Money Habits That Build Real Wealth for Salon Owners

Money talk can feel prickly, especially when you’re juggling bookings, staff and the pressure to keep everyone happy. 

We went from dodging finance chats to feeling steady and clear, and today we share the exact habits that made the shift: weekly number check-ins, paying ourselves first, pricing with strategy, banking all cash and systemising every dollar with automated buckets. If money has ever made you want to run, this conversation brings you back to ground with simple actions that build calm and profit.

We start by naming the discomfort and why open money talk can trigger people, then walk through how regulation—not hustle—changed everything. Weekly visibility gave us control over break-even and cash flow. Paying ourselves first created a non-negotiable boundary that forced better decisions. 

On pricing, we unpack why copying competitors and last-minute discounts quietly bleed margin, and how to account for wages, consumables, super, tax and overheads so every service funds a healthy profit. We also call out the hidden cost of panic promos that attract bargain hunters while sidelining loyal clients.

From there, we get frank about cash. Banking every dollar protects your valuation, supports mortgage approvals and keeps you audit-safe. Finally, we lay out a practical blueprint: pull twelve months of transactions, sort them into clear buckets like rent, wages and leave, overheads, repairs and maintenance, tax and super, plus a profit reserve then automate weekly transfers so big bills don’t spike your nervous system. It’s the calm, boring system that quietly builds a business buyers trust and owners can breathe in.

If you’re ready to swap anxiety for agency, press play, take notes and choose one habit to implement this week. Love the show? 

Follow, share with a salon friend and leave a quick review so more owners can build confident, profitable money habits.

To follow our journey:
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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:06

Welcome back. Welcome back. Okay. Welcome back to the Conscious Salon podcast. Nikki. Thank you, Tiz. It's great to be here. So good to have you. We are doing an episode today on I hope so. We have hired the studio and we're here. We are. We have. Yep. We're actually going to talk about money habits. Because this is something that I feel. One of my favorite topics. Well, we've healed a lot of bad money habits, um, unconscious money habits, bad money energetics, all of the things.

From Avoidance To Regulation

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Money is something that we could talk about all day, every day. A lot of people are really, really uncomfortable talking about money as salon owners, and it's really, really important that we have these conversations. So if you feel yourself starting to feel a little bit dysregulated in this conversation, or you want to run away from this conversation, sit down and get a pen and paper. Lock the doors. Classes in session.

SPEAKER_01 1:05

That's right. Actually, you know why we say that? Because this was the first I would say six years of us having a business. I would not talk to you. No, maybe not that long, maybe four or five years. But I would not have any conversations around money. You'd like want to talk about it. I'd be like, let's have a finance meeting. And you'd just absolutely not. Yeah, straight out the door. And this has truly been, I think, where the most amount of growth for me in terms of creating abundance for myself and like really normalizing how I speak about money, how I uh like my money energetics, the way that I respect money now, all of these things I've worked really hard on. But I would say for so many years, like truly majority of my life, I was so uncomfortable talking about money. I was so uncomfortable about having any conversation, anything that had anything, like I just want to get rid of it. Like I never wanted to like hold it, do anything with it, cut talk about it, any of those things. And when you have a business where you need to talk about money, it's really important to have a really good money energetic and how really flipping that up. So if you are someone that's already feeling uncomfortable, or even like how we talk about like we we talk about money really openly. And we can trigger a lot of people with how we talk about money. We get really excited about money, we get really um bold and big and ambitious and we love like talking about it in general. And what we can find is often this can trigger people or have a reaction and a response to that. So if you are finding that happen for yourself, we really want to push you to lean into the discomfort because if we start leaning into things that make us feel uncomfortable, that's where growth happens. And it's really what we want to see happen today.

Start Anywhere: Mindset Or Systems

SPEAKER_00 2:55

We want women to be more financially literate and to be more financially empowered and claim it. Yeah. And I think I did a piece of content recently where I said, you know, let's go and pay$60,000 worth of bills from a regulated place. And I never thought I would like if you had told me five years ago, even that I would have made a piece of content that talked about regulation around money in in big volume like that and paying and releasing money in big volume like that, I would have never thought that I would have been anywhere near that piece of content. So I want to really hone in on the fact that you can absolutely start from anywhere to work on your money mindset and to work on your money energetics and to work even just on your money systemization. If you're like a really logical person, you're like, I don't give a shit about the hippie side of money energetics and things like that, and you just want to work on purely the logic and the systemization of money, you can literally start from anywhere and at any point you can choose to learn more about money and to start that journey and to start that conversation. And it's really important for us as business owners.

SPEAKER_01 3:57

Agree.

Habit 1: Know Your Numbers Weekly

SPEAKER_00 3:57

So today we want to give you guys five hot tips on your money habits that you need to have as a salon owner. So this is not about like energetics or philosophies or things like that. These are just habits that you need to get into as a sell-on owner. As of this day moving forward, these are the five things that you are going to do. Tess, what's number one?

