365 Five Things Every Growing Salon Needs in Place

[upbeat music] Welcome to another episode of the Grow My Salon Business Podcast. I'm your host, Anthony Whitaker, and it's great to have you join us here today. If you think about any salon, regardless of where it is or how big it is, it's constantly evolving. It's on a sort of journey of evolution, and that journey can look very different for every salon. Someone might start out as a one-person salon suite or studio and stay that way for years because they love the control over their income, the freedom it gives them, and the lifestyle that they have. Whereas another salon might have five or six people on the team, a stable client base, minimal staff turnover, have a good profit, and have absolutely no desire to get any bigger. And then there are people like me. You see, I started small with three other team members, but I always had the intention to grow, and grow we did, to the point where I eventually had three salons, a school, and about 50 people on the team when I eventually sold the business. Other salon owners might have ambitions to grow into multiple locations, perhaps bringing in partners or even franchisees, and eventually go on to employ hundreds of people. The point I'm making here is that there isn't just one way or one path to follow, and there certainly isn't just one definition of success. Someone working in a suite by themselves might not be your idea of what you want from your career, but I know people who do exactly that and absolutely love the lifestyle that it gives them. And I know others who've tried it and decided very quickly that it really wasn't for them. Self-employed stylists don't necessarily make more money than employed stylists. Some do, others don't. So don't believe everything that you see on social media. But if they're happy and they're earning what they want to earn and their business gives them the lifestyle they want, then I totally understand and I respect their decision. Likewise, I know many salon owners with relatively small teams who are very profitable, happy, and have absolutely no desire to get any bigger, and there's nothing wrong with that either because success and happiness comes in many different shapes and sizes. And I think sometimes in business, we need reminding of that. There can be this assumption that bigger automatically means better, whether it's more salons or more employees or more revenue or more followers or more of anything. And somehow, if you're not constantly trying to make the business bigger, it means that you're lacking in ambition. Well, I don't believe that. Growth isn't the goal. What the goal is is to build the business that you actually want. That is the real goal. If the business you want three years from now is bigger than the business you have today, then you need to understand what that growth is going to demand of you because sustainable growth doesn't just happen. It needs to be planned for. So if growth is your goal, I want to talk about five things that I believe you need to put in place if that growth is going to be sustainable. So the first thing you need is a clear vision. Now, that's probably the most obvious. You need to know what it is that you're