Truth 2 of 7 : You Create Your Game

For whatever reasons you entered the Industry you had to decide where to make your start; Apprentice therapist, stylist, receptionist, company rep, industry trainer or perhaps straight in as a partner or owner. In order to succeed whatever your industry experience, you will need to get clear on what Game you play within it.

Truth 2 is that there is a personal game that is right for you and so too, a personal game right for each team member within the salon. A good salon management plan will be flexible enough to acknowledge this truth to allow each person to contribute at their best while playing in their most fulfilling role.

Many owners we work with in-salon, have struggled with what game they want to play verses what game they believe the business needs them to play. At this point they go about the working day or week running from one game to another. Like trying to keep a full column because stepping back might hurt turnover too much, then getting stuck at reception because no one can deal with enquires, rebook and retail quite as well as themselves, then having to take a member of staff aside to deal with a personal or employee related issue, then squeeze in a meeting with the product rep who is paying a courtesy visit, then shutting themselves in the backroom while they try to catch up on office admin while pushing down some lunch.

These are all essential parts of the business, but hard to succeed at, without the time and ability to apply the appropriate amount of focus, let alone be all things from which you receive the most satisfaction. Yet these same roles may be areas other team members have an almost natural bent towards doing well.

Taking the time to document easy to follow checklists and guides on how you would like each of these salon tasks to be managed, will allow you to implement well structured ways to identify and train interested team members into taking on responsibilities that are the right game for them, freeing yourself up to focus on the game you really want to be playing yourself.

The payoff for operating your business at the level of this 2^nd truth is that you get this certainty. If for example you think you can’t afford to let go or delegate out all the different games to other members of staff because they won’t look after your business as well, ask yourself this:

Do you agree that if you were to play one game well that you would be more successful than trying to play some of all the games you need to run a salon business? If the answer is yes, then you and your business will only suffer from not implementing a way to pass the other games over.

Just decide which game you are going to play: in the business or on the business?

Once you have that clarity, you know how to preserver from now on.

Whereas at the level of the first truth, which is acknowledging there are many games to play. Such as; will I stay behind the chair or in the room with my clients to bring in the cash, will I lead from the front and manage the salon from the reception desk or will I run the business from behind and provide the environment for the team to succeed in. It’s in making the decision, which is the right game for you, that then, even in tough times or when things don’t seem to be going right, you can know that so long as you stick to your game, you can say, “This is my game, this is my game, if it’s not going well today, I’ll still turn up tomorrow because, this is my game!”

By having this conviction to preserver at your game, you can resist the old tendency to dive back into the other games when they don’t look to be as perfect as you’d like and so allow others to improve in the growth of their own games to free yourself from being tied to them.

With Nexus Revolution, you do not have to tackle this alone. If you would like to call upon our 12 years industry experience implementing salon management systems customised to your situation, email us at info@nexusrevolution.co.uk