On today’s episode of The Engaging Marketeer, Darren is joined by Natasha Britton.
Natasha is a marketing and business consultant that specialises in salons. Having owned her own salon some years ago, she transformed it from a struggling business to a thriving enterprise, and now works with other salon owners who are overwhelmed, stressed or worried about how their business is going to survive.
Below, we’ll see what she has to say.
Darren: Natasha, hello! You’ve got a very specific niche in business at the moment, haven’t you?
Natasha: Yes, at the moment I help salon owners to earn more and work less! Because they’re very overworked, and they tend not to pay themselves very much money.
Darren: Why is that, do you think? Is it just that the profits aren’t there?
Natasha: Well, yes – with having a salon, there’s a lot of overheads, There’s machinery that costs a lot, and if you’ve got a team, your overhead is going to be quite high. On average, if you’re making anything from upwards of 20% profit as a salon, then you’re doing okay. There’s not much give, in that respect – but they also have shiny objects syndrome, where they love to buy machines and equipment – just like you Darren, with your gadgets!
Darren: I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean!
Natasha: Salon owners are always looking for the next shiny object, and they get sucked in by the manufacturers. But if you don’t have the marketing expertise to market that product, you’re left with a fancy machine that’s just collecting dust and not doing much for you.
Darren: I imagine in specific industries like this, there’s people that just go around touting equipment to them, promising them that these new things are going to save them time and make you more money.
Natasha: Totally, and it’s okay if the actual manufacturer gives you that support and guidance around marketing. But if they don’t have that kind of support, then you’re kind of left with a machine that’s not doing much for you, and that’s when the spiral starts to happen.
Darren: Do you find that a lot, where there’s salon owners who are buying equipment they don’t need?
Natasha: Yes, a lot. We have trade shows twice a year, and if you go to these events, you feel like you have to buy all the latest gadgets to stay current. But I find that if you’ve got a machine, treatment or even a service that you’re not really utilising, you can recreate that buzz within your business if you have a proper marketing strategy. You can relaunch something you’ve probably had for years and make it exciting.
Darren: So, what you’re saying is, rather than look for that new shiny piece of equipment, look at what you’ve already got in your business that you’re just underutilising, and get more out that instead?
Natasha: Definitely. It’s a no-brainer really when you look at how many types of equipment and services salons already have. You could literally recreate a campaign and get it out there, get your clients excited again, and then YOU get excited again.
Darren: From a business perspective, what’s the biggest mistake that salon owners tend to make in terms of not generating enough revenue or maximizing their customers?
An outside perspective may tell a very different story
Natasha: A lot of them on the outside look very successful, and I was one of those people. People might have thought, “Natasha’s doing really well,” but behind closed doors, I was losing the wheel. The money was running out, and I wasn’t asking for help when I needed it. I think that’s a big thing for salon owners, and for business owners in general. If you go out and ask for help, you’ll be able to find somebody who’s done it before. You can start to look for different methods or strategies and implement them in your business.
Darren: I know that a lot of people have the perception that business owners are successful, if they see that they’re always busy and they’ve got loads of customers – you just assume everything’s flying high for them. I imagine that’s amplified with salon owners, because their business is all about image, and they need to convey that image of luxury and success, because that’s what their customers want. So, I imagine it’s hard for a salon owner to ask for help, because they need to appear successful. Would that be fair?
Natasha: I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. It’s so true, and when everybody perceives that you’re doing well, you feel like you have to maintain that image. It’s only when I started asking for help, and I started to look at mentors, that I was able to turn things around on my own.
Darren: So, what happened? You were a salon owner originally, weren’t you – was it just the one salon, or was it more than one?
Natasha: Yeah, I set up a business with a business partner. I never had my own money to invest, because salons are really expensive to set up. My business partner invested in me and in the business, so I was on sort of difficult grounds anyway, because I had to rely on his money to set up everything. But I got there, and we were in a very busy shopping centre in Greater London. Overheads were massive – just the business rates were like a rent payment in itself. So, from the get-go, I needed to make money fast. I had a team as well, and we didn’t have a client base, so I had to try and figure out everything that I could to get us out there. The first two to three years were very difficult, but over time, I started to learn the things I needed to learn to get us out there.
Darren: Was your business partner involved in the business, or was he just a backer?
