Beauty Business Strategies
The podcast where salon, spa, medspa, barbershop, and lash studio owners — just like you — learn quick tips to make more money, inspire your team, and create world-class client experiences.
Beauty Business Strategies
Salon/Spa Profitability Through Efficiency
Get ready to revitalize your salon's approach to efficiency and profitability!
On this episode of the Beauty Business Strategies podcast, we speak with Tim Howard, Chief Innovation Officer at Vish, a technology-based company that takes a revolutionary approach to hair color management.
During our discussion, Tim shares his insights on managing hair color inventory, reducing waste, and understanding how your actions impact business profitability.
He also shares his insights on replacing the "bucket method" with more efficient strategies and leveraging technology for a more sustainable and profitable business model.
Have you ever wondered why some salons seem to thrive while others struggle? Listen in as Tim explains how proper coaching and a streamlined menu can help manage critical areas of the business more effectively. He presents valuable perspectives on how clarity and understanding can pave the way to successful strategies.
The final gem of this episode is the discussion about change and the importance of having a solid foundation in the salon industry. Tim encourages us to embrace change and shares tips to ensure our teams work harmoniously.
00:03 - Improving Salon Efficiency and Profitability
12:55 - Profitability and Waste Reduction in Salons
19:21 - Improving Salon Efficiency and Profitability
28:22 - Coaching and Mistakes in Salon Management
39:58 - Change and Foundation in the Salon Industry
Watch the video version of this episode: https://youtu.be/orBVjXuEdxQ
To learn more about Vish: https://getvish.com/
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The Beauty Business Strategies Podcast is designed to give salon, spa, medspa, barbershop, and lash studio owners, just like you, quick tips to make more money, inspire your team, and create world-class client experiences.
Welcome to the Beauty Business Strategies podcast, where we give salon, spa and med spa owners quick tips to make more money, inspire your team and create world-class client experiences.
Speaker 2:Hello again, everyone. Welcome back to the salon business strategies podcast. My name is Michael Yoast and once again I will be with you today, have another fantastic guest joining us, and we are joined today by Tim Howard from Vish. Tim, how are you? I am great. Happy Monday to you. Yeah, happy Monday. So you know, just before we get into it, because again, I never like to make the assumption that listening audience knows exactly who we're speaking with and things like that. If we could kind of start this in a traditional format where you know what, tim, why don't you give just a brief introduction? Obviously we're going to be talking a lot over the next 30 to 45 minutes, however long we like to spend together, but if you could just give everyone just a little sense of yourself and and Vish, if just an overview, just so, again, people have perspective if maybe for some odd reason, they've not heard of you, and you should, if you're listening, and you should have. But just in case, let's get everyone on the same page. So take it away.
Speaker 3:Thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah, so Tim Howard is my name. I am currently one of the founders and came up with the original idea of Vish, and where that comes from is just my time in the industry.
Speaker 3:I started doing hair at hair school, I believe, at 19 years old, and I had a pretty fun career. I've done a lot of things. I started off, you know, as a hairdresser working in salon, foolishly opened up my first salon when I was 23 years old. I was a little bit too young, a little bit too inexperienced, but fortunately that turned out really well for me. I went on to open a second salon.
Speaker 3:I spent 16 years working for Aveda as one of their guest artists and educators, and I've had my hand in many things, from writing curriculum to teaching workshops, doing fashion week in New York a lot of great, exciting things.
Speaker 3:But it was during that time looking at my own business and then looking at the businesses that I interacted with throughout the Aveda network, where we also have the same problem one of the top problems we highlighted anyway, which was managing the color bar.