SPEAKER_01 4:18

Number one is know your numbers weekly, not when you panic.

SPEAKER_00 4:22

So this is one of the biggest transformations. When you panic, aka when your accountant calls.

SPEAKER_01 4:27

Yes. So this is where I feel we've really had a large like shift with really understanding our numbers first of all. Debriefing them with our team every week, having a real clear, like we're transparent. Our team know our break-even, they know what we're working towards, they know what we um you know when we how much we go over, how much we're under. And we really have a really clear understanding as to what our numbers, what like what's coming in, what's going out. And there's a few reasons that we do this. Um the first one is to show gratitude for this. So we Nick and I both have on our phones every day when we get our um what's that thing called? We get the alert and the income will tell you.

SPEAKER_00 5:14

No like settlement notifications for our banking.

Team Transparency And Break-Even

SPEAKER_01 5:17

We have them active so that we can always see money going into our business account. We constantly are making sure that we are across our numbers. I would say if it's not daily, it's every other day, we're making sure that all of our accounts, all of our money buckets, are full and doing what they need to be doing. So that when we get a Bass invoice, which could be sixty thousand dollars, we're not sitting there from a dysregulated place being like, where the fuck am I gonna get this money from? And this is one of the things that there's so many numbers that you need to know within your business, knowing your break-even, knowing what you need to be, like pricing yourself according, all of these things. It's I understand why people can put their head in the sand and just look at what other people are doing and add$10 or something or take ten dollars off. I get it. We did that. When you start knowing your numbers and knowing them from a regulated place, that's not in a reactive thing, or only looking at them when a big bill comes in or something like that, and you start to panic. It changes the way that you can show up and your energy around money in general. Okay. So when we start normalizing this, this is when we can really go from having that avoidance and that reactivity into regulation and just being really clear on okay, cool, next week this is gonna come out. I need to make sure that that account's got this. And I think that's a really important thing to have. Not necessarily flipping everything at once, but when we start understanding what's coming in and coming out of your business, you're gonna then start creating a more um regulated response to it.

SPEAKER_00 6:54

More conscious of it. Exactly. Beautiful. Money habit number two, you're going to start paying yourself a set amount every single week. And you need to pay yourself first. So if you have a team member in your team or if you have rent due, they will always be a priority for you. And what we see so many salon owners do is they pay all of the things and then they pay themselves last, or they make an excuse for the money to go everywhere else except to them. And you can, I can always find in our business something else to invest in. Always. Always. Whereas when you put yourself as the priority and you respect yourself as a team member, because what we see is we see selling owners working like some selling owners working 50 hours a week and then not taking a wage for it. Yeah. If you prioritize yourself just as much as you would prioritize a team member, you would never be late for a team member's pay and you would never undercut them because you didn't have enough in the account. You would always pay them what you are meant to because the consequences are too high if you don't.

SPEAKER_01 7:53

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 7:53

You're gonna start paying yourself a wage, the set amount every single week, and you are going to pay yourself first every single payday of the week.

Habit 2: Pay Yourself First

SPEAKER_01 8:02

I love that. Second one, the third one, sorry, which ties into what I spoke about earlier. Price with strategy and not feelings. So this is such a massive one that we see play out. And as we've spoken about, we did this where we just kind of looked at what everyone else was doing and then took money off, or we'd start getting emotional and start seeing other salons, you know, running promotions that we thought we sh would need to do it at that same thing. Letting emotion rule it is where things start really breaking down. So when you're pricing things, have a really clear system in place. Having something where you are aware of how much things cost you, how much like really breaking it down, creating a format that will really support you with that. When we start uh pricing with strategy and not just undercutting or getting emotional, getting reactive or getting fearful, we then can create things that are profitable rather than uh continually effectively you're gonna start working yourself that a client will come into you and you'll be giving them money back for being in your space. If you price with strategy and however you want to do that, if you're not sure of what we're talking about, you need to start really researching and start really getting clear on how you can best support yourself with doing this. Reaching out to people that can help you with that. When we don't have a strategy, it's anyone's game as to what's going on.

SPEAKER_00 9:28

Just to be clear, we can't help people with that right now. We only do pricing with our one-on-one clients, and we're at capacity at the moment.

SPEAKER_01 9:34

But there are plenty of people.

SPEAKER_00 9:35

Kate, I'm gonna shout out Kate Slater. Kate Slater does, I don't know if it's a container or sessions or something on getting your pricing in order.

SPEAKER_01 9:43

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 9:44

Kate Slater, and she's an accountant. So sorry.

unknown 9:48

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 9:48

Kate Slater. I think her Instagram is kateslater.cpa. Yes. I think. Um she's an accountant on Instagram. If you can't find her, just DM us and we'll get you her link. She's amazing, she does pricing. Yes. But you've got to you've got to account for things like consumables, super, wage costs, like all of those things, tax in there, everything in there to and make sure that you're still sitting at a really good profit rate.

