Phorest FM Episode 105: Ronan Perceval & Nuala Maguire On How Rebooking SMS Prompts Help Retain An Extra 6% Clients

Killian Vigna: Welcome to the Phorest FM podcast, episode 105. I’m Killian Vigna.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: And I’m Zoe Belisle Springer. This week, we’re joined by Phorest CEO Ronan Perceval and Phorest Product Data Analyst Nuala Maguire to discuss getting your clients back in, but this time without the sales pitch.

Killian Vigna: So grab yourself a cup of coffee, sit back, relax, and join us weekly for all your salon’s business and marketing needs. Good morning, Zoe.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Good morning, Killian. You’re out of breath!

Killian Vigna: I’m out of breath. I just ran up and down three flights of stairs to set the guys up in their studio, and I am really paying for it. I need to get back in shape.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: You definitely do! I thought you were going to run a marathon this year or something!

Killian Vigna: I’m slightly sweating as well, to be honest! So yeah, Zoe, first episode back after the Digital Media Awards. What a great night. We were up for three nominations: best creative, best native content, #salonretailweek and best podcast!

Zoe Belisle-Springer: It’s funny you did the drum roll for the best podcast because the nomination that resulted in a silver medal was actually the Salon Retail Week.

Killian Vigna: Yeah, it was. Fair play to Chris and the marketing team. They did phenomenal there because there was serious competition all night, so it was so nice, so good to see another second-place comeback this year.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah, and to me, the most important thing, and I’ve mentioned this on the live, because you were pretty much streaming the whole event for us online through Instagram with me, and it was a very new thing for both of us. We never really go live, guys. But what was really great was that it showed the impact that we had on the industry we work in, and that was the most important thing for me. And yeah, I suppose talking about new things, you’ve been dying… I know you’ve been dying… You’ve mentioned this so many times since the start of the year. You’ve been dying to talk about what each of us has been reading, so before, current. And as many of you know, Phorest is all about upskilling, learning, and we’ll often get books dropped onto our desks. I know Johannes gets a lot of them anyways.

So, Killian, tell me what’s the last book you’ve read, and what are you reading now?

Killian Vigna: So the last book I read was “Can’t Hurt Me” by David Goggins. For anyone that doesn’t know who David Goggins is, he was a Navy SEAL. He was an Army Ranger, but he also does ultramarathons, and this guy… his mindset is just insane. We talk about stoicism. We’ve talked about it a few times. This guy is genuinely the daily stoic. There is nothing that can hurt him. Everything to him is a battle, and he just gets through it. He’s phenomenal, so I actually listened to the audiobooks, because I’m too lazy to sit down and read a book, and it was done as a podcast format, so a guy would read chapters out of his book. Then, they’d chat a little bit about it. Really good, 13 hours long, but I recommend it.

So what have I moved on to? This is one that I’ve been recommended a few times. I just only finally now getting around to it: “Shoe Dog: A Memoir” by the Creator of Nike, Phil Knight, and it’s quite interesting. It’s not him doing the voiceover of it now, it’s someone else, but just the way… I’m only starting this, so I’m only about two chapters in, but he just seems so kind of relaxed and chilled about everything. Maybe I’m picking it up wrong, but yeah, really, really interesting so far. So that’s what my books are. What books are you listening to, Zoe, or reading? Sorry!

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah. I don’t really listen to books much, to be honest. I tend to retain the information better if I read them, so my goal is to read at least one a month. In Jan, I read “The Coaching Habit,” which was one recommended from the guys in Phorest, and it was absolutely… It was such an easy and great read. It’s all about how to become better at coaching people. I mean, the title kind of gives it all away. And then currently, I’m reading… I’m halfway through “Good Strategy, Bad Strategy,” which is one of Paddy Monaghan’s favourite books ever. So yeah, super interesting. If any of you guys are on Twitter, this is kind of why I use Twitter. That’s the only reason, kind of, why I use it, and I just kind of summarise, try to open a discussion around certain concepts, and it helps me retain the information more, but it also is a great opportunity to chat to whoever wants to have a chat about it, so.

