Episode 3: "CEO in the Storm: Leading with Clarity When Business Chaos Hits"

Weathering the Storm: Leading Your Beauty Business Through Challenges

Every business faces tough times—but how you handle them makes all the difference. In this episode, Debbie Mulhall shares real-life lessons from leading her beauty business through unexpected challenges. Using the metaphor of "weathering a storm," Debbie dives into leadership, decision-making, and profit protection strategies that every beautypreneur needs to know.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• Leading with Clarity in Chaos – How to make confident decisions and keep your team grounded during uncertain times.
• Managing Time & Energy as a CEO – The secret to balancing multiple roles without burnout.
• Handling the Unexpected – Real-life lessons from closing a business early due to a crisis and how to communicate effectively with your team.
• Profit Protection Strategies – Why a strategic flash sale can save your business and how to maintain financial stability in challenging times.
• Lessons in Leadership & Flexibility – How fostering a strong team culture can help your business thrive, even in crisis mode.

💬 Debbie’s Key Message: A salon should be more than a job—it should be a valuable, sellable asset. Without systems, strategy, and financial clarity, many beauty business owners face burnout and walk away with nothing. Start planning your exit now—so you can leave on your terms, with profit and purpose.

✨ Discover the 4 Biggest Profit Killers that could be holding your beauty business back 💸💔—straight from Beauty CEO & Mentor Debbie Mulhall 💄👩‍💼: https://www.beautybbm.com/signup

🎧 Tune in now to protect your passion, prepare your plan, and turn your salon into a sellable asset.

📩 Have thoughts or questions? Connect with Debbie on:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beautybusinessmasterybbm

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beauty_business_mastery/#

Website: https://www.beautybbm.com/

📢 Loved this episode? Subscribe, rate, and review! Your support helps empower more beauty entrepreneurs to build sustainable, stress-free success.

Chapters

• 1:06 Weathering the Storms in Business
• 2:07 Real-Life Crisis: A Major Storm in Ireland
• 3:07 Leading with Clarity in Chaos
• 6:01 Protecting Energy & Preventing Burnout
• 9:59 Making Tough Business Decisions
• 18:03 Staying Calm & Objective in a Crisis
• 22:02 Profit Protection in Times of Crisis
• 29:02 Using Online Presence to Recover Revenue
• 33:14 Lessons Learned & Team Culture
• 39:06 The Power of Reflection & Future Preparation
• 42:05 Final CEO Mindset Takeaways
• 44:00 Closing & Call to Action

Transcript

Debbie  0:00  

Debbie, welcome to Beauty Pro To CEO. I'm Debbie Mulhall and a cure a beauty or skin professional who wants to build a thriving, profitable business without the stress and burnout. You are in the right place. I started in this industry, just like you, working hands-on passionate about beauty, but quickly realizing the passion alone does not pay the bills. I built my business from the ground up, learned through trial and error, and became obsessed with mastering leadership systems and strategies to create a business that works for me, not the other way around. Now I help beauty clothes, just like you to do the same. This podcast is your go-to for practical business tips, no fluff, strategies, and real talk behind the scenes, the highs, the lows, and everything in between. And because I'm all about mixing strategy with a little magic, you'll also get a little dose on Debbie de Lulu energetics and magic, because mindset, intuition, and energy are just as important as the numbers. So grab a copy. Get comfy, and let's dive in.

Debbie  1:06  

Okay, we're moving into our next episode, weathering the storms. Sometimes in business, you will be faced with challenges that feel bigger than you. They don't just test your systems, they test your leadership skills, your resilience, and your ability to adapt under pressure. But what happens if you're hit with not one storm, but three all in the same month? This isn't the kind of storm most beauty business owners are used facing, such as team members leaving or members calling in sick, last-minute shipment delays, or a tough sales week. These storms were something else entirely. Today, I'm going to share my top three strategies for weathering any storm in business, the lessons I learned from leading my team through an incredibly tough time and how I came out stronger on the other side. Stick with me as this episode is going to take you behind the scenes where the real work of being a CEO happens. Oh, and one more thing, this storm wasn't just a metaphor. Let's get into it. 

Debbie  2:07  

Okay, so at time of recording this podcast, we have just weathered one of, definitely the worst storms I ever witnessed in Ireland. Stormon raged through it was a cold, red wind storm that absolutely has devastated businesses and country, counties and countries all over Ireland. It was a very fast and furious event around 12 hours and yeah, I'm going to share some things I learned, how we handled it as a business and as a CEO, as the leader of the business, how I made decisions in the episode, I'm going to talk a little bit about your CEO survival kit, how to lead with clarity and chaos. I'm also going to share a little bit about profit protection in the audio of the storm. Oh my god, I got chat G P T to help me with three hooks. And they are chat G P T, profit protection in the eye of the storm. And the third one is lessons and flexibility, what worked, what didn't, and the power of reflection. 

