If you're a shit speller, check the spelling of conscious or at ahead hair underscore. Thank you so much for joining us today and we'll see you in the next episode.