Esthetician Podcast; Business tips for Beauty professionals

083: Weekly Team Meetings That Scale Your Esthetician Business: Fix Turnover, Build Profit

• Kari Jo

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Weekly team meetings are a non-negotiable foundation for scaling your aesthetics business and creating a stable team culture that prevents costly employee turnover. When implemented correctly, these gatherings transform from boring obligations into culture-building sessions that your team will value and look forward to attending.

• Hiring someone new costs money for at least six months before becoming profitable
• Employee turnover is extremely expensive and often indicates systemic problems in your business
• Weekly meetings increase employee engagement by 43% and make businesses 21% more profitable
• Common excuses (scheduling conflicts, not wanting to pay for meeting time, preferring one-on-ones) all indicate leadership problems
• The perfect meeting formula includes good news, team appreciation, customer feedback, goals review, priority topics, team input, and mini-education
• Group meetings create camaraderie that one-on-one meetings cannot achieve
• Without regular alignment, your team is like rowers with blindfolds moving in different directions
• Creative scheduling solutions exist for teams with varying work schedules

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Rachel :

Hi, my name is Rachel. I am the founder slash CEO of Alturi, a luxury spa. I have worked with Kari Jo in the beginning of this year and she has transformed my business. Everything has increased. All of her tips, all of her tricks, all of her advice has been the most helpful and my business has transformed exponentially. I want to thank her for her honesty. I want to thank her for her help, and if you're struggling with your aesthetics business or if you need help hiring or any of the sort, Kari Jo is the person that you should definitely work with.

Kari Jo:

Welcome back, estes. Today we are going to be talking about something that I am passionate about, that I love. That was a game changer for my company when I was leading a team, and that is weekly meetings. Guys, today I'm diving deep into why you cannot skip having a weekly team meeting. On one of my coaching calls I was doing and I started noticing a little bit of a red flag on one of my clients who she's been with me for a very long time. She has a great team, her numbers are phenomenal, and we get on this coaching call like what are we going to talk about today? But of course I always have something that we're going to talk about, because I make all of my girls track their numbers, because numbers tell a story and I pay attention. So I'm always getting into figuring out what's going on by their numbers. So I don't even have to talk to them and I can kind of tell what's going on in their company. So I don't even have to talk to them and I can kind of tell what's going on in their company. So I am looking and I know, before she gets on the phone call, that she just had one of her technicians quit. She's had quite a bit of front desk turnover and so she wants to scale, you know, past a million dollars and I'm looking at her numbers and that turnover rate.

Kari Jo:

You guys, when somebody leaves, it's so costly because in reality, guys, you do not make money and I literally mean this when you hire someone. This is also wait, we're going to go back up. I had another client that I had a coaching call with right and she called and came on because she hired a person and she was upset because she wasn't making money and it was stressful and all of those things. And I was like well, why did you hire someone? And her response was well, I thought I would make more money. I was like, so, are you hiring someone to make more money? And she's like yes, and I'm like okay, yep, it's not problem.

Kari Jo:

One right when you hire someone on true fact, guys, you guys need to be ready for this. You are not going to make any money when you hire someone on for at least six months, and not only are you not making money, but you're probably losing money. And if that person leaves before six months, the amount of money that you paid them and you already lost with them, it doubles, and it's because of so many things. It's because your time is money, right. So if you are working behind the chair but you bring someone on, your time now has to be doing that. So now you can't see all the people or do all the things to be building yourself money because you've got to train somebody else. There's also you have to pay for maybe them training, or now you have to buy an extra bed or all of these different costs. So there's a lot of costs that goes into hiring and, first and foremost, you do not make any money for six months. After six months, that's when you start actually making money and that's also when your esthetician that you hire is going to start. It's going to be a rough six months, but if they can hang in there six months at six months, they're going to start noticing that their paycheck is like going up and up and up and up. But that needs to be really ingrained in people.

Kari Jo:

So, anyways, I'm on this coaching call with one of my VIP clients and I'm like okay, you are never going to scale past over a million dollars if you keep having these turnover. This is your red flag right now. You've done all of these other things, but what's holding you back is this turnover rate, even if it's their front desk or you had maybe good reasons, you let somebody go or whatever it is. That is your main problem. You let somebody go or whatever it is. That is your main problem. And so we need to figure out. There's something broken in your system, no matter what it is, whether someone is moving, whatever, there is a breakdown. And so we got to go through. I gave her the hiring systems and things. So I know she has systems but somewhere in there. So and it's two different kind of problems so she's got.