Debbie  3:07  

Okay, so let's dig in, and hopefully you get some real nuggets about how you can deal with any kind of storm, really in business, because a lot of these principles apply to all of it. Okay, the first thing I want to talk about is leading with clarity in chaos. I'm going to show you how making clear, confident decisions as a CEO can really stabilize your team and your business When Everything Feels very uncertain. And this isn't just about daily decisions. This is about showing up as the leader your business needs on the stakes are high. The storm was announced on Wednesday, and it's really funny how I found out about the storm. Okay, so I, as many of you, some of you know, some of you don't, multiple business owner. I do own and CEO to skin and beauty businesses here in Ireland, I do have a full management team in place. 

Debbie  4:05  

The businesses are more or less self-sufficient. I work from home mostly, and my role in the business is very much at management level. However, I do work. I still work very hard, very much involved in the day-to-day runnings of the business and then the areas that I'm supporting my manager in around HR or sometimes sales and marketing. But essentially, I work from home and I work, maybe I focus on that business. I would say one to two business days per week. Okay, I obviously run my other company. I'm growing a startup, so I have to very organized with my time. I have a huge team of anywhere up to 15 people working on my new project, BBM, and we have a team of anything of 15 in the clinics. And I'm mum and yeah, if I don't manage my time very, very well, like what can happen is My Diary can spill over. I'm also in. 

Debbie  4:59  

The back of house, building and writing content, as we speak, for BBM Beauty Business Mastery, which will be going live for all the messy things and all the things that I do in my life that are so disorganized as a creative which I'll get back to that in one second because so many of you are gonna relate to this. In my out-of-office hours, outside of coaching my one-to-one clients. I have a very set schedule. And a move that I made, which I really had to make earlier this year was I decided to get a second phone. Now, I've always operated my company with just one phone number. However, I recently took on a higher number of one-to-one clients. Last year I worked with group coaching, and I grew group masterminds, and I didn't offer one-to-one service via WhatsApp, and I had a much smaller team for BBM. So BBM last year was just one virtual assistant. Okay, so now this year, it has grown to a team of editors. We have people working in marketing, people working in graphics. 

Debbie  6:01  

We have virtual assistants in the Philippines, so those ladies and gentlemen, are on different time zones. Slack could ping at any time of the evening, and yeah. So what has happened is, with growth, this is fine with growth. We often have to make decisions. We can become very overwhelmed, and things can become a little bit too much if we're not preparing. So as a step, beginning of the year, I decided it was time in order for me to protect my energy, and this is what I wanted to actually come back to as well. We're gonna go on to engines, and I don't care, because I need to have a little creative license with this podcast. I feel like, when I work under very strict guidelines, my true message sometimes gets missed, so when I feel a tangent coming, I'm going with the flow. But with the setup I have with the team, it became imperative for me to protect some downtime for myself. I'm 42 I have it written on my goal card, and I will be semi-retired at 45 I am on track for that goal. 

Debbie  7:02  

Semi-retired from me will probably look like some shape or form selling my physical businesses or something of that nature, that say the businesses are ready to sell today, and if I got a buyer with the right price, probably would sell that the businesses are up and running, and they are amazing, and they require a variety of time, and I have an excellent manager in place at the moment. What that looks like for me is phasing down my hours. So I decided at the beginning of the year that I was going to finally a 42 make sure that I had at least two full days, and some weeks, maybe three days where I didn't have any phones on, no contact with clients, no contact with team members, and really gives me the space to write my BBM program as well. Sometimes I work weekends because my house is quiet, although the irony, after this storm that I'm going to tell you all about, my doorbell has just rang three times. All these guys want to come and take my beautiful trees, and there was nobody here yesterday when I had to pay somebody, but now they all want to sell the firewood. 

Debbie  8:05  

But anyway, so sometimes when my house is living quiet, that's when I get my creative energy to write the program. So with my one-to-one clients, with my team members, I work with way less people now. So the amount of people who have access to my energy is much, much smaller. So my input is with I have an executive assistant, and she manages the virtual team, and then I speak a lot with my general manager, and she looks after my not virtual team, my team members that are in Ireland working in the clinics. And I also put a lot of energy into my one-to-one clients. So if you don't protect your energy and where you're spreading yourself, you will, for sure, learn the perils burning out overwhelm, and spreading yourself too thin, and as CEO, that just doesn't cut it. So you do have to protect your energy so that when things like this happen, you have enough energy in the tank to show up as a leader and to make really good decisions. 

