Welcome to the Salon Owner’s Podcast, Phorest FM Episode 33. Co-hosted by Killian Vigna and Zoé Bélisle-Springer, this show is a mix of interviews with industry thought-leaders, roundups of our most recent salon owners marketing tips & tricks, all the latest in and around Phorest and what upcoming webinars you can join. Phorest FM is produced every Monday morning for your enjoyment with a cup of coffee on your day off.
Phorest FM Episode 33
One of the most important things you can do as a successful business owner is to give back to the community which has gotten you to that point. Phorest Salon Software’s Charity Team leads, Sarah McEvoy and Aoife Kelly-Cooney, share their experiences from the past few years. They’ll also be sharing some advice on how you can start this kind of initiative (if you don’t already have one). Another topic covered is messaging tools you can use among your salon staff to keep everyone informed and on the same page, as well as how you can go about creating a mission statement for your salon. Finally, the Salon Owners’ Summit 2018 keynote speaker is announced at the end of the episode!
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Transcript
Killian Vigna: Welcome to the Phorest FM Podcast, Episode 33. I’m Killian Vigna.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: And I’m Zoe Belisle-Springer.
Killian Vigna: This week’s episode is all about giving back to your community, where we’re joined by the Phorest Salon Software’s charity team leads Sarah McEvoy and Aoife Kelly-Cooney.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: We’ll also take you through this week’s blogs, so three messaging tools to improve internal salon communication, the final announcement for the Salon Owners’ Summit 2018, and top tips for creating your salon’s mission statement. As always, we’ll top off the show with our upcoming Phorest Academy webinars.
Killian Vigna: This podcast is produced every Monday morning for your enjoyment with a cup of coffee on your day off. Now, let’s get into the show. So, Zoe, we’ve two guests today.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: We have.
Killian Vigna: We’re doubled up here. We’re going to kick it off with… first off welcome, Sarah and Aoife.
Aoife Kelly-Cooney: Thank you.
Sarah McEvoy: Thanks.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Aoife’s, you’re already-
Killian Vigna: Aoife’s been on the show a few times now at this stage.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: But you seem to enjoy it every time though?
Aoife Kelly-Cooney: Yeah, takes me away from my desk.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Welcome to your first time.
Sarah McEvoy: Thanks very much.
Killian Vigna: I’m laughing. It’s Sarah’s first time and she’s more relaxed than the three of us. So, we had like… the reason we’re doing this episode is that we had Graham Kent from FHC Hair, there recently talking about… so every year, his salon actually gets involved with the local community and they do fundraising events. I think over the last ten years, his salon alone has generated over a hundred grand.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Wow. Amazing.
Killian Vigna: Hundred thousand pounds, yeah. We’re going to talk a bit about ours today now. I know we’re more of an organization, but any salon can get on board this. It’s just about tweaking it for the size of your business. You want to kick it off, Sarah?
Sarah McEvoy: Yeah. Yeah, sure. So this is the third year that I’ve been involved in the Phorest charity project. It’s been going for I think for about five years altogether. The first year, they did Barretstown, where a group of people went and did activities with kids with special needs. Two years was building a garden for hospital and a residency for adults that had severe disabilities. And then last year and this year, were doing it for Friends of the Elderly, so it’s basically fundraising for the elderly who need to get out, like that might not necessarily have an outlet, they’re at home all week, and Friends of the Elderly provide that for them. They don’t have any government funding, so that’s where we come in. Then like last year, the target was 7,000 and we managed to raise 8,000 for them. This year the target is 10,000 and we’re already at seven, so…
Killian Vigna: And we’ve only really just started.
Sarah McEvoy: Yeah, picture it.
Aoife Kelly-Cooney: [inaudible 00:02:44] No comment.
Sarah McEvoy: I kept counting the money just to make sure I haven’t added on any zeros in there. I counted fifties instead of tens or so, I don’t know. Yeah, it’s really exciting and we’re only about three weeks in technically, and we have like the rest of the year so… Yeah, it’s amazing.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: And what about you Aoife? How long you’ve been involved in the charity project?
