Welcome to the Salon Owner’s Podcast, Phorest FM Episode 66. Co-hosted by Killian Vigna and Zoé Bélisle-Springer, Phorest FM is a weekly show that puts forth a mix of interviews with industry thought-leaders, salon/spa marketing tips, company insights and information on attending Phorest Academy webinars. Phorest FM is produced every Monday morning for your enjoyment with a cup of coffee on your day off.
Phorest FM Episode 66
Ever walked into a hospital and thought: “Woah, why is it so bright?” Or perhaps have you experienced the other end of the spectrum in work or at home: “I can’t see anything, I need more light.” In this episode of Phorest FM, Killian and Zoe take their usual mid-month break from interviews to discuss recent Phorest Salon Software blogs. Find out about the different types of lighting, what each is best for and what you should look out for when playing with the light in your salon or spa. Then, get inspired by some online education resources and marketing ideas.
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Transcript
Killian Vigna: Welcome to the Phorest FM podcast, episode 66. I’m Killian Vigna.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: And I’m Zoe Belisle-Springer.
Killian Vigna: This week’s episode will feature discussions around some of March’s popular material on the Phorest Blog. We’ll discuss interior design lighting tips, online education, and marketing ideas for your salon or spa.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: As always, we top off the show with our upcoming Phorest Academy webinars.
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. How are things?
Killian Vigna: I’m good now, yeah. Yourself?
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Pretty good. Pretty good. I mean, we’re back in the snow again in Montreal.
Killian Vigna: We’re prepared for a Pest from the West. We had the Beast from the East there, last week, or two weeks ago. Yeah, which is mad, because we’re in the second week of March, which brings us to your blog episode.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah. There’s quite a few things that have been going on on the blog. There’s a bit of chat about GDPR, obviously, which is an ongoing thing for salon owners to prepare for, May 25th. Apart from that, there have been a few articles that have stood out, in terms of the engagement. One of those was the lighting tips to complement interior design. It’s interesting how lighting can actually change either the vibe of your salon, or how your retail display stands out, or the day-to-day tasks. There’s different types of lighting.
Killian Vigna: I had a look at the blog, and I’m not going to lie. What was it, the second two that you’re going to talk about? I never even knew that was the right name for them. So you might need to give a bit of context around those.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah. Well, there’s mainly three big types of lighting. There’s ambient lighting, which is your kind of primary light switch when you go into a room, turn on a light. That’s kind of your ambient lighting. This is obviously something that you need, but then to accentuate certain things, or to help, say, for instance, your receptionist at the desk, sometimes that lighting isn’t strong enough for you to be able to do all your tasks during the day, so another type of lighting that you’ll hear about is task lighting. Essentially, that’s when, say, for instance, your reception desk doesn’t have a lot of light, or your colour station isn’t really well let, you’ll have, for instance, a little… You can use table lamps, floor lamps, pendant lights, anything that will give that additional light to that little space.
Killian Vigna: That kind of… Almost a torch, nearly. The light is focused on one area, as opposed to just open light.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know when you’re sitting in bed, and you have a little light next to your bed? That’s a task lighting. That would be something that you would turn on to read a book, for instance, you know?
Killian Vigna: That’s one of the ones where I was like, “Task lighting? What’s that?”
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah. Then, the third type is accent lighting. That essentially is to bring… The way you’d use it in a salon or spa is to bring your customer’s attention to something in particular. Now, I’m thinking retail products, I’m thinking any kind of display that you have. Is there a waiting area where you keep books and magazines? Maybe you’d want to accentuate that.
Killian Vigna: So it’d be kind of like a backlight, is it? You kind of-
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah. You could have a backlight, yeah. Sometimes, backlights, especially for products, if it’s very, very bright, it’ll actually have the opposite effect, because it’s going to be so bright that the products won’t actually stand out.
Killian Vigna: Yeah.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Sometimes it’s more interesting to have a light that goes onto the products, compared to if you have it coming at the back of them.
Killian Vigna: And do you have different styles of lights, like softness, or harshness, or anything like that?
