Phorest FM Episode 109: March Monthly Round-Up

Killian Vigna: Welcome to the Phorest FM podcast, episode 109. I’m Killian Vigna.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: And I’m Zoe Belisle-Springer. This week on the show, we’re looking back on what’s been going on in March. We’ll be discussing our latest feature releases, bits from my Thrive Session workshop, along with some discussions around blogs and podcasts episodes released this month. As usual, we’ll wrap up the show with what you can expect in the coming 30 days.

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. Freshly back from Seattle with a sunburn. And a cold!

Killian Vigna: Yeah, I was just about to say because we’ve been talking about this for so long at the end of the shows. Now it’s finally happened and not going to lie; you don’t look the best at the moment!

Zoe Belisle-Springer: (laughs) Thanks, you’re not supposed to say that. People can’t see that!

Killian Vigna: You’re not as fresh looking as I would hope after coming back from a session; because you were presenting at it?

Zoe Belisle-Springer: I was, yeah. I was hosting a workshop on both days of Thrive, so it was over lunch break. So very, very grateful for anyone who attended those two sessions, because they dedicated their lunch to come and listen to me talk. So yeah, it was touching upon photography concepts and techniques. So the workshop was called “Lights, Camera, Post: Basic Photography Skills For A Standout Portfolio,” so it was all about, you know, building that social media presence and capturing better photos to build your portfolio. And then tools that Phorest is developing at the moment to help you build that presence online; on Instagram particularly. So it was very interesting. I will actually touch upon a few of the concepts if you’re up for it, sure.

Killian Vigna: Go for it, let’s see.

Thrive Sessions: Photography workshop recap [01:45]

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Right, the session kicked off with the one question I get asked the most often. “Should I get a DSLR camera, or can I take good photos on my phone?” The answer to that question is whatever the gear you have, photography is all about being creative and it’s all about, you know, exploring what you can do with what you have . Because at the end of the day, I mean, phones now… There’s one company that just came out with this piece of hardware, you know, for their cameras integrated to their phones that you can now shoot astronomy with, which is absolutely incredible. And no one would’ve ever thought you could do that, say, even just five years ago.

So DSLRs are great because you can shoot raw, which is a concept that I explained in that workshop, which is a non-compressed format for your photos. So it’s great for that. But if you don’t want or you can’t invest in a DSLR, it’s not going to cause you not to get good shots. It’s just how you use your equipment, really, and how you take advantage of the lighting that you have. Or if you don’t have good lighting, how you can bring in some extra lighting, like those little round lights that most salons have now. Like selfie stations and stuff?

Killian Vigna: Yeah, where it’s like a circular glow around you, isn’t it?

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah, exactly, that’s the one, yeah.

Killian Vigna: There’s actually one right beside me here in this studio, yeah!

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Oh, there you go. So yeah. Most people would have those now because they’re quite cheap to purchase. So yeah, you don’t necessarily have to invest in the DSLR. Sometimes a phone can do just as well. But it really depends on how and what you want to do with your photos, right? 

So that was the first question I tackled. Then I went into three photography concepts and techniques. The first one being the rule of thirds. And that’s probably one of my favourite ones, to be honest. Because it’s essentially…

Picture a rectangular image, right? Picture a rectangular photo. The idea is that you take that image and you split it into thirds. Vertical and horizontal. So you get this kind of grid. Because opposite to what you can think, human brains actually don’t go straight to the centre of an image. Your eyes won’t necessarily flick straight to the centre. They’ll go to those intersection points.

And that’s why most photographers will use that concept to create a better composition. And even if you look at, say, magazine covers and stuff like that, and you put that imaginary grid on it, you’ll see that the most important things on the magazine, say the first big title or maybe there’s a portrait, and you’ll see the girl’s eyes and makeup and whatever, they’ll tend to be on those intersection points. It’s a grid to help you compose your image in a way that will help your viewer get straight to what you want them to see.

So that was the first concept that I talked about. And then I went into depth of field. Depth of field is a concept that when you look at an image, you’ll often have a part of it that’s blurry and a part of it that’s really sharply in focus, right? So there’s deep depth of field and shallow depth of field. Shallow depth of field is when most of your image is blurry. A lot of those would be product shots. When someone’s holding a product, and you see that bottle in crisp, sharp focus and the rest is kind of all blurry around it. It helps the viewer identify what you want them to see.