Debbie  9:04  

But the funny part about it is, I call my fun phone the bat phone. Okay, Batman and Robin had the phone. And my very close family members have it, a couple of my close friends, not all my friends. I don't mind, in all the WhatsApp groups and all the chatter, and honestly, a lot of my people, I love heart, but if somebody's messaging me, I can't just say, Oh, I'll text them back in a few days. I have that awful habit of reading the message and then, regardless of the time, and messaging back. And I use my phone for everything. So I use it for my Down Dog, for my yoga when I want to go to the gym, I use an app and a program on the phone as well. So if I'm listening to music, or even if I'm trying to, like, have a little listen to a book. I do read so many books, but I listen to books and all of these, all of this noise and micro stresses come in. So I can't have a day off if the phone is there because I'm using my I can't just put it in the drawer completely because I. 

Debbie  9:59  

Use it for so many of my downtime activities. So I have the bath phone. So my accountability with my own mentor is that I turn the bath phone off after business on Wednesday evening, and I take Thursday off as one of my days off. Thursday works very well for me because I am on it, Monday on a Tuesday. On it Wednesday, I need a day. I put so much into my clients and my team, I need a day to regenerate my energy, and then that leaves me ready to wrap up my week. And I generally do a half day on Friday. And at the moment, I could be sitting at my desktop writing VM over the weekend, which doesn't even feel like work. So that's kind of how the schedule works, a little bit. So this week was very busy. We had a very productive week. I had a lot of excellent one-to-one calls. My team was flying. We were all set up. My manager and I had a very good weekly pulse meeting. I teach about the weekly pulse meetings on the BBM program. 

Debbie  10:56  

So if you hear me talking about them, and you're not sure what that is, you learn a little bit about them if you participate in the program, but essentially, they're in a word, there are manager meetings that we have every Wednesday, and we look at our KPIs and our key business targets to ensure that we're on track for our quarterly and annual goals. So we do that virtually. My GM is she's been trained on all of this stuff, and we do this every Tuesday. So we had an incredibly productive and busy week last year. Was annual planning, and we had a lot of action steps. One of the big things that's going on in our business at the moment is we're training our team members, and we've some new team members that we're training. So the GM, who is incredible with all of that stuff, has taken some space from her diary, so she's not on with clients at this month, and maybe, like, a few days next month, and she's writing out some herba trainings for our newer team members and as a team, refresh around inflammatory conditions. So we're talking about acne and rosacea. And those trainings, we will have them on a bank for new team members, and they're recorded. It's automated. 

Debbie  12:02  

It's fully digitalized. We have a testing system. So it's a huge cause to the business right now, but it's a long-term investment for one of our biggest challenges, with a huge team, and with a growing team, and with team members that are transitioning with babies and whatnot, is making sure that we have an inbox of very well trained therapist to take over. So that was one of our key issues that we face, like when we did our SWAT challenge, that was one of our key issues this year. So we're addressing that. So that's how you do it. But so this Her name is Ava. She won't mind me sharing her name. Many of you are probably Irish salon owners who have probably seen Ava and know other and have faced she's very much face of my brand at the moment and this past couple of years, but she's so involved. So Alva was working from home on Thursday. That was the plan. She has access to my bathroom. Okay? So she knows, and Alva and I like to talk about cats and nutrition, and we had a rule that, like, we're very much friends. 

Debbie  12:59  

So I had Alva and I have this thing, like, we on the bat phone, if you want to send me a funny or send me a picture of your cat, or we're going to talk about, like, what's in your smoothie, that's fine on that phone, and she would only really use the bat phone, then if it was she needed to contact me and it was emergency. So even though I see her name pop up on the bat phone, I'm always going to know this is a cat meme. Like, she's she's sharing something funny. I don't get like, the fear of like, oh God, is something wrong? But anyway, I turned off my work phone. Behind me, I'm in my office, and behind me, have a little charting station, and just to make sure that I don't go checking messages and things when I'm off, I actually just plug it in and I stick it into the plant. The plant is to re-energize it, and it's where I charge it. Okay, so on Wednesday, for accountability, I sent a small video. This is my third week to do this. So I sent a video to my own mentor of me turning off my phone and putting into the plant. I know that sounds weird, so I sent the video and said, Look at me. I'm doing what I said I was doing. 

Debbie  14:03  

It's Friday evening. In my head, well, it's Wednesday. So I went into my kitchen, started to I was doing food prep. My housekeeper had been off on the Tuesday, and I was all getting all ready to do some meal prep. I had some music on, and my daughter was just about to come home from school. I was gonna make her a Fauci her a fabulous meal, and I was winning. I was like, this is yeah, this is good. I like this now. So I'd mentally switched off. And that's the beauty of having really, really good team members like my EA would also have be, would be aware of my schedule. She would know that I'm gonna go dark for a day and everything. She'll make sure the team keeps working. And she schedules, actually, she schedules her own mid-week day off to her mind, so she also comes back on a Friday rested. So, like, there's ways you can get systems and processes to really work, and that's what works for us. Anyway. It's really funny, the phone's on the off about an hour next. 