Aoife Kelly-Cooney: Well, like Sarah, the past three years, so the two gardens, last year’s Friends of the Elderly event, and again Friends of the Elderly this year. I think what we kind of did was we moved away from the larger organizations, which is probably what would be relevant to salon owners who are looking for something in their local communities. We wanted to bring it to kind of smaller charities that aren’t government-funded and that are closer to us so that we just feel like we’re helping the local people as well.
Killian Vigna: So somewhere where whatever we raise will actually make an impact?
Aoife Kelly-Cooney: Absolutely.
Sarah McEvoy: Yeah.
Aoife Kelly-Cooney: Yeah. And you really see it as well.
Killian Vigna: Because there are some organizations out there and like the amount of funding that they get every year, that whatever we raise, like the couple of grand, basically just go on admin for them or something.
Aoife Kelly-Cooney: Absolutely.
Sarah McEvoy: Yeah.
Aoife Kelly-Cooney: Absolutely.
Killian Vigna: So the charities that you… and you both choose them yourselves, is it? Because myself and Zoe, we’re only here just over a year, so this is kind of our first experience with it, you guys have been with it from the start. We were a lot smaller then as well, so you could nearly say just a little bit bigger than a salon, so it’s not like there were hundreds of people in the company when it first started.
Sarah McEvoy: No, when I first started working here, I think there were about 45 people.
Aoife Kelly-Cooney: Yeah. Yeah. 45.
Sarah McEvoy: Compared to over a hundred now. To be honest, the way we did it, like what you were saying, you don’t want to be fundraising for a company that gets a lot of, or an organization, excuse me, that get a lot of funding. We do a lot of research, homelessness is a massive issue in Dublin and a lot of people would suggest that as a fundraiser. For your charity event to be that. A lot of the homeless charities get a serious amount of funding and help. So for us, it’s like identifying somebody who’s not necessarily looked after, they may not be in the limelight, or in the media of who needs help. A lot of the time it’s the elderly. The elderly are forgotten about, they’ve done all the hard work, and they’re kind of just, do you know what they want? To enjoy their last few years.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: So how did you come across the Friends of the Elderly last year?
Aoife Kelly-Cooney: They’re around the corner.
Killian Vigna: All your research, you walked outside…
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Just walking around.
Sarah McEvoy: Yeah, that we did.
Killian Vigna: Your research is walking around the office block, yeah.
Aoife Kelly-Cooney: We would’ve found them, just through doing that alone, but we reached out to a load of people in the city centre. We’re in the city centre in Dublin, and there are a lot of charities like Sarah was saying, a lot of them are homeless, but we were just giving them a call and saying, “Okay, this is what we’re looking to do, come…”
Zoe Belisle-Springer: And we were turned down by a lot of…
Aoife Kelly-Cooney: We were turned down.
Sarah McEvoy: Yeah. Yeah. We were turned down by a lot…
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Surprising.
Sarah McEvoy: Yeah, which is good in a way because that means people are there helping them, but for us it was like, okay, if we’re being turned down for this particular area of who needs fundraising, let’s just look at something else. Yeah, that’s how it came up with the elderly. We do, just to mention as well about giving back on a smaller scale, we started doing Age Action. They’re another organization.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: You were involved in that, weren’t you Killian?
Killian Vigna: Well, I’m going to let Sarah talk about it.
Sarah McEvoy: You could talk after me. We started that this year, and Age Action is another charity organization for the elderly. What we did was we welcomed in two separate groups of elderly from the community and we hooked them up with a staff member from Phorest, and they sat with them for two hours on a Thursday for five weeks, I think it was.
Killian Vigna: Five weeks.
Sarah McEvoy: Yeah, five weeks each time and we just taught them computer skills like basic stuff, anything they wanted like setting up Facebook, email address. Some of them brought in their own gadgets, which was pretty cool. They had their iPads and they were like, I want to learn how to use this.