Killian Vigna: Look at you plugging your Twitter, but yeah. “Coaching Habit,” really good book. Read that as well. “Good Strategy, Bad Strategy,” it’s a lot of information.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: It is!

Killian Vigna: I’ve tried to read that one a few times, so I’ll give that another shot. But yes, without further ado, let’s jump straight into the show, so… Oh, just before we do, if anyone’s reading any books out there that they want to share, please do #phorestfm on Twitter! But, I just kind of hope by us setting our goals here every week, we get to share the knowledge of some books that we’re listening to in Phorest and to share with everyone. So yeah, anyway, today’s show. I’m getting sidetracked here.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Today’s show. Yeah, it’s all about SMS and rebooking. Taking out the awkwardness of asking clients to rebook.

Introducing CEO Ronan Perceval & Product Data Analyst Nuala Maguire [05:00]

Killian Vigna: So without further ado, we’d like to welcome… Actually, we’ve had Ronan a few times here before, but for the first time ever, welcome Nuala Maguire!

Nuala Maguire: Thank you, thank you. Delighted to be here!

Zoe Belisle-Springer: It’s great to have you guys. Welcome, Ronan!

Ronan Perceval: Yeah. Welcome, guys.

Killian Vigna: So guys, let’s kick it off with yourselves. What books have you just finished, and what books are you reading now? Let’s get you involved!

Ronan Perceval: Yeah, so the book I just finished was something called “The Amazon Way,” which is a really short book. It’s only about 100 pages, and it’s 12 chapters. In each chapter, it’s sort of something that they do in Amazon that makes that company work incredibly well and makes it so innovate and able to scale to half a million employees and still actually not be really bureaucratic. So I think there are loads of lessons in there, and I really enjoyed that. Some brilliant things. And one of the things in there was that when you’re doing a new idea, you do this six-pager about it, rather than doing a PowerPoint presentation, and write out exactly what you’re going to do, which is something that we’ve implemented here in Phorest. And it’s a hard thing to kind of start doing, but it’s really effective.

And the book I’m reading at the moment is “I Used to be a Reluctant Environmentalist” by a guy called Paul Kingsnorth, and he used to be this big environmental campaigner, and he’s just really pissed off at the world and about the environment and everything like that. And it’s a really motivating book. I know it sounds kind of depressing, but it’s also really motivating about doing something for the environment. It’s something that I think everyone might know that I’m kind of at a bit of a buzz about at the moment is how Phorest can have more of an impact, positive impact on the environment. And so if people are wondering where that buzz has come from, it’s from this book I’m reading at the moment.

Killian Vigna: That’s why we don’t have lights on in the building anymore. Everyone goes around feeling the handrail.

Ronan Perceval: There’ll be a lot more [inaudible 00:06:52] for that but environmentalists who are listening, we’re going to be doing a… there was a big survey went out there last week, we got like 200 responses on it. That’s been really helpful already kind of guiding us, but we’re going to be doing a lot of stuff around helping make Phorest carbon neutral and things like that so looking forward to telling people about that.

Killian Vigna: Delighted to see more about that, yeah!

Zoe Belisle-Springer: What about yourself, Nuala?

Nuala Maguire: Yeah, so I’m in the last few months of a six-year degree in computer science that I’m doing so all of my reading has been and shall be for the next four-months, peer-review journal articles and research papers on agile methodologies and technology research so thrilling really. Gripping!

Zoe Belisle-Springer: You put it that way, but I know you actually love it.

Nuala Maguire: I love it, but I’m very aware I’m in the minority!

Killian Vigna: It’s actually funny you say that because when we were chatting before this episode, we said, “Oh yeah, we’ll ask Nuala and Ronan.” And I looked at Zoe, and I said, “Nuala’s in college, you just know what she’s going to answer. It’s going to be some thesis or something.” So yeah, pretty much nailed it.

So Nuala, we mentioned you’re a Product Data Analyst. Other than crunching numbers and drawing up pretty graphs, what exactly is a Product Data Analyst? And more importantly, what is it for Phorest?