Kari Jo:

One problem is she has front desk and her front desk staff you'll notice like a pattern, her turnover with the front desk is happening before the six month and it's not that like on her front desk. She's hiring them and they are really good, but it shows that like there is something wrong with her onboarding right. So we had to break down, figure out what that was, which we did, and then she is working on fixing all of the onboarding for her front desk now. And then we looked into the technicians so she knows how to do the hiring. Her hiring processes are fire. Her onboarding for these estheticians are fire.

Kari Jo:

What normally ends up happening with her estheticians is they leave, well, after the six months, whether it's a year or nine months or something like that and so that goes to show that there is a culture problem. Right, there's something that's a misconnect there, and so one of the things we dived into is we're like, okay, well, where does this culture come from and what's going on? Are you having weekly meetings? She's not right now. You might be like, oh, that's like a her thing, but that is not her thing.

Kari Jo:

This is one of the biggest problems, and I do tell all of my girls that I work with. I can't force any of my clients to do anything. Right, they kind of have to learn it on their own speed. But I tell everybody, once you start hiring, you have to have weekly meetings. It's a must, and if you don't do it, that is your biggest downfall. But most estheticians, they don't want to do that, and we're going to jump into that today, which is so I wanted to give you a little background, because here's the most important thing that I want you to take away from this episode today, which is if you are avoiding weekly meetings because your team works different hours.

Kari Jo:

Some work on Monday, some work on Friday, whatever. Or maybe you are avoiding the weekly meetings because you don't want to have to pay them or you don't want to miss out on serving clients right. Here's what I want you to know right now, you are not saving money. You are costing yourself so much growth Every single week that you skip a meeting. You are delaying all the systems that your company needs. You're delaying trust, the momentum that your business actually needs to scale. You're missing out on it. In addition, meetings are so much of what builds culture. So today's episode, I'm going to give you the exact formula that I use for my weekly meetings to help me grow, delegate and eventually scale my company.

Kari Jo:

Now, before I jump in to giving you the system that I'm using, what I want to do is I want to go over some of the common excuses that I hear estheticians saying and I want to break it down with what they're saying why they can't have these weekly meetings and the real truth behind what they're saying. So the first reason that I hear, as statisticians, I can't have a weekly meeting with my team because we all work different days and different hours and none of us are here on the same times. Right, that's your excuse. Let me tell you what the truth is. The truth is that is a scheduling issue, not a leadership issue. Okay, in order to be a good leader, you need to fix that scheduling issue. You need to create meetings that are consistent, but that consistency can be different, right? So solve the problem. Get creative whether that is okay, maybe we're going to do it on Mondays, and then the second week we're going to do it on Tuesdays. The third week's we're going to do rotate it. Get creative, do alternate days. Maybe the month of April you're doing it on Wednesdays and the month of June you're doing it on Fridays, right, so that you can kind of please everybody. You can get creative, but you have a scheduling issue and you need to solve that. That's your first problem. Okay, you got to get creative and become a leader and be like there's a problem. Here's the red flag. How do I solve it Now?

Kari Jo:

The second reason is I don't want to pay my team for them to just like sit and talk and we could be seeing clients. Here's the truth. You're either going to pay them now or you are going to pay for it later. You're going to pay for it in miscommunication with your team. You're going to pay for it later. You're going to pay for it in miscommunication with your team. You're going to pay for it in the lack of performance with your team. You are going to pay for it with resentment and you are going to get massive turnover period. So either you choose to make the time or later you will pay for it. And, trust me, your one hour facial client that you're missing out on, or maybe two, is well worth what you're going to develop in that hour with your team than what you're going to miss out on.

Kari Jo:

The next excuse that I hear is it's just easier. Texting isn't building a team. That's transactional, that's not going to transform what is actually going on. So those are probably the main excuses. I want to know. If you have another excuse, let me know and I will definitely tell you what the truth is behind what you're saying.