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah, so obviously light is a very complex thing. There are different colours. You’ve probably noticed yourself, sometimes, if you go in a hospital, the lights are really, really bright and white. Sometimes you’ll walk in a room, and the light is kind of yellow. It’s on the range of a Kelvin scale, it’s called. In terms of your salon, that will change a lot of things, especially, for instance, for anything that you do with colour. Think about it. If your light is too warm or too cold-
Killian Vigna: You’re going to see different tones and stuff like that.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Well, imagine you do a full face makeup on someone, and they leave your door, and because the lighting was so different, they get a completely different result as they walk out the door.
Killian Vigna: Yeah.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: It’s something to be careful. There’s essentially five things to remember, when you’re playing with lights and redecorating your salon, in terms of lighting. Make sure that they flatter and complement your design because that will change quite a lot. For a customer walking into the salon, lighting is something that can either throw them off or make them feel really comfortable.
Killian Vigna: Yeah.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah. Then, thinking about placement, make sure there’s no… Especially for salons and spas, make sure there’s no shadows around your stylists’ and therapists’ working area because that’s… Imagine the stylist having to say to the client, “Oh, sorry. Can you move a little bit to the left, because I can’t see because of the shadow?”
Killian Vigna: Yeah. [inaudible 00:05:17]. Yeah.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah. It’s no good for anyone. Bulbs: Try to choose ones that render colour accurately. Again, not too yellow and not too white. There’s a thing called colour rendering index, which I explain in the blog further. You want to keep that between 80 and 85. Again, just go and read that blog, and you’ll have a better understanding of what that is. If you do want to create a certain mood, then you can use dim lights, for instance.
Killian Vigna: I love dim lights.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah. That works very well. There’s a few more things down there. The impacts on why you should have good lighting in your salon and spa. I encourage you to go and read that on the Phorest blog. The article is called Top Salon Lighting Tips To Complement Your Interior Design. That was published very late February, early March.
If we move on to the second one that was very popular, and I’ve seen going around on social already, it’s the 10 Alternative Online Salon Courses That Will Help You Grow. That was essentially a blog that we published about, I want to say, two, three years ago already. I went through it from A to Z, and looked at all the courses that we had listed, refreshed all the list, added way more as well. So there’s different things there. You know how we do Phorest Academy, and we have, for instance, a webinar on leadership, or a webinar on GDPR, and things like these? This blog actually goes into the Udemy, Skillshare, Coursera kind of courses, and they’re on different types of subjects that you wouldn’t necessarily get through Phorest Academy.
Killian Vigna: Are these self-taught courses, or an online university, or something?
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah. That’s the one. It’s a bit like an online university, with a very, very low fee. Obviously, this is to develop yourself. You could have public speaking, inspirational leadership, writing that sells, creating effective messages to promote your brand and products.
There’s usually one or two, sometimes even three courses per topic. I’ve listed ten different types of topics. There’s even courses on HR, and recruitment, social psychology. There’s a lot of things in there. Design, interior design, photography. Anything that can really add to your set of skills, and can help grow your business, essentially.
Killian Vigna: Yeah, because you always want to be learning. But as far as I know, some of these courses, they’re not even overly expensive, either.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: No, no, no. Some of them are free. Some of them are… I think Coursera charges, I think, $60 per month. But most of the courses you can do in a month, so it’s really not that much.
Killian Vigna: Yeah. Cool. That brings us to our last blog, which is the Salon Marketing Opportunities to Avail Of This Coming March, which it is March now, so avail.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Avail, yeah. In the UK and Ireland, last week was Mother’s Day, so there were things in there for Mother’s Day. This weekend is St. Patrick’s Day, and coming later in the month is Easter, so there are quite a few things you could do around those holidays. I don’t know if you have anything off the top of your head, but if I kick it off, I’d say even just for St. Paddy’s Day, the easiest one, treat your clients with an Irish coffee. It’s always something nice to do. It’s always very appreciated by clients when they come in, and you say, “Oh, do you want to top it up with a bit of Jameson?” or any kind of whiskey. It’s a nice touch in the morning.
Killian Vigna: In the morning, yeah?