SPEAKER_01 10:13

And I think this is the the biggest thing that we often get like sold to us is that for like just do a sale that will give you an influx of cash. Or um do a promo with it. And like sometimes those things can work really, really well with having you know a a um consciously curated sale, hell yeah, that can do incredible things, or having a really intentional promotion with a new team member or someone who's emerging who's needing to improve their skill set, absolutely such a like unbelievable with what that can do. But when we just do it from panic of like, oh, I'm not busy and I'll just offer a quick promo thing of you know half-price foils for the month of January. Although you might get an influx, what's that actually costing you? What type of clients are coming forward for this?

Habit 3: Price With Strategy

SPEAKER_00 11:00

I see some really high-level people doing this. Buy$100 worth of gift vouchers, get$150 free. Well, like, you know, get$50 free. Uh for anyone who upgrades to anyone who books tomorrow for a half ahead of foils, we'll upgrade you complementarily to a full head. And I'm like, what are we doing to the existing clients who we need to recognize those beautiful existing clients who are rebooking their appointments, but right now we're awarding people who are going last minute.

SPEAKER_01 11:24

And I think this is something we see play out all the time. When we start doing anything from an emotional, reactive, or like a place of feelings, that's truly when chaos starts ensuing. It's when we get unaligned clients or um, you know, the ones that um what was the thing we saw is um reference to when we and we we did it for a while. Um was it barter card, something like that? Groupon.

SPEAKER_00 11:44

Groupon. We never did group on, didn't we? No, you did it at your old company. We never did group on.

SPEAKER_01 11:49

Okay, you bring that shit around here. But that's Aiden's laughing. He hates group on. But this is the thing, and then no shade to group on, but a little bit of shade to group on. What can come from that is it people we've got the bargain hunters. Now, are they the clients that you want to be rebooking? Are they the clients that you're wanting to um really give your time, energy, and space to? Have those clients actually worked out for you long term? Or are they just a random kind of like bum-on-seat mentality of like I'm just gonna pop this person in so I'm doing someone rather than no one?

SPEAKER_00 12:18

Agree. Number four, money habit that you need to bring in. Bank your fucking cash, please.

SPEAKER_01 12:24

This is a big one.

SPEAKER_00 12:25

Sorry guys, that was really passionate of me. Please bank your cash. And this is so important because so majority of salon owners, I'm gonna say, majority of business owners that have cash coming through their business.

SPEAKER_01 12:38

Trades in general.

SPEAKER_00 12:39

Tax managers not gonna see this. Like it's like really a thing.

SPEAKER_01 12:42

Because that was a huge thing when we started. I remember people being like, I if I pay cash, is it any different? And it's like, no, but I was just oblivious. I was like, no, it's the same, but totally worked out why.

SPEAKER_00 12:50

So we were we had this drilled into us from day one from our accountant. He was like, don't fucking ever take cash out of your business. And he was really serious about it because he was like, You guys are young, you're gonna want mortgages, you know, you're gonna want to apply to get a mortgage to buy a house, blah, blah, blah. Do not, do not, it is like shooting yourself in the foot in terms of building an asset or even building yourself as an asset long term, you're just shooting yourself in the foot, taking cash out of your business.

SPEAKER_01 13:15

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 13:15

Someone wants to come along and buy your business, all of a sudden we've got years of unaccounted for cash that you can't explain. You can't explain where that cash is. So all of a sudden you lower that asset, you lower the sale price of your salon because you've taken cash out of your business.

SPEAKER_01 13:32

Well, taxman comes around, like auditing. Like that's not that's not a myth, guys. That's happening. Exactly.

Promotions Without Panic

SPEAKER_00 13:38

And do you know what Craig always said to us, our accountant, he always said, you will be audited, you will be audited at some point. So do not put a foot out of line. We're gonna do everything by the book, you will be audited at some point, it's just a matter of when. We've never been audited. But um, we it's really interesting because I think we've always had that mentality of like we just have to do things by the door, it's gonna bite us in the house. I know it's fucking tempting. Sometimes our business has thousands of dollars worth of cash coming through the door every week, not so much anymore, but once upon a time it absolutely did when cash was like a massive thing. And we would have so much cash come through the door, and I totally understand the idea of it, but so many selling owners are like, I'm just gonna take this cash as my wage. It's just in terms of just play with me for one second. The energetic side of this, in terms of not respecting and systemizing your money, the what you're energetically telling money is you don't belong to a system. I don't respect you enough to have a system for you. I'm gonna take you and I'm going to spend you differently because I'm so unconscious of this because it feels like free money.