On the flip side, deeper depth of field is when most of your image is in focus, and you’d have a little bit of blur maybe at the very, very back. So say for instance, if you’re at an event, or if you’re in the salon and you have a few therapists or stylists working on something, you would have most of them in sharp focus. And then maybe at the back, the window of the salon kind of a bit more blurry.

So that’s the idea of depth of field. And it’s really interesting to play with it when you’re creating your images because that’s how you can really get your viewers to see what you want them to see without even having to properly write a caption for it. You will also write a caption, but their instincts are naturally going to go to what you want them to see.

The final technique that I was talking about at Thrive was the idea of white balance. So one of the best examples for that is… and it’s very relatable to the hair industry, actually, is when you have a client sitting in your chair, and you’ve done a blonde. They wanted a blonde. They wanted platinum, or really white blonde, right? And they’re like, “I still see yellow.” And it’s the most frustrating thing, right? But most times, it’s just because of the lighting. It’s the same thing for photography.

So if you’re inside, you know a t-shirt is white. You go outside; you know the t-shirt is white. Our brains can naturally adapt to recognising colours. However, because a DSLR or a phone has to emulate that process, it’s not always as accurate. So often, you’ll have a bit of a tint in colour on your image based on whatever lighting you’re in. So, for instance, if you have neon lighting, you might get something really kind of coldish. Think hospital, right? If you’re in broad daylight and it’s really sunny, you might get more of a warmth colour there, so a bit more of a yellow.

So it’s talking about colour temperature and stuff like that, and how to readjust and how to play with white balance to get your pictures to come as close as possible to normal, I suppose, reality colour. Because at the end of the day, when you are posting on Instagram, your hairstyles or your makeup or this or that, any of your work, you know that they’re gonna come back to you and say, “I want this, this is awesome.” But if your colour is off, and it doesn’t really represent the truth, they’re going to have mad expectations that you can’t actually fulfil.

So the white balance there is super important. And that was kind of the three main photography techniques and concepts I was talking about at Thrive. And I’m always open to chats. I am available for any questions. You can always hit us up on phorestfm@phorest.com. I am happy to answer any of those questions. 

But yeah, it was a fun session two days in a row, and now I’m back here in Montreal talking to you, doing the podcast. So much fun!

Killian Vigna: Yeah, I’m just thinking, just sitting here listening to you. We probably need to do a podcast episode just on that alone. I know we’ve covered a blog that you did a while back. It was probably over a year now at this stage. And now you’ve done the workshop. So yeah, I think there’s definitely cause for getting, I suppose, a photography episode out here now.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: For sure, yeah. I was also thinking about writing a blog on the session. So on the photography concepts from the session. I got loads of really good questions coming from those workshops, so I think there’s definitely something to do with that.

Killian Vigna: Especially the industry we’re in. Like being able to, I suppose, not even master but just to be able to get to grips with using the phone or the DSLR like you have there. Just learning these concepts is going to make drastic changes to your product shots, to your before and after pictures. It’s just, the content you’re going to put up is going to change so much.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah, 100%. And sometimes, I got asked a lot, you know, “What about if I take the photos, and then also my stylists take the photos, and they don’t necessarily know how to either?” And I was like, well, I don’t know. There are loads of options for that. You can even make a team activity out of it. You get a photographer in maybe for half a day or a day, and you get models in for the day, and you do a cutting technique or something like that. And you make everyone learn how to take good shots, and then you have new photos for Instagram, for Facebook, and then you also are teaching them how to take good shots. So, it could be a fun activity.

Killian Vigna: Yeah, you’re going to have your own catalogue, and you’ll never have to rely on, what was it, those royalty-free images that you see online, or just ones that aren’t realistic.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: So I suppose moving on then from there, in the blurb there we were talking about feature releases. And I think you’re pretty keen on talking about SMS rebooking.

Phorest’s predictive SMS Rebooking feature [09:33]

Killian Vigna: Yeah, we’ve quite a bit of content to cover here today, but we’ve had two big feature launches this month. This month being March, of course. And the first one we have is the predictive SMS Rebooking feature. So for anyone that listened to an episode, I think it was episode 106 or something like that, it’s-

Zoe Belisle-Springer: I believe it was, yeah.