Aoife Kelly-Cooney: That was a really nice thing for us to do. Sorry, Killian, go ahead.
Killian Vigna: No, you’re alright. I was very blown away by it. I was expecting, like, when we were gearing up for it, I was going to Sarah, like, alright, where’s the manual? Where’s the stages to go and teach them? They’re like, no, you just teach them whatever. It was like, alright, fine. Alright, iPads, can’t use an iPad, never used an iPad, I’m not taking an iPad. One person turns up with an iPad, and it was with me. I was laughing because she was actually teaching me the iPad, because they were well aware of it. So, for five weeks, it was just me and her having a conversation, really. Because they were already kind of up with it, but it was good. It was good bringing them in, going for a sandwich mid-way and stuff.
Sarah McEvoy: Exactly. It’s a lovely way to bridge the gap as well between generations because I think a lot of times they do feel disconnected, especially with technology advances.
Aoife Kelly-Cooney: It grows so fast as well.
Killian Vigna: That’s where it’s us sharing our skills because we’re all working on computers every single day. Not iPads. We’re working on computers every day, so that’s a skill we could offer someone else. Where you, in a hair salon or beauticians or anything like that, there’s a little skill that you can give back. I know a lot of you are busy, but, it’s kinda like adapt to your own salon.
Sarah McEvoy: I think even last year, the charity that we did.
Killian Vigna: At the dinner dance.
Sarah McEvoy: At the dinner dance. There were people from Phorest, coming from the industry basically that had backgrounds just doing little treatments here and there.
Killian Vigna: Yeah. There was like a little station so our trainers, our in-house trainers had stations where they were doing hair and stuff like that, was it?
Aoife Kelly-Cooney: Barbara was doing makeup, Declan was doing hair, and Martha was doing makeup as well. It was really cool because some of the ladies hadn’t been to the hairdressers in like 30 years or something.
Killian Vigna: They were in the queue for it. They were all so happy.
Sarah McEvoy: We had to comb over like the little bit of hair they had left.
Killian Vigna: It’s just that little value, the treatment I suppose.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah, because it does make a difference. Even if you don’t think it does, it actually does impact them in their lives.
Sarah McEvoy: They’re so appreciative. I don’t think we can ever imagine the impact that we have. They’re just so blown away. Even at Age Action, they didn’t really need to know how to use computers, they were just coming in for the chat and the cup of tea and the sandwiches.
Killian Vigna: They didn’t know who we were, what company we were representing, they just wanted to come in and talk to someone for two hours. It was great because we got a laugh out of it as well. Then, they all got certificates at the end as well, so we got those photos too. Anything, it’s just; identify somewhere in your community and where can you help out, I suppose. What skills can you offer? Recently, what was our most recent fundraiser, oh it was the quiz.
Sarah McEvoy: Table quiz, yeah. On Wednesday night, we had it in the Generator Hostel here in Dublin. We had 19 tables altogether, which was amazing. A lot of staff, thankfully friends, family and then there were some outsiders as well, which is always great to see. We raised 1,100 and we had a raffle on the night as well. Really good. Table quiz is always one of the best nights. It was super professional this year because we actually got a quizmaster in.
Killian Vigna: A real quizmaster. A real one.
Sarah McEvoy: We had a big screen with everything on it. He had one of those clicky things in his hand for changing the pictures.
Aoife Kelly-Cooney: And the mic.
Killian Vigna: And a microphone. Very professional.
Sarah McEvoy: It blew us out of the water, because we did it last year and the year before, and we were not that good. We’ll probably get him again next year.
Aoife Kelly-Cooney: It’s always good craic, though.
Killian Vigna: That was great craic. It was a lot of staff but there were randomers, because it was in a hostel, so people got on board, and everyone was kinda mixing. A few drinks obviously, but it’s good craic. And then we had the raffle as well, so some really good donations came out of that one.
