The odd idea, a bit of prodding, a nudge here and there, a little fun, and the occasional dose of brutal reality.
With Worldwide Salon Marketing CEO Greg Milner.

Interviewing a series of successful salon owners this week for a new book I'm writing, it was interesting to see how a common thread began to emerge during these discussions. And it will come as no surprise to anybody who's been following our work with salon & spa owners over the past serveral years, that the central theme is 

 ACTION

Thanks to her prominence in the Inner Circle program, Tracey Orr gets a constant stream of phone calls and emails from salon owners all over the world, begging for help. Tracey told me this week that most of them - struggling for the 'magic bullet' that will somehow miraculously save them from bankruptcy and failure - complain that it's all just

'too hard!!!'

As I said in my post last week, the statistics show that in 12 months from now, 80% of salon & spa owners will either be out of business, or no further advanced than they are today - and only 20% will be on the way to success.

And that goes back to ACTION: the difference between those who choose to be in the 80% 'also-ran' category, and those who choose to be in the top 20% (and don't be under any illusion through my use of words here. I wrote 'choose' deliberately, as it is certainly a choice that anybody can make. Unfortunately, 80% choose to be in the bottom group.)

Case #1: The Hair Salon That Doubled Sales in Just Two Months:

A hair salon owner in Sydney got hold of the microphone at our recent Road to Riches Salon Marketing Super Conference and told how, after 5 years of plodding along doing it the way she'd always done it - and getting miserable results - her life had changed overnight… simply because she

1) made a decision, and

2) took ACTION

Coralie Allen takes up the story:

Coralie Allen, hair salon owner, of Sydney: "I have so much more energy for my business, I am currently aiming and on track to triple my sales by September…"

"Hi there, I had my business for 5 years and thought I was doing ok. But I knew it wasn't good enough to be able to stay in business, I never could stay on top of it all, just making enough to barely stay open, all because of the way I was running my business.

"I realised I never really knew anything about business until I tried the salon marketing with Inner Circle. When I first saw the free intro DVD I was amazed…. it was like an awakening to me.

"I could not believe what I was watching, it was like 'wow', a saviour to my problems, something and someone that can hold my hand and help me make money in my business, all I had to do was follow what they told me to do, and no-one had ever offered to do that with me before.

"I could not believe it. I felt I had nothing to lose and everything to gain. Instantly I enrolled in the program and as soon as I received it (the marketing Toolkit) I got started. I got results straight away, in the first two-and-a-half months my takings had jumped from $20,000 to $42,000… unbelievable, just simply following what I was told to do.
 
"This extra money made it possible for me to be able to

• renovate my old looking salon to a stylish new one.
• Hire my part time senior to full time,
• Get a $20,000 computer system,
• build a beauty room at the back and get a beautician in there, which she pays me rent, also getting her to work with the kit, so we do all the same marketing,
• hire a fantastic and more expensive bookeeper, who pays for herself because she helps me alot more than the other book keep ever did.

"Because once you start making money you need someone really good to be able to manage it, right? I have never ever had so many New Clients, using the marketing like the Queen of Referrals, in the first 2 months I got 62 new clients, now I get between 10-15 new clients every week.

"Got Hair Extensions in my salon, which I never could afford to get started up in previously. Got a part-time assistant, also now looking for a receptionist, and no more stress…YAY!

"I have so much more energy for my business, i am currently aiming and on track to triple my sales by september. Also have already planned 2 trips this year, one to NZ next month, also go to the Philippines in December for my brother's wedding, which before i joined the Inner Circle program I had to tell him that I could not go, because I could not afford to go. So now I can.

"Also having money to purchase an Operations Manual through you guys, all these things I never would have been able to do before. Now I am also working on the membership for my clients to bring in even more cashflow. Thank you to Greg and your fantastic team. It feels like I have just started a whole new business. I really appreciate it. :)"

Case #2: The $500 ad That Brought In 26 New Clients

Now, Coralie's story is hardly unique. All over the world, Inner Circle members are reporting similar breakthroughs. Like Lisa Conway of Marinelli's Hair Design, down in Victoria. Recently I reported how Lisa had joined the program only in July, and had taken immediate ACTION, placing a direct response ad (my kind of ad, the kind the so-called 'professionals' hate) in her local newspaper.