Killian Vigna: Yeah, it’s a few weeks, yeah.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: With Ronan and Nuala.

Killian Vigna: Yeah, exactly. With Ronan and Nuala. So what is the SMS Rebooking feature? Well, we spent the last year analysing data and coming up with an intelligent algorithm that can not only identify when your client is ready to rebook, but also send them a message just before that moment. So for anyone out there that is a client of Phorest, you’re probably thinking, “Well, is it not like Client Reconnect?”

No, because basically what this does is this takes the rebooking process to a whole new level for both your clients and your salon.

So I suppose the best way to explain what it is, we’ll put it into a scenario. So imagine this. Just as your client is thinking they need to go back to your salon, a text with a link allowing them to book in pops up on their phone. So basically, it’s almost like predicting when they’re about to rebook with your salon. It’s been hugely increasing the rebooking percentages. 

And I just wanted to recap some notes that Nuala did have from that episode. Imagine this. If your client walking out the door already has a future appointment in your system, there’s a 71% chance they’ll still be your client in six months. If they don’t have that future appointment booked in, then the likelihood drops to 35%. It’s mental-like.

And then the second one she has here is if you take a client who has visited your salon 60 times, on average the increase between what I’m going to pay during my first 5 visits and my last 5 is 5 times more than the increase for a client who has only visited the salon 20 times. So basically, what she’s saying here is the longer you stay, the more they pay.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: I have no hard time believing that.

Killian Vigna: Well, it makes sense.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: It does! Because I mean, you do build that relationship with your stylist or your therapist; you get to… Well, if you’re anything like me, anyway, and if the salon you’re going to does a lot of education around retail, you get more confident and trusting in them, and you’ll buy more products and you’ll just come back more often. 

I used to go to get my hair cut I want to say, what, maybe once every month, if not once every second month? And now it’s nearly every second week or third week? So yeah.

Killian Vigna: But think about it. I suppose; put yourself in your client’s shoes. If you’re a salon shifter, you don’t have that trust. So if you’re moving from salon to salon to salon, how much are you going to trust a person that’s doing treatments with you because you don’t really know them. You’re taking a gamble by going to them in the first place and then after two or three visits; you’re still kind of, “I might just kinda get the basic treatments for now.” But over time you start building that confidence in them, you build that trust, and then you’re going to start getting more treatments. And like you said, if you’re really good at educating me on products, I’m going to spend on products as well on top of that.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah, I know. That’s great that we have data for that. I mean, this throws me every single time that we have stats like these. I’m like, wow, but they all do make so much sense.

Killian Vigna: Yeah, Nuala does love her data. (laughs)

Zoe Belisle-Springer: She does, yeah. (laughs) And then what’s the second big feature that we released?

Phorest’s Fallback SMS feature [12:50]

Killian Vigna: Yeah, so the second one we released, and we’re going to talk about a webinar we’re hosting for this near the end of the show so hold on, is the Fallback SMS. For anyone that’s been using our new email editor, you probably know… Again, I don’t have the stats here, but talking to Nuala, we know that for most salon owners, email is the primary form of marketing channel outside of social media, of course.

So imagine you’ve put all this effort into building the perfect email campaign. You’ve picked, you’ve sourced all your images, updated all the information, added your links, and then you send the email, and you’re waiting. And you’re waiting. And you’re waiting. You don’t really know the impact of that email. But also, you don’t know how many of your clients have received that email. Based on our research, on average, our clients only have email addresses for 30% of their clients. Which means that every time you send an email campaign, you’re missing out on roughly 70% of your clients. 70% of your clients are probably not going to see that email. That’s the equivalent of filling three jumbo jets of clients that will never receive your email campaign (laughs).

Zoe Belisle-Springer: (laughs) That is absolutely insane.

Killian Vigna: There are more figures there. I suppose the Fallback SMS is going to tackle that problem by helping you to reach 100% of your clients. How’s it going to do that? So you’ve created your email, and just before you click send, you’ll go to this screen. And a screen will tell you, “70% of your clients won’t see this email.” Why is that? Because you only have 30% of the email addresses where you’d have 70% of those phone numbers. Because every time someone comes in as a walk-in, it’s the phone number you’re going to take. Now, if you are a high online booker, then you will have a lot of email addresses. But this is where the SMS comes in, for the people that haven’t given you their email addresses.