Speaker 3:So having a lot of waste was sort of the number one complaint that salons had. So this was probably 10 plus years ago set out to try and solve that problem and here we are fast forward. You know we've been in the app store for over five years now. We have helped many, many salons gain insight into how their color bars being run and then data that gives them some actionable items to make changes in their business so that they're more profitable, more sustainable and just run a more efficient business. So I'm very happy we have a new app coming out this year. So we've taken all that input from our users over the last five years and we do have a new color bar app coming out which has made lots we'll make lots of improvements, a lot easier for our power, our hairdressers, to use. So it wasn't a brief intro, but no, it's perfect set up, a perfect setup.
Speaker 2:So, you know, as I usually find, you know, great ideas come from just this idea of personal passions. Uh, that, you know, I think that sounds to me. You know, certainly a bit of how Vish was really born is the fact that, like, I recognize something that was a personal passion and turn it into something that maybe at the time I didn't even think that was going to happen. I just was looking for ways to better my own company. Next thing, you know, a whole other, a whole other offshoot starts up. Uh, so I love it, I love that. So, and that's where kind of one is.
Speaker 2:So, again, obviously, over the course of for those you know listening today, um, you know, we're certainly be talking about Vish a little bit more directly, but also just some great conversation in general about some concepts and some ideas. And the first place I want to start is something you just kind of you kind of introduced, and again this kind of comes out as, as anyone that's listened knows, I always like to do a prep call with anyone beforehand. So I'm pulling something that really stood out to me in that prep call, that you even just kind of dipped a toe into right at the beginning is something we talked about in our prep, was that idea of profitability through efficiency. And so, you know, talk to me just about that idea, just on the bigger scale of things, before we get maybe a little bit more specific. Uh, what is that? What do you really think that looks like on the, on the kind of a larger scale? Uh, in general, when we brought that up, yeah, I mean if I think it's.
Speaker 3:You know, one of the main reasons why Vish came about is if you look at any manual processes that you're doing and you look at how your team are working and if you could find ways to improve it, then obviously it's going to do it. And some of the inefficiencies that we get, um, you know, is that the hairdressers I think not maliciously tend to misuse the hair color inventory in a way that will make them more time efficient with the guests. But I think there's a lot of pitfalls and and problems that come with that. So, you know, an example of that would be I'm going to go over and I'm going to use a whole bunch of colors so I don't have to come back and mix more. Right, seems very efficient at the time. But what are some of the other problems that that causes?
Speaker 3:Um, and you know we we which was common in salons for many years, was to have a bucket method. So you take your waste color, you put it in a bucket, you pull it out of staff meeting and everybody who's in awe and it's a problem and they see it. But I always put that back on the, on the salon owners is like okay, sure, you've highlighted the problem, but what solution are you offering? If you don't give somebody a solution, you just highlight the problem. That's not going to go away. So we looked at you know what are the some of the things that vish can do to make the salon more efficient and, in turn, be more profitable, um, the waste being one of them. Right, so it's, it's an important one. Mix what you need and initially, sure it's going to take you a little bit more time because you're going to come back and mix more, but we're going to fine tune that amount so that when that guest comes back after their first visit, well, we know exactly how much to mix and we know how much inventory you used and we know how much extra you should charge the customer because they've used more product than they should. Because what ends up happening now is you mix too much. You've got a bunch of ways you dump it out. You record your formula where you started. So it's likely you're going to keep doing that every time because you, you didn't, you had no way of tracking what was left. So we take care of that for you.
Speaker 3:Um, and then the other side is charging customers accurately. You know salons are, you know, sometimes running a very thin margin on their business, especially because of hair color inventory so expensive. So if we can make it more efficient so that you know how much to charge so it's not quite a bowl of color I'm able to use an extra 20 grams. I didn't take any additional time Rather than just having the salon absorb it and not charge that customer. Well, let's charge for every little bit of extra that is used so that A there's more money in the bank to keep that inventory replenished, as well as education and various other things. So it's just really about looking at your process, finding tools and not just Vish. We're not the only ones out there doing it, but what can, how can you embrace technology to make your team more efficient so that you're protecting your workflow and your profitability?