Nuala Maguire: So I can only really speak to what it is in Phorest, it’s the only place that I’ve done this role, and I think maybe the way we do things is very tailored towards the kind of company that we are and the culture and the values that we have because what I do… Because we’re in a company that’s so innovative and we have all these new features that are coming out all the time, what I’m doing changes quite rapidly on a day-to-day basis. So there’ll be some days where we’re looking to track a new feature that we released, and the method of tracking that might be making sure that our salons are retaining more clients.

And the next week, the feature will be released, the goal, the metric for that, that we’re looking to measure might be to make sure that we’re helping our salons retain their staff or increase their average bill or save time doing certain tasks. So it’s very varied, it’s a very varied role, and there’s a lot of different hats you end up wearing.

Developing features based on data insights [08:54]

Killian Vigna: So we’re saying… Basically, this episode is taking the awkwardness out of asking clients to rebook. You do the data around when a new feature is released but are you involved in kind of identifying where we can come up with new features, like identifying problems?

Nuala Maguire: Yep, absolutely. So there’s two kind of parts to the role. The first that I talked about earlier is that kind of tracking feature when stuff’s out there in the wild, but before that, we do a lot of kind of audits on the features that we already have. So it lets us identify areas where there might be issues, where clients may not be aware of how a particular feature works or that it’s there in the system and kind of helping the uptake on that. And it also lets us identify the areas that we’re doing really, really well in. And then by combining all that information, we can focus on the areas that we want to improve on or change aspects of.
So, yeah, definitely most of the information that we would get that helps us decide what new features we’re going to build, that comes from our clients, that comes from speaking with our clients and getting that feedback in. And my role then is just kind of pull the numbers that back that up.

The real issue with salon and spa rebooking [10:00]

Zoe Belisle-Springer: So for years, Ronan you wrote an article or a letter to the industry about rebooking and SMS recently. It was published on the Blog. And you were saying, for years Phorest has been trying to solve the issue of rebooking. Do you think we’ve actually finally cracked the code?

Ronan Perceval: Well I think if we had actually solved it, then every single salon in the world would just have to have Phorest because it makes [crosstalk 00:10:26] that make a big difference to it, like a significant difference. So Nuala’s pulled out some stats. There’s two that jump out at me. Can I discuss them?

Nuala Maguire: Oh, of course, yeah, yeah!

Ronan Perceval: So there’s two big stats that she’s found, which I think even I like this to an even bigger degree… So, somebody just turned off the light in the room…

Killian Vigna: The guys are sitting in a room in pitch black now at the moment. See, this is Ronan turning Phorest green!

Ronan Perceval: Yeah, so basically the two big stats are this. Number one, that salons… On our system, there are over 5,000 salons on the Phorest platform. Salons that get a rebooking done before the client books in for their next appointment, whether that’s the day before or turns up for their next appointment. Salons that get a rebooking, either on the day they leave or in the short time after that, 71% of those stay with the salon for a long time. Isn’t that what the stat is?

Nuala Maguire: Yeah, that 71% comes from… If you have a client who’s walking out the door after their appointment, if they already have an appointment booked in when they’re leaving; so if they’re rebooked six months down the line, you’ve got a 70% chance that they’re still going to be a client with you.

Ronan Perceval: But if you don’t have that booking rebooked before they leave, it drops from 70% to 35%.

Killian Vigna: Wow!

Zoe Belisle-Springer: That’s like a 50% drop.

Ronan Perceval: Yeah, yeah.

Killian Vigna: That’s insane. So is this an industry-standard or is this just across all Phorest systems that you’re pulling this from?

Nuala Maguire: This was a randomised sample that we did of our clients, so we’re looking at information from July 2018. We took a sample of clients who’d been with us for at least six months by that point, just to allow for anyone to… We didn’t want anyone in there that was kind of new to the system and hadn’t maybe set up rebooking for that long. This was people who had been using it for a while versus people who’d been with us for a while but not using it. So yeah, presumably if you’re not… Because other parts of Phorest help with your client retention, presumably if you’re not using Phorest, that 35% chance is lower again.