Natasha: No, he was involved in the business – he was a nail technician, who did nails and pedicures downstairs. I was upstairs doing laser and skin treatment. I realised over time we had different plans. I wanted high end, and he wanted fast service and quick turnover.
Darren: So, there was a discrepancy in the kind of customer that was coming in.
Natasha: Definitely, because people were probably looking and thinking, “oh, I won’t get my laser done there, they’re just a fast turnover.” So, I had to try and go against that. I found that once I did start to turn the business around, I was able to leave the premises on really good terms, and go off and do my own thing. I moved around the corner to a smaller shopping centre.
Darren: How did you feel when things weren’t going well?
Natasha: God, I was blaming everyone! I was blaming the staff, the customers, I was blaming the VAT man…
Darren: Bloody VAT man!
Natasha: I was literally blaming everyone. It wasn’t until I started to get a bit of outside help that I realised I wasn’t doing the things that I needed to do. So, I started doing those things, and that’s when it turned around.
Darren: What were those things – what did you do that you weren’t doing before?
Natasha: Well, I’d never really managed a team before, so I started making sure that I was going through the boring stuff, like the KPIs, and communicating properly. We started having staff meetings, and set up systems and processes. Once I was able to systemise the business, I could then take a step back. It was learning about marketing, too, and making sure that people were enjoying the service, coming back – all of that stuff. We tend to kind of overlook these things when we’re so involved in trying to run everything. I took myself outside of the business and looked at it from a bird’s eye point of view, to see what was working, and what wasn’t.
One of the best things I learned was how to use Google My Business. I didn’t have money to advertise, so I had to learn all of the things that I could do to get to number one spot on Google when people were searching for keywords. It was little things like that which helped us became number one in our area organically. That really did transform my business, because we were starting to get new clients from that.
Darren: That an interesting one to pick up on. When you were struggling, you didn’t use that presumably, as you may not have known about it?
Natasha: I didn’t really know about it, no. I set up the profile and thought it was just like a Yellow Pages listing. I didn’t really realise the power of the listing itself, and what you can actually do. Obviously over time, it’s evolved so much. I truly believe you should treat your Google Business listing as another form of social media.
Darren: Once you had that for the new location, and you were getting people finding you organically, what sort of impact did that one simple change have?
Natasha: We started getting impressions of up to 60,000 a month.
Darren: 60,000 a month? Wow. For people that don’t know, that is essentially anyone in your area searching for your services. So, your business listing was appearing on searches 60,000 times in a single month. If you paid for your ads to be seen 60,000 times, you’d be paying a lot of money!
Natasha: Exactly, and because we do so many different treatments, I had to work on different keywords for being found for different things. I think that one skill of learning how to master that did help us become known as experts in the local area. Just to give you an idea of the competition, there were over 50 different types of beauty businesses in in just a four-mile radius that were offering the same services. It’s huge competition.
Darren: And you were up there on the first page ahead of pretty much all of them, because of something you did that was free. So, to bring it forward a little bit, when you’re working with salons now, what do you see in terms of their Google Business Profile?
Natasha: A lot of them are do have that perception of, “oh, I’ve created my listing”, and that’s kind of it. So, it’s about teaching them what the listing actually is, and giving them some tools and education around how they can use it easily, even if it’s just five minutes a day spent updating things on there. Then, they start to see that they’re going higher and higher above their competitors in the area. It does take time, and it’s not something you can just do immediately. I like to say that with Google, it’s little and often, because otherwise if they see a load of activity, then they could mark it as suspicious. We have to start easy, and then just make it a normal habit on a day-to-day basis.
Darren: Awesome. So, if we go back again back to your salon – you talked about procedures being in place, having regular staff meetings and being able to take yourself out of the business. How common is it for salons to have all the procedures in place?
Natasha: It’s not very common at all. A lot of the time, salon owners have got into the business because they love what they do, and then it kind of does well to the point where they’re so busy themselves running one column, that have to get a team in to manage the rest. But what tends to happen is they’re still very busy themselves, and they’re trying to manage this team that’s not really building up, because they don’t have the same traits and values as you do, and you haven’t got time to train them. I teach salon owners to get out of that column, and start reducing their own working hours in the business, by creating “Mini Yous” – that team that DO have the same values. That way, you can nurture them, train them to your standards and get really good results. Once you’ve got a strong team, you can really take a step back, and the business almost runs itself, because you’ve set up the processes and procedures, and everyone knows what they need to do.