Sarah McEvoy: Brilliant. It was great prizes. The top prize was a cash prize, which everybody wants.
Killian Vigna: Any next stages now, before? I don’t think we’ve even announced what the budget is going to go towards. We’ll talk about that in a second. Have we got any more plans?
Sarah McEvoy: Yeah, so, the next thing that we’re looking to do, we’ve never done it before, as the fundraisers. It’s going to be a Phorest market day. We’re going to transform the fifth floor of our offices into a market, so it will be like stalls for clothes. The staff are going to bring in clothes that they have in their wardrobe that are pretty decent, like that they might have donated to charity, but bring them in, sell them off, and accessories, we’ve got a couple of people here that have loads of free stuff at home. One of them runs a blog, so she has loads of skincare, makeup, so she’s going to donate that to sell. We’ll do up some food and cakes and stuff. We’ll make it like really big. It’s not just a cake sale anymore, it’s going to be a Phorest market day. It’s like, bring anything, your mommy’s handbag, we’ll sell it.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: That will be fun.
Sarah McEvoy: That’s the next thing.
Killian Vigna: If it’s not pinned down to the floor, it’s coming in.
Sarah McEvoy: After that then, it will just be the charity committee banging our heads together to see how do we get the next thousand or the next book. I have no doubt that we’ll reach the target and probably be [inaudible 00:11:39].
Killian Vigna: We have an iDonate, so if anyone does want to set up their own charities or donate to our charity, we use iDonate, so it just sits there, is it?
Sarah McEvoy: Yeah, it’s really good. There’s another few online links or online charity pages that you can use, but this one, the reason that we chose it is because it’s mobile friendly, so there’s none of this pinching your fingers together to try and make it small, entering this.
Killian Vigna: We learned all about that at Age Action.
Sarah McEvoy: They do take a percentage, but it’s not a lot, and whoever donates is given the option if they want to pay the extra euro to cover the charge. To be honest, most people do that, which is really good. Yeah, so we still have the donations rolling in on that page, which we might just put the link up somewhere just in case.
Killian Vigna: Oh yeah.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Definitely.
Killian Vigna: So, do we have a deadline for this?
Sarah McEvoy: I kind of think we’re going to leave it open until October.
Aoife Kelly-Cooney: That’s what we did last year, wasn’t it?
Killian Vigna: Last year we had the dinner dance was in September. This year it’s going to be…
Sarah McEvoy: August.
Killian Vigna: The funds are actually going to more use this year.
Sarah McEvoy: Yeah. Last year a lot of the money went to an event where we took them back in time to the 1950’s in an iconic hotel in Dublin city centre.
Killian Vigna: So much fun.
Aoife Kelly-Cooney: Yeah.
Killian Vigna: I was here a week and I was already dressing in like 50’s.
Sarah McEvoy: Real dapper. We had over 100 members from Friends of the Elderly at that. But it was very pricey. So, the two ladies from Friends of the Elderly approached us and basically asked if we could have a smaller event in their club, but not be high in costs, and that’s exactly what we’re doing because of the need to maintain the building, they need a new floor… It’s not that great, to be honest. It’s very old, and because they don’t have government funding, they want to make sure it’s up to standards of safety and that kind of thing. That’s where the 10,000 is going to go. New floor, they can dance on that floor for years to come. Maybe a lick of paint, who knows, but yeah, it’s mainly for maintenance and repair of their club, which is going to be more effective and more people will benefit from that than a dance.
Killian Vigna: You went in there recently enough and sent us back some photos and videos and it is…
Sarah McEvoy: Shocking.
Killian Vigna: Yeah, I was going to say shocking. It really is, it’s basically a pit in the middle of the room. Toilets don’t even work or something like that.
Sarah McEvoy: Yeah, they need work on the toilets and the sewage system isn’t that great. It’s quite… like being in the city centre, so that needs a lot of work.
Killian Vigna: It’s not somewhere that you could go and hang out, and that’s what the place was built originally for.