What it does is it takes a link that goes to that email. It nearly turns your email into a small little webpage, and it puts that link into an SMS, and you can compose the SMS from there. So now you’re sending an email, and you’re sending a Fallback SMS to reach everyone that won’t get that email. Which now means 100% of the clients that you’re trying to target because we know everyone should be segmenting their lists anyway and not just blasting all of their databases for successful marketing. But it means you’re now reaching 100% of the clients that you’re targeting, and they all see that email because the link in your SMS will take you to that email. So now you’re not wasting any time putting together this amazing campaign.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah, no, it’s great!

Killian Vigna: And that’s just the starting point of the updates to the new email editor. Because in next month’s roundup, we’re going to have even more. The guys are doing some great work on this new email editor, and I can’t wait to talk about that now, at the end of April, too.

Review of some the latest Phorest Blog articles [15:31]

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah, we’ll be back with more information on that. In terms of the blogs, we have two that I want to discuss today. One was on International Women’s Day, and it was 3 Female Bosses From The Salon Industry Discuss Leadership. That was the title. It was written Avril Kealy, who’s a member of the front of house, First Impressions team in Phorest. She’s combined her love of writing with customer service skills to create content. 

She interviewed Sam Pearce, whom we’ve had on the show before. She’s the Director of the garden-themed spa The Potting Shed in the U.K; Michaella Blissett-Williams, the CEO of multi-branch hair salon Salon 718 in Brooklyn, New York; and Penny Bennett, owner of Sitting Pretty Skin Centre and Beauty Salon, also in the U.K.

The questions were all about, how and why did you become a salon owner? What does it mean to be a leader to you? What keeps you passionate? What does being part of the salon industry mean to you, and what advice would you give to aspiring female leaders, both in and out of the industry? Very interesting answers we got there. Lovely article, lovely interviews. It was awesome because it was released on the day of International Women’s Day.

Then the second blog that we’ll chat about briefly here is Top 10 Rules for Creating An Efficient Salon Staff Rota. That one was written by Valerie Delforge, who surely you would know by now because she writes for us pretty much every month. The main points of this were that rotas can be really complicated and can be a proper headache for salon owners to create. It’s not hard to understand why. The issue is that there’s no “one size fits all” for creating those. So she listed the top 10 rules for creating an efficient rota based on what your salon needs.

I’m just going to list them off here. You can go and check it out on the blog. Both are there on the Phorest Blog. Rule number one, know your costs. Number two, know your room and chair occupancy. Three, look into your staff occupancy. Four, analyse your days’ occupancy. Five, cater for your hourly customer demands. Six, check in with your staff. What does their ideal schedule look like? Seven, getting the part-time versus full-time balance right. Eight, Analyse your Sunday business. Nine, figuring out your own rota, as in you, the salon owner. And ten, Considering a four-day week rota for full-time staff. 

So very interesting article there, again. It’s all about knowing your numbers, knowing your figures, knowing what works for your salon and what doesn’t. When I say salon, obviously I mean salon, spa, any of you in the hair and beauty industry.

So yeah. Very good articles this month. Like I said, 3 Female Bosses From The Salon Industry Discuss Leadership by Avril Kealy, and Top 10 Rules For Creating An Efficient Salon Staff Rota by Valerie Delforge.

Throwback to some of the latest Phorest FM episodes [18:32]

Killian Vigna: That brings us on down to our podcasts. We have two podcasts to talk about here today.

The first one is episode 107 with Steve Gomez On Listening To What Your Salon’s Numbers Are Telling You & Coaching Accordingly. As a coach, Steve Gomez supports salon professionals to create breakthrough results when it comes to growing their sales, client base, and profits. To do this, he’s committed to helping the industry recognise that how you view yourself and your business more often than not dictates personal and professional results. He joined us to discuss interdependent leadership and how to put emotions aside to coach based on data-backed decisions. So there are a few soundbites that Zoe’s going to play here for you now.