Here's how Lisa describes the results… (and Inner Circle members can log into the Members' Only 'sealed section' to download the exact ad that Lisa used, under 'Getting New Clients - Hair'):

Lisa Conway: $490 ad produced 26 new clients

"We have had 25 people come in and the last one is tomorrow. All were openly happy and 11 rebooked, 10 purchased a product on the day…We call them a week later to make sure they are still happy and 2 came in again for a slight adjustment.

"The ad cost $490.00 and I ran it twice, 2 weeks apart. The first ad made 15 bookings and the second 11 …26 x 99 = $2574 -  that’s the fact but for me it has created 26 new color clients and a new energy in our salon that is as they say, PRICELESS. "The rebooking and the products sold on the day was way down on the second group, maybe coincidence or maybe the energy slipped a little not sure. Lisa."

HOW TO JOIN THE INNER CIRCLE PROGRAM AND GET THE TOOLKIT ON 30-DAY TRIAL:

Each month we accept a handful of salons on a 30-day Test Drive of the whole system, including the full Toolkit, and one-on-one coaching in how to use it. To see if you qualify, you must first complete the survey and questionnaire.

Hazel McNamara Bodysense Solutions, NSW

Case 3: The Shop-A-Docket Campaign That Paid for Itself in Three Weeks. 

An email just in this week from long-time IC member Hazel McNamara of Bodysense Solutions in Gordon, NSW:

"Hi Greg, Just thought I would give you an update about a campaign I'm currently running in my local Woolworths supermarket.

I hadn't done 'Shop A Docket' before but thought that I should give it a go. The campaign started at the end of July for 10 weeks at a total cost of $1,500.

I decided to run the attached campaign as I wanted to increase the number of new clients and give an option of a few treatments that we offer rather thanjust one type of treatment.

We've had one client who called asking if she could book herself and 4 family members in for a facial on the one docket.

As you can imagine, I had no problems with this at all. The more the merrier. And even better, this client came back the following week and booked a course of Microdermabrasion treatments for herself at $650 and a course of Infrared Wrap treatments at $1,000 for her daughter.

So from just one coupon we've had sales of just over $2,000. The campaign is paid for and all other sales are now profit.

We had another new client today who walked in with her coupon. She had our new Solitone treatment and spent a total of $260 and her daughter is coming in later in the week for the same treatment. She's off to Paris for 3 weeks tomorrow but is booking a course of Solitone treatments together with a course of peels on her return at a cost of approx $1,700. Not bad!

This is the only marketing that I had booked for the month of August but because we are following other marketing ideas from our marketing kit, ie new client letters, birthdays, sms, emailing etc we are about to do one of
our biggest months ever!

The marketing kit has saved me thousands of dollars and although I'm spending less each month, our sales compared to last year have continued to increase each month.

Can't wait till Summer comes to see how much we can increase sales duringour busiest time of the year.

Thanks,

Hazel
BodySense Solutions."

NOTE TO Inner Circle Members: log into the Members' Only 'sealed section' and you can download the exact Shop-A-Docket voucher that worked so well for Hazel. You'll find it under 'Getting New Clients - Beauty.'

HOW TO JOIN THE INNER CIRCLE PROGRAM AND GET THE TOOLKIT ON 30-DAY TRIAL:

Each month we accept a handful of salons on a 30-day Test Drive of the whole system, including the full Toolkit, and one-on-one coaching in how to use it. To see if you qualify, you must first complete the survey and questionnaire.

The odd idea, a bit of prodding, a nudge here and there, a little fun, and the occasional dose of brutal reality.
With Worldwide Salon Marketing CEO Greg Milner.

On Monday in Sydney, I stood in front of nearly 300 beauty professionals and told them I was under strict instructions from our coaching team back at head office:

"Under no circumstances are you to allow more than 30 of them to join the Inner Circle program - we just cannot handle any more than that!"