SPEAKER_01 14:45

Yeah, it feels like monopoly money.

SPEAKER_00 14:46

Yeah, it feels like monopoly money. And people just become so unconscious with money. And it's really funny because a lot, most of salon owners that we start working with, we ask the question, do you bank your cash? And it's usually when we're working with them one-on-one and we're like, Do you really bank your cash?

SPEAKER_01 15:00

And then we're like, Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:02

And then you go, Do you? And like most of the time, and then it's like, okay, cool, what's actually going on? No. Exactly. Yeah. So bank your cash.

SPEAKER_01 15:09

I do think as well, cash is starting to make a bit of a comeback because people aren't wanting to do the F POS um surcharges anymore. Because so many of the time, if you pay on like um paywave or um on a card, there's a surcharge for it. That's where I'm seeing a real shift of that with people. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:27

I mean, I haven't like I haven't taken a payment in our salon in a long time.

SPEAKER_01 15:30

Oh, yeah, Doll. Sometimes like the surcharge can be, and not from like our choice, but from we've got one of the um terminals, yeah, whatever they are. Sometimes if it's like a six, seven hundred dollar bill, it can be like eight dollars or so with surcharge. Whereas if it's like, I think if you physically have the card, it's less, but it's still a surcharge. Yeah. Whereas if there's none. So cash is making a bit of a comeback.

SPEAKER_00 15:51

See, I just am like, who is carrying a wallet these days? Like, I'm just I mean not that eight dollars is so much more value to me than carrying around a wallet.

SPEAKER_01 15:58

Like, I don't want to drag myself down with all this money in it.

SPEAKER_00 16:02

I'm just like, I don't want to like you know, do you know what I mean? The convenience of it, but yeah, each is their own. If you want to pay cash, amazing. But we're going to the bank and we're banking that cash. Yes, what's number five?

SPEAKER_01 16:11

I want you to because you've actually tied into this really nicely. The final one is systemizing every dollar you earn.

Habit 4: Bank Your Cash

SPEAKER_00 16:16

Systemising every dollar you earn. Yeah. Say more on that. Yes, yes. Money systems. We actually teach a whole module of this in Becoming Conscious Cell On, and then we do it on steroids with our private clients. So we know where every single dollar and cent is in their business, exactly where it's going. So we need to systemize it and account for prepare. This is how actually, this is how we got regulated with paying huge bills. So basically, every single week we have automatic transfers out. So I look, here's a way that you can do it. I'm gonna give a quick blueprint. I'm just giving him a lot today. I just want I want people to change this for themselves. Great. Get every single bill that you've paid, every single transaction in your bank account for the last 12 months. Now, before you start bitching and moaning, this is beautiful business advice. So you just it's gonna be inconvenient, but you're just gonna do it because this business advice is stunning and it will help you long term. So no bitching and moaning. Go get every bill that you've paid in the last 12 months, every transaction in your bank account. I want you to go through with a fine-tooth comb. And I want you to create five different buckets that you're gonna put them in, five different doors, whatever you want to say, that you're going to systemize them in. So if there's bunning stuff, you're gonna put that in the repairs and maintenance bucket. If there's rent, you're gonna put that in the rent bucket. If there's overheads like electricity, gas and rates and things like that, you're gonna put that in the overheads bucket. Wages and and leave, you're gonna put that in the wages and leave bucket. So you you're basically gonna systemize it. There's probably a way that you could get AI to help you with this. I don't know how reliable it would be. Maybe don't use the AI. Do it manually, actually. Get really clear in the case.

SPEAKER_01 17:59

Create the money buckets, separate them.

SPEAKER_00 18:01

Separate them, and then you're going to work out the weekly amount that you need to transfer to each of those money buckets. Great. If you're panicking and you're like, oh my God, my money buckets are way more than what I have, like, I need to put more aside than what I have. You need to like join our world. You need to get on our wait list and we will show you how to reduce those money buckets.

SPEAKER_01 18:23

Agreed. And I think this is also ties in really beautifully to the whole thing of then we're not doing things from feelings, we're not like hoping that we've got enough on the random day where we get the Bass come through. We're able to start really regulating ourselves, talking about money, getting comfortable with money, also really appreciating money that we have. Agree.

SPEAKER_00 18:40

So once you've done those buckets, you're gonna set up a weekly transfer into those buckets, and that amount you're gonna transfer every single week automatically, not manually. All right, and it's gonna start to accrue in different accounts, and that's how you're gonna become more regulated.

SPEAKER_01 18:55

Perfect. Five habits again. Know your numbers, pay yourself first, price for strategy, bank your cash, systemize your dollars. Stunning.

SPEAKER_00 19:03

We'll see you multi millionaires in 2027. Love you guys. Thank you for listening to another episode of the Conscious Salam Potty. Well, you took my line, so later everyone. Good to great to be here.