Debbie  14:59  

Morning, the door opens. My 13-year-old daughter, Brynn, comes through the door like a bat out of hell. Mom. Mom, did you see the news? The schools are closing on Friday. We are getting the most crazy storm. It's May Day. It's cold, red. I just started laughing, because sometimes, as a business, I think actually most times, what I said to one of my one-to-one clients is, and I actually coached my GM a little bit in this, and I said, sometimes we just have to pretend that this is a computer game. I'm actually really in the big picture. It's all. It is all. We are all just living in game, to be honest. That is the truth. But I said sometimes we just have to pretend this is a computer game, and it's literally like, what, what are you going to the next level? Or are you going to go back to the beginning? So I, like, I just laughed, looked up the universe and went, Okay, Upton sky. No problem. I've got this. I've got this. 

Debbie  16:01  

So I had to bring I wasn't turning the phone back on. It was already no so I rang Alba on the bat phone, and I contacted my other friend, who's a business owner, and she was like, she even said, Why are you contacting me about a work thing on your phone? And I said, you know, I just have to go to flow here right now. What is, what's happening with this storm? It's a cold red it looks like we need to make a decision around how we're going to manage this. I'm not sure what to do, and what are the legalities. We don't normally get cold red storms in Ireland, so even legally wise, like, are we supposed to be in our cars? Are people supposed to be going to work? Do we need to just close the business? Or the storm was due to be finished at 12 in the day, so technically, we opened till eight on a Friday. Do we maybe say to our therapists, look, let's close until lunchtime and then reassess? So at all, every business owner was faced with the same thing. 

Debbie  17:00  

I got quite a few messages from my one ones I was speaking to. I reached out to them, got a couple of messages from other salon owners, wondering, what are you going to do? So in that moment, making clear confident decisions is important, okay? Because how you operate at a time like this really does put you as the authority of the business, and everybody is going to look to you for that final decision. Now, my manager would make 99.9% of the decisions in the business. I don't get messages from her all day. Do I do this? Do I do this? We're still at her level of train. We're occasionally with, you know, team members, or if she's, if she's unsure about, you know, something, she'll still ask me. But usually, she makes all these decisions. We've systems and processes in place, and it doesn't require that, you know, I have to be on the phone. But I did say to her, we need to talk, because I wasn't sure what to do. 

Debbie  18:03  

So really, I just like, Give me, give me an hour or two. It was still Wednesday evening, and we had all day Thursday to make our decision. So I just said to her, you know, let it just sit. Give me the evening, and we'll make a decision tomorrow. So Thursday morning, I just woke up early and I decided that I needed to make a decision. That day, we have 15 people's lives affected if I'm going to decide to kind of stay half open or half closed. And this is something I talk about a lot, and I have spoken from a mindset or from an energetic perspective. I sometimes talk about the feminine side of running business. Now, if we're decision makers, doers, go getters, action steps, action takers, we're very much in our masculine regardless of whether you're woman or a man, you're in your masculine energy when you're doing all those things. 

Debbie  19:00  

That's how businesses grow. If we were to sit at home and are feminine all day, we probably never have businesses. Okay, so we can be very much in our masculine however, I talk about this a lot in any of my mindset programs or with my one-to-one clients, the absolute importance, sometimes as CEO, of stepping back even in the eye of a storm, and actually, ironically, the eye of the storm is where it's most calm, actually, there you go. That's actually fantastic genius I'm obviously channeling here now. In the eye of the storm is where it's calm and centered. And I want you to remember when there is a storm as the CEO, that's where you belong, in the eye of it, not on the floor in the chaos, not on social media, looking at what other salon owners have decided to do. Well, maybe some. I deliberately didn't turn on my Social. Social media. 

Debbie  20:00  

I didn't even see the news. I went and got some information from the weather sites. I'm a mountaineer, by the way, I don't know this is something else about me. So I'm a high-altitude mountaineer. I have slept in winds on the top of Mount ACK and Camboot, which is the second-highest peak. Sorry, it is the highest peak in the southern hemisphere. It's like a 7000-meter peak. So when I see these winds coming, I have two perspectives. I obviously have to be very responsible, and I have to look after my home and my family and my team, and my businesses. But there's a little part of me inside that giggled when I looked at the weather, Waring, so I know how to read all the weather reports. I'm really good with all this stuff, because when you're on a mountain for three weeks and you're expeditioning, you have to start predicting the wins because you're going from camp to camp to get higher and higher. Again, video games, I'm telling you, but you're going from camp to camp, and that weather, when that they call it a weather window. You hear them talking about it with Mount Everest you need. You've got, you've got, like, a tiny window to reach the summit. So to get to the to win the video game, you get this tiny dot, and your strategy to get to the top of that mountain very much depends on your ability to preempt weather windows. 