Steve Gomez: “The more involved you get somebody, the more you challenge somebody to think about what’s happening, before just acting. Instead of having a good soldier that’s going to go do something that you told them to do, you have somebody who is a thought leader. So now you have a group of leaders who are moving in that direction. You don’t have to go faster to get there. You have to start by understanding what’s occurring, what you have to work with, whom you’re working with, and then how you want to go from there. What’s the defining moment going to be, for anybody listening to this, when you’re sick and tired of being sick and tired, and you know you have to shift and make a change? Sometimes you have to take a leap and grow your wings on the way down and get uncomfortable and face these things. It starts with the way you think. Anything can be overcome.

How do you want to grow as an artist? How do you want to express yourself creatively this year as a hairdresser? How do you want to be better in that way? How do you want to be better as a communicator? What do you want to do in your personal life? And what does working here mean to that? If I can take the time as a leader to get those questions answered, then I know the hot buttons of my team so that when somebody is underperforming or struggling, I can remind them of their why. And I can put my foot on their button and push it when they need it. To me, that’s where goal-setting must begin first.”

Zoe Belisle-Springer: And then episode 108 last week was with Ryan Power, who is a salon coach based in the U.K. It was Using The Blurred Lines Between Personal & Business Personas As A Marketing Advantage. I know you loved that one, Killian. 

Killian Vigna: Yeah, it was a good one. We felt it was the right time to cover the topic because just as the world wide web celebrates its 30th birthday, we’re becoming a lot more aware of online privacy and just some recent scandals, too, that people probably remember. Like the Fyre Festival documentary on Netflix, you know the whole influencer campaign they did for promoting… Then we had that little incident with Mark Zuckerberg there a couple of months ago.

In reality, the lines between online personal and professional personas have never been so blurred. It’s caused a lot of headaches in the entrepreneurial world. So in this episode, we’re joined by U.K.-based Beauty Business Superstars coach, speaker, and author Ryan Power. He’s also a day spa owner himself, so he knows firsthand how to fill diary columns. And in this episode, he helped us decipher the blurred lines.

A little interesting bit that I really enjoyed about it was he is an advocate for making all of your social accounts public. Not hiding anything about yourself, not making any of your accounts. Then there’s you, and I believe you have half of your accounts kind of public and half of them private, am I right?

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah, kind of. My Instagram is half work, half personal. My LinkedIn is public. And then my Facebook… I just don’t really use it at all.

Killian Vigna: And then there’s me, where everything is just on absolute lockdown (laughs). I don’t know, I’ve just always kind of, even though I’m, what, 27? I was kind of old school on it, and it’s kind of taken me a bit longer to come around to the fact of, who cares if they see everything that you put up? So a really interesting one. As a side note, I did finally make my Instagram public.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Did you? Look at you (laughs)!

Killian Vigna: I did, yeah. So, shameless plug there if you want to find me. It’s killian_vigna on Instagram. Promote Phorest a lot, promote Phorest FM a lot. And a lot of hikes and runs if you want to check them out.

I suppose this episode is really focused on deciphering the blurred lines between personal and professional social media profiles, and how you can use that to your advantage in marketing as a small business owner.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah, so we’ll play a few clips here.

Ryan Power: “I think now, actually, it will be harder to try and remain anonymous as a business owner than it would to actually put yourself out there. If clients really want to find you personally, they’re going to find you. One of the funny things is that business owners, even if they don’t view it like this, they are in many ways, in the eyes of some of their clients, they are minor celebrities. I don’t care how minor they think they are, but if you’re famous to a few people, i.e. your clients, then you are a very minor celebrity. So you might as well embrace that and welcome them in and also use it to your advantage by actually building a better relationship with them.

As long as your personal profile isn’t just promoting your business, then I think that generally, you’re going to be okay. What I would recommend is that you just go and hang out casually in whatever groups you think your dream client is also hanging out in. If you’re going into the groups with the intention of just trying to get clients or make some money somehow out of it, then you’re probably going to come away disappointed. But if you go in with the attitude of I just want to offer some help, and I just want to try and be as helpful as I possibly can, then those clients will find you the other way afterwards.”

