Top Ten Blog Posts for 2013

Soon to be washed away by the tide of a New Year.

Top 10 blog posts

10. Lessons from the Naja I shared my heart felt feelings about the amazing opportunity I have to know and work with this special lady. But..You’ll have to read the post to get the lessons.

http://probeautygirl.blogspot.com/2013/09/lessons-from-naja.html

9. Define your own success This was a reflection from a weekend nail Artist retreat in Kansas City with the PKO education group. I had the blessing to be part of a team of amazing educators and soak up their knowledge as well. One of these top nail trainers was Maisie Dunbar and I share her on point theory of defining your own success. It’s definitely worth the read.

http://probeautygirl.blogspot.com/2013/05/define-your-own-success.html

8. Social Media and Indian food I shared an adventure while looking for a vegan meal in London Ontario while attending the CNTC with Braden. We used Yelp to determine which restaurant we should check out so you’ll have to read the post to see if the power if social media really works.

 http://probeautygirl.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-power-of-social-media-and-indian.html

7. Adventures at the Beauty Classic I updated all of our listeners with what was happening at the 2013 Premiere Beauty Classic. I ran into some of our favorite nail peeps and they were showing off some of our favorite new products.

http://probeautygirl.blogspot.com/2013/10/adventures-at-beauty-classic.html

6. Seasonal strategies This post I shared my past favorite pedicure specials including a few recipes and of course the Open Toed Shoe Pledge. Something every beauty girl should take.

http://probeautygirl.blogspot.com/2013/04/in-keeping-with-tonights-theme-i.html

5. International Congress of Esthetics I shared a wrap up of this show I was a guest speaker at in Philadelphia. I previewed a new gel polish and met up with Katie Saxton from Custom Nail Solutions.

http://probeautygirl.blogspot.com/2013/05/international-congress-of-esthetics.html

4. Top Ten things your clients want This was actually an article from Inc. magazine that I took their top ten list and applied it to our beauty world. Definitely a great read.

http://probeautygirl.blogspot.com/2013/05/top-ten-things-your-clients-want.html

3. Spring Renewal This post shared top tips on spring marketing, including a few ways to think outside the beauty box and expand your client data base.

http://probeautygirl.blogspot.com/2013/03/spring-renewal.html

2. Building a celebrity clientele This post was a live update from the International Congress of Esthetics where I spoke on building a celebrity clientele. Check it out if it is on your to do list for 2014.

http://probeautygirl.blogspot.com/2013/04/im-coming-to-you-live-from.html

1. Building foot Traffic In this most popular post I shared several tried and true strategies to increase your pedicure business.

http://probeautygirl.blogspot.com/2013/04/build-your-foot-traffic.html

 

So if you missed any one of my segments they are all archived on my blog right here. Adventures of a Pro beauty girl. Make sure you read them all because that’s smart marketing.

 

 

ReBook... ReLax

 

January in the salon..where's everybody at?

 Fun Fancy Nails aka Danalynn recently posted this question on Facebook.  What are you doing to increase your clientele in January? My response? Rebook them in December. Kind of a no brainer however many of us get busy, clients waiting, running behind so we don’t take that extra step to make sure our guests are rebooked that day. Rebooking is an art form in itself. You should have a strategic plan and verbal script at the ready to make sure this important task is not overlooked.

 

Let’s look at a few scenarios. I am finishing up with my guest and I ask if she would like to rebook her next appointment. Well actually I don’t actually ask I say Let’s get you on the books for your next appointment. I’m parental, I tell them what they need to do, admit it, some of your clients need this too. We know how this is going to play out if we don’t. They wait, and call needing to get in that week or even that day right? Their nail emergency becomes our scheduling problem. Since we can’t make appointment times appear out of thin air like some kind of nail genie what happens? They are upset, we are booking extra hours or days to try and get them in. Not a good scenario. I take back control.  I say this day and time seems to work best for us both, let’s look two, or three weeks out whatever the case may be and get you on the books.  Option one they say OK great let’s book it. Option two they say well I don’t have my appointment book with me, rare these days since everyone’s schedule is on their phone.  If they say they don’t know their schedule I then say Well Let’s put it on the books and you can check when you get home. If you have a conflict we can try and rearrange it. What usually happens is if you are on their schedule then your appointment becomes the conflict. They have to work other appointments around you. Just as it should be.  If they do have a conflict at least you know with enough time to find an alternative slot. 