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Well, I used to go-
Killian Vigna: [inaudible 00:08:55]
Zoe Belisle-Springer: No, seriously. I used to go to a salon where, it was especially during the holidays, because they didn’t really celebrate St. Paddy’s Day, but especially during the holidays, you’d come in, and I’d have appointments at 10:00 or 11:00 AM, and I’d get a little Bailey’s coffee or Irish coffee. It’s delicious. Starts your day perfectly.
Killian Vigna: Puts a smile on your face I’m sure, yeah.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Oh, yeah. Definitely. But no, other than that, you could use the colour for St. Paddy’s Day, and just translate that to something else. For instance, you could decide that on St. Paddy’s Day weekend, you could give a certain percentage of your sales to an environmental charity, or even a non-profit looking for help in your local area to clean up, say, for instance, a beach, or something like that.
Killian Vigna: That’s pretty good. It’s always good to think of local, small charities that wouldn’t usually get big funding, either.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Or even, like I said, just hands-on help. Sometimes that’s all they need. There’s things like that. There’s also one there that I put up, and it was the pot of gold promotion. It was taking inspiration off what David Barnett, in the Christmas retail opportunities podcast that we did with him… Took inspiration from that. I don’t know if you remember that. We were talking about that little wheel of fortune.
Killian Vigna: Yeah. It was a brilliant idea. He has it in his salon, and everyone can just spin it around when they want.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Exactly. Yeah. If you do that for St. Paddy’s Day, you could say there’s three level of prizes. For instance, if you spend, I don’t know, 50 euros, pounds, or dollars, you get the level one type of prizes, that are according to how much they’ve spent, because you don’t want to over-give a prize either. Then, clients who spend from 50 to 100, they get the level two prizes. Those who spend 100 or more, they get the level three prizes. That way, you’re not giving away a massive prize to someone who’s spent 20 euros in your salon, either. Then, you can create a list of prizes like that, depending on bill spend, and just get them to spin the wheel at the end of their treatment. It’s a nice thing to do. It gets people talking, definitely. Can even share it on social.
Killian Vigna: Yeah, it’s a bit of fun, and it’s engaging, too, with the chance of a reward.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Exactly. Yeah.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: The other thing that I put up there that was actually quite fun to do myself was a St. Paddy’s Day Trivia Quiz that you can actually host through social media, and draw daily prizes, or invite people to answer. If you don’t want to do daily prizes, you can say, “If you answer 10 out of the 13, then you’re automatically entered for a draw,” or something like that. Essentially, you’re just kind of asking questions about “What is St. Patrick’s Day? Why do we celebrate that?”
Killian Vigna: Yeah.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: That was actually quite fun to do. Did you know that St. Paddy’s Day’s colour wasn’t actually green before? For a long time, it was blue.
Killian Vigna: Oh? What made it green?
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Accidentally… Well, from what I’ve understood, accidentally, I think it was Chicago, they started… There was an accident, and they put loads of green in a river, so that’s kind of what kind of started it all. But, yeah. It was actually blue before.
Killian Vigna: Did you know the hometown I’m from, which is good old Naas, in Kildare, was the showdown for St. Patrick and the last snake of Ireland?
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Are you for real?
Killian Vigna: Yeah. Yeah. So the final showdown happened in Naas, where I’m from.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: That is so funny.
Killian Vigna: That’s why we have a snake on our crest.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Oh, well, you learn something every day.
Killian Vigna: [inaudible 00:12:33].
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Jesus. [pause] Easter. March 30th to April 2nd this year. You could sponsor an Easter event in your local town. That’s kind of the easiest thing if you don’t really have the resources, or you’re too busy to do something in your salon. It could be an Easter event that includes families and stuff, because then you’re getting the parents, to get that visibility of your salon. You could reward your most loyal clients by sending them a little note with, maybe, one or two product samples in the mail.
You could create Easter self-care baskets. One way to do sell retail is by creating grab-and-go packages and baskets. I know you’re a big fan of those when it comes to Christmas and stuff. We’ve discussed this before.