Kari Jo:

Now that we know some of the excuses, I want to go back and I want to tell you guys a little bit about my own story with doing Friday meetings. When I first started, I used to do these huddles on Mondays because you know they're like you need to have me and says be like okay, my team work different hours too. I'm going to tell you how I solved all of those excuses that I just gave you. But back in the day, what I didn't want to do was I didn't want to have a weekly meeting and then my girls not be able to take clients, because then I felt like I was missing out on Monday or on money. So instead, what I did was I decided to do huddles and we would do them on Mondays, and every Monday we would do it was like 10 minutes and you could get on it via zoom. Everybody had to get on it.

Kari Jo:

And let me tell you, I think every single person my whole entire team hated that stupid huddle. It was like I hated it, it was worthless, it was pointless. I was just doing it because everybody said you should have a huddle with your team or meetings with your team, and it was like my way of trying to whatever. It was boring. Here's what I want you to know is that meeting on huddles aren't the problem, but bad meetings and huddles are. If you're going to them and you feel like they're worthless, your team feels like they're worthless and you're absolutely right. You should totally get rid of them.

Kari Jo:

I then decided I don't even know what happened that made me rip off the bandaid, but we are going to do meetings and I looked at the schedule and the time that most all of my employees were there not all of them was on Fridays, which you always want to have your meetings on Mondays because it sets the whole week up. I will say that if there was one thing I wish I would have done differently is I wish I would have done my meetings on Mondays because my meetings became the most valuable part of my whole entire day. All of my girls they loved it. It was their favorite thing, even if they had to come in on their day off, which some did. They all enjoyed our weekly meetings as motivational. I always got massive good feedback because it was like the best part, and so I wish I would have done it on a Monday. But so I will give you that.

Kari Jo:

But because of everyone's schedule and most everybody that was there on a Friday, we did it on a Friday, and then anyone who wasn't scheduled on a Friday, I made it mandatory, like it's in my handbook, that Fridays are meetings. They're mandatory and you have to show up, no matter what, even if it's via zoom, and so I had girls that would come in. Now, if they're coming in on that time off, should you pay them? Sure, pay them for the hour that they have to come in. I'm not saying they need to come in for free, but make sure that their pay is covered for the hours that they are coming in. Even if you wanted to give them, you could even give them an extra bonus that they have to come in. A good one would be like what is your minimum hourly wage in your town? Is it $15? Then give them an extra $15 on their check for them coming in. Whatever it is, get your team there. I had my team come in and it was mandatory. It was in my handbook when I was hiring. I told them you have to come on a Friday. Even if you're not working on the Friday, you have to be there, because it's the only time that we can all get on the same page.

Kari Jo:

Now what I want you to know is if you are choosing not to have these meetings right? Here's what I want you to consider is you are choosing to do what's good for you, not what's good for your employees? What I mean by that is when you choose not to have your weekly meetings. You're choosing the comfort of saving your time, right, but it's costing your employees in culture. It's costing them in the knowledge that they need. It's costing them clarity in your business. When you are choosing not to hold the weekly meetings, you're being selfish because you're trying to protect your money, but that's not helping your culture and your team. Okay, so if you think meetings are a waste of time, then it's probably because you've never seen it done right. But when it is done right, your team loves it, they show up. It builds trust. It builds culture within your team because you feel like a camaraderie.

Kari Jo:

So what I was talking about earlier is when I had my client, she did not do monthly meetings or even weekly meetings. She would meet one-on-one with the people and I was like well, that's a little intimidating, because nobody wants to meet with their boss all the time because it's just once. You're a boss, you are intimidating to your employees. It's a natural process. It doesn't matter how cool you are, how nice you are, you do carry intimidate like. You do become a little bit intimidating to that employee. So if you're always going in and just having one-on-one meetings, that is intimidating. You're always going in with your boss feeling targeted, one-on-one on the spot. When you have a group meeting instead, it feels different because you're not on the hot spot feels different because you're not on the hot spot, right and it's. You guys are developing ideas together.

Kari Jo:

Maybe the goal of the company is we have to fill Jessica's schedule and so the whole entire team. You give a task to every single person on the team to help build Jessica's schedule. And now Jessica feels so supported by everyone in the team. Do you think Jessica's going to leave and go work somewhere else by herself and be lonely? No, because she feels the support of everybody behind her, and that can only come when you're in those team meetings growing together. I can't stress it enough. Okay, so we're going to go into this Also.