Well, maybe I shouldn't have said anything at all. Because within 30 seconds of finishing my 90 minute session on stage, Jill and the team at the back of the room were beseiged .

More than 45 salon owners were jostling at the tables, thrusting their enrolment forms forward and begging to be allowed into the 'chosen 30'.

I called the office.

"Peter," I said to senior coach Peter Butler, "go find some more coaching resources!"

It was a cracker of an event. Here are just a few of the comments emailed to us within hours of the event:

"Hi Greg, I went to your seminar in Sydney on Monday, I have to say for the first 15mins I could not imagine ever doing the marketing you were suggesting me to do, My business runs really well with the marketing I do at present. The more I listened to what you were saying the more I couldnt wait to get back to my salons and put your marketing into practice. 
"It will be interesting to watch my business grow. I opened my salon in Woy Woy in 2006. The first year we turned over just under $500,000.00 and in 2007-08 we turned over $560,000.00,  my other salon was opened in December 2007 and turnover to date has been $225,000.00.

Click here to view more pictures.

The odd idea, a bit of prodding, a nudge here and there, a little fun, and the occasional dose of brutal reality.
With Worldwide Salon Marketing CEO Greg Milner.

Had two conversations this week which demonstrate clearly how frustrating it must be for so many people who are bursting at the seams to succeed - only to be held back by others like a ball-and-chain around the ankles.

One was a very sincere salon owner who had applied for a 30-day Test Drive of the Worldwide Salon Marketing Inner Circle marketing and mentoring program. Turns out she is the family's major breadwinner, with her 'house-husband' staying at home to look after the family. At age 37, she was working her fingers to the bone, helped only by a part-timer. It had been this way for the past SEVEN YEARS!

I asked her the hard question: "If you keep doing it the way you've always done it, can you see yourself still doing the same thing ten years from now?"

As I suspected, it was her husband who was holding her back, too fearful to allow her to invest in anything that would help leverage her off the tools and turn her 'job' into a real business. By the end of the conversation she was reduced to tears of frustration. She would have to go home and ask (beg!) the husband for his blessing to join the program.

Not surprisingly, I haven't heard from her since.

The second conversation was with another lady; different circumstances, same frustrations. She's a sales rep for a skin care product company, whose owners are blinkered by the 'old school' of sales - knocking on doors, cold calling. That's all they know, that's the way everybody else does it. Too ignorant/narrow-minded/pig-headed to even investigate the possiblity that there might actually be more effective ways of getting customers (eg, carefully-drafted direct response marketing that gets customers calling you instead of you chasing them.)

If the dilemma faced by these two ladies resonates with you, listen up:

If you keep asking permission, sooner rather than later you'll find somebody who'll say NO. It's easier to seek forgiveness that it is to get permission in the first place.

Find yourself in the position where your ambitions, desires, hopes and dreams are blocked by the ignorant, the timid, the fearful, those stubbornly resistant to change?

If you can't easily remove yourself from them (husband, wife etc) then suck it in, grit your teeth and commit to change without enrolling them in the process. Bite off more than you can chew, and chew like hell. And when you succeed (not if…when) then you can justifiably go back and say 'I told you so'. 

And if, as I told the sales rep, you're hamstrung by a boss who will obstinately refuse to get out of the way of his own failure - to educate himself on better ways to do business, to bring in customers, to market his company using brains instead of brawn and hard labour - then for the sake of your own sanity, you have a duty to yourself to remove yourself from that toxic influence. 

It's about two very simple, but BIG things. Making the decision… and then acting on it. 

Yes, being a member of the Inner Circle program gives you the tools, the guidance, the inspiration and the encouragement to make your salon or spa successful. But only YOU can make the decision and take the action to join in the first place.

Rebecca Skehan of Gaia Hair - from $8,000 a month to $22,000 a month…

Speaking of success - a topic that's far more palatable, easier to digest and produces less stomach acid than failure - I'm always delighted to hear of the great successes of our Inner Circle members, many of whom have made the tough decisions above and are very shortly thereafter reaping the benefits of those decisions.