Sarah McEvoy: Yeah, exactly. It’s weird because I’ve gone up there a couple of Wednesdays and Aoife has as well and they just, they don’t even really notice it to be honest. I think a lot of the time, they’re just delighted to get out for a few hours, meet up with their friends… But, it’s the staff and the volunteers that are kind of like look, we need to get this sorted because dancing on a carpet isn’t safe either. They need a good…
Killian Vigna: Carpet burn and all that.
Sarah McEvoy: You know yourselves, dancing on a carpet isn’t fun. And they have the oldest boy band in Dublin there. They play every Wednesday.
Aoife Kelly-Cooney: Every Wednesday.
Sarah McEvoy: It will be good for them as well to have a nice little venue to go and play their music and stuff.
Killian Vigna: I might throw a little sound bite in there.
Sarah McEvoy: When we actually told them, they wanted…
Killian Vigna: Can you throw a sound bite in?
Sarah McEvoy: They want to record an album, but they’ve never had enough money to go anywhere. Remember, they said a Christmas album, and we told them that we had a sound-proof studio here if they wanted to come down. They never got back to us, but we must…
Killian Vigna: Zoe’s an audio mixer, so, making an album…
Sarah McEvoy: Yeah. That would be like, if they could produce.
Killian Vigna: X factor, watch out.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: I haven’t recorded an album in like six years, now, but sure.
Sarah McEvoy: There’s a challenge for you now.
Killian Vigna: That’s basically how we’re getting involved in the charities. Have you got any advice for any salons that might be thinking of getting into this route?
Aoife Kelly-Cooney: I would definitely look at what you can do yourselves. Not the easy thing you can do, but what do you have that you could give that doesn’t involve that much money. Obviously, skills like hair, beauty, they’re all things that you can use.
Killian Vigna: Yeah. It doesn’t always have to be cash donations. You can provide services or stuff like that. Maybe turn up once a week for an hour or something, like you were saying. Do hairstyles. Do makeup, facials, anything like that.
Aoife Kelly-Cooney: It’s going to be different for every community as well. You’ll know where the areas of need are.
Sarah McEvoy: Exactly. There was a lot of publicity at some salons, they were doing hair for the homeless and stuff. Even something like that, it’s like low cost, low time, but massive impact.
Killian Vigna: Yeah. Some salons do like free haircuts. That could be just once a month. One hour a month, 15 minutes a week basically.
Aoife Kelly-Cooney: Another idea might be for if you had any local hospitals, like regional hospitals where I know some hairdressers go in…
Sarah McEvoy: Or a nursing home.
Aoife Kelly-Cooney: A nursing home as well. They go in and they would give treatments to people who are in a hospital or in homes. You see that even in Beaumont Hospital here. They can go and get their hair done at the hospital and their nails as well, even in the bed they can have their nails done. There are really nice things that you can do that don’t actually really cost you anything other than your time.
Sarah McEvoy: Yeah.
Aoife Kelly-Cooney: The impact that has is massive.
Killian Vigna: It’s the one time we’ll always tell you, this is the only time we’ll tell you I mean, think small here. Like you were saying, if they’re getting a load of funding, are you really going to make an impact? So, go smaller. That’s why we’re saying about communities and like the hospitals is a brilliant idea. That’s pretty much giving back to the community in a nutshell. Thanks, Sarah. Thanks, Aoife.
Aoife Kelly-Cooney: It feels really good as well, so enjoy it if you do get involved in anything like that.
Killian Vigna: I can’t wait for the…
Zoe Belisle-Springer: You can’t do it halfway. You have to give it your all.
Killian Vigna: I really can’t wait for the marketplace now, because we’ve a lot of foodies and a lot of bakers in here. I’m going to get so fat.
Sarah McEvoy: You’ve got to get a full new wardrobe as well.
Aoife Kelly-Cooney: Get your dad to cook.
Killian Vigna: Bake a cake, yeah. Thanks very much for joining us, guys.