Inside Phorest: reflections, upcoming events & final words [24:17]

Killian Vigna: So that brings us on to the second half of the show. We’ve got a couple of webinars, a couple of sessions, and one big campaign that Zoe’s going to talk about now.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah, I was actually on an Instagram Live about, what, a week and a half ago with Paige, who heads up all social media content for Phorest. It was #30Days2Grow. #30Days2Grow is a campaign that we run every year. Well, the first year was in July, but now we’ve been running it in April. It’s all about getting your business to grow with small, bite-sized tasks every day for 30 days. Pretty self-explanatory, I suppose, with #30Days2Grow as the name.

We change up the content a bit every year. Say, last year we had week one focused on customer service, Say, week two was on retail. This year, we’ve changed it up a bit where we have themed days of the week. So Monday is going to be Management Monday. Tuesday, Marketing Task. Wednesday, a Wild Card. Thursday, a Retail Target. Friday, Eco-Friendly Task. Saturday, Sunday, Customer Service and then Social Media.

So the campaign came from the idea that the industry was facing a deep discounting culture. This is what we’ve come up with to help salon and spa owners all around the world, clients or non-clients, face this issue and grow their business over the course of 30 days.

Killian Vigna: I think it’s an amazing campaign and it’s just so happy to see it run for its third consecutive year because usually campaigns come about and they disappear just as quick. But the takeoff for this has been unbelievable. I was just looking at the Facebook page there earlier. It’s #LetsGrow, the Salon Owner’s Tool to Growing Their Business. It now has 1700 members. That’s insane. That’s so many people all getting on board this initiative.

This year we have a theme as well, don’t we? It’s all about getting salons to work together, planning and implementing the challenges.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah, it’s all about teamwork and coming together from a unified front, I suppose. Because that’s what’s going to help you grow in the long run. And we’ve noticed that with these challenges, you know, 30Days2Grow, first edition, second edition, one of the main feedback that we were getting was that salon owners all around the world were discovering new things about their staff that they didn’t know that they could do.

I remember when we had an interview, we were talking to Katrina Sutherland last year. She was saying, “I didn’t know that one of my staff members; she’s actually fantastic at retail!” And she loves it. And she had no idea, or like visual merchandising. It happened the year before, and I think it was with social media. So it’s a great way to get to know your team better, learn how to delegate better as well because it’s very important in the industry. You can’t take everything upon your shoulders.

So yeah, it’s an awesome challenge, it runs for 30 days. It starts on April 1st. We’re hoping to see you on board. You don’t have to… you know if you missed the very first day of the challenge, you can still sign up! It’s entirely free. You do not need to have software to participate. You can be on pen and paper, even. And you don’t have to, obviously, be a Phorest client. We’re here to support you through all of the 30 days with that Facebook group, with emails, we’re always at a touch of a button, really.

So we just wanted to see you guys grow and see you have fun with it as well. Because that’s the most important part of it, you know, having fun while growing your business.

Killian Vigna: Do you know what I love most about it? First off, we actually learned a lot about our clients. Because when we did the initial feedback from the first one, the amount of the feedback we received to help us improve the campaigns. It was brilliant. But I love going into the Facebook group and watch salon owners helping each other and encouraging each other with their posts. It just creates this amazing discussion, and it’s definitely worth getting involved in, because believe it or not, everyone is going through the same struggles. It’s great to be able to go in there and, first off, learn from other people who’ve gone through the same things you have. But secondly, to be able to help someone else get through those problems.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: It’s just another way, I suppose maybe an easier way for some people to network. You know when you go to events, and sometimes it’s intimidating because you’re face-to-face with people and you have to properly meet them. If you’re a bit of an introvert, say, like me, it just causes a lot of stress. This is all online! You can make friends, and you can still engage with these people after the challenge in the Facebook groups and online. It’s just fantastic. To be honest, it’s an amazing community.

Killian Vigna: We had people turn up to the Salon Owners Summit this year who met through that group. Who took their relationship offline and organised to go to it together. It is a mix of people coming to the Salon Owners Summit with teams, but there are still quite a few people who turn up on their own, and they use that as a tool to meet people.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah, no, it’s great. So if you’re interested in joining the challenge this year, the website to sign up is www.30days2grow.com. We’ll be happy to see you onboard and see it kick off in just a few days!