Killian Vigna: That is absolutely insane.

Ronan Perceval: Yeah, so that’s basically… We know now that you’re twice as likely to retain a client if you rebook them or prebook them.

Nuala Maguire: And you’re twice as likely but high stats as well, it’s not like 10% or 20%. If I said, “You’ve got a 35% of winning the Lotto.” You’d go “Nah,” but if I said, “You’ve got a 70% chance,” you’d probably buy a ticket.

Ronan Perceval: Yeah, yeah, it’s very high. So that’s a big stat, and that’s a stat now I think we’re going to be sharing with a lot of people just to really knock this home. Because the top salons in my experience, the salons that do really well, they really focus on rebooking. It’s something that I put in the letter. It’s something that… I’ve spent years visiting salons, I’ve worked in salons as a receptionist, so I know… I knew that was true, but I didn’t realise how much it was true until Nuala pulled out that data, so that was really interesting.

The Predictive SMS Rebooking feature [13:19]

Ronan Perceval: And then the other stat, so with the Rebooking [feature]… What we’ve done with the Rebooking [feature] is you used to just ask you the next day after your appointment to rebook and what we did was, we found that it wasn’t that effective because if they didn’t rebook on the day, why would they rebook the following day. So we built this algorithm that basically guesses to a really high likelihood of success when a person is likely to book their next appointment anywhere and to reach them with a text message just before that happens.

So when people are in the mindset of booking their next appointment, they’ll get a message from the salon that they’re going to which makes them more likely then to rebook with that salon rather than rebooking with another salon, if that makes sense.

Killian Vigna: So this SMS is essentially preempting when they would usually contact a salon to book as opposed to x number of days?

Ronan Perceval: Yeah and this is the option now we’re turning on as default for everyone who’s using this feature. So basically, Zoe you go into the salon. I should ask you… If I’m a really good salon right, I should ask you before you leave and Phorest prompts you to do this anyway, but I should say, “Zoe, can I book you in for your next appointment?” Okay, so we’re taking… Salons still need to do that because the ones that do that get the best results, right? You should still do that, but there are people then that don’t want to rebook there and then, okay, and then there are also salons that don’t ask, okay. So that’s, to be honest, that covers the vast majority of people. So what do we do with those people? So Phorest has this feature called Rebooking which sends them a text, used to send them a text the next day, but it didn’t have a massive conversion rate, it was something like one and a half per cent or something like that.

What we’ve done now is, is Zoe comes in. She’s not asked to rebook, she leaves. Three or four weeks go by, she’s just about to start thinking about right I need to go back to the salon, boom she gets a text on her phone. “Hey Zoe, here’s some slots for you with Mikey your stylist” or whoever it is. And then she can click on that and book in. And what we’re seeing on the stats on this are incredibly better than what was there before. What are you seeing now, Nuala?

Nuala Maguire: Yeah, so we’d improved it from that kind of 2% just work we were doing around rebooking anyway. But it’s now three times more likely that someones’ going to rebook if you send them this kind of predicted time text. Because I know for me personally, the place where I go to get my hair done, I won’t go there the same day every week.

Sometimes it will be two weeks, and sometimes it will be three because I’m just being run into the ground by my CEO here, he’s like more stats, more stats, basically, I’m just coming out with figures.

Ah, we’re back!

Zoe Belisle-Springer: The lights are back on!

Killian Vigna: I texted [inaudible 00:16:12] guys just beforehand, I was like, “Someone turn that light on.”

Nuala Maguire: That was with the [inaudible 00:16:15] App though right?

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Just a little in advance.

Nuala Maguire: When I go in, I don’t know the next time I’m going to be free to go back to book so, and you can’t rebook me back in on the spot, even if you asked and threatened me at that point. What would be very, very good for me, if I got that text then three weeks later and I’d say, “Oh yeah, yeah I’m about due for that.” So it’s another element to just kind of building up that relationship and that trust with your client as well.