Sarah McEvoy: Thanks for having us.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Thanks so much.
Killian Vigna: Cool. Zoe, moving on from giving back to your community, now, it’s the blog recaps.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah, so recently there’s been loads of blogs going out, but we’ve chosen three. The first one is messaging tools. Internal communication and it’s something that’s come up time and time again. People have been asking for this even through the software. What I mean by instant messaging tools is things like a group where you can chat with your staff, with your managers, and create little channels where you can share information and make sure that everyone knows what’s going on.
Killian Vigna: Yeah. It’s keeping the team in the loop.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah, exactly. It’s nothing to do with clients, necessarily. It’s notes on clients, but within the staff.
Killian Vigna: Yeah, you’re not going to want your clients in this group chat.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Exactly. There’s quite a few options out there. If we highlight the three main ones that I suppose people are already using within the industry, would be Facebook groups. Facebook has also introduced Facebook workspace. It’s similar to the way a group would work. It’s just a tool that helps you communicate with your staff team. It puts everything together in the same place. You can share videos, you can share documents, you can go live within the group, you can do pretty much anything you want.
Killian Vigna: That’s Facebook workplace. That’s only new feature coming in now, recently.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: It works quite similarly to the Facebook group that we are… that you already know of, that are already available on Facebook. Obviously Facebook workplace, they do have pricing plans and stuff, but there’s also a free version if you want it, a free plan basically for it.
Killian Vigna: Yeah. If you only have a handful of staff, you could check it out, it’s free. If you’ve got more bigger companies like thirty plus staff, then you probably want to just stick with Facebook groups or the next one you have lined up. The free ones, these are free ones.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah. I always try to highlight free options, because people don’t necessarily want to spend more on anything else, especially if there are free versions out there.
Killian Vigna: Exactly. Unnecessary costs.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Exactly. In the blog, obviously I suggest you read it, because I’m only going to highlight the three main ones, but within the three, within each three, I highlight pros and cons of every platform. There is definitely something that you can look up there and see whatever works for you within your team. The other option, the second one, would be What’s App groups. That’s been, Ellen Cavanaugh from Waxperts uses What’s App work groups. They are free, they are easy. The only thing that sometimes happens is that it can derail from being professional to being very casual and friendly and you kind of lose the professionalism out of it.
Killian Vigna: Exactly, yeah.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: There is that danger. Again, if that’s an option that you want to consider then that’s totally fine and you should look in to it.
Killian Vigna: This is another one where you just create a procedure about it.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Exactly, yeah.
Killian Vigna: We have them at work here. We have some serious ones and we have some random channel or Phorest jams, which is our music channel.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah. Actually, that brings me on to the third option, which is Slack. Slack would be my favorite within all of the options because it is available for free, you can use it on a tablet, on desktop, on your smart phone. The advantage of it is you can create channels, so, you could create, say you had a team of managers or different branches, you could have a channel for branch one, branch number two, you could have a channel for just chat with the managers of different branches. You could have one for every single employee within your organization, in your company.
Killian Vigna: Slack would be more multi-branch is it?
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Slack would be the best option for the multi-branch, especially if you’re trying to manage different things. If you don’t want your floor employees to know everything about what you want to tell your managers, then it’s easy to separate it because you can create private channels or public channels as well. You know that as well, because we use Slack in Phorest, and I’ve heard of some salon owners using it too.
Killian Vigna: Some of the examples we have is we have the marketing channel, we’ve got the general, which is everyone. They’re all public, you can tune in and out, but sometimes it’s just like, the support channel would have so many notifications that we wouldn’t need to be in it, but if we need to talk to support, we can jump in to that channel. It would be the same with you guys, especially if any of you are crossing stocks off, taking stock from one branch to another branch, that’s where that would come in handy. I know a lot of shops that do it, some salons do it too.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: There’s loads of advantages to Slack to be honest. It’s definitely something you should look in to. If I had to choose one, it would be that one.
