117: How to Grow Your Esthetician Business with Systems (Increase Revenue & Get More Clients)

We coach Sam, a Winnipeg sugaring salon owner, through the real barrier behind her goal to double revenue: leadership systems that make performance visible. We lay out a simple daily numbers routine that turns rebooking, retail, and sales into clear metrics instead of emotional guesswork. 

• Sam’s path from COVID lockdown launch to expansion and a second team member 
• why “double the revenue” often points to a leadership gap 
• balancing a friendly culture with clear employer-employee lines 
• using systems to remove emotion from raises, feedback and hard talks 
• making team performance visible by having employees track their own numbers 
• a daily routine for tracking clients seen, rebooking rate, service totals and retail sales 
• setting realistic goals from a baseline, including the 25% retail benchmark 
• pre-planning retail recommendations from the schedule to increase follow-through 
• handling employee pushback by enforcing the system instead of controlling the person 
• weekly totals and 80/20 reflection to find what drives results 

To learn more about Kari's Fearless Prosperity, one-on-one VIP coaching opportunities, and more, visit www.karijopatterson.com.

If you’re booked but not making money, you need to start with your numbers.
Download my FREE  “Diagnose Your Business” tracker in the show notes and I’ll show you exactly what to track.

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Transcript

Listener Love And Welcome

Speaker 0:01

Hi, Kari Jo. I just want to say thank you. Your cost helped me so much. You made everything simple and clear. I feel more confident and excited about my business. You teach with love and I can feel it. I'm so happy enjoying your cause. Thank you for everything.

Kari Jo 0:20

Welcome back to the esthetician podcast, guys. Today I have Sam and she is an esthetician and she fills out our breakthrough audit. So I'm so excited to jump in to this business audit today because she had some good questions. Okay,

Sam’s Salon Story And Growth

Kari Jo 0:37

so Sam, tell us a little bit about you and your company.

Speaker 3 0:41

Hello. Okay, so yeah, so I'm Sam. I'm the owner of a sugaring salon in uh Winnipeg, which is a city in Manitoba, Canada. Um I opened my salon Lemon Sugar Bar in 2021, in like the middle of the second lockdown that we had here during COVID. Um so, you know, for a while we kind of had to just be open for retail. I couldn't even take clients for a while. And uh then luckily things kind of started reopening and we were able to get rolling. And I had been, I think, really fortunate in that um, you know, being a sugaring salon primarily specializing kind of in Brazilians, um, when things started reopening after COVID, uh, we were really lucky to um have a lot of you know bookings coming in, whether it was regular clientele or even new clientele from the area. And yeah, we kind of just been doing that since 2021. Um, in 2024, we um had the opportunity to expand our business and move into a new kind of suite in the building that was larger. Um, I was able to kind of upscale a little bit and now I have um another full-time employee with me. So um, yeah, and then we've kind of expanded services a little bit as well. I'm still primarily doing all the sugaring, as is she, but um, she's also offering, you know, facials and um lash lifts and other services like that as well. So yeah, we're kind of just excited to be growing now.

The Real Goal Behind Doubling Revenue

Kari Jo 2:12

Yeah, you are killing it. Well, I am super excited to jump in. So I was looking and it looks like you're doing really good in revenue, and you want to like your goal would be to increase it by like double. Why why do you want to increase your revenue by double?

Speaker 3 2:33

I mean, I guess just like I I want to in the like future plans, I guess, would be to have more locations um within my city, um, potentially more locations in other provinces uh within Canada as well. Um, so I do want to see the growth. It's just difficult for me, I think. Um being a neurodivergent um business owner, um, autism and ADHD, I have a very hard time putting, I guess, plans in place and then kind of sticking to the plan. And I have all these ambitions, but I have a really hard time kind of nailing down what needs to be done to, I guess, make that happen. So um, yeah, I guess that's kind of why I'm looking to increase my revenue so that I can start allocating, you know, more money towards um potentially expanding. And also just uh personal, personally, I'd like to pay myself a little bit more as well. Um, because of the renovation that we did in 2024, I am now, you know, working, it was a loan. And so I'm working really hard to pay that off early. Um, but because of that, I am paying myself probably less than minimum wage at the moment. So yeah, I'm hoping to just increase all that. I get that.