Speaker 2:of your salon, right? Well, I think this is, I mean, certainly, you know this fits right in the wheelhouse of what we love to discuss, you know, from a strategy standpoint, which is, you know, out, distill it, you know, into a few areas that apply on our end. And making this connection is the fact that, again, the more, basically, the more we understand and know about our business, the better the decisions we can make about our business. And this becomes one of those moments where, you know, by utilizing, you know, vish and utilizing a tool that's available, it allows us to take one key area and go I can get, really I can get a bunch of clarity around how it can be more efficient in this, in this area. So here's an interesting, and you know I'll take a best guess and you know, and, but if you got real hard, strong, like data on it, I'll take that even even more so, but I'll take a good guess too. Okay, there's nothing like a good guess on some of these things, because I'm not sure exactly what, what types of all the, what depth of data you have.
Speaker 2:My question would be this is what do you, as you were, you're talking about that? My question would be like on the average, like, because, again, we talk about, we talk about. So let me frame it for the, for the, the audience. If we're talking about profitability through efficiency, we know that the more we can save on those top lines and those expenses, that makes it a lot easier for that to drop to the bottom line, and so that's really as simple as as as that concept goes. So if I'm able to spend like, for example, if I were to say we know we'd like to keep like a pro use cost at like you know, in a traditional hair, we'll just kind of go that way In a traditional hair environment we want to keep that, let's say, seven, eight percent in relation to the services we do. What do you see as? Do you have an idea what your average savings might be Like? Can you save someone like 2%, 3%, or is it greater than that? Even it's greater?
Speaker 3:than that. Yeah, it's greater than that. Okay, a lot of us and we'll start from the top, where we look at that First of all, loving all your services in together haircuts and hair color really distort that view because you know your haircuts are costing you, on average, a dollar, whereas your hair color costs can be. You know your profitability can be nil. You can be losing money, and we'll look at toners as an example of that.
Speaker 3:It's quite often that we see a salon charging $25 for a toner and they're using over $12 per toner. By the time they pay out the commission, by the time they factor in, you know, the bottle, the shampoo, the, everything else, they're losing money on that service. But overall, you may be seem healthy because you're, you know, at your 8% or your 7% overall. But if we could break that out a little bit more and then focus more on every service being equally profitable, well then you're in a much healthier shape. So some top line numbers that we look at is we know that salons waste, on average, 27% of their inventory. Wow, two out of every five tubes of hair color get thrown away. Two out of five.
Speaker 2:About a five yeah, holy cow, and just the audience listening just shuttered. Like I did as an ex-business owner, I just went. Oh dear God, like I think about, I mean, all you did for me, tom I'm sorry to break through your moment, but I think it's happening across the listening world is the fact that I sat there going okay, so I owned a business for 16 years and what you're telling me is, basically, even if I were being that wasn't my team, even if I was only wasting one tube out of every five, it still makes me shudder with the amount of money that okay, continue, because I've now caught my breath.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it is incredible right and again, like think about that. From retail Would you throw away two out of five bottles of shampoo you're trying to sell?
Speaker 2:Right, it's like oh, we got a shipment in today, hey take two out of that, two out of that let's take three out of that dozen and throw them in the garbage.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, exactly. So you know that's one area of focus for us and that's pretty much a primary. So I think it's important that we describe the process that we go through through the onboarding of fish and that the first 30 to 45 days that you use fish, we've understand a lot. Now that we're not. We don't want to ask too much of your team. We don't think that you should ask too much of your team. We want them getting used to using the new technology and we'll focus on waste as the first area that we're going to see value, that we're going to change the value and be more profitable. So just by mixing Envish and returning with your bowl at the end of the service, we can really start to cut into that 27% waste, average, 27% waste right away. So soon as that first group of clients come back, you're already seeing some positive numbers on your bottom line. But then we look at other areas.