Debbie  21:09  

Okay, so sometimes you've got to sleep at very high altitudes in very, very high winds, because if you follow the patterns of the weather, you will know if you stay on the high camp, and you survive one night in the tent and pray that you don't get a little hole in the tent and that you're not gone with the tent in those extremely high winds that most likely two o'clock, three o'clock in the morning, the winds will die down, the stars will light the Sky, and you will get out of your tent there, up with 16 pairs of boots and socks and coats, put on your mask, put on your goggles, get your poles, put your crampons on, and very, very, very slowly start to walk to the summit of the mountain. The wind has died down. You cannot travel to the summit after whatever it is, let's say 30, 40k winds. After that, you're not walking to the summit of the mountain. 

Debbie  22:02  

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Debbie  23:14  

So it's about so yeah, so the I'm getting totally derailed. I love a little mountain story, but anyway, you I was able to ascertain that these wins were really high. And this was not just typical media scaremongering that we were dealing with, some very serious wins. So I made the decision without looking at everybody else's doing. Most businesses put messages up to say that they will close it to and reassess the dependent I understand why they did that. They did that because I can't tell you how many times the Irish weather reports will say that there is, like a blizzard coming, or a tornado, or the worst storm ever is coming. Small business owners close their business, lose all that revenue. And, you know, on a Friday, hello, like payroll day. 

Debbie  24:04  

I said joke, if you don't have a Good Friday, payroll can be jerky, right? So payroll day, and then they close their businesses, send everybody off small some small business owners, that's enough for them to have to really go and dig into their profits or dig into their savings to source wages. So the unified decision seemed to be that they would reassess on Tuesday, on Friday. Now I decided not to do that, and I was strategic because I decided that my team members, so some of them live 40 minutes away, 50 minutes away, 30 minutes from the salon. If they go home on Wednesday night, some of them are anxious. Some of them are babies. Some of them might be awake during the night with the storm. Some of them are maybe going to have to be up with their kids, if their kids are enough, you know, happy in the storm, and then they're not even going to get to properly sleep after because they're not sure if they're going to get a text at 11 o'clock, nine o'clock, one. O'clock, you gotta come to work, or expect to come to work. 

Debbie  25:02  

And I don't know, it just seemed like it was gonna put everybody on tenterhooks. And most likely, what happens in our industry is so we don't make a profit unless our team members are on and unless they're like, they gotta be 80% bought anything under 80% we're starting to just kind of go into, like a wash your face day, which is like you're just covering costs. You want them over 80% booked, a minimum 50% you know? But yes, I just figured out that in and then we had so many clients booked, and I knew what would happen. So many people will be without power, unable to come. They may not be even able to reschedule their appointments. So even though it was a financially painful decision to close our busiest, you know, Friday of the month, it's early, it's early in the year, it's January, for peace of mind for my team members, so that they could go home after the shift on Wednesday and not worry that they were going to get messages to come back in on Friday so they could actually try and, like, do their own version of weathering the storm with their families. 

Debbie  26:05  

And also puts a lot of pressure on the monitor as well, if she's waiting and watching and people are texting her and what's happening, what's happening, and it just, it just wasn't really what I wanted as a strategy for any of them. And even if we had have opened, I think some businesses may have opened. I don't know it was very bad. I just know that it would have been a very messy day. So made the decision to close on Friday, and we're moving into the next part of this very podcast. Oh my goodness. We're going into 26 minutes, and I haven't gotten to my second topic, the how was I going to navigate protecting and thank you? Chat, GPT, profit protection in the eye of the storm. Okay, so the strategies, then I'm going to dig into the strategies for managing cash flow at times like this. Now you're talking to a lady who grew a business with absolutely no money in the bank. Well, if there was if I was going to write a book, it would be boot strapping for beauty business owners. I grew this seven figure Empire,

Debbie  27:03  

and now my new company, which is in its second year from zero, I don't come from money. I don't come from a family of investors. I don't come from a family chief. I have so many business owners. They're about grafters. Grafting in Ireland means hard workers. But yeah, but yeah. Essentially, didn't come from business background. No financial back in token. Business didn't get any loans. Just did it from zero. If you talk about creation and pouring so much energy and focus into something that it keeps growing, and it's undeniable when you're working in alignment that you can't not win. That's what happened with me and my business. But as beauty entrepreneurs, we are constantly making sure that we have like our businesses are not so cash-rich. We don't have to watch every single week to make sure that we have a little bit for the bills, that we have our wage bill covered, and that we have a little bit left over, hopefully for profit. And this month, I can tell you, for January, for business owners, very often, cash flow can be tight. 

