Your Salon’s Secret Success Tool: A One Page Plan
February 2nd, 2012Anyone that knows me, knows that I am all about making a plan and putting it into action. This is what I call “Dream into Action.“
As a hair professional, you have to asked yourself, “what am I going to do this year to grow my business.” If you hoping that things will miraculously go well and the business will grow, you might be in for a surprise. Leaving things to chance is a recipe for disaster. How can you make your employees more productive, how can you maximize your merchandising and floor space, how can you incentiv-ize your employee performance?
Part of my educational offering to Salon Owners is help in “Creating a Vision” for your business, creating a business plan complete with strategy, action plan, benchmarks and ways to measure your success and return on investment. My consultation is geared towards helping you jump start your business, with the most efficient use of your time and resources and getting your business on track to sustainable and measurable growth.
As artists, we are often guilty of not paying attention to the actual business part of our business. I invite you to give me a call to set an appointment so I can begin to help you realize your full potential as business owner. 201-443-4455
Chao Chao, Salvatore
This article is from my good friend Andrew Finkelstein’s, “The Finkelstein Report.”
It’s no secret that owning and operating a successful salon isn’t a walk in the park.
Anyone who’s telling you different has to get their head examined.
But just like any other successful businesses in this world every successful salon started with a person’s dream – the dream was communicated to others who “bought into” it.
And their collective energies made the dream come true.
More than likely you have a dream about your salon, too. But in the daily grind of running the business, you may have forgotten that dream.
And if you did, then now is the time to resurrect it. And if you didn’t, now is the time to review it – using your heart, your mind and your imagination.
Why? Because you’re the leader, and your people are counting on you – because they want to be part of a successful salon – a salon that has direction – that’s “going somewhere” and they don’t want to be part of something that’s drifting – because something that’s drifting is listless and has no energy.
So you’ve got to give your salon energy and channel its power, so that you can transform your dream into a reality.
Remember you’re the leader, and leaders need to show their followers the “promised land”, to give them the road map on how, together, you’re going to get there.
The question then becomes – exactly how do I do that?
You do that by starting with a road map or plan.
Ok so you’re thinking – oh no not a plan!
- Plans are for big companies and we’re just a local salon business
- Plans seems so stogy and I feel like a “suit” when I try to create one
- I’m afraid I’ll be trapped by my plan – and I work best when I feel free
- I’ve planned before and nothing happened
- I planned but when I shared the plan with my team they thought I was smoking something.
- I really don’t know how to plan
- I could never achieve but a small fraction of what I planned
- I planned but then things got so busy I couldn’t execute on the plan
Believe me all these statements are very real.
But I can tell you one of the biggest lessons I learned when operating a group of salons, and a lesson I followed my own salon business with was this: making a plan and using it is the only way to create a successful salon business.
But the plan has to be practical.
And practical means short – not some big fancy document that only would end up collecting dust.
No, it’s One PAGE! YES, One Page long – no nonsense here – who has time for that! I didn’t – you don’t.
There can’t be a wasted word in this plan…you want beef – not hamburger helper!
And it has to be SMART.
So what does this look like?
I’ll break it down for you. Your One Page Plan has only five parts to it.
- Your vision: describes what you want this salon to be in a few years.
- Your mission – describes why your salon exists
- Your objectives – lists the measurable results you want to accomplish this year.
- Your strategies – describes how your salon will achieve its objectives
- Action Plans – Lists the projects you’re going to do this year
Sound simple to create? It is – and I’ve never found a salon owner who after putting their mind to it couldn’t create a plan for themselves.
For example Salvatore Minardi creates a One Page Plan for his salon every year.
At the beginning of the year he meets with his eight person salon and reviews the plan with them – making sure to have everyone on the same page.
The results? Salvatore told me “instead of being paralyzed (you know how easy it is to become stuck with all the doom and gloom news we’ve had) he follows the plan which gives him “a purposeful course of action”.
And what does that purposeful course of action lead to? Salon sales and profits that have grown three years in a row.
Salvatore’s secret weapon is his One Page Plan. For a copy of Salvatore’s plan click here.
Want to get started with your own plan? Book yourself out for an hour, download the FREE TEMPLATE and start filling in the blanks.
Quotation: Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending – Maria Robinson