Kari Jo 3:52

I get that. So now let's jump, let's pretend like in the four we're in the future and you ended up doubling your revenue or tripling your revenue. How do you think you're gonna feel as a leader? Are you gonna feel still like scattered?

Speaker 3 4:09

Yeah, it's tough, right? Because I mean, nothing changes there, right? I have to um, I'm trying to figure out sort of the next steps to take in terms of um what to do. Like, do I want to continue taking on that role or do I hire out eventually, right? To have somebody who manages the salons and kind of takes care of um that stuff for me. So I guess that's the question that I have. Um, but I do still want to stay involved and I do still want to be a part of it. But yeah, it's just half knowing, I guess, what yeah.

Kari Jo 4:45

What matters more to you right now? Do you think? Do you think it's your revenue or do you think it's more leadership? It sounds to me more leadership.

Speaker 3 4:55

Yeah, that's kind of how I'm feeling. Like I feel like if the leadership is there, if things, if I can kind of get things to all come together and make sense and be cohesive, I think a lot of the additional revenue kind of follows along with that, right? Like having the systems in place and um, you know, even things like hiring have been historically tough for me because I don't have like a systematic way to hire. It's kind of just like, hey, I'm hiring, I'll put out like an Instagram post and hope it catches, you know. So um I think if I have a lot of those systems in place, then I think a lot of the revenue

Leading Your First Employee

Speaker 3 5:30

will follow.

Kari Jo 5:30

Yeah, and I definitely think you are right. So walk through what does your leadership look like with your employee on a day-to-day basis, on a weekly basis? Tell me your interactions.

Speaker 3 5:44

What are you doing? Well, I feel like, you know, I've worked in so many salons in the past where I've felt undervalued. I felt like I brought a lot to the table. I, you know, am really good at servicing, I'm really good with the client interaction. Like I have all of that down pat. And I always felt undervalued working for salons. So I think my leadership style is, you know, very lax and and um, you know, I I'm happy, like I'm glad for that. Like I have like my employee that works with me, she is incredible and she is so optimistic. She is so, she's such a yes girl. Like she like she's so good. Um, so I try to be very um accommodating when um, you know, for like time off or for certain, like, you know, for certain things. Um, I feel like maybe I'm more of a friend than a boss at times. Um, so that's tough for me. And it's tough for me to shift out of as well because I like having that dynamic. I don't like being kind of a hard ass, but um at the same time, I know too that there does need to be a distinction um between employer, employee. And I struggle that way.

Kari Jo 6:54

Yeah, no, I get that, and I feel like we've all been there. Especially when you start hiring on, I always say no one is born a leader, everybody becomes a leader. You know what I mean? Nobody knows when you start hiring people, you don't know how to manage people. You have to learn how to develop that. And so that is so normal. And I remember I was in the same exact shoes of when I actually hired my one of my closest friends. She wasn't like my best friend at the time. And then it was like, how do you manage

Systems And Metrics Over Emotions

Kari Jo 7:32

your best friend, right?

Speaker 3 7:34

Make the transition, yeah.

Kari Jo 7:36

Yes, and so earlier you said, you know, you have some ADHD and autism. And I want you to know first and foremost that that's not going to affect your leadership in any negative way whatsoever. And I don't think that that would ever hold you back in your leadership. What you need is just systems, right? Yes, and when you have systems, the great thing about it is when you don't have any systems, everything feels so emotional. Yeah, right. So, like when I'm giving my employee a raise, it feels emotional because I don't actually know what I'm doing. I don't have a system. Or let's say, I don't know, you're having a hard conversation. It's emotional. When you implement systems into your business as an owner, everything becomes metrics, right? There's not any emotion when it comes to numbers, numbers are numbers, and there's no emotions to it. So like it takes that feeling of, oh, this is really hard to, it's just very factual. And so people who have, I have ADHD and things like that, people who have ADHD and autism, when you implement systems, it literally puts you in your zone of genius. Do you know what I mean? Like, we don't have emotions about this, we're just going to look at the numbers, right? Yeah. And every decision that you're going to make based off of your employee is all going to be surrounded by numbers. So right now, is your employee tracking any of her own numbers?