Killian Vigna: Oh, one hundred percent, yeah. There’s just so much more you can do, and you can still have fun with it too.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: You can create like a fun channel, like we have the random channel. You know that every other channel is professional, and then that one you can put up fun things or like a random article you read or something like that and that’s fine.
Killian Vigna: Exactly, yeah. Cool. There are the three salon communications, so that moves us on to?
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Creating a mission statement.
Killian Vigna: This one actually ties in well with 30Days2Grow.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Exactly. That’s exactly what I was going to say. 30Days2Grow is all about…
Killian Vigna: I’m just spoiling all of your stuff.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: I think we’re just getting way to used to… 30Days2Grow is all about the little small changes that you can do to grow your business. It’s one task a day that we send salon owners who have registered. When you think about it, the whole idea behind it is to have, you kind of need a mission. Something that you want your team to achieve in the end as well. You have an end goal that you want to reach. It’s defining that end goal. Sometimes you get so stuck on all the little things, the day-by-day, that you kind of forget why you got in to the business in the first place, and what you wanted to achieve.
Killian Vigna: Well sure, it’s like that known thing with start-up companies. All of these tech and software companies pivot, pivot became this massive word, because they didn’t have mission statements. They just came up with a product, or came up with an idea and just constantly kept changing the business plan. That’s why most of them, well, not most of them, but a lot of them do fail because they don’t know who they are and they don’t know why they’re doing it. They just had a good idea. This mission statement, it reminds you of why you got in to the salon business, why you’ve gone with that particular style you have. It just keeps you on track with your journey and it keeps your team on track as well.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: For any other staff that you decide to hire within the span of what you’re doing, it just puts everybody on par with your ideas and your vision as a salon owner. You got into the industry for something. Just try and remember what that was and communicate it with people.
Killian Vigna: How would you write one, though?
Zoe Belisle-Springer: There’s loads of questions. Obviously in the blog you have that all written down, so it might be easier for you to have that on the side while you try and write your mission statement. There are questions you can ask. Who is your company? What does your business and why do you do it? Do you want to make enough income to make a living, or is profit more important? Who’s your target base? Who’s your audience? Do you solve a problem for your customers? If so, which one? What’s the internal work environment you want for your employees? It’s all that kind of thing, those kinds of things. Basically, it’s a sentence. You have to sum it up in a sentence.
Killian Vigna: It sounds like it’s a lot of work and really long there, but they’re just getting you to question every area of your salon, and then it’s just one or two lines.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: If you say one or two lines, think about what do we do, how do we do it, who do we do it for, and what value are we bringing, as simple as.
Killian Vigna: Please don’t put in to be the world’s best salon or to be the world’s best hairstylist, because that is not a goal. You’re going to spend your whole life trying to chase that.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: If I just give out an example, I have an example right there up in front. “Our mission is to create a delightful retreat from the pressing worries of the modern world, embodying our own signature blend of natural and organic ingredients, we will strive to provide our guests with the sanctuary for the senses. To us, each guest is an individual and each treatment, a highly personal affair”. It goes on for a little bit. This one is a little longer, but it just defines everything that you want to achieve with your business.
Killian Vigna: Even what you just read there, that’s perfect. There’s no exaggerated claims or anything. It’s just nice and simple. This is who we are, this is what we’re going to do.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Exactly. I guess that pretty much sums up how to create a mission statement and why you should have one. If you’re doing 30 Days 2 Grow, I really encourage you, we’re still early days in the challenge, so I really encourage you to just, even if you do have a task a day, just to add this one somewhere down the line. Think about it during the month, because you’re already doing that work of trying to grow your business, so you might as well. If you don’t have a mission statement, just take the time to make one.
Moving onto our third blog, which is an announcement.
Killian Vigna: To end the show on a highlight, I suppose, or a high note.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: We have announced Tabatha Coffey for the Salon Owner’s Summit 2018 as our keynote speaker.
Killian Vigna: Does Tabatha need an introduction?
