Transform Your Esthetics Business by Unlocking Data-Driven Growth: Mastering Optimization for Lasting Success

What if tracking your business data could be the key to unlocking unprecedented growth? Join me, Kari Jo Patterson, as I unravel the often-overlooked optimization phase of business development. This episode of the Esthetician Podcast is a brief but powerful exploration into the nuances of building an aesthetics empire. I share personal anecdotes from my journey, including a pivotal moment when the lack of documentation nearly derailed my progress. As I navigate through the phases of business, I reflect on listener engagement trends, revealing why the optimization and legacy phases don't always capture attention—but when they do, the insights are profound.

Get ready to discover why maintaining organized records for employees could save you from hidden pitfalls. If you're still fighting through the survival phase, don't miss the strategies I've developed in my mastermind program tailored just for you. It's designed to elevate your business to the next level, offering practical solutions to steer you out of survival mode. Listen in for wisdom drawn from my experiences, and consider this your invitation to share your thoughts on delving deeper into those later stages when the time is right. Let's optimize the journey together, one phase at a time.

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Links You May Want to Check out:

Join the Client Building for Estheticians group to go deep in learning all the latest tips and strategies https://www.facebook.com/groups/clientbuildingforestheticians
Check out Kari Jo’s courses here https://esthelaunchacademy.com

Transcript

Announcer: 0:00

Welcome to the Esthetician Podcast, where passion meets prosperity. Your host, Kari Jo Patterson, transformed from a solo esthetician into a successful business owner, achieving ultimate time and financial freedom by the age of 38. Kari is the author of Fearless Prosperity, empowering estheticians to build their empire and achieve financial freedom, and the creator of the empire growth system for estheticians. Get ready for some empire building wisdom Now. Welcome your host, Kari Jo Patterson.

Kari Jo Patterson: 0:32

Welcome back to the Esthetician Podcast, where we are diving in to real stories about building your aesthetics empire, and I'm your host, Kari Jo, and I'm like literally sharing a bunch of my failures in these last few episodes, and today we're going to continue on about talking about all the failures that I made and we are focusing on the optimization phase of your business development. This episode is actually going to be probably pretty short, and the reason why is when I opened my podcast, I started doing how I was going to do this originally. I'm just going to fill you guys in. I basically was going to make an episode on each phase and all the things underneath it. Let's say, in phase one, there's all these different things that you need to learn, and so I was going to talk about each of them. And then I was going to go on phase two, the survival phase, and name all the things underneath, and so I was going to talk about each of them. And then I was going to go on to phase two, the survival phase, and name all the things underneath that. Then I was going to go to the growth phase. Anyways, you get the plan. So I was going to go through the whole entire phase, all the way to the legacy, and then I would repeat it over and give new information, blah, blah, blah, blah blah.

Kari Jo Patterson: 1:40

But what I noticed was this is why you track your guys's data. Hey, this is part of the optimization phase. Track your data, guys, on everything. I tracked my data on this podcast and it's funny my listeners, and was like continuing going up and up and up and up and up and I was getting amazing, I would say, on the growth phase and the survival phase it was, and the culture phase it was like prime. You know what I mean like it was like numbers were off the chart and then all of a sudden I hit optimization phase, the legacy phase, and it was like but he wanted to listen to it, which told me that I mean then I mean that makes sense because if we're being honest, there isn't you're you're to be at the top 1% if you get to the optimization phase and the legacy phase, which means there isn't going to be a lot of listeners that really care to listen to that, because that's not where you're necessarily at. So I am going to touch on it, but I am not going to go into deep views on these anymore because, from what I know, I mean hopefully I'm just going to keep doing this podcast and then eventually all of you guys make it through all these stages and then you guys are going to need the optimization phase and the legacy phase, and then I can make more episodes about that. But that's where I'm at. I don't know if you disagree. I want to know. I want't know if you disagree, I want to know. I want to know if you disagree and you want to know about these phases. So leave a comment below in this episode before we dive in. I do want to remind you that if you are looking to get out of that survival phase and you are in the survival phase I literally redid my mastermind so that I focus only on those in the survival phase and I teach you all the things you got to do in order to get out of the survival phase. I'm giving you absolutely everything and I don't think it works. I know it works. I've had amazing feedback on all of my classes. You definitely. I want you to consider joining my mastermind. It is $97 a month for one facial. You can have a coach that is going to teach you what you need to do in order to move on to the next phase of your business.

Kari Jo Patterson: 3:55

Let's dive in, and I'm going to talk about a time when I overlooked an importance part, and that was documentation. Who the heck documents? I just want to know if you are a business owner, do you have a file for each of your employees? Are you documenting? I bet you're not doing a very good job of it because, let's be honest, nobody in the beauty field does a really good job of it until they learn to do a good job of it.