Ronan Perceval: So we were looking at 2% on the next day moving to 6%, which is three times…

Nuala Maguire: Ah no, we’ve actually managed to increase it from the 2% over the last few months of work that we were doing up to kind of four and five or five. And the new one now is 14, 15%.

Ronan Perceval: 15%? Wow, okay so that’s major jump there.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: So quick question then. I’m a bit the same, I don’t always go back in on the same day or same two, three weeks, a month maybe. How does this new predictive SMS rebooking text work? Is it based on my personal data through Phorest, is it analysing the patterns at which time I’m actually contacting the salon?

Nuala Maguire: Yeah.

Ronan Perceval: Yeah, yeah.

Nuala Maguire: It 100% is. So I can’t tell you the exact details of the algorithm, trade secret and all that. So it absolutely works off your booking cycle, so the more times you’ve been into the salon, where you’re using Phorest; obviously, we’ve a bigger picture, and we can get more and more accurate as to when you’re likely to book. But even for clients who’ve only been in kind of once or twice, we can still use the industry knowledge that we have as well to kind of…

Ronan Perceval: So for example, we know if it’s a facial or if it’s a haircut or it’s a colour based on the type of service you’re having. You’ve only been in once, we’ll have a pretty good idea when you’re next due based on the [inaudible 00:18:08], so there’s that element too so it’s using lots of different data sources and bring it together and that’s… Their magic formula obviously is a secret, but yeah it’s working better and better. I think that was what was amazing, that the percentage is getting higher as more data is fed into it which is incredible for salon owners to have access to.
Nuala Maguire: The other really interesting thing about it is because we’re doing it based on an individuals booking cycle rather than just anyone the next day, if they don’t have an appointment, sending it out to them means you’re actually sending less SMS but getting a better return on what you are sending.

Killian Vigna: So if I’m a Phorest client, I’m sitting here, and you’re talking about rebooking SMS, but then I look at my system, and I see I have Client ReConnect. Is that not similar?

Nuala Maguire: It’s very similar, they go hand in hand almost. I think you mentioned the word preemptive earlier, which is the important distinction there between the two. So with ReConnect, I look at your actual appointment visits, but it only flags you up as a client in the reconnect system once you’re already outside of that booking cycle. So you’ve fallen away as a client at that point. The difference with the rebooking SMS is that we’re reaching out to you before you would be due to book. So it’s that preemptive –

Ronan Perceval: Before you’ve gone to another salon, basically?

Nuala Maguire: Yeah.

Killian Vigna: Ah, that’s clever! So you’ve got the preempt and then you’ve got the at-risk clients nearly.

Ronan Perceval: If you rebook under the preempt, then you’re not going to get ReConnect. It’s not like they clash with each other.

Nuala Maguire: No, they really do compliment each other I think in that sense. So if I am someone who… Let’s say I’m due to book in, in the net few days, to go back into the salon. And for whatever reason, I haven’t so I’m going to get my Rebooking SMS and hopefully, ideally at that point and data shows that I am likely to rebook then. But if for whatever reason I don’t, I’m busy, things have happened, I’m locked in the basement again.

Killian Vigna: That’s me.

Nuala Maguire: Could be a week later. A couple of weeks later, I’m going to get a different message from the system. So this one is less, hey we know you’re due to come back, we’re making it easy for you to do it. This one is more you’re outside of the cycle, you’ve dropped away, we’re concerned, so it’s wooing someone back after they’ve already broken up with you rather than promising to change to keep them essentially.

Killian Vigna: Yeah, yeah, it’s kind of… One of our trainers is doing a presentation on the SA, and one way of thinking of it was, do you know the way sometimes when you leave school and when you leave college, you’ve got that friend that you’re always really friendly with but you just kind of lost touch and you’re like, if I text them we’d be back buddies again, or you’re waiting for their text. It’s just waiting for that text to go, “Oh yeah.” So that rebooking text goes out, the client hasn’t been to your salon six weeks, they’ve nearly forgotten about you, and then they see that text and the conversations back up again. It’s like you never even stopped talking!

Nuala Maguire: That’s it, that’s it! Rather than when they send you the text, and you ignore it for a couple of months, and then you feel bad because they were deteriorated a bit, that’s when you’re going to get that ReConnect text.