Speaker 3 9:15

I mean, if she doesn't actually have access, well, she has a little bit of access to see like her own, but like when we'll have our kind of one-on-one meetings, I'll show her kind of what her numbers for the month um have been. Um, so she does see it about, you know, once a month or every other month sometimes. Okay.

Kari Jo 9:32

Yeah.

Speaker 3 9:32

All right.

Kari Jo 9:33

So here is above everything else, because there is a lot that goes into leadership, like learning how to, like, I have a system for how to run a meeting, right? How to a system for all of those things. But before you do everything, any of that, the first step, if we're going off of principles, like what comes first, the first thing you have to do as a leader is you need to get your employees tracking their own numbers. Okay. Okay. So, like, that's good that we have our own numbers and we're tracking them for her. But the truth is, is you can't improve what you don't see. Yeah. Right. You're right. And this is like what happens so often. I did this in my own business. It was I was like, okay, we need to get better at rebooks. You know what I mean? And I'm like looking at the numbers and she's okay, but they can't improve their rebooks. If they're not looking at it, they don't know. They don't know until you tell them. So the first thing is is gotta get your employee tracking it. Once they start tracking it, they will start becoming accountable. That's true. And they are going to start loving it too. Yeah. You know, because when they start seeing that they're improving, like people always want to improve in life. Nobody wants to be stagnant. And so, like, when you see that you're constantly growing and like, oh, my rebooks are getting better, my retail is going up. You want to stay at the company because you are growing. And then when you see her numbers going up, then obviously you're like, Yeah, you deserve that raise because of your numbers, not because I just think you're great.

Speaker 3 11:17

Yeah, no, you're right. You're absolutely right. And yeah, I, you know, she is definitely like an employee where even at like our monthly meeting, or even if it is every other month, if we're busy or whatever, like she does take those numbers that I do supply and like she does kind of take it as like a personal challenge to do better. But yeah, you're right. Like, I mean, it does kind of at some point fall off, you know, it's like um we'll have the conversation about um, you know, we had this like X many new clients this month, and only, you know, so many of them rebooked, right? And so um I feel like it's really strong for a while, but then over time it kind of just goes back to like we're not having as many of the conversations about um the importance of of rebooking and that. But um no, I mean like she is such an easy person to have those conversations with. So I appreciate that uh that that's something that she should have access to.

Kari Jo 12:10

Yes, yes.

Speaker 3 12:11

Yeah.

Kari Jo 12:11

Um, so let me tell you a little bit about how I would

Daily Number Tracking For Rebooks Retail

Kari Jo 12:16

implement this. Okay. And it's gonna make it really easy because if you get your employees starting to own their own numbers, track their own numbers because they're accountable, they can see it and they know what they're doing. Your business will just start, your revenue will obviously increase because now your employees are taking complete ownership over what they are doing. And so um, that's one of the reasons that I developed because so many times what happens is we're like, okay, when an employee comes in, they're like, what am I supposed to be doing? You want me to track numbers? What am I supposed to be tracking and things like that? That is why I developed like a workbook for my employees. So I'm going to walk you through a little bit of how I would do that with your employee so that she can start carrying some of that responsibility as well, and you guys can grow together. So the first thing is is and I have a workbook which you can actually get from my website, but like the the first thing is is every day you want your employees to track how many clients came in they saw that day. So, like in my workbook, like I have this little workbook. But what you want them to do, and you can do this on a piece of paper if you want to try doing it yourself, is you need to when your client when your girls walk in for the very beginning of the day, they need to look at their calendar and be like, okay, I have five clients, right? And then before they leave at the end of the day, they're going to look and see how many of those five clients rebooked, right? Okay. So that day they know how their rebooking was.

Speaker 3 13:57

Right.