Kari Jo Patterson: 4:18

Basically, early in my business, I did not maintain proper records. I did not have a binder that was like set up for this employee and that employee and this employee and whatever. There was no individual binders that had their contracts, continuing education certificates, performance reviews, disciplinary records. I didn't write down when I met with them what our conversations were, and I didn't do any of that. Write down when I met with them what our conversations were, and I didn't do any of that. And this lack of organization not only I just was always what. What it basically made me feel was I was just always going, I was always going. But when I learned to fix this, I actually gained my time back and I felt more organized and so much more professional, and things like that.

Kari Jo Patterson: 5:07

What I want you to do is I want you to try imagining, trying to address I mean, this is this is kind of what it was like for me Try to imagine addressing an employee's performance issues and you don't have any documentations or reviews. I swear I talked to you about this I don't know when Three months ago. You know you did XYZ. It just it's inefficient, it's so inefficient but when you're able to document everything. So let's say this is one thing I learned from an HR. Oh, my gosh, I'm going to do a podcast interview with an HR specialist. We're going to do that. Stay tuned.

Kari Jo Patterson: 5:46

Okay, but one of the things that I learned from an HR is, when an employee calls in sick, you should document the day that they're calling in, because you'll actually start noticing a pattern. Is it every Friday? Is it in the mornings? Every morning? You should document the times that they're and you'll, eventually you'll find a total pattern in your place. Crazy story. It is true that you will recognize employees, but basically you need to implement a structure and you need to have documentation. And so what I want you guys to do because that was my mistake for many years until I learned don't do that. And then, when I actually started documenting real corporate businesses, I felt like a true boss, like I had my shit together and that, I mean, isn't that how we all want to feel? We want to have our shit together. Get a binder for you, for everyone in your company, and put in it your employee contracts that outline their roles, their responsibilities, their expectations and their job descriptions so, like when you are having a problem, you can be like this was your job description, this is what you were hired for. You have to have ways to go back and show your communication. Put in there like continuing education, track what's going on, the skills and the training and the development and the growth of the employees that you can show it to them.

Kari Jo Patterson: 7:10

You want to always put your performance reviews. Guys, I have a killer performance review and I am about to be releasing this is a side note. I am about to be releasing this is a side note. I'm so excited for 2025 because I am going to be releasing something so exciting and it does include this next one and, trust me, you want it. It was killer and my employees loved it and it was, like, probably the best thing I did in my company. Okay, so you also need to document all your performance reviews. So you should be having quarterly reviews with your employees and you want a way to track all of that. I love them Still today. There's such. It's also nice. You don't get feedback as an owner very often, but in my performance reviews I always got such nice feedback from my employees, which was so nice.

Kari Jo Patterson: 7:59

Disciplinary records so you want to keep track of issues and the actions that you are taking, and this system just having a binder for everything for each employee and a binder for the company for the protocols it brought a whole new level of professionalism into my business. It was crazy. I want you to know the few reasons. If you're not doing it, I'm going to try to talk you into it here by telling you why it's crucial, even though you don't care about this stuff, because it's a little bit legal, jarring stuff and yeah, but I'm going to tell you because you need to know it. Okay, one, did you know that legally and you don't hear this? Because when you opened your business, you didn't get these, this binder of those laws that you have to follow? Did you know that employment laws require you to maintain specific records. Yeah, yeah, like payroll tax records, all that from both employers and employee. Yeah, you got to do it.

Kari Jo Patterson: 8:57

Proper documentation is going to act as your first line of defense against disputes. It's really handy, when your employees quit, go back to this documentation and pull it out so you can show the judge the whole story, because you have the whole story and most of the time the employees are like oh, I didn't even know you had that on me. Yeah, I did Performance management. You need to have documentation. It basically is going to ensure consistency and efficiency in your organization. Keep job descriptions, keep the feedback on all of what your clients are saying about your employees. It's gonna help you guide and coach your employees. Another reason why is because it's going to streamline all of your processes Onboarding, training. It just takes everything to new. It reduces errors is what it does, and I've told the I think I've said this like 10 times but it really helps you maintain professionalism in your business so that you can address any issues and it's going to allow you to execute processes seamlessly. It's amazing.

Kari Jo Patterson: 10:03

All right, guys, remember, proper documentation is not about compliance only. It's about building a solid foundation for your business and, learning from my mistakes and prioritizing organization, you can avoid all the pitfalls that I encountered and create a more efficient and professional and successful aesthetics practice, which is what you want. Thank you for joining in with me on this episode of the Esthetician Podcast. If you found today's lesson valuable, subscribe, leave a review, share it with a fellow esthetician you know I'm going to say it because you probably have already heard it. Okay, until next time, keep striving for excellence and turning your setbacks into comebacks. Bye guys.

Announcer: 10:47

Thank you for listening to the Esthetician Podcast with Kari Jo Patterson. Each week, Kari brings you real world lessons on how to grow your empire. To learn more about Kari fearless prosperity mastermind group one-on-one VIP visit wwwcarriejopattersoncom. That's wwwcarrijopattersoncom. See you next week for more insights and strategies on the Esthetician Podcast.