Turning Passion Into Practice: Starting or Revitalising Your Clinic
A wise person once said: “The WHY is more important than the HOW!”. In other words, the reason you decide to open a business will have greater influence on your success than the knowledge you have. In fact, statistics say that your success depends 80% on your motivation; 20% come from your knowledge. Let me explain. Say you are working as an employee in a busy salon. You are generating a steady weekly income, obviously well in excess of your wages. So you get this idea: ‘Why don’t I make this money for myself?’. That’s a negative reason to go into business. You could end up buying yourself a job and working for the worst boss there is – yourself. Once you have signed a lease you are tied to that job. And unless you are inspired by your business it will soon become a burden.
The Hard Yards
The reality of starting a business is normally pretty harsh. Expect long hours, little time off, hard work, plenty of challenges. It will interfere with your social and family life and present you with problems that will make you question whether it’s all worth it. Of course, it can also be hugely rewarding, in time it can finance a good lifestyle and – if you play your cards right – you will have a valuable asset that you can sell. If you have that inner desire to run your own business it pays to work to a plan. After completing your Certificate in Beauty Therapy you should serve your ‘apprenticeship’ in a good skin clinic. Look for the toughest boss you can find; then work so hard that – in time – even that demanding boss will be impressed. This experience will be invaluable when you decide to go on your own.
How to Define Your Skin Clinic Mission and Values
Decide what your ‘Mission Statement’ should be. It’s a brief sentence that encapsulates the essence of your business. Hint: “I’ll be the cheapest facialist in town” is more likely to lead to long, grinding hours of unrelenting work than to great success. Next are your values. These are like guideposts. When we find ourselves facing difficult decisions we go back to our values for guidance. Anthony Robbins’ statement ‘Your Destiny is shaped in the Moments of your Decisions’ illustrates the importance of a good set of values to help us in getting important decisions right. A word of caution. A difficult decision can lead to procrastination. In the process of looking for ever more information we fail to make the decision. If you have considered all the alternatives and ticked the choices off against your values – take the decision.
Another word on values. Faced with decisions we often see what is called a ‘high road’ and a ‘low road’. The low road may seem easier but does it fit with your values? I don’t believe in Voodoo or Hocus Pocus but I have seen enough in my life in business to have a healthy respect for the concept of ‘Karma’. When leaving a place of employment make sure you do it on good terms. To poach your bosses’ clients is not only unethical and illegal; you might be tempting Karma. If you can’t start a business on the strength of your drive, skills and knowledge wait until you are ready. Your Business Plan and Cash Flow Statement will be developed taking into account your Mission Statement and Values, as well as the financial aspects which follow.
Choosing the Right Location for Your Skin Clinic
Beauty therapy is a wonderful business to be in. A good skin clinic will establish loyal clients who visit monthly for their personal services and who purchase significant amounts of personal care products. A location off the main traffic areas can work quite well because a good skin clinic becomes a ‘destination’. Once your clients know that you offer outstanding services they will go out of their way to visit you. For high profile clients a location in a side street can be attractive because it’s more discreet.
Lease or Buy? How to Choose Your Skin Clinic Premises
Now you are ready to look for a location. This is the first real big decision of consequence. You’ll be signing a lease that ties you into the location for some years. You’ll be investing your money to make the place suitable for your business. The rent you pay will be determined by the foot traffic that goes past your door.
It can be a good idea to buy an existing business if the price is right. This normally applies when a business owner has become tired and wants out. A new owner with lots of energy and some new ideas can revive such a business quickly. It may be a cheaper option than fitting out an empty shell and starting from zero. In making these decisions you will do well to heed two quotes purloined from the investment world:
“The market is a mechanism for transferring wealth from the impatient to the patient.”
“The opportunity of a lifetime comes by about once a week.”
All this says is that you need to do enough research and study to recognize a good deal as ‘genuine’. A lack of knowledge will lead to a decision you might regret.
How to Choose the Right Skincare Products for Your Clinic
Whilst all this is going on you will have spent time thinking about the product line you’ll want to work with. Your prior experience working with various brands will have a great bearing on your decision. Be careful not to close your mind to new developments and ideas though. Salon owners usually look for a combination of the following values from their skin care brand:
a) Profitability: this is often related to mark-up.
b) Results: these days clients’ expectations are very high.
c) Image: does the brand and its price point fit into my business plan?
Everybody goes into business to make money yet I hope your Mission Statement doesn’t say ‘I want to make lots of money’. Why? Today’s consumer is well informed and sophisticated. Your clients have access to a great deal of information, they have the opportunity to compare treatments, results and prices. You should take into account all three criteria mentioned above but the successful skin clinician is the one whose first thought on seeing her client is: ‘What can I do to help this client achieve her goal?’. If the money is uppermost in your mind the clients will eventually recognize this and go elsewhere. Your choice of skin care brand will be made easier if you look at overriding trends. In the past we have seen trends towards natural, then towards acid based skin care. The present trend seems to be toward a holistic, biomimetic approach. A few words of caution:
• Beware of fads.
• Don’t pick a brand because the price is low. You don’t want to compete against your local supermarket or health food store.
• Be careful of choosing a brand because of mark-up. Where does it fit in Results and Image?
The advent of internet selling has completely changed the playing field in beauty therapy. Most brands are available on the net, and many salons enthusiastically participate in the ‘online auction’ of who can offer the biggest discount. I have no doubt that eventually there will be a return to professional salon-only brands. The skin clinician’s biggest strength is her know-how based on skin analysis and professional prescription of suitable, results-oriented skin care. The internet weakens two of your greatest competitive advantages:
a) Your professional skills in skin analysis and product prescription are devalued.
b) Client loyalty, your greatest business asset, is reduced.
Ok, you have now set up your business, in your carefully selected location, with the equipment and products you have chosen. I trust you have budgeted carefully and have sufficient funds in reserve to market your business and to carry you through an initial period of losses. Make no mistake – there will be some weeks, maybe months, when your income will fall short of your expenses. That’s why banks ask you to prepare a ‘Cashflow Budget’ before considering any loan application. The worst mistake would be to invest all your funds in signwriting, fitout, beautiful pricelists and business cards – and then you have nothing left to advertise your services. By the way, if you can find someone who has made that mistake you could pick up a very cheap business. (If you find this statement distasteful think of the reality: the business owner might be grateful to you for helping her out of the lease she can’t afford to pay)
The 4 Stages of Business
There are four stages to every business. If you are aware of them you can plan ahead.
1. Start-up
This is a time of hard work and long hours, often on your own. You’ll spend time designing ads, dropping leaflets and networking with other business owners. This is also a time to refine your services. Ultimately, you have to find your ‘niche’. What are you offering that the public is prepared to pay for? You need to keep an eye on how your business is developing. On the one side is your bank account; you need to ensure you have sufficient funds to pay the rent and to replenish your stock. On the other hand, when your business starts to move you need to start planning for expansion. Once 70% of your time is devoted to client services you should employ a staff member. The temptation is to wait and to build up your bank balance. That’s a mistake. By the time 90 or 100% of your time is taken up with your clients how are you going to train your staff in your methods and procedures? You need to allow enough time to systematize your business, to write clear manuals and to train your staff to become as good as you are. I have observed salon owners who have not followed this advice: they are in the cubicle all day doing high end treatments whilst a staff member sits at the front desk, filing her nails and waiting for an eye brow wax to walk in.
2. Growth
You now have a loyal clientele. You have funds to market your business, word-of-mouth is working for you and your turnover is growing. Now is the time to ensure you always have sufficient qualified, trained staff to consistently deliver the high-quality service your clients deserve and expect. You need to keep working on your Procedures Manual and your Customer Service Policies. Regular staff meetings are vital to keep up spirits and to maintain a high level of communication. Successful business have a daily ‘huddle’ – a short, sharp stand-up meeting that gets everyone on the same page, raises motivation and team spirit. Weekly meetings are used to discuss and resolve issues, to determine what worked and what didn’t, to praise and to raise ‘esprit de corps’. If you haven’t yet outsourced administrative tasks, now is a good time to look for professionals that can support you in your business. A good bookkeeper will not just free up your valuable time for client or staff contacts but he/she will be able to give you financial advice that will allow you to make better business decisions. You can employ a marketing student on a part-time basis to design your ads or your newsletter. Remember, if you can make more money in your salon than you spend on hired help – hire the help.3.
3. Sharing
You now have good, loyal staff. You have trained them in your policies and procedures. Now you need to look after them because if you don’t someone else will. This doesn’t mean that you give away a share of your business but it means that you need to reward and recognize performance – or else your staff will walk. You need to check and measure a range of KPIs – Key Performance Indicators. The simplest ones are daily or weekly turnover in services as well as retail sales. Others revolve around rebooking rates, up-selling, client retention and so on. An idea would be to set a minimum weekly service turnover, say three or four times the gross weekly wage. You can offer your staff member a percentage of any additional service income above the agreed target. Obviously, the targets need to be reasonable and realistic – a staff member working with a $100K IPL machine will reach higher targets than one doing basic services. Both should be able to earn an incentive, based on their respective contribution. You should also have an incentive in place for product sales.
4. Maturity
The ideas discussed so far are described as ‘working ON the business’, as against ‘working IN the business’. If you always work IN the business you’ll find it hard to generate growth. In fact, this is the main problem of sole operators (doctors and dentists typically fit into this category – because they ARE the business). Some business owners get so fed up with staff problems that they give up and decide to remain sole operators. They pay a heavy price: their income will always be limited by the hours they have available, it stops whenever they go on holidays and their business is basically unsaleable. Let’s face it, you decided to take on problems when you decided to go into business. I like the quote: the amount of money you will make is directly related to the number and the size of problems you can handle. Let’s say you have worked on your business, your policies and procedures are in place and your staff are trained to the point where they are capable of taking on training roles. You have now achieved what you set out to do: you have a profitable business, a valuable asset, a loyal workforce and – most importantly – you have achieved the freedom to take time off, to enjoy family time, a holiday and to concentrate on managing rather than doing. You can be rightfully proud of what you have achieved.