Kari Jo:

Guys, I did some research and I wanted to throw that like some numbers in here because I want you guys to know how important it is. But they say that about 15% of employees are actually engaged in their work. If they're not having regular touch points, only 15% of employees are actively engaged. So you want to build a schedule for your employees? How can you do that when your employees are only 15% engaged, right. But if you have meetings, your engagement of your whole entire team jumps 43%. If they have regular communication and an alignment from the leader that is where the meetings come in your production of your team will jump 43% if you have regular communication and alignment with your team. Isn't that insane? Why would you not have a meeting? Okay, that's just engagement for helping building their schedule and stuff like that. But did you also know that any company that has regularly, weekly engaged meetings that are purposeful and good meetings right, not just the kind I feel like my husband? He goes to meetings at the hospital all the time and their meetings are pointless and he hates it, and so I don't think that that's helpful at all. But if you have high engagement meetings, your company is going to be 21% more profitable. So you can become 21% more profitable by having a weekly meeting.

Kari Jo:

Why the heck would you not do it? You should do it. Okay, if I haven't talked to you into it now I'm going to. Then you can just move on to the next episode. Hopefully you're talked into it, because now I'm going to give you the formula that I actually used. It's funny. I was talking oh wait, I do guys stories. But when I was getting ready to do this podcast and I had my front desk manager on, courtney, and we talked about front desk I did an interview with her. It was a really fun episode. You guys should go back and listen to it.

Kari Jo:

But I had Courtney on and she it's funny we were talking about it. She's like you know, what you should do is you should try to recreate your Friday meetings on your podcast, and she's like I don't know how you would do it, but you should totally do it because, I kid you not, my Friday meetings were bomb. Okay, this is how I ran it and you can copy this exact formula. And actually, guys, what I did is I pre-wrote down my whole entire meetings on Thursdays before my Fridays, so I didn't go in empty handed. I would write down my meetings on a piece of paper and I have this binder and so I have every single meeting that I've ever had with my company. So I just opened my binder and I'm on. This was my meeting in actually, august 7th of 2021.

Kari Jo:

So the first thing I do is I start by good news. What I want to do here is I want to share a personal good news, to connect with the team or I share a professional what's been good in the business, and I just try to connect with them. So on this day it was like good news we are getting Podium. So I don't know if you know what Podium is, but it is a software system that basically connects your Instagram, your emails, your phone lines everything into like one platform and it makes it so much easier for the front desk from having to manage all of these other platforms. It's really nice, but it is very expensive. My front desk really wanted that, but it was really expensive. So I don't ever just get anything. I make us hit goals in order to get it. So it was like good news we're going to be getting podium. Also, the marketing team has completed all the marketing all the way through December. So that was the good news that I shared in that meeting.

Kari Jo:

Then the next thing I do is we had this little frame and on the frame it was like good job, adulting today. And then you write down the name and what they did and I would give it to someone in my team and they would highlight someone else in my business. For example, I would give it to say Jessica, and Jessica would write down Maggie's name and she noticed that Maggie helped her clean her room this week, and so I let my team members give appreciation to someone else in front of the group and it just creates like this oh, someone else notices me and it's nice because it also gets them noticed in front of the boss, which feels good, okay. And then, after they know, I let my team notice someone on the team. Okay. And then, after they know, I let my team notice someone on the team and then, of course, once they notice that person then has the frame and they have to do it at the next meeting and notice someone else. So it just continues getting passed around. And then, after they notice someone, then I do noticing as the boss, because that's super important. So this week I was noticing Allie and she did amazing. I didn't actually put what she did, but that's who I was giving recognition to.

Kari Jo:

Then we go into reviews. So I used Vegaro for my company and after you get an appointment done, I get sent an email where they can review the company and give some feedback. So every week I would pull up the reviews and I would read through what it said and then we would go over it, no matter what it said good or bad so the whole entire team knows what's going on. So the reviews from this week were that we need to. It just says PMU offer blankets. We need to start offering our permanent makeup clients blankets because they are cold while getting their permanent makeup. So we are going to do that.

Kari Jo:

Then the next thing that we are going to do is we go into our goals. This is how the company is doing. What is the priority of the company Review? The progress of it. So in this one. So we were still doing actually I guess we're still doing huddles, but I was like we're no longer doing huddles on Monday mornings because we're going to be doing these right. And then we actually talked about goal setting and that, too, how it needs to be doing these right. And then we actually talked about goal setting and that, too, how it needs to be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-oriented.