Kari Jo 13:58

And it's in their face. You want to know, okay, how much did you do in sales? You want them tracking at the beginning of the day, like they're going to pull up their schedule and they're going to look and write an estimate of about how much they're going to make by the end of the day, which is, you know, like I have say a facial is a hundred dollars. I have four facials, I'm gonna get four hundred dollars, right? Right, yeah. But then at the end of the day, I'm gonna write down what I actually did, right? So if I added on a service, I sold a brow wax now. I sold, I'm like at 450, you know. So I'm showing not only am I doing this for me and keeping myself accountable so that I as an employee hit my goals or whatnot, but it's also this is like proof and document for you. Yeah, look, I'm increasing my tickets every day. Like I'm working, I'm showing the next number that you want to do is the retail. So, like you should have a goal of how much retail you want them to sell.

unknown 15:10

Okay.

Kari Jo 15:11

So, for example, when I did my quarterly reviews, because we had re you know, we do reviews quarterly at my business every quarter. There are certain things you have to hit in order to get a raise. You need to be bringing in and making a certain amount per week. You need to be selling a certain amount of product, and you also need to be, you have to be at a certain percentage of rebooks to get that raise. So they're gonna track like how much retail, like they should have a goal of how much retail they need to be selling every week.

Speaker 3 15:44

So, do you have like a would you do you have a suggestion for like a percentage that you like kind of usually would go by for even for like retail or for rebooking? Like what's your kind of standard?

Kari Jo 15:56

Yes. So in the industry, you should be 25% of your income should be coming from like yourself, like your products, you know. Okay. Um, now I'm gonna tell you I have many people track it and it takes a while to get there. So you kind of have to figure out where this is where like what would be helpful is you've got to sit down and you've got to make goals for what you want your employee to hit.

Speaker 3 16:25

Yeah.

Kari Jo 16:26

So realistically, based off of her, not based off of, well, I she should be hitting this. Well, I don't know where she is in her career. Someone one year in is not gonna sell as much as somebody who's 10 years in. My 10-year girl, she better be like hitting out of the rockets, you know. My one year girl, you're doing good. You sold almost one to every client, you know what I mean? Yeah, so on average or something. So you have to first you have to get a baseline of where she is. What is she currently doing right now? And then you've got to make a realistic goal of okay, if she realistically, what could she achieve if I made a goal? Like, say she's only selling one product a day, right? Like, but she has six clients a day. I definitely think she could sell three. For sure. Yeah, no, absolutely. That's what I mean. Like you probably get three. So we're gonna set a goal of three. And then when she's tracking it, she's coming in every day and she knows if she's hitting it. So, like at the beginning of the day, I always have my girls plan who they're going to, they have their schedule and they pre-plan who they're selling product to and what they're what they're going to like focus on. Because if you pre-plan it, you're more likely to do it. Whereas if you don't, then the client comes in and you're not. Where a lot of times, if you're looking at your your schedule, you can be like, okay, well, it's winter. You know, you can pull up her products that she's already bought. Maybe she needs a serum. So I'm I'm gonna talk to her about a serum today, and I'm gonna make a plan for what I'm gonna do in order to hit that goal of selling product. Does that make sense? No, totally, yeah.

Handling Pushback Habit And Weekly Review

Kari Jo 18:12

The the main things that you need your your employee to be doing is she needs to be tracking how much she's bringing in every single day. She needs to be tracking her rebooks percentage every single day, and she needs to be tracking her retail every single day. Yeah, when she does this, right, and you're you're doing it every day at the end of the week, you total everything up. She totals it up, right? So she knows my rebooks were only 65% this week, right? And it hits her in the face instead of you being like waiting until three weeks later you have a meeting and you're like, your rebooks are not very good, right? And she's like, Oh, yeah, it's not if you see it every day, I'm held accountable for it. Do you see how that works?

Speaker 3 19:00

No, that's true. And honestly, like I think she is such a go-getter that I think that you know, if she was able to kind of just do that for herself, she would take it as like a personal challenge to make sure everybody's rebooked and um to kind of up that number. So, no, I I actually really like that idea.

Kari Jo 19:18

Yes, yeah, it makes it really nice because again, then you just don't have any friction. And like once you install numbers into your system and everybody's working towards certain numbers, then everything is it's all mechanical, it's not emotional at all. There's no emotion in it. So, how do you feel about all that? What questions do you have about that kind of a system?

