Hairdressing Business Systems

Hairdressing Business Systems

Hairdressing Business Systems

It’s great that you’re passionate about your hairdressing salon, and you offer an amazing service to your clients. But is your lack of good hairdressing business systems losing you money? Wasting you time? Causing you stress? Without good business systems you’ll also spend way too much time putting out fires or reinventing the wheel, when you could be spending that time growing your business, spending more time with your clients, and getting your freedom back.

But it’s never too late to start thinking about good business systems. But firstly, what do I mean by that?

There are two things to consider – financial and non financial systems. If you want to get really technical, they’re explained in more detail here. Otherwise, let’s keep it a little more general to first get you thinking about how you can improve the profitability of your salon with good business systems.

Financial & Non Financial Business Systems

Financial business systems are the easiest to explain, and it can be as simple as starting by putting in some good accounting and business software such as Xero, Simple Salon, or Vagaro. I often hear business owners complaining that software is so expensive. However, it’s an essential tool in your business, just like an exceptional pair of scissors, and business software can actually help you make more money!

But setting up your business software and having it running nicely shouldn’t be the end of it. What story is it telling you? What can you do with that information? What processes can it improve? And no matter how good your financial reports look, if you don’t have the back end systems turning the wheels in the background, you’ll always find it’s harder that it should be – in all respects.

Learn more: How accounting software can increase your profits

Of course your salon can run without these business systems – an appointment book, a shoebox for your receipts, and a pencil is really all you need. Right? In my opinion, you need way more than that if you want to run a scalable, profitable, successful business that you can be proud of. The lack of good systems can mean that you can’t grow to your full potential, you’re losing clients as quickly as you’re replacing them (hole in the bucket scenario), you’re losing money, you have unhappy staff, and you don’t have the freedom you need to grow. And what happens when you go on holidays or need to be away for a period of time? How will your business cope without you? When you start to analyse how you’re running your salon, you’ll start to discover gaps where improvements can be made. You might find better ways to perform routine tasks, reduce bottlenecks, and eliminate extra steps. There may be holes in your operation that good systems can plug. Here’s how your business can look with good systems:

  • You don’t spent most of the day putting out fires.
  • You have more freedom because the salon manages itself better with a natural flow.
  • There’s consistency of output so your clients know what to expect, and are delighted by the level of extra care you give.
  • There’s less churn and more loyalty.
  • Your salon is more profitable.
  • A systematised salon is a sellable salon.

So I have a challenge for you. Start thinking about all the processes in the day-to-day running of your salon. What can you delegate? What can you automate? What can you improve? What’s going great? It’s a big job to fully systematise your business and not something that needs to be completed by next Tuesday! So be patient, as it takes time, consideration and planning. And there are lots of moving parts within any business, particularly a busy salon. So take your time and work on one area before moving to the next. Before you know it, you’ll have your salon performing as well as a high quality pair of Kamisori Black Diamond scissors!

Related Posts

member-img

Online Accounting – The Future is Here

Is now the time to move to online accounting? Now that online accounting solutions have been in the

Read More
member-img

Five Ways in Managing a Healthy Cash Flow

We cannot stress enough the importance of properly managing a healthy cash flow to ensure the smooth

Read More
member-img

4 Tips for Encouraging Repeat Customers

There’s a lot of data supporting the idea that it’s less costly, easier and more efficient to en

Read More