Kari Jo:

And then after that, we bring up one or two topics. I have this binder that I write down with my meetings, but what I would do is I would have the parking lot and any issues that came up that last week. I would write down all of the things that came up that I needed to address in the meeting and I would only pick always. There's never a page that didn't have more than like two things. But what I did have to do is I have to pick the most priority. I don't want to talk about a bunch of different things because it's overwhelming, I just want to pick two that I feel like is the most important and I would address those. So in this one we needed to address employee family pricing and how that worked. And then the next one that we needed to talk about was calling to reschedule somebody to move up earlier. My girls sometimes, if they wanted to leave earlier, they wanted to move a client. If they had someone call and I was okay doing that if, and only if, they completed certain tasks before they did that, okay.

Kari Jo:

And then after we did topics, I would let my teams talk and say if they need anything. So I had a few different teams. I had like kind of my management team if they needed to go over anything. I had one of my girls was in charge of product education, so she wanted to go over anything with that. And then I had a marketing team and so they might talk about what's going on. And then, after all of that, I would do a quick five-minute lesson and I would teach them something.

Kari Jo:

Sometimes what I would do and we always love this, this one was my favorite, one that all my employees loved was I would put up a client's photo and then we would say, okay, here's the client, what would you do different? Or what would be the plan that you would put them on? What product would you put them on? What treatment would you do for this? How would you go about it? We all never said the same things, but they were all really good ideas and it was like the funnest brainstorming time ever and I definitely highly recommend that.

Kari Jo:

And then, at the very end of everything, we would do any reviews so who needs to do what, when and by whatever? And then I would have the employees before we left. They would rate the meeting on a scale of one to 10 for how they found it useful or not, so that I could get feedback and know what I needed to do differently. I, 99% of the time, always had a 10, because this was very useful to all of my employees. What's also great is sometimes, when you have meetings, you don't always have to have it like this One time, instead of my Friday meeting, we did a yoga session and we all went and did yoga. So you can throw in some other fun things too. Or sometimes, like I, would have someone come in and teach. One time we had a massage therapist come into our meetings and give us some tips on massaging, which is so useful too. Again, just to break it down really quickly we start off good news five minutes, right. We go into team member and customer feedback. Another five, 10 minutes go into the company's priorities any of the topics that I need to talk about and let all my team say whatever. And then we do like a five little minute of a lesson and, yeah, then we rate and review it and that sounds easy. It doesn't sound too hard and it might sound boring, but when you get into it it is so fun.

Kari Jo:

Guys, meanings are everything. Remember this. Okay, think of this as if you are in a canoe. Okay, if you and all four of your friends get in the canoe and you guys all start rowing your canoe and you guys are blind and you put on the blinders and you row for a month, y'all are never going to be anywhere, but, like if you have regular touch points, like every week, where you like take off the blind and look and see where all your people are and then get everybody back on track and then put the blinders back on, you guys are going to be more aligned. It's the same thing with business If you're only getting together with your team once a month, like they had 30 days to row in any direction that they want, but when you are constantly on the same, checking in every single week, your team is rowing together. They are growing together. So I hope I talked you guys in to why these meetings are the most beneficial thing ever. Because they are, and I hope that you guys take from this as well that meetings are where all of your ideas and all of your culture will be born. And so if you're having a turnover rate, if your culture isn't what you want it to be, a turnover rate, if your culture isn't what you want it to be, the best way to do that is by starting to have weekly meetings, because it aligns your team. You guys can grow together, you guys get focused together and that's not going to happen from a once a month thing.

Kari Jo:

Guys, thank you for tuning in to today's podcast. I hope that you found this episode super valuable. But hey, I am reaching out because I want you to come on my podcast. How do I want you to come on my podcast? There is a link below that says text us. I want you to text me your name, your number, your email, however we can get ahold of you, and then I want to bring you on my podcast where I will do a coaching live for free with you and we will figure out whatever your problem is and I'm going to help give you a system. I'm going to do it. This is like free coaching. You guys will love it. So definitely click the link in the show notes, send us a text, a message, and come, jump on my podcast. Let's get you some coaching that you need. Thanks, guys, we'll see you next week.

Kari Jo:

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 coaching opportunities and more visit Kari. That's Kari. No-transcript.

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