Like IC member Rebecca Skehan, of Gaia Hair in an outer southern suburb of Brisbane, Queensland.

Rebecca was savvy enough to join the Inner Circle program and get her marketing kit before she even opened the doors of her salon last year. Her sales figures after one year in the program speak for themselves:

Sales in July 2007: $8,119 - with two full time staff

Sales in July 2008: $22,669 - with 1 full time staff member, one part-timer, and 1 apprentice.

That's a shade under 300% growth in 12 months. If you play the video in the right column of this page, you can see and hear Rebecca talking about this experience.

SYDNEY Road to Riches Conference Bursting at the Seams

As of today - Thursday, August 14 - we have 278 salon & spa owners registered for Monday's day-long marketing conference at the Novotel Brighton Beach hotel in Sydney. That's a big day, and if past conferences are anything to go by, every one of them will leave dazed, thrilled, a little bewildered by the information they've absorbed - and fired with new determination to make serious changes in their business and personal lives.

Late breaking news: Australia's most inspiring motivational speaker, Pat Mesiti, will be there to give us his own (fire)brand of get-up-and-go business-boosting training. Pat is one speaker I never get tired of listening to.

And at the end of the day, somebody's going to ride out of the hotel on our door prize, a brand-new, fully registered $4,000 Vespa scooter. Can't wait to see that.

NOTE TO MEMBERS:

Inside the 'sealed section' Members area, look in the Newsletters category for new templates for you, in Microsoft Publisher format, in both US Letter and A4 sizes. These are templates of the very successful monthly newsletters created and used profitably by IC members Angeline and Andrew Griggs of Nails & Beauty with Attitude in Cairns, Queensland.

Simply download them and use them as your own.

The odd idea, a bit of prodding, a nudge here and there, a little fun, and the occasional dose of brutal reality.
With Worldwide Salon Marketing CEO Greg Milner.

Long-time Inner Circle member Tracey Orr (left) of Absolute Beauty in Launceston, Tasmania, runs a VERY tight ship. And, as the Commanding Officer, she takes absolutely no prisoners when it comes to protecting the only real asset her business owns - her clients.

The odd idea, a bit of prodding, a nudge here and there, a little fun, and the occasional dose of brutal reality.
With Worldwide Salon Marketing CEO Greg Milner.

It's the depth of winter in my part of the world, so Michelle and I are flying north from Perth to the former US Navy base town of Exmouth tomorrow (Friday) for a few days of warm weather, game fishing and socializing with friends.

But before I get into fishing mode, a few words of advice about a Big Mistake many salon owners make when deciding about advertising in the local newspaper.

Yesterday I was interviewing the owner of a salon that was applying for membership of the Inner Circle program, and she brought up a misconception that’s so common I thought it worthwhile to discuss in this week’s Success Strategy.

 This salon owner echoed a sentiment that’s so widespread in the beauty industry it’s actually quite corrosive and dangerous for your business if you believe it, and act on it.

More on Salon Success Strategy #67: Don't blame the MEDIA when your salon ads don't work

Unbeknown to the more than 250 salon owners who've bought tickets for the Sydney Road to Riches Salon Marketing Super Conference (Novotel Brighton Beach, Monday August 18, 8.30am - 5pm) one lucky delegate is going to

ride away on this brand new Vespa scooter!

Yep, we're giving away this shiny new machine, fully registered for the road and valued at over $3,000, as a door prize at the end of the day-long conference.

If you have NOT yet registered for this event, we can squeeze just TEN more people in.

Call the office NOW on 08 9381 6621 and ask for Anna, Sally or Jemma.

Tickets are a measly $159 each, and apart from the best business, marketing and leadership training available for salon owners anywhere, we'll also feed you a sumptuous lunch into the bargain!

"My Website is Now Making Sales… in just 3 Weeks!"

www.salonsuccesswebsite.com

By Greg Milner.

I'll say it till I'm blue in the face… if you don't have a properly-developed website driving customers to you, you're simply leaving money lying uncollected on the table.