Speaker 3 19:46

Like, I don't know. I like it all, like the way that you explain it, like it all makes sense. Um, I think that it could even just be something that her and I like do together, you know, at the end, like at the start and end of every day, just kind of like going through our numbers sort of simultaneously. And uh like I think it could kind of just be like a fun thing. Like because we're such a small business, like it's literally just her and I. We don't have a receptionist or anything. So um it's nice if we could have those conversations at the end of the day, carve out 15 minutes and just kind of go over things. So yeah, I don't I don't really have any questions in terms of that. Like my um my system that I have, like I mean, I can see like she can see all the numbers, I can see all the numbers. So yeah, it could be something we could easily do together.

Kari Jo 20:30

Yes, yeah, and I love that you're like willing to do it with with her because I will tell you what happens now. If I was to just and I do do this, right? Um when I coach an esthetician and we're growing, they get the workbooks and they go and give them to their employees. Their employees are gonna see, uh, this is work. Why am I tracking this numbers? Do you know what I mean? Like they don't love it, and they're not going to love it until they do it for, I don't know, I want to say three months, and then it becomes a habit for everyone, and everyone starts loving it. My aestheticians loved doing it, but it was like habit. But like, did they love it at the beginning when I or when I tell new owners to start implementing this with their employees? Do the employees love it? Nope. Most of them push back, they don't want to do it, they need to be held accountable. But like tighter that you can control. And then the thing is, is you don't want to control your employee. Employees don't want to be controlled, they don't want to be micromanaged. What you control as the leader is you control the system. What you micromanage is the system. You don't micromanage the employee, you micromanage the system. The system is, is I'm going to micromanage. When you come in every day, the first five minutes, you fill out your numbers. The last five minutes, and you don't get to go home until the numbers are filled. Out. That's when your day is over. Do you know what I mean? And that is the rule in the company. And this works for like not even if you don't even have an employee. If this is a solo esthetician, if a solo esthetician started doing this within three months, they're going to start understanding how to read numbers. Yes. And you're going to see the growth. I love that you're like, let's do it together, because then you can see what it is and what it's doing. Now at the end of the week, when I had all my girls total up, so you know, in the little book, like you always reflect back and you always ask yourself, you're like, okay, what worked really well this week?

Speaker 22:43

Yeah.

Kari Jo 22:43

And then what did not work well? Because there is that rule in business where it's 80% or like 20% of whatever you're, let's say you're trying to sell more product, right? Most of the time you're going to get 80% of the results for from only 20% of the things that you do. So you want to double down on whatever's working. So you're going to start noticing, oh, when I sell the product like this, or when I recommend it like this, it works. When I like this, it doesn't work. When I started, I changed instead of asking for a rebook after I checked them out, I start asking for the rebook in front of checking them out. And oh my gosh, I noticed a difference. So you can start actually seeing what's working and what's not working.

Speaker 3 23:37

Okay. I love that. And I love the idea of I love the idea of starting to implement that now because I feel like as we grow and as we do hire more aestheticians, then it's just nice to have this in place kind of from the start, right? Like I can, you know, get my current employee sort of on board with things and kind of get her used to things. And then the two of us together can kind of, you know, adopt that with anybody else that comes on board. And then it makes it a little bit of an easier transition. So I really appreciate that.

Kari Jo 24:08

Yes, yes. You're going to absolutely love it. So like the first thing is you got to make your employees accountable for their numbers because you can't lead if anything's not visible. You can't lead something that's not visible. So the first step in leadership in growing your business is you got to make everybody know their numbers, be visible. The next step is you've got to know your own numbers and you've got to know what numbers you want your team to hit. And so that would be the next step of going like, okay, my employees have started to know how to track their numbers now. What are we going to do with these numbers? Then that's what you work on next. But get to the first step, and then, you know, we can move on from there.

Closing And Coaching Resources

Kari Jo 24:56

Okay. Oh my gosh, I'm so excited. Hey, well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and um filling out the form. We'll check back in and see how you're doing in a few months and you can update us. Yes, thank you so much. This was wonderful.

Announcer 25:13

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's Fearless Prosperity Mastermind Group, one-on-one VIP coaching opportunities, and more, visit www.Karijopatterson.com. That's www.kari-jopatterson.com. See you next week for more insights and strategies on the Esthetician Podcast.