Killian Vigna: Cool, so let’s move on to… I suppose I was going to say to webinars. I’m thinking two years ago when we used to go, “Here are the webinars.” But we only actually have one webinar now. It’s the first time we’ve announced a webinar in quite a while. But this one is a Phorest clients-only webinar because it’s focused around a new Phorest feature that we were talking about earlier, the Fallback SMS. It’s going to be with Andrea Kane and Rachel McAdam. Andrea Kane is our Grow Marketing Advisor here at Phorest, and Rachel McAdam is an online Phorest trainer. A lot of you have probably already spoken to both of these people, so you’ll be quite familiar and comfortable with them already.

It’s a 30-minute webinar where they’ll explore Phorest’s newest feature Fallback SMS, why it’s a salon must, and how it works perfectly with our new email editor. By the end of this 30-minute webinar, you should be able to identify why you aren’t reaching as many clients as you think, understand how Fallback SMS complements email marketing, create an email campaign with our new email editor, especially for anyone who hasn’t used it before. Finally, by the end of the webinar, you’ll be able to execute your next email campaign and reach more clients with Fallback SMS.

We have three dates for this in April. We’ve April 3rd at 2:00 PM Irish time, or GMT. We’ve April 8th at 2:00 PM GMT. And we’ve April 15th at 2:00 PM GMT.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Perfect! So if you are a Phorest client and you want to attend these webinars, how do you sign up for these?

Killian Vigna: A campaign has just gone out to all of our clients on Friday, it went out. We’ve already had a good uptake. You can email at our training@phorest.com or grow@phorest.com to get yourself set up there. Alternatively, you could just call us. Everyone knows about the Fallback SMS webinars. Just call us up here at Phorest, and we’ll put you through ourselves.

Zoe Belisle-Springer: Perfect. And I suppose that leads us into our last two things for this episode. The Salon Mentorship Hub, which is, if you haven’t heard about it, is a place to connect. Whether you’re struggling with retail, staff management, customer service, anything that can relate to running a business, running your salon or your spa efficiently. We’ve teamed up with coaches and consultants that we trust around the world to help you get unstuck and remove the fear from asking for help.

All you have to do is go to the Salon Mentorship Hub website, which we have a link in the show notes for, and you choose whom you’d like to connect with and what topic. Once that’s done, you check your emails, and you book yourself in for a date and time that suits for your free 15 to 30-minute consultation with the coach or consultant. From there, we’ll take care of the rest. You’ll have all the information coming to you.

Some of the consultants that we have currently on the website are Valerie Delforge, Susan Routledge, Danielle Boucher, Richard McCabe, Phil Jackson, Jennifer Swaine, Gloria Murray, David and Nicole Barnett, Stefania Rossi, and Katie Lowndes. All of these coaches are based either in the U.K., the U.S., Ireland, Australia. So even time zone wise, you’re sure to have something that works with your schedule.

The very last thing that I want to mention before we wrap up the show today is the Salon Owners Summit Roadshow which is coming to Chicago. The Salon Owners Summit is leaving Dublin for the very first time, going to Chicago on April 15th. That’s a Monday, and it’s from 9:30 AM to 5:30 PM, followed by drinks and a networking reception. It’s at the Dalcy at Aba in Chicago. Some of the announced speakers are Scott Buchanan, Stefanie Jackson, Jay Williams whom we had on the show just recently, Neil Ducoff, Marlo Boyle, Heather Yurko who was also speaking at the Salon Owners Summit this January in Dublin, and Ann Bray, who is our latest announced speaker. If you want more information on this event, or you want to actually just buy a ticket straight away, you can head over to salonownersummit.com/chicago.

And well, that’s all we’ve got for this week, guys. As always, if 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 Apple Podcasts. 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

Good, Better, Best: Introducing The Predictive Rebooking SMS Feature

3 Female Bosses From The Salon Industry Discuss Leadership

Top 10 Rules For Creating An Efficient Salon Staff Rota

Steve Gomez, Business Coaching

Ryan Power, Salon Business Superstars

Join the #30Days2Grow Salon Challenge (Starts April 1st, 2019)

Book a consultation on The Salon Mentorship Hub

Salon Owners Summit: The Roadshow, April 15, 2019

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