Case studies and results [21:09]

Zoe Belisle-Springer: That’s a perfect analogy, yeah. So listen, guys, I have seen… I know there are quite a few results from this already. One of our clients in Sutherlands invested, I think it was, €17.50 and got back over a grand in revenue from Rebooking. Do we have anymore case studies or results from this new release?

Nuala Maguire: Yeah I could bore everyone with stats and stats and stats and the numbers stop being meaningful at some point, so I had a chat with the lovely Niamh, who’s responsible for setting up all these trials for the Rebooking SMS, and she was saying that for just two weeks in February, we got over 400 clients who were on the [inaudible 00:21:55] in February. They’ve sent roughly around… Just under €2,000 worth of SMS and the appointments that would have been booked as a result of that €2,000 spend is €93,000.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Wow. That’s split among 400 salons, right?

Nuala Maguire: 440, I think it was.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah, that’s not one salon spending two grand worth on SMS.

Nuala Maguire: No, that’s a whole entire group of 440 salons.

Killian Vigna: That’s mental. I think we need to retitle this episode, Zoe. So it’s called “Taking the Awkwardness out of Asking Your Clients to Rebook,” but I think we need to throw one of those stats in, even the 70% stat where if you were to rebook before you left your salon, you’re 70% more likely to come back. And then with the revenue right there, yeah I think we need to rethink this title.

Getting set up with the Predictive SMS Rebooking feature [22:42]

Zoe Belisle-Springer: So after throwing all these stats in, I’m assuming if there are any Phorest listeners here, they’re going to want to know how they set this up. How can we get them set up on the Predictive SMS Rebooking feature?

Ronan Perceval: So you can do it yourself in the system; if you just click on contact support and the green button on Phorest, I think Help Juice comes up and you just type in Rebooking SMS into that. It will show you the instructions on what you need to do. Or even better is just to reach out on contact support, just type in you’d like someone to ring you back on it and one of the guys in Grow, like Niamh Greaney will ring you back and sort it out for you.

Killian Vigna: It actually… I’m just looking at the Help Juice, and it actually looks very, very simple to set up. You just go to marketing.

Nuala Maguire: If you have questions or anything, you want to talk to someone absolutely give us a call. It is kind of a three-step process just to –

Ronan Perceval: Three clicks, yeah.

Nuala Maguire: – set it up yourself.

Killian Vigna: Marketing, reminders, Rebooking SMS, sending options. Four steps; couldn’t be any easier. Fair play guys, that’s a good setup!

Ronan Perceval: Well I have to say that I had nothing to do with how easy it is but the guys in product and dev have much more to do with that than me but yeah it is really simple and I think at this stage, with these stats, you’re kind of crazy not to do it really.

Hopes and expectations for the coming months [24:00]

Zoe Belisle-Springer: So Ronan, Nuala I suppose because we wrap this up. What are kind of your hopes and expectations for the next six months on this?

Nuala Maguire: So the 14% conversion rate is brilliant. Obviously, the money that our clients are making is fantastic, but I feel like if we can take all the data that we have out there now and use that to leverage it even higher so we can get that retention rate right up.

Ronan Perceval: Yeah. Well, I’ll echo everything Nuala just said there. If we can help make salons even more money off it than we’re making now, that would be amazing and would be a great feeling and great result. And I just think we’re beginning to… We’ve almost fully closed the circle on the prompts in the salon to help remind your front of house and the salon staff to rebook people. And then we have this Rebooking SMS going out to capture them before they might rebook and then if they still don’t rebook after that, we’ve got the Client ReConnect a couple of weeks after that again, and they might have gone to another salon, or they’re potentially at a loss to go somewhere else, ReConnect then has two texts over a period of time to bring them in again.

And so we’re improving the retention rate all the time, and then the next step is when you know the client is definitely lost, what do you do and we don’t have anything for that right now, and I think that’s the… What we’re thinking of at the moment, this isn’t necessarily definitely going to happen but if people hear this and they think it’s a good idea as well, love to hear it. They can email us in, but is to do some sort of postcard or letter that’s triggered from the system automatically because you know that the client is lost, maybe it’s six months later, and then a postcard or a letter goes out to the client automatically from the system.

