29 March 2024

10 Steps to Destroy your Salon with International Business Consultant Alex Dobao

Alex Dobao is a beauty business whisperer, holding the secrets to success from a financial standpoint. Today we get deep into the concept of how bad business habits can cost you your business, and how to identify these in a salon owner. Below he writes his column to show how 10 issues can guarantee failure…

Advice and “miracle tricks” on how a salon can achieve success are commonplace chatter. It’s safe to say the grand majority of these e-articles have no basis, unless the author has reaped the benefits of a good business sow and is then sharing an autobiography of enlightenment. Personal analysis is my cup of tea: the methodology of business-oriented thinking and financial discipline, and a post script of honed habits which seek to increase the efficiency of an organization. The worlds of personal and professional blended.

Years ago I dedicated myself to the development of a system that would allow me to understand the functions of a business and the abilities and wishes of a person. With that, I wish to establish a custom-tailored plan, but for it to have success it needs 100% from the person or persons seeking change.

THE GREAT SECRET TO SUCCESS, is that there is no secret. Absolutely everything is based on will, laced with sacrifice and the compromise that the individual has to him or herself. There are many rules and fundamentals which can be harnessed to achieve the desired result. One, however, can be more productively practical in the short-term by absolutely avoiding known obstacles.

These ten issues which I share with you guarantee the failure of your salon. Simply follow them step-by-step to ensure you are a financial mess! If, however, you manage to avoid them, you may be very well on your way to proving this article very wrong!

10 secrets to ruining yourself:

1. DON’T HAVE A CLEAR VISION
Open your salon without understanding exactly what it is that you want to do. What your objective is – what service you wish to render and how you want to do it.

2. DON’T HAVE A BUSINESS PLAN
Don’t, under any circumstance, make any sort of budget or long-term financial calculation scrutinizing ever last detail, taking into account a “margin of error” in the first few months when you will undoubtedly be met with unexpected expenses, or the money takes its time coming in.

3. MAKE SURE YOUR PRICES ARE COMPLETELY OFF
In order to fail, ignore your cost of operation entirely, and don’t make a list of prices calculating your initial investment or your clients, who will desperately seek a better product and not necessarily the cheaper one. Go cheap and steal customers, based entirely on your own definition of whom you are.

4. BE LIKE EVERYONE ELSE
Why do you need to be different? Try the same thing everyone else is doing – it’s working for them, right?

5. DON’T, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE, HAVE A MARKETING PLAN
No need to advertise yourself. People will wind you. Your salon will become a huge success without paying any attention to what the “word on the street” is about you. There is no need for any publicity campaigns or merchandising opportunities for your clients.

6. YOUR EMPLOYEES KNOW WHAT THEY HAVE TO DO
There is little to no need for a clear, concise workflow plan. Written rules to help newcomer employees and a established procedural structure need not be part of your daily regime.

7. NOT KNOWING HOW TO MAKE PERSONNEL DECISIONS
No need to have individual responsibilities clearly lined up for your employees – you’re on your way to failure, right? During your interview with potential teammates, ignore any questions beyond their resume: don’t ask about their personal capacity, aptitude, and abilities as they are unnecessary to you.

8. A HEALTHY MIND IN A HEALTHY… WHATEVER!
It’s a business. There is no need to worry about your physiological or emotional health, much less that of your team, so that there is a nutritional environment for everyone to work in. All you need to do is work until you’re exhausted on the daily and put massive pressure on your team to meet incredible deadlines.

9. BUY NOW, WORRY ABOUT IT LATER
How much you spend monthly, or biweekly, on essentials for your salon, is completely irrelevant if you want to achieve maximum failure. Buy whenever you feel emotionally tempted to do so, and pay all that you can until you are out of money.

10. SPEND MORE THAN YOU HAVE! IT’LL COME BACK
Don’t sacrifice anything… you can have whatever you want! You’ve been working so hard… you deserve a vacation. As long as you have that credit card, charge away!

My personal guarantee is that if you follow these steps you will suffer greatly and you will quickly lose your hair salon. However, if you find yourself doing the exact opposite, you will have many opportunities to establish yourself as the name you seek to engrave.

It’s possible to become a millionaire stylist – but only if first you become a businessman!

Happy and productive day!

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