Debbie  28:05  

Okay? So people always think that, like post-Christmas, people are in spending their vouchers. The salon is very busy. But you know, that's not always the reality for every business owner. We have a strategy in place that we have a very busy January. We don't have quite January, but I know that's not the reality for my many business owners. We identified it as an area that needed a lot of work about seven years ago, and now it's our busiest month of the year. I share all those techniques, all those strategies, how we did that. Like, I can't put everything onto the pod. I am going to try and give you as much as I can, but a lot of this has gone into BBM and how we did that, and beauty business mastery, I write about those kinds of things, but this particular strategy I'm going to give you, if you find yourself in a sort of a cash flow Flo now, when it comes to protecting cash flow in times like this, you have very limited options If you don't have an online presence. 

Debbie  29:02  

We're lucky that we do have an online presence. We have an email list of probably 9000 10,000 people, and then we have about 20,000 followers on our 18,000 on our social media platform, where a lot of our regular clients are active, and they watch and they know that we show up there. So as a strategy, we decided to do a very quick flash sale. Now it was a 50% of sale on some of our top performing advanced skin treatments. Now as a strategy, that's not usually a really good way to make money in the business, and you cannot do that on an ongoing basis. Well, you could, but it would mean that you would closely be you would be bootstrapping. You'd be really bootstrapping. You'd be really tight all the time, because if your highest revenue services are not been available, except unless they're discounted, well it's not so good for business on the bottom line. Now. 

Debbie  30:00  

What we did was we just had to navigate. I got on the phone very early on Thursday morning, and I just spoke to my GM, who, as always, very flexible. I said, you know, I'm really sorry that you are going to have to do this today, that you are so excited to do your training, but I'm going to ask you to run a launch. So it meant that if I had to do it that day myself as a CEO, I wouldn't have had the space to do it. I had other plans and other things that were meant to happen on my day, and things that were important, not business related. It was my life at Monday supposed to be off so I could just do our passport and insurance, some really important things had happened. So said to Alva, you're going to have to just be a little bit flexible here. I'm going to ask you to instead of doing your day building the course, I'm going to ask you to do a launch so we have all the systems and processes in place. I was very good with all of that stuff anyway. So we decided to do a 50% off our highest, higher advanced treatments. 

Debbie  30:56  

Now, our strategy for this was to just on that day when you have like December 26 or bank holiday Sundays, there's certain days of the year when you when you're in business, that you will find so when people are just sitting at home on their phone, it can be a great day to connect and to make a sale with your audience. Now we did a very simple sale. She made. She'd never think the graphics. She kept it very simple, and she did a fit. Buy one, get one for some of our advanced treatments, buy one, get one is definitely much better than doing 50% off. Why? Because it's obviously, if you're talking about getting people results, having two of those treatments is probably going to be much better for results. It could also build up the habit of that person seeing the results of an advanced treatment and how amazing they are. So if somebody hasn't been into us for a while and they haven't had an advanced treatment, this person might be all of a sudden ready to commit to a long-term strategy or long-term plan. 

Debbie  31:59  

And if they are a regular client and they've invested in a bunch of treatments before, then we're happy for them to have a buy one, get one. Now what we didn't do, we did not do a paid advertisement. Generally, when we do paid advertising, the goal of that marketing is different. So if I use Facebook ads, or if I'm using Instagram, I'm going for it newly Gen or a mass purchase. We did not want a mass purchase. We really just wanted our own people to avail of this offer. So I'll give back to our regular clients who are already in the business, who we they're they're the easiest clients. You know. They know how you operate. They know who they like. They've had these treatments before. These are advanced treatments, so obviously you want to make sure that they're suitable. So if somebody so if somebody has purchased this, they've had the treatment before with us, okay, you can't really go mass on advanced treatments, because they can bring all sorts of bother. I don't necessarily think going mass on anything that's half-price is ideal for a business, especially at our stage, because, well, you know, bargain-hunter clients can serve a purpose, but you have to have a strategy to manage them when they're coming into your business, okay? 

Debbie  33:14  

And very often they're the wrong type clients. I could get into this. I have to be careful now because this podcast is going to spoil so we will talk about, you know, you're attracting the right clients at another time. But we decided for our business, we would want to give back to our current clients. So all this, all that really happened here was we went into Canva, where we have some templates. She logged into the back of our website, where we already have stuff from before. She just changed the wording, and, she launched this offer, and we just went live with it. Said one email on Thursday, and she automated one for Friday, and on Friday, then I logged in and we just reposted it. So that was our strategy for managing our cash flow. Is it something I would recommend you do all the time? No, and if you don't have a website, and you're you know, you don't need you could easily do something. 