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Really, she doesn’t.
Killian Vigna: She probably doesn’t. But you know what, who is Tabatha?
Zoe Belisle-Springer: If you don’t know Tabatha, Tabatha is a best-selling author and she’s also the star of the hit U.S. TV series ‘Tabatha Takes Over’. What she does basically in that series is help businesses get back on track every week with her advice on customer service, leadership, management, teamwork and good work ethic. In a nutshell, that’s pretty much it. There’s so much to know about Tabatha.
Killian Vigna: It’s so funny, because this blog just went up there a couple of days ago, didn’t it? And in our Slack channel that we were just talking about earlier, in the general one, it was actually one of our U.S. trainers who was basically, “Oh my god, oh my god. Tabatha. Why didn’t I know Tabatha is joining.” We’re in the marketing department, we’ve been working on this for ages, but we just realized it’s only actually been announced now.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: She’s made her mark on reality and daytime television, red carpet and best-selling list, but initially her roots began in the hair industry, so she knows what she’s talking about. She’s a very confident woman.
Killian Vigna: Her roots began in the hair industry, yes.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Sorry, didn’t even think about that one. From the beginning of her career when she was actually 14 years old, to training with Vidal Sassoon in London, to her debut on Bravo’s ‘Shear Genius’ in 2007, she has devoted her professional life to achieving excellence in hair design and education. She doesn’t really need an introduction, really. If you don’t know about her, I strongly recommend you look into her. She is amazing and we cannot be more excited to have her on our speaker’s line-up.
Killian Vigna: If you don’t know who Tabatha is, the first thing you need to do is check out ‘Tabatha Takes Over’ on Bravo, isn’t it? That will open you up to how good she is and why we’re getting her as our keynote speaker.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah, keynote speaker.
Killian Vigna: Main keynote speaker. Those tickets, we’re still on the early bird tickets, so get those quick because they are limited. It’s on Monday, eight of January. We’ve moved from the Shellbourne Hotel to this year it’s now in the convention center, Spencer Dock, Dublin. She stars alongside Steve Martin, Gavin Hoare and Valerie Delforge.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Exactly. It’s definitely an event to get on board with as soon as you can, because tickets will sell out.
Killian Vigna: It sells out every year.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Especially with this announcement now, it’s just going to go so quick. Move on fast.
Killian Vigna: Like I said, our trainers got so excited this week, and we thought they already knew.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Exactly.
Killian Vigna: To top off the show, or well, top, top off the show, any upcoming webinars, Zoe?
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Absolutely. The next one would be on Monday, July 24th and that’s the salon Facebook webinar master class with Chris Brennan, our content manager at Phorest. If you haven’t jumped on that before, basically what we do, it’s an hour long, and we go through how to read your insights, how to boost posts, how to reach your audience, different tips and tricks and it’s a really nice introduction into Facebook advertising if you haven’t really played around with it. That’s from 3pm to 4pm U.K./Ireland time or 10am to 11am U.S. eastern time. All you need to do is go on to our Facebook page in the events section, we’ll have an event called Facebook master class. You go in to that, click get tickets, they’re free. Just save your spot, and you’re good to go.
Killian Vigna: Cool. And as always, if you’re enjoying the show, let us know. I think you can leave a rating and review in iTunes. It would be great to see your feedback and see how much you’re enjoying the show, are you enjoying the show.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: What you want to hear on the show. We do interviews every two weeks, every second week actually, so, yeah. Anyone that you want to get insights from and we can get on the show, we’ll be more than happy to do so.
Killian Vigna: Or do you want to be on the show? We’ve had a couple of salon owners reach out to us, so jump on board. Let’s go.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: On this note, Killian, I don’t have anything else to add, so…
Killian Vigna: I’m empty.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: You’re empty.
Killian Vigna: I’m empty.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Listen guys, have an amazing week, and we will catch you next Monday.
Killian Vigna: All the best.
Thanks for reading!
#LetsGrow