 

I encourage my clients to book standing appointments with me. I work two nights per week and have no interest in working another. Having most of my clients on standings eliminates phone time, scheduling time and nail emergencies. If you constantly have appointment challenged clients consider charging premium pricing for the added hours or days. Let them know you do have extra times available but they are at a higher fee. Say 20% higher than regular pricing. Nothing like hitting them in the old pocketbook to get them booking during regular business hours. On the other hand many clients that are in need of these specific times may not mind paying the extra fee to have the time they choose. If we don’t respect our time our clients won’t either. I am guilty as charged myself at times.  I just had a situation last week where a client asked for a Monday appointment. I booked it and met her at the salon, on my day off. I figured she may have been going out of town and needed the Monday. Once we got there she said "Oh Millie I didn’t realize when I booked this it was your day off. Why didn’t you tell me?  I don’t need to have them done today, do you have something tomorrow? I can come back." As it turned out I had time the next day to fit her in and I was able to return to my regularly scheduled day off. Lesson learned for me too. Don’t assume your clients have your schedule memorized, even if you have been doing them for 10 years. Don’t get me wrong, I would come in on a Holiday if a client was truly in need, that is after all how to build a rock star clientele. But those times are few and far between.  Get yourself in the habit of looking over your schedule on a regular basis and creating the best work flow possible. After all, what we are truly selling is our time, and remembering time is money is smart marketing.

 

The Ripple

     This time of year tends to be a very reflective one. With the year coming to a close I begin to evaluate how my year unfolded. Did I grow? Did I get stuck? Was I present? Am I living on purpose or skating on the surface? It seems a lot of others are in the same mindset, or maybe I am more tuned in to this vibe at the moment. Last year right around this time I was reflecting on the Sandy hook tragedy and wrote a blog called Each one reach one, my call to action that "we need to pause and understand we are all interconnected, woven of the same fabric of life. We share the same challenges of the human condition." Never forgetting that in this industry we have an opportunity to help lift a burden or at least to empathize with one another's struggles. We can be that positive moment in our clients hectic day, their stressful week.

     Scrolling through Facebook this week another post jumped off the page. My friend Tracy Wilcox posted this in a nail tech group

"Very emotional week with all my clients issues!! I pray that we all can uplift our clients lives and help them emotionally, physically, and spiritually, within the hour that we have them. It's not only our jobs to do their nails and make them look beautiful but it's also to make them feel beautiful inside and out!! I pray for this upcoming week for all us nail tech to have patience and kindness and show love!!!!"

     It just blew me away because I had a very similar week. I cheerfully asked a client this week what's been happening since the last time we saw each other she said nothing good. She went on to share that her son and grandson had been in a head on car collision, both escaping with minor injuries although her grandson fractured his skull. Why is it she asked I do the right thing, try and be good to others and bad things keep happening? You're a spiritual person, how do you stay positive? I was taken aback for a moment, mostly because I don't usually get directly asked for spiritual advice. I took a deep breath and realized the opportunity I had before me. My first thought was man it could have been so much worse. Your family is intact, a car can be replaced. I shared with her that in all the tragedies I have faced I have always been given the grace of God to get through them and if she had faith she would find that too. We talked the rest of the appointment about faith and it was truly amazing. I felt so honored to have an ever so slight ripple effect in her world. 

 

     So this holiday season with all the craziness make sure you are dialed in. Our clients truly come to us for more than their "nails". They come for support, fellowship, advice and perspective.  Tracy also shared with me she feels we are different and able to be more connected with our clients because we're one-on-one in front of each other rather than a hairdresser that's behind you and you never really get very emotionally  connected.  "We do have the opportunity to help our clients emotionally too." I agree.

Right or wrong, agree or disagree,  these connections happen. So we must keep growing ourselves, to offer our best to our clients both technically and emotionally. I just saw this status this morning from online coach Brendon Burchard that really sums it up well.