Debbie  34:05  

You have to get creative. I had another business owner contact me. Said, I don't actually have anyone to do that. My frontal house is not here today. Like, sometimes, if you're connecting with your audience, I don't know, we don't do tick tock, but if it's your tick tock, if it's your face, wherever you connect with your audience, like, drop them an email. If you have all these people coming on your client base, and you're not emailing them, if you're not telling them about your offers, or, you know, letting them know that you have something you can't expect people to purchase. So we had a very successful it's very successful like we hit the goal. I said to Alva, the goal of this sale is not to break bank. I'd like to try and hit somewhere between payroll and five figures. So our payroll is just under five figures. And we did, we hit it. We just, we did over five figures. So it was good. Just it was perfect, because it took the stress out of, you know, wondering, how are we? Are we gonna have to dig into the profits now? And protecting the profit is something that I've. 

Debbie  34:59  

Done on my mini-course at beauty, profit first. It's so pretty important. So if I wasn't focused on protecting my profits, I would have just said, Oh, look, don't worry, Ava, will we'll get the money out. I'll just do a transfer from the profit account, and we'll pay the wages next week. Because, as I say, Fridays even us, we were on a tight ship. If we don't if we miss two days trading, we're all of our most busy days, yeah, I'm gonna have to go somewhere for cash flow, because we keep it organized. So it was a win. Our regular clients who were at home got to support the business. Our therapists got to just relax and not worry about having to come to work. They didn't have to worry about they were minding their families and trying to get some sleep in a storm and not worry and not stress. It meant that my manager got a very good lesson in CEO ship. I would love that lady to be my CEO very, very soon, and so she got a good lesson in how to make decisions in a crisis. I want to say not like, capitalize on a storm like, that's not it. It's called survival. But there's nothing wrong. 

Debbie  36:01  

We don't we don't have to feel dirty about protecting our profits. She made a valid point, why it's a do cold Red Storm. Call it cold rash. Like I was great with the optics. She's like, Deb, um, do you not think that's a little insensitive? I was like, Oh my God, if you're totally right, I just verbal diarrhea. So I said, we're still doing the sale because I have to. I it's my job to protect these salad owners. Everyone's job is my job. I got to make sure the business has money, right? If I don't do that, then I'm not doing my job. But yeah, so protecting your profit. When you become really, really good at this, it's expected. And Abba didn't argue, because she's my sales manager, so she knows it's expected that there's money in the bank account. So she didn't say, Oh, Dad, that's a bit of work. Now I don't really feel like doing five Canva posts, creating new links, and posting not at all. She was like, oh my god, this is an amazing solution. Her attitude was phenomenal. And as I said, it was a good solution. And then we got to give back. So we created a bit of happiness for our regular client. I looked at the orders coming in on my phone. 

Debbie  37:00  

Not one new person, all regulars, because we didn't do paid promotion. There was no advertising budget for it. It was just our email list who are already our clients and our social media. And we do a couple posts, and all of those people will be in and out now. They get to hang out with their favorite therapists. Get some lovely results, and yeah, they're getting that's creating a good habit, by the way, for the for them, because if they've had two treatments and they're like in the results, maybe they'll avail of something else that's coming up later in the year because they're back in that routine of looking after themselves. So the timing of the storm was good. It was January. We're all about new me. Okay, so really, the last thing is to always look at lessons and reflect. So when these times of chaos happen in your business, so I've weathered a few. I've weathered a few. So I have weathered a few storms. In my day, when my beautiful trees came down out of my garden, I looked at the universe and said, I have weathered enough storms. My character thou carried. 

Debbie  38:01  

Thy character has been built enough. Please stop sending me storms. But the beauty of it is you must take you must take notes what worked and what didn't. Now I'm going to tell you I learned a very, very expensive, painful lesson in lockdown. In COVID, we closed our business, I would say it cost me about 100k again, not going to get into it now, but I learned some serious lessons that I got a lot of positive out of when our business closed during lockdown. But you will learn something out of all of these crises, crises, crises, crises, okay. Anyway, during a crisis, you're going to learn a lot if you're if you're going to be objective. You always, always okay. And I'll send me like the ultimate optimist. You be optimistic but also use your use your noggin. Have a think about what worked and have a thing about what didn't. The biggest take from me, out of all of that was, I'm so grateful that I have put such effort into building a team culture rooted in flexibility. 