Speaker 3:So now that we've got data for 30 to 45 days, if I asked anybody on the call today how much on average is each hairdresser using of your hair color inventory, the data is just not there. You don't have it because you're not using technology that will give it to you. So what's commonly comes back is you're going to see the owner, the managers or some of the long-term, more invested staff members using closer to $4 or $5 per application. Then you're going to go other team members that are using upwards of $12 to $15 per application. So we'll capture some of that from the waste. But then there's the other side of it, which is are they just over applying on the head? Are they doing that because they think it's more efficient to just put a lot of color on? And what ends up happening is you're eating the cost of that. So two out of five tubes of color go down the drain. What about the rest of it? How much more can we correct that?
Speaker 3:And salon owners when we present them this data, they really have two different paths they can take. One path is changing behavior of your hairdressers, and there's areas there, maybe highlight education, and it's not one or the other choice, but two choices. Get presented and you likely will do both. So reeducate your team. Identify the people on the team that are maybe applying way too many highlights when they do a half head of foils and not charging for it, so you have the opportunity to teach them how to have a better foil pattern, how to apply that color better so that they are not using too much, or the best option, in my opinion, aside with the education is to charge one and not raise your prices across the board, because that's not always necessary.
Speaker 3:It's the ability to recapture from the guests when more color is used than needed, and I'll give you a clear example of that, and this is one of the ways where that being more efficient means more profit is that Jane comes in every six to eight weeks for her hair color, for a highlight at her toner, and she's very regular, very consistent. But her sister comes in infrequently, having the same service. Well, if she's coming in every 12 weeks or every 16 weeks, she's likely paying the same amount because her booking times are the same, but your costs are way different on these two people. So what Vish gives you the ability to do is set a baseline. Here's how much we use for that highlight and that toner. If you exceed it, we're gonna collect that. So now, while you're educating your team, while you're making these changes on them individually so that they're not so wasteful and using just too much product, we're ensuring that you're not losing the money on those because we start collecting that after the 30 to 45 days. So I'd say the average ticket increase on the ticket is probably between four and $6, but multiply that by the three 400 services you're doing every month. You'll start to see that.
Speaker 3:You know, our inventory should be treated like inventory, which is you should make money off of it. It should be profitable, but it's not. When it ends up happening is if a hairdresser decides you know what, I'm using a lot of extra color, I'm gonna charge this person for the extra bowl. If you're charging $20 for that extra bowl of color and you're using 10 and you pay commission, you're just breaking even. So what we propose at Vish is that there's a markup put on the inventory and maybe only a portion of it is shared as commission with the team and less extra time is added.
Speaker 3:So what you'll end up seeing is that a salon. You know, when we get back to your original question, which is percentage of back bar, we see salons get down to one to 2% back bar cost. We see salons that move into a parks and labor model, where a hundred percent of the hair color inventory used as charged to the customer. So you know it. Really it depends on the culture of your business and how willing you are to adapt to change is how we'll configure the system and roll it out in your salon. You know waste will be sustained at some point, so where's the rest of the value? What other positive impact can you make on your business? And we'll help you get there just by simply you know different milestones at different times and configuring our software so it fits a culture of your business better. That's a very long answer I don't like a little bit, no it's the perfect answer.
Speaker 2:And you know you give a lot of great things to think about. You know, as I sit here you know kind of processing I want to kind of just kind of recap a couple of things that you kind of shared in there that I think are really critical, and I want to make sure that that again, those listening don't get hung up on anything. You know that you shared because it was so good. You know, again, for most people that are probably listening in, they're going well, we pay hourly and you mentioned commission. Listen, get all that out of your brain. It doesn't have anything to do with any of this conversation. And the same thing, too, about the fact that while we at Strati's talk a lot about the fact that we want to make sure you're charging appropriately for your time, here's where this again make sure you make the right connection. Here's where every ounce of what Tim just shared absolutely fits in. Because here's what I do know If we're applying everything that Tim shared there, it's making your cost for your time reduced, which makes you more profitable, because anytime