Darren: That is a really good point. When you free up time in your business, it’s critical what you do with that time you free up. If you just end up doing more of the same thing, you’re not really helping yourself. You need to, as you say, take a step back from it and work strategically on it, so that you’re not there all the time. You’re the one working on the strategy of where the business is going, how to process everything, and how to get people in to replace you – the Mini You’s, as you call them.
Helping salon owners step off the hamster wheel
Natasha: I do find that salon owners try to do everything by themselves. If they block out time for admin days, or try to reduce their hours and things start to go wrong, they go right back into their comfort zone, back to working in that column. They fall into a trap of, “I can’t do less hours, because I need the money and the clients”. They get stuck in a loop. So, that’s when you bring people into the business, like a mentor, who can see a bird’s eye view of what needs to happen. Normally, when I take on a business, I’ll do a full business audit just to see where things are not quite adding up, or where there’s holes that need patching up.
Darren: I wish every business had somebody like you helping them. Getting the procedures in place is crucial before you do any kind of marketing to get new business in – otherwise, you’re just going to be throwing money away making yourself even more stressed, and more busy, without any additional return. So, that’s where you come in to help them with this?
Natasha: Yes, just systemising everything so that they’re not as stressed, they know what high value activities they need to be doing every single day to attract and nurture clients, and to grow their business without feeling like they’re on a hamster wheel.
Darren: Now that you’ve worked with a number of salon owners, what kind of successes have you seen?
Natasha: One client springs to mind, who’s still working with me now – we’ve gotten her business to a stage where she’s making a lot of profit, which also means a lot of tax. So, now we need to figure out how she can increase her network without paying quite so much tax. It’s a good problem to have, but we’re looking at different things she can do, like investing in property and growing her net worth, so when she does retire, she’s got a nice little nest egg.
She joined me when she’d just registered for VAT, and if you think about that 20% profit margin, you can be doing really well, and making a 20% profit, but as soon as you need to pay VAT, which is around 20%, it’s all gone. We can claim back some, but a lot of people don’t feel confident in putting up their prices by 20%, because they’re worried all their customers are going to leave. This is a story I hear so many times. This client joined me at a really rocky time – since she’d been VAT registered, she saw her bank balance dwindling, and she was like “right, I can either make this work, or I’m going to pack it all in because it’s not worth it”. Her mental health wasn’t good – when she joined me, she was pretty much a breaking point. I came in, and knew exactly what she needed to do. Within about eight weeks, she started getting results. She was working less hours, yet she was earning so much more. Since then, she’s made about an 191% increase in her revenue.
Darren: I’ve heard that said a lot, that if you’re at the VAT level, which is £85,000, that you don’t want to just teeter over it, because you’re going to end up earning less money. You either need to stay under it, or smash through it – which it sounds like she’s done.
Natasha: Yeah, especially for salon owners. If you’re around the £100,000 to £120,000 mark, it’s dangerous, especially if you’ve got overheads and a team. You need to go way over that to really smash it and make back that profit. This is why it’s so important for business owners to get out there and look for content on this stuff – go on courses, surround yourself with people who know about these things. Because what you don’t know, you don’t know!
Darren: That’s true! So, if there’s any salon owners out there thinking, “I like the cut of Natasha’s jib”, and they want to find out more about how you can help them, what’s the best way for them to get in contact with you?
Natasha: Best way is probably Facebook, which is my main platform. Drop me a message, and we can go from there.
Darren: Brilliant. Natasha, thank you, this has been really enlightening, and I love the way you’re helping people fulfil their dreams of why they started business in the first place.
Natasha: Thank you for having me, Darren, it’s been a pleasure.
More about Natasha:
Having once owned her own salon, Natasha now runs a thriving enterprise where she helps other salon owners gain more clients, earn more money and, most importantly, free up their time to get back to what they love – growing a successful, flourishing business. You can connect with Natasha here:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/natbritton
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thepvconsultant/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natasha-britton-7543359b
Website: https://www.thepvconsultant.com/
About your host:
Darren has worked within digital marketing since the last century, and was the first in-house web designer for video games retailer GAME in the UK, known as Electronics Boutique in the States. After co-founding his own agency, Engage Web, in 2009, Darren has worked with clients around the world, including Australia, Canada and the USA.
iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/engaging-marketeer/id1612454837
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrenjamieson/
Engaging Marketeer: https://engagingmarketeer.com
Engage Web: https://www.engageweb.co.uk