The great compromises we make in our lives are not, like the movies often portray, centered around huge and vexing life decisions. There is no tearing out of hair, desperately trying to figure out what to do, as if a grand existential dilemma is unfolding all around. No, the great compromises in your life usually come when you're too busy to pay attention. You didn't even notice you were rude. You didn't realize it became a habit to avoid, to play small, to keep your ideas to yourself, to talk too much about yourself, to gossip, to delay, to ridicule, to be late, to forget the thank yous and the I love yous. You compromised away integrity not because of big tough decisions but because of little throwaway acts that you didn't realize were solidifying into a character that was, likely, beneath you. Sure, there may have been a handful of big compromises in life, but those are the easy ones to spot, the easy to avoid next time, the easy excuses. The tougher work is in noticing, each day, whom we are becoming by our real acts not just our hopeful intentions, to tease out the moments when we act like idiots and charlatans and bullies and babies, to see it and rise above it, to decide to live a different kind of life, more centered and aware, more loving and true and kind and bold. "I didn't fritter away my character," we shall say, "I forged it, purposefully, joyously, lovingly, day-by-day, moment-by-moment. I was here," we shall say, "and I lived by choice not chance, by design not distraction, on fire not off-handed." So let us release the old tales and excuses, and let us go forth and build our ideal selves. Day. By. Day.

And I say client by client :) 

Holiday Survival Guide

 

How to survive the holidays as a beauty professional

1. Don't make rock solid plans. We know this time of year clients come out of the woodwork. People you were sure had passed onto another salon, or even another life, you know the ones that are so sketchy during the rest of the year. Well all of a sudden they remember how fabulous you are and cannot possibly get through the holiday season without your services, preferably yesterday. So you know you are going to be coming in early, staying late and maybe even on regularly scheduled days off. Just embrace the business and the extra cash, it happens every year, you know it, get over it.

2. Take care of you. The holidays call for extra long hours and extra busy days. Try and prepare yourself by getting extra rest, limiting alcohol and planning to have healthy choices to dive into when you are ready to eat your arm off. Surviving on cookies, brownies, peanut brittle, peppermint bark, pitzels, caramel corn and chocolate candy is not the best plan. Have fresh cut veggies, fruit, healthy chips and salsa on hand and take the cookies and junk to grandma's for the kids. They have plenty of energy to burn off all those extra calories. Get yourself some Emergency or vitamin supplements to ward off the ever present infection DuJour our guests are so graciously exposing us to this time of year. Have extra hand sanitizer at the ready and get in the habit of pre and post slathers, all day long. Wipe down door handles, phones, if your salon has a land line key boards and mouses or mice? You get the drift, follow the KISS method. Keep it sanitary sister.

3. Have your shopping done by tomorrow. Seriously.  You know you are not going to have any more time to shop between now and the holidays, just admit it. Gift cards and online shopping are our good friends. Your loved ones want to pick out their own gifts anyways, honestly my daughter hasn't liked anything I picked out for her since she was 4. If you insist on shopping for them I recommend wrapping up a shopping spree to take place after the holiday madness. Enjoy the malls when things quiet down and all the prices are marked down even further. I'm going to admit another spin on re-gifting here. We all know there are plenty of gifts our clients bring in that are so much better suited for someone else on our list. I know it and you know it. Plus how many gift cards to the local health food store can I use at once? It is still a gift and used as an extra gift has so much more meaning wouldn't you agree? And as far as cooking all those treats? Many stores today have excellent prepared food sections, that are good enough to put in your own serving dishes with a few dashes of your own special touch and passed off as home-made. These dishes don't make themselves, well almost.

4 Last but certainly not least. Prepare for the onslaught of holiday cash. Don't let your family use your extra tips as the household ATM. Get yourself an envelope to stash away these extra bonus dollars. I don't even put them in my wallet and let myself be tempted to pick up an extra bottle of wine or spirits. Write the amount given and the clients name on the outside of the envelop so you can keep track for your thank you notes. You will be amazed at the amount of cash you once blew through without anything to show for it. Better yet focus on an item for this extra windfall. Maybe you have a nagging bill you'd like to get rid of, or slice in half. Assigning a goal to this extra money will give you incentive to stick to it. And try and make this something just for you. I know it goes against our nature as givers at this time of year but I don't see anybody else coming in early and staying late. This is YOUR money, you've earned all year by taking the best care of your guests. Treat yourself. That's an order.