The dream clientele

Dream Client... Hmmm.

What does that actually mean??

Well Do you happen to remember the moment you know this was your chosen career? What did that feel like? Where you curious?... excited?.... A little nervous maybe?? What did your clients look like? Where they models on the runway? or funky hipsters on "the scene"?

Or maybe it was your dream to help cancer patients look and feel better about themselves during a tough time in their lives? whatever it was, do you still feel that way? Do you really get to live your dream every day or are you living the Nightmare.

Wherever you are in your career its always nice to check in and make sure the path that you are on is the right path..

What are some things that we can do to take back the dream ?

Everything in your life once began as a thought.

Take a look at your car, your house, your significant other, your career or even your clientele. It may seem a little metaphysical but one of the first things that your gonna want to do is...

1. Begin to visualize your dream client (you already have some of them in your life)

• what do they look like
• how old are they
• what is there personal style
• what color is their hair or texture
• what kind of car do they drive
• where do they socialize
• how much money do they make
• how often do they receive maintenance on their hair, skin or nails
• what books do they read
• how do they like to be spoken to
• what kind of things do they find important

You want to come up with any and every detail that may be relevant to them wanting to spend their time and money with you. And why do they want to take your recommendations on their image ?...

Now... sit down and make this list, it's the first step in unlocking the door to re-living your dream career!!

Don't wait!!

Go now!!

Go ahead... Ill wait here...

Well?.. what did ya learn?

Is that what 80% or your existing clientele look like?

If not we have some more work to do..

It's time to take some personal responsibility for the business that you have created.

You hear it all of the time:

"My clients will not let me do the fun stuff on their hair"

"They always want the same thing"

"My clients are not adventurous, there conservative."

And then there is my personal favorite:

"My clients are cheap, they won't buy that stuff !!"

Whatever our clientele looks like, at some point we are responsible for creating it.

We all have heard the saying "What we permit, We promote !"

The truth is your clients come to you because they trust your judgment about their self image. We need to understand that our clients are expecting us to help take their ideas to the next level. It's our job to suggest what they have not envisioned!

We need to begin to talk with our clients about something we have not talked about for a long time... their hair, skin and nails!

We need to talk about their desired look and feel.

So what kind of business are you committed to having?? This brings us to our next step..

Now we need to take another look in the mirror.

2. How much does our desired clientele match the professional that we are being right now

• do we wear the looks that we are promoting Or at least talk about them
• do you go to the places your dream clients hang out at
• do you offer new options to every client every time
• if you where that perfect client, would you let you do your hair?
• do you attend regular networking events where your dream clients hang out
• do you belong or support the same charities that they do
• do you consistently attend or teach educational events to better your craft

You should be beginning to see that until you become the stylist, nail tech, or esthetician of your dreams why would we expect anyone else to want to come and see us?

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Attitude.. the key to success behind the chair

Well, I don't know about you but it took a week for me to shake off the holidays and things are starting to feel normal again. And as the hangover of negativeness in the media seems to be somewhat calming down. I'm starting to remember a time when Hairdressers and other Salon Professionals used to genuinely enjoy what we do for a living every day
(yes I know you still love it, but I mean have fun at it too).

So now that we have another chance at another year, lets choose to prosper by "loving what we do every day"!!
Recently I was speaking to a group of about 200 Salon Professionals and the lecture was about strategies to grow referral business. Just then something became more obvious than ever.
Most of the people in the room where never going to go home and use any of our suggestions, and the ones that actually do have the willingness, don't really need us anyway.
What I realized was winning salon professionals have a winning attitude. It hit me like a ton of bricks!!
Some of the most successful salon professionals in the world are not necessarily the best! So, whats the difference?? Attitude!!

Attitude:
A mental state involving feelings and values
A position of the body or manner of carrying oneself.

Hmmm, Feelings and Values. Let me ask you, how are you feeling about your business or your clients or yourself?

Are you valuing every opportunity for what it's worth?

Are you valuing yourself ??

Are you valuing your time ?

Are you just coming into work day in and day out and being to busy to set some time aside to make real money !?!

Too busy to set some real career and financial goals ?

Too busy to decide what you want your clientele to look like and what actions you need to take to make that reality ?

Most salon professionals bought the dream, and live the nightmare!
Some salon professionals are having the time of their lives these past couple of years, while most where wondering where have all of my clients gone??
Time after time the person with the right attitude will win business over the one who piss and moan about how bad things are!!

So ask yourself, How do I feel about my business? and be honest!! What kind of experience have I been giving my clients?

Because this year clients are choosing to spend their time and money in places where they feel appreciated. They want to go to the hairdresser, nail tech, massage therapist that says I LOVE MY CAREER!! Is that you?!?! You have to make the choice!

Thank You so much for your time and reading this blog..

In my next blog we will take a look at some key actions that you can take to accelerate the growth and development of your dream clientele!!

The iBeautify Stylist Notebook can help you earn more money behind the chair, check it out!
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stylist consultation

The Consultation:


1. First part of Visit comes in the greeting of the guest. 56% of our communication comes from our body language and our NON VERBAL SKILLS. This is our look, smile, handshake, personal hygiene, professional image, confident outward appearance and our attitude. ( for this first part to take some of the work off of you, you might ask the group to take 1 minute to talk among themselves and come up with all of the things that make a Great first impression and greeting.)

Also the intention of the greeting is to LOWER anxiety and RAISE trust!! FAST.

2. When we finally get to the chair we want to begin the consult by using natural bonding and rapport builders.
A. Bonding- The building of a close interpersonal relationship,, personal Attachment. Or a mutual interactive process.
To build bonds we can simply ask things like.. Where are you from? How did you hear about the salon? Who referred you to see me? Where do you work? Where did you go to school? These are just things that we can start to build in common so the guest can see that we are like them. (people like to do business with people who are like themselves)

B. Rapport- Relationship, especially one of mutual trust or emotional it's affinity Accord or fellowship. a little different than bonding it's where we set up the "rules" of the visit. This is where we may say to the person " Julie, is it ok if i ask you a few questions about your hair before we get started." Or if the visit is with an existing client that we already have a relationship with we could say something like " Samantha, I know it's been a while since we have checked in with you about updating your look.. Is it ok for me to ask you a few questions?

With regards to rapport there are a lot of clients that we have been working with for a long time that a long time ago we stopped talking about there hair and the visit turned more social. So, to steer the conversations back more about their hair we need to start to ask them a new set of questions and start doing something that we also stopped doing a long time ago.... Listen......We need to start to listen again!!! So When we begin to ask questions.. and we want a new result we need to listen t all of the clients responses before we give our ideas and recommendations.

Also when consulting sit face to face with the person, without draping the person until after the consult is finished. People feel less comfortable with a cape or smock on. this sometimes keeps the person from sharing info with you.

3. Types of questions to ask.. Haves and wants questions EX; What are some things that you like about your hair right now and what are some qualities you would want to have more of?.... or What are some things that your not enjoying about your hair right now.. What are you liking about your haircolor,, what colours would you like to have more in your hair? What problems are you having styling your hair at home? What are some other ways you would like to style your hair at home of for going out? After our questions have been asked then it is time to repeat back or paraphrase to them what you heard from them.

It sounds something like.. So you like your fringe a little longer but you feel like your hair is too flat on the top. If you could you would have lighter hair but you do not want too much maintenance. You like the length but you wish your hair could have more shine.



Check out our web app and iPhone app to help stylists make more money behind the chair:
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Things that salon professionals need to know

Ok The next thing we need to take a serious look at is our SAVINGS.
For some of us this is a four letter word!!
Or it's like "I'm in my early twenties what do I have to worry about that for"?
Well lets just say TIME has a very strong effect on the growth of MONEY.


You see, everyone knows that money deposited in a savings account will earn interest. because this is a universal fact, it is best for us to save today rather than next year or next decade.. So no matter how tight money fact's will prove that the money you earn today is worth far more than the money you will earn ten years from now.

Here is a simple example. Your savings account earns a 5% interest rate, $100 dollar investment today will be worth $105 next year (100 multiplied by 1.05). Conversely, 100 received in one year is only worth 95.24 today (100 divided by 1.05), assuming a 5% interest rate.

Now if you are a salon professional, you have an enormous amount of creativity. So you can come up with more exciting examples on your own!I think you get the point!! START SAVING TODAY!

Note: One of the easiest ways to "find" money to start saving is out of your tip income. If this is a new habit start with an envelope and put your first 5$ or 10$ tip per day in and do not touch it!! I challenge you to try this for a month and see how fast it will start to snowball!

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money management for hairdressers

All right, all right. So another year has passed you by and your thinking" this year, I'm gonna do it!!" Well, I ask you. What exactly is it that your gonna do?? If you are one of the few who do actually have an answer... Just how the heck do you plan to do it?!?! So if you are a hairdresser, nail tech, massage therapist or aesthetician and your hoping to look better in the pocket book area at the end or 2010 than you are right now, read on..

Traveling the country and dealing with hairdressers one of the things that has proven itself to be a harsh reality is that most people in our business could so easily achieve their financial goals. However most do not. This is true for two simple reasons. Number one reason; They do not know how much they want to make in the first place. Number two reason; they have no plan at all on how to achieve their goal.


First of all there are only 4 things that we can actually do with money. We can Make Money, Save Money, Grow Money and of course SPEND MONEY. Most people do not read a blog about how to spend money so let's focus on the first two for now.. first of all How much $ do you want to make this year?? There are just two things that you need to consider when answering this question. 1. how much dose it cost you to live for a year. And 2. how much would you like to have left over after that (Which is the saving part).

#1. How much dose it cost me to live.. Make a list of all of your monthly expenses.

A. Rent or mortgage
B. Car maintenance, and insurance

C. Consumer debt or credit cards
D. Savings long term and short term
E. Electric and Utilities
F. Child care ( and all that comes with that)
G. Clothing
H. Groceries
I. Entertainment
J. Telephone and Internet
K Etc. etc. etc.

Now add those all together and come up with the total.

Let's say that all of your monthly expenses added up to $ 3,750
Next we are going to take that monthly expenses total and multiply it by 12. (because there are 12 months in a year)
SO, 3,750 * 12= 45,000

There we have it! An accurate number of how much you would need to make this year if your current monthly expenses are $3,750.

Now If you are a salon professional who works on a commission basis of let's say 50% (to make the numbers easy your commission may be higher or lower in this case you would adjust the numbers to fit your personal situation) we would take your monthly Desired income and multiply it by 2 ( because at 50% you take home 1/2 of what you take in).

3,750 * 2 = 7,500 this gives our before taxes bring in income it would take for us to achieve our desired income.

An easy way to for us to figure taxes is to "guesstimate" that taxes are 30% if our "bring home income". So again take your desired monthly income ( which for the example is 3,750) and multiply X .3 and we will come up with a good estimation of taxes.

3,750 x .3 = $1125 So $1125 would be your estimated tax with hold. Let's now add this with your desired monthly "take in" income and see what we come up with. This will give us a grand total of what we would actually need to produce behind the chair to achieve our financial goal.

7,500 + 1125 = $8,625 This is a very realistic $ amount that it will take in to cover your monthly expenses. Dose this make sense?


* remember the difference between "take in" and "take home" can be very different. However they are both VERY IMPORTANT numbers for you to have great awareness about!

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