If you do have a website, and it's drifting aimlessly somewhere up there in cyberspace, lonely as an orphan on Father's Day, with fewer visitors than a roadside diner in the middle of the desert, it's about as useful as not having one at all.

I've harped on this many times… in this day and age, having a website that actually gets traffic can be more effective as your unpaid salesperson than any amount of Yellow Pages advertising and newspaper ads combined.

Many of our Members have recognised this, and the smart ones very quickly signed up to have IC coach and web specialist David Glendinning build a specialist customer-generating website for them.

Among the first was Ann Lockhart of Advanced Laser Hair Removal & Cosmetic Clinic in Toowong, Queensland. Anne's new website went 'live' only a few weeks ago… and already, Anne's getting new customers.

Click below to hear what Ann says about her website:

More on Salon Success Strategy #67: Is Your Salon Website Getting THESE Results?

Congratulations to Inner Circle members Niki and Jane from Talking Beauty in Melbourne, Victoria, and Robyne Squires and Bellabroayre Day Spa in Mundingburra, Queensland for some super marketing efforts that brought instant results.

Niki and Jane only joined the Inner Circle program three weeks ago at our Melbourne conference, and they're already swamped with new customers.

"Well the letters (the Hollywood Woman sales letter from the Toolkit) were finally sent out last night. This morning the phone has been ringing off the hook!!! I’ve had clients who have been coming here for 3 to 4 years and have never called up to book!!! We have already booked in 13 packages since 10am its now almost 3!!!  Just thought we’d let you know…"
  
And from Robyne Squires in Queensland: 
 
"Just had to share this with you, came in this morning and Sarah only had 1 client!!! So I tweaked the current beauty offer to incorporate nails, I sent 271 text messages at 10.15am (today Wednesday)  - well,  the phone started ringing before all the texts had gone out, I answered the phone and while on the phone had a client run in and say 'I just got a text I'll have one of whatever it is!', handing me $70. I had 5 calls and bookings in the first 15mins, and another 20 calls in the next 2 hours,  booking 15 for nails, 2 for the facial special as they already had nails, and 1 to call me back, plus 2 I have  been playing phone tag with.
What was interesting,  2 of the 1st 5 that booked had text/emailed their friend (who are not clients) and told them of the offer.. of course they booked ..now I have 2 new clients. UNBELIEVEABLE! Thanks, Robyne."
 
Actually, not all that unbelievable Robyne. Same story every time: If you put the right message, out to the right market, at the right time, it's pretty much a foolproof formula for success. 

Sure does help though, to have all those marketing messages already done for you, in the Inner Circle toolkit.
 

At a seminar I gave on Monday in Brisbane, a salon owner took me aside after my talk and complained bitterly about how 'tough things were out there' and accused me of mis-representing the 'true situation' by only featuring stories about successful salon owners.

"The way you talk," she said, "you'd think almost every salon owner is making money, when in fact the reverse is true. Most are scraping by week to week, or going broke…and I'm one of them!" she huffed.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

"So," I told her as gently as my white knuckles and clenched teeth would allow, "you'd prefer to get this newsletter every week and waste your time reading sob stories and failure reports - of which there is ample supply - rather than actually finding out what works, from successful people who are actually doing it?"

She looked at me blankly, shocked and speechless. So I filled the gap. "And then, poisoned by tales of woe, you go to work and pour this toxic gloom and doom all over your staff like a sticky dark syrup… is there any wonder you're having a miserable time?"

She shook her head and stormed off in a huff, a little dark cloud over her bowed head. Needless to say, this lady was not one of the dozen or more salon owners who joined our Inner Circle marketing and mentoring program that day.

So, in the interests of both rubbing the poor woman's nose in it, and bringing some more light and inspiration in your life, here's yet more compelling evidence that with the right tools (eg, the Toolkit that all Inner Circle members get) AND the right attitude about success, you too can mix with it with the Inner Circle members whose videos appear below.

And remember, it really is true that your income is an average of the income levels of your ten best friends and closest associates. What does that tell you? Hang out with successful people, not self-declared and self-perpetuating failures.

Drum roll please, for the Recession Busters!!!