And is actually posted, we’ve found a service to do that. And then you could do that with some sort of little offer in it to get them back in, I think if we could do that as well, that’ll increase the retention rate a little bit more again. And will kind of close the loophole all the way across. So that’s kind of what I’ll be looking through over the next year or so.

Killian Vigna: Going back to traditional marketing, I like the sound of that. Postcard, hand-delivered by Ronan! But listen guys that’s been brilliant thanks very much for joining us on the show and Ronan just before we go, you said you had an email there is anyone did want to get involved. What’s that email?

Ronan Perceval: Yeah, so if you just email into letsgrow@phorest.com, the normal contact. If you send in something about that, I’ll get that directly as well so.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Sounds good, we’ll put that in the shows notes anyways for any of you who would like to get in touch!

Killian Vigna: Lovely, thanks very much guys and all the best.

Ronan Perceval: See you guys!

Nuala Maguire: Cheers, guys, thanks.

Inside Phorest: reflections, upcoming events & final words [26:40]

Killian Vigna: So that was Ronan and Nuala there talking about the Rebooking SMS and how we’re going to help take that little awkwardness out of asking your clients if they want to book in again at the point of sale system. And honestly I don’t know, we’re probably not going to mention it or not, it’s just going to happen, but I think we’re going to have to relook at the title of this because some of those stats were just phenomenal.

So let’s move it into the second half of the show now, Zoe what have we got?

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah, so we’ve got a few things. I feel like it’s been ages since I’ve had loads of things to list out at the end of these episodes.

So first things first, Monday, March 4th at 11:00 am GMT, so is for UK business, we have a Making Tax Digital Salon Masterclass with Gloria Murray from Murray Associates Accountants. And this masterclass will give you the full breakdown of what this new government initiative is, how it will affect your salon and most importantly, what you need to do to be prepared. Not to miss if you are a salon based in the UK, because this legislation is coming into play real fast and you’ll have to be prepared for it from April onwards.

And then as a reminder, I’ve talked about this quite a few times already. The Thrive Sessions taking place on March 24th and 25th in Seattle, at the Bell Harbor International Conference Center, we’ll be sponsoring the weekend. It’s a two-day intensive educational workshop. There are loads and loads of classes there. I’ll actually be giving a workshop on both those days over lunch for which you will be getting some food, and an Instagram ebook and the workshop I’ll be presenting is “Lights, Camera, Post: Basic Photography Skills for a Stand Out Portfolio.” So I’ll be talking about composition rules, understanding light, taking better photos for your portfolio for Instagram and stuff like that and also introducing to you some of the new tools that we’re working on to help you build that engagement and that profile, that presence on Instagram.

So if you want to sign up for that weekend or get more information on pricing at least, you can head over to thrive-sessions.com and then finally we have the announcement…

We were just talking about this on the podcast a week ago, the Salon Owners Summit Roadshow. So this is taking place on April 15th, it’s the first time that the Salon Owners Summit is leaving Dublin. The conference I from 9:30am to 5:30pm, then there’s a drinks and networking reception from half five to half eight, and it’s taking place at The Dalcy in Chicago. We have quite a few announced speakers already, so Scott Buchanan, Stefanie Jackson, Jay Williams, who we had on the show last week with Sinead talking about the Roadshow, Neil Ducoff, Marlo Boyle and Heather Yurko.

And for any more information on the Salon Owner Summit, you can check out salonownersummit.com/chicago. Get your tickets soon because they are flying out!

And well, that’s all we got for this week guys! If, as always, you want to share your thoughts on this episode or have any suggestions, send us an email at phorestfm@phorest.com or leave us a review on iTunes, we genuinely love feedback and are always looking for ways to improve the show. Otherwise, have a wonderful week, and we’ll catch you next Monday.

Killian Vigna: All the best!

Related links

Leave a review