Killian Vigna: Yeah.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Creating special Easter treatment packages, again, often for stylists and therapists that feel maybe a little shy to push a different treatment, to try and get clients to try a new thing, treatment packages is a great way to do that, because you have this opportunity of saying, “Well, you’ve already tried this. Why not add this to your experience next time?” or something like that. You can market it as limited availability, rather than limited time only, because the way I see it, Easter is only there for a weekend. Everybody knows that it’s only a limited time, whereas if you say a limited availability, you’re putting your marketing at a different angle. People will want to get onto it before it runs out.
Killian Vigna: Yeah.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Then, you could also put on a ‘Count The Eggs’ social media contest. I’ve seen this before. You know those little bags of the mini Easter eggs or even the Cadbury eggs?
Killian Vigna: Oh, I think I know where you’re going with this. I’ve seen it with coins, and jellies.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah, yeah. Exactly. You buy a few of them, and then you put loads of them in three jars, and you ask people on social media… Take photos. Put it on social media, your Instagram, or Facebook, or whichever platform, and you ask people to try and guess how many eggs are in the jar. The people who get the closest answer or the person who gets the closest answer could get a complimentary treatment of their choosing or something like that. It’s a fun thing to do. It gets a lot of engagement every single time I’ve seen it.
Killian Vigna: It’s one of those curiosity ones, as well.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: But when you do create those jars, for the sake of you, just don’t forget to count the eggs when you do it the first time.
Killian Vigna: Or you could do a Facebook Live at the end, where you count them all on Facebook.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Oh, yeah. That too. Listen, I’ve seen one of my mates-
Killian Vigna: I’m not going to sit down and watch it, but you could.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: No, where I’m going with this, one of my mates is a YouTube star/Instagram influencer, and when he hit 20,000 subscribers on YouTube, he decided to thank every single one of them. He counted from 1 to 20,000 in a video. It was quite funny, to be honest. I didn’t watch the whole thing because that’s very long-
Killian Vigna: Wow!
Zoe Belisle-Springer: …but, I mean, you could do that with the eggs.
Killian Vigna: Let’s hope you don’t have enough time to count all those eggs.
Zoe Belisle-Springer: Yeah. I mean, that’s only starters. You can have many more things you could do. I’m always surprised to see how creative people get around these holidays, even just, say, International Woman’s Day last week. Therwereas loads of things going around on social media. It was just great to see people engage with each other, and celebrate, either women, or Mother’s Day, which was last weekend. It’s just really great to see the engagement, and how people get creative around these holidays.
Killian Vigna: For the second part of our show-
Zoe Belisle-Springer: The webinars. Phorest Academy webinars. We have one coming up on March 21st. It’s a special Irish Hairdressers Federation webinar/Phorest Academy webinar. It’s on Salon GDPR. Again, it’s essentially that same, one-hour master class, but tailored for Irish Hairdressers Federation. That’s with Connor Keppel, from 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM UK/Irish time. He’ll go through understanding what GDPR is, how it affects your salon, the work involved in becoming compliant, and the risk of not being compliant. What could that cost your salon?
Then, the other one coming up would be in April, but I’ll mention it anyways, just because you really don’t want to miss out on this one. It’s the Phorest Academy “Become an Exceptional Leader”, with Valerie Delforge. That’s her last webinar of the salon management series that she’s been running for about six months with us. It is something that you want to get onto. It’s a topic that we just discussed on Phorest FM recently with David Barnett. So, leadership. She will go through ways to motivate your team to achieve targets and goals. She’ll talk about how to inspire staff to take ownership of their own roles. She’ll go through strategies on how to become the leader that you’ve always dreamed of being. That’s on April 11th. It’s far away from now, Wednesday, April 11th from 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM UK/Irish time, or 9:00 to 10:00 AM US Eastern time.
If you want to sign up to any of those, you, as always, go onto our Facebook page, in the Events section, click on the event of your choice, and click Get Tickets. Events are free, as always. You just have to sign up and save your spot on the day.
So, that’s it for us today. If you have any feedback, feel free to leave us a review on iTunes or on Stitcher. We’re always looking for suggestions on how to improve the show. Otherwise, have a wonderful week, and we’ll catch you next Monday.
Killian Vigna: All the best.
Thanks for reading!
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