The “Great Lockdown” (thanks to “C” who shall not be named) brought about a great awakening in our industry. In the past couple of years, so many women have subsequently left their salon jobs to work for themselves and open their own businesses. The female hype-woman in me is wildly excited about this! I get so excited seeing other women in our industry take ownership of their dreams and make some real moves.

So many women are great at what they do for work. They’re extremely talented. They have no issues getting or maintaining clients. They’re already starting to build a strong team. But what happens when you’re still in the throes of taking clients every day, and your business starts getting SO busy that all of these tasks start feeling super overwhelming!?  

As beauty business owners, we wear ALL the hats. Marketing, client acquisition, customer service issues, scheduling, money management and financial planning, hiring/firing, maintaining employees and keeping them happy… WOW.  Literally, how are we supposed to breathe!? 

I have 3 high-level tips to set you on the right path to start thinking about what you need to do to take a step away (and breathe) and start focusing on the growth of your business, rather than slowly burning out inside of it.  

My goal is to take you from service provider to CEO. Here’s how!

TIP 1: Hire an Administrative Assistant  

Hire a “right-hand” administrative assistant to help you handle the daily, weekly, and monthly tasks.  

This person’s job responsibilities should include handling emails, schedule changes/requests, customer service issues, counting and preparing inventory orders, and making phone calls to help solve tedious issues. 

Tip 2: Define Your Hiring and Onboarding Process (and Put on a Timeline)

Streamline your hiring and onboarding (employee training) process by clearly defining and making trackable all of your tasks. Also implement a timeline so you know approximately how long it takes to train an employee. This will enable you to easily bring new employees on and train them in a timely manner. 

BONUS TIP: It’s worth paying your other employees a training fee (during gaps in their schedule) to help train the new employee(s).

Tip 3: Systems, Systems, Systems! 

I cannot stress this one enough: you need to have systems in place or your business will not make it. There is a difference between businesses that do well and businesses that are scalable. The difference is that the scalable business owner knows the importance of their systems and having everything organized and easily accessible by any hand that touches it.  

As a beauty business owner, you should have: 

1. Salon Management Software System/Online Booking. I stress salon management because you will need this as you grow, over a regular “booking” system (like Square or Acuity). Can you make those other systems work? Yes, but those systems are not scalable and will waste so much of your time managing and leading employees as you grow. I place importance in online booking because it allows your clients flexibility and takes away the need to have your front desk manned at all times (which in turn costs $$$).  

2. An Inventory Tracking and Ordering System. This doesn’t have to be complicated or fancy. I recommend keeping everything clean and organized on a “Google Sheet” page and shared in your company drive. Set yourself a reminder to count your inventory weekly, or biweekly, and work your way up to a monthly process. Order supplies and products in a timely manner. The more streamlined you have this process (and especially once you’re able to delegate these tasks to someone else), the more time you’ll get back as a business owner. And that time can be better spent elsewhere; making money, or growing your team! 

3. A Salon Communication/Task Management Software. I cannot tell you how much I love Asana task management software.  This is something I get into a lot more deeply in my 7 Figure Foundation Course, but let me give you a brief overview.

I house every piece of business communication in Asana. My HR folders, candidate tracking, employee training/onboarding task list, client issues (requests, schedule changes, communications), social media planning, processes (with how-to video)… I mean EVERYTHING.  

Every piece of communication – every task is customizable, assignable, and traceable.  It will help you delegate and keep track of tasks with ease, giving everyone clarity and vision on your expectations as a business owner. Even if you don’t have a team yet, download this software, and start organizing your thoughts and processes now. Brain dump in Asana regularly and organize your thoughts. I promise you, this is an absolute game changer for growing your business!

I challenge you to explore more ways to take yourself from a service provider to becoming a true CEO. I am here to share with you the direct path to how I was able to achieve it myself. My 7-Figure Foundation Course doors will be opening again soon. In the course, I deep dive into the 5 pillars I grew my business foundation on, and show you how I was able to step away little-by-little to having complete freedom to make my business work for me and put an END to burnout before it even began.

If you haven’t already, make sure you subscribe to my 7-Figure Foundation Waitlist for when course doors open again.