Unknown Speaker  39:06  

We put out, we circulated an email. We let people know that further safely, that we had no option but to close they were grateful because they just meant that they didn't have to think. And in return, we have we flex. We flexibly offered them some options around payment. So for some people, it would have they would have wanted a day's holiday. For some people, it just wouldn't suit. So some people want to not just take a day paid on leave. Or for some people, it would suit them to pick up extra ships and not affect holidays. So we gave them options. We didn't just say, here's what we're doing. So we gave them some flexibility around that. And just asked if anybody was available to help with a later shift, an extra hour on Saturday, or an extra bit of time next week, and to just give us an email back, and you know, it just, it was amazing, the response we got. And I. 

Debbie  39:59  

Absolutely everybody was so positive. And I know some of the team members went in this morning. I don't think they had es, they didn't have electricity last night, and they still made it in this morning. The businesses are open at nine this morning, and the team members made it in, and that's it. And there was no everybody just did what they could, because I guess they understood that everything that was from my end, from a business owner's perspective, from Alba's end, we did as much as we could to make sure that everything was okay for them, and then, yeah, in return, that flexible culture just came through back. And one thing I've learned is that if you demonstrate over, if you just do it one time, it takes culture takes time when you demonstrate over and over and over your true intentions for your team and your true intentions for your customers, that over time, that's how you build culture. It's not going to happen. It's not going to happen overnight. So that's one thing that you will learn as you go through these navigate these difficult times. Everything difficult in your business will always go back to culture. 

Debbie  41:05  

I haven't seen something really heavy or something that didn't. So yeah, having a great culture in place will really help you as CEO. So stepping back, just to review that, I think that's enough. I've rambled on for long enough. So yes, clarity and chaos be that CEO. Picture yourself in the eye of the storm or above the storm. You have to step back energetically, out of your masculine, into your feminine, steady, into your center, and think, Okay. And it's, as I said, no good to really always look at social media in the news. What other people are doing, step back and think about how ask, you know, how can I just sit quietly? How can I best navigate the system to keep in line with my policies, to make sure the team are okay, and prioritizing the profit was a big part of it for me. I wanted to make sure we had wages in the account, and as soon as I step back from it, I'll get it, and you will too. 

Debbie  42:05  

So I want you to try that. The next time you're in the chaos, step outside. Slow down, make a quiet space. Put the phone down, take a deep breath. You have got this like you have got that power. You got the business to where you got it. Trust yourself, trust your inner guidance, your Inner Inner intuition, and just slow down and I promise that the answers will come. And then, yeah, I'm going to say you're going to never hear me not say it profit protection at all times in your business if you're not running your business on profit, and if you're not making a profit, why are you there? Okay, so obviously, if you're in growth, and you're in that very early stage of business, and you are, you know, reinvesting, you may not end up with profit at the end of the year. You might decide you're buying a machine, but you you you damn straight, better make sure that you are in profit every single week, that you're not at a loss. And what you do with that money, of course, depends, but yeah, you gotta protect it. 

Debbie  43:00  

You gotta that's your that's your role as CEO, as a business owner. Because if you don't get that right, the business doesn't grow. Nobody gets pay rises. Nobody gets flexible errors. Like, if you're not doing that, your team won't stay because things are gonna be pretty grim there. Yeah, it's gonna be survival instead of thriving. And that's the whole thing about the profit protection. And then the third was lesson in flexibility, what worked, what didn't, and sit back and reflect. So I guess I've just done a little reflection on how I would break that down so I know what worked, what didn't work, and how I would manage it next time. And you can do the same in your business through any storm. Sit back when the dust settles, ask people who you trust, and review and talk to other business owners what worked for them, what didn't okay. So I hope that that gave you lots for thought. That was a long one, but yeah, hopefully, you found it helpful. Hopefully it gives you a little bit of a steel rod up your back next time you have to deal with something stormy in your business.

Debbie  44:00  

That is a wrap on today's episode. I hope you're leaving with fresh inspiration, new ideas, and the confidence to take some action in your business, because, trust me, you are so capable of building something amazing. Thank you so much for hanging out with me today. I love having these chats, and if something in this episode lit a fire under you, please let me know I'm always up for a good conversation, so feel free to reach out, ask questions or just tell me what you're taking away. And remember sharing is caring. If you know another beauty pro needs to hear this, send it their way. Let's spread the love and help more beauty business owners step into their CEO power before you go, don't forget to check out all of the goodies in the show notes. I've got some incredible resources waiting for you, including my free guide on the biggest profit killers in your business. Trust me, you will want to see these plus links to my programs if you are ready to deep diver and work with me. Alright, beauty boss, that's it for now. Keep growing glowing and I'll catch. You in the next episode.