Happy New Year!

It's a time to reflect on and celebrate your company's successes and milestones in 2022 — no matter how big or small.

But it's also time to buckle down and start taking action on your plans and aspirations for your company moving forward.

For many salon/spa/medspa owners, those aspirations include expanding their physical spaces, increasing profits, and getting more new business in the front door.

But for those who own employee-based companies, another important detail demands your attention throughout the coming year: How will you insulate your company, employees, and customer base from the lure of booth rental and suites?

It’s always been our opinion that the traditional salon/spa business model, built on commission and individual clientele building, is the root cause of the industry’s shift to the independent mindset.

And that’s precisely the reason that Strategies has been relentlessly teaching and coaching our Team-Based Business Model for over 29 years. It builds viable, sustainable, systematized, profitable, culture-based salons and spas.

As we move into a New Year, we offer you ten rock-solid New Year’s Resolutions that all employee-based owners absolutely must embrace and live every day:

1. Extraordinary Customer Service: The single most significant advantage employee-based salons/spas have over rental and suites is the ability to offer the highest level of orchestrated customer service. By “orchestrated,” I mean team based, systematized, structured, coordinated, vision-driven customer service being led with purpose and passion. It’s time for salons and spas to start playing the customer service game with the same relentless passion and consistency as Ritz Carlton, Nordstrom and other greats. It’s time for employee-based salons/spas to capitalize on the customer service advantage they’ve always had.
2. Dial in your Team-Based Culture: Showing up on time and helping others out is simply being responsible and courteous. A Team-Based Culture functions at the highest level to deliver coordinated excellence and achieve a common goal. Anything less is “I/me/mine” thinking. It’s time for employee-base salons/spas to dial in their Team-Based Cultures to deliver the absolute best customer service experiences — and to achieve company goals.
3. Focus on Behaviors … not just numbers: You can pound away at the numbers you need to see individuals and your team achieve. All you’ll do is create more frustration and have your team thinking “you’re all about the numbers.” Numbers are measurements that are the result of thinking and behavior. Get the thinking and behaviors right and the numbers will take care of themselves. It’s time for employee-based salon/spa owners to embrace the finer points of leadership by locking in the right behaviors.
4. Build an Internal Training Program: Internal Training Programs that create the collective skills and abilities to represent your brand don’t come in a box. Yes, it’s a big undertaking, but in a service/skill business, it is a non-negotiable. It’s time for employee-based salons/spas to build and maintain a unique brand by building your own unique Internal Training Program. (Strategies can help: Schedule a free strategy session here and we'll show you how.)
   
    
5. Polish up your salon/spa vision: Remember how clear your vision was when you started your salon/spa? Like water methodically carved out the Grand Canyon, the daily grind of leading and growing a business can cause your once clear vision to become dusty, rusty and to drift. Teams need a vision to keep them engaged and pushing forward. Owners need a vision that continues to inspire them. It’s time for employee-based salon/spa owners to reconnect with their vision and enhance it so it stays relevant and ahead of the competition.
6. Take your Leadership abilities to a higher level: Hey owners, your leadership skills are always a work in progress. There’s always more to learn and master when leading, inspiring and holding individuals/team accountable to achieve great things. It’s time for employee-based salon/spa owners to acquire the knowledge and skills to lead at a higher level.
7. Offer careers — not just a place to do “their” clients: When a salon/spa owner says, “They’ll just leave in three years anyway,” the problem is the owner’s thinking, NOT a perceived industry trend. If your salon/spa leans ever so slightly to “hire them, build them, hope they don’t leave,” your business model needs an overhaul. Employee retention is about providing a career path. Employees need to be challenged, coached and see a future beyond how full their column on the appointment book is. It’s time for employee-based salons/spas to stop blaming schools, rental and suites for turnover by addressing what’s missing in the career opportunities you offer.
8. Hiring decisions based on Productivity Rate: At Strategies, we’re seeing too many salons/spas with Productivity Rates well below 70%. Having 30% or more of your salable payroll hours go unsold is a major “red flag” problem. For years, commission pay made it easy to overstaff. FACT: Over staffing squanders payroll dollars and contaminates cultures by creating frustration and dissension. It’s time for employee-based salons/spas to use their Productivity Rate as an indicator for hiring decisions.
9. Be financially fanatical: This doesn’t mean leadership by numbers. It means for a salon/spa business to be profitable, it must be profitable by design. It means understanding how to manage payroll costs, expenses, buying decisions and debt, and how they impact your Balance Sheet. FACT: Your salon/spa can be busy as hell and be financially insolvent. Your Profit & Loss Statement and Balance Sheet are your business scorecards. It’s time for employee-based salon/spa owners to become financially fanatical. Learn how at the Strategies Incubator Seminar.
10. Be proud of your employee-based salon/spa: Yes, employees can drive you crazy. Yes, you’ll hire another problem employee. Yes, there is stress to owning a business. Likewise, building a team that embraces your vision and works in unison to be the best and to win is an owner’s reward for a leadership job well done. Seeing a raw talent learn, grow, earn and mature as a valued member of your team is an owner’s reward for a leadership job well done. Building a brand that rivals your competition is an owner’s reward for a leadership job well done. It’s time for employee-based salon/spa owners to stand up and be proud.

These ten New Year’s Resolutions go beyond mere words. They represent the essence and strategic advantage of being the owner of an employee-based salon/spa today and in the future.

Seize the amazing opportunities that exist for you in the New Year by embedding each and every resolution into how you lead, build and grow your company.