My is back from maternity leave! This week she is sharing some of her top tips to help you ensure your business remains stable (or growing) even when you’re not around.
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John: So I’m really happy to be here with My today. For those of you who have been on the channel for a while, know that My went on maternity leave and is now gradually coming back from maternity.
And in fact, we’ll be spending much more time here on this YouTube channel. And we’ll see if you’re a member at the salon business, you will be seeing much more of My which I’m really grateful for because My sits on so much knowledge when it comes to running a Salon, effectively marketing, and all that good stuff.
Handling Maternity Leave as a Salon Owner
John: And so really happy to have you back here. How has the maternity leave been so far?
My: It’s been good. I’ve been able to check out from my business and it has actually run quite smoothly. I’m happy.
John: Yeah. So how has business worked?
My: Actually when I started my business maybe I didn’t think of maternity leave. But I thought of things like being on vacation and being away and maybe someday selling my business and so on.
So I always thought that my goal was not to build myself into the business so that the business would run smoothly when I’m not there.
John: Yeah. No that’s awesome. I have another child coming up as well.
And I know running a business at the same time can be challenging. Sometimes when we need to move out of the business and we need to do other things. So not building yourself into the business so much to allow you to do that is really important.
And you might hear some noise, cause we have My’s son here with us in the background as well.
Maybe you have some concrete tips here because I can imagine there are more people seeing this who might be in a similar situation. It could be because of a child coming up. It could be for another reason.
How to Set Up Your Salon Business to Run on Auto-pilot
John: So would you have any tips to share for how to set your business up so that you actually can take time away without things falling apart?
My: First of all, I would say involve the team in your business, make someone responsible there.
So that there is someone that you can check in with and talk to when you’re not there. Someone that has an overview of things and has the numbers to things like for the trash, or for the plumber when something happens. So they don’t have to call you for everything.
And also have a lot of things on automation or subscriptions. So we have cookies and milk and stuff that comes for the customers that come every two weeks on a subscription. So have a lot of things like that. So they don’t have to physically push a button or do the order for everything so it goes on by itself.
Getting Your Salon Team Involved
John: So automation, having good ownership in the team is what you said. But a critical component will be the culture of the team as well. If you don’t have a good team culture and the boss is not around.
My: Then yeah, it’s like the law of the jungle.
John: I can imagine you’ve worked quite a bit on the team and making everybody feel like it’s their salon too.
My: So everybody’s together when we’re deciding new stuff. And so in the salon, we have a meeting and everybody can say, okay, should we do like this or like that?
So they feel like, okay, this is my salon. Peach is my salon too. So on social media, I also made it so that I am not the main face. So it’s my. employees or the team that’s the face out also. So then I can also be away.
I make my team stand out. Instead of me, I can stand in the background. So then it’s also easier for me to be away.
John: And we do have a video actually on the channel that we posted some time back where My walks you through exactly her marketing strategy when it comes to social and the website and search and all that.
Because also there it’s about the type of marketing you’re doing, right? If you have marketing methods that are dependent on you running campaigns or doing different things, or do you have marketing that allows people to keep finding you, booking you, even when you haven’t run a specific campaign.
Making sure that you’re going to have a solid way of getting new clients to find you and to book you is of course really important as well.
My: And I think also it’s very important not to tell your staff too much what they should do. Just let them come up with ideas and let them make mistakes.
So that they feel comfortable making mistakes. Then they will take charge by themselves. You don’t have to tell them so much, because if they feel like you’re running everything, then they won’t dare to do anything when you’re not there.
Creating a Sense of Ownership with Your Salon Staff
John: Yeah. It’s about creating that ownership, right? Like that they feel like ownership.
They’d been part of making the decisions and they feel like the certain parts of running the business that they control and own that they have to really do that. That’s how you get the buy-in so that it actually works also when you’re not there.
Okay. So I think that was really helpful.
If you’re in that kind of similar spot and what I would say as well is if you want to drive up the value of your business. So let’s say you’ve been in it for a while. You’re approaching like pension or you want to exit your businesses.
Building a business in this way where the business is not dependent on you being there, and even if we take you out of the business, it still works. That’s how you create a business that is sellable and valuable.
My: You are not the brand. When the brand is not a person. So it’s not you or anyone on the team.
John: That depends on where you are on the journey. If you’re just starting out, maybe you’re not thinking so much about this. But it’s good to start already thinking about making sure that the business that you’re building creates value and makes it sellable as well.
And this is something that we will be talking about in a future video as well, so when that is available I’ll make sure to link to that. But anyway, great to have you back. I think we dived into a lot of business discussions today but it’s just really nice to have you here.
My: I’m very excited to be back.
John: So yeah, we look forward to seeing you here on the channel and in the upcoming video inside attract the marketing program or, wherever we meet and we look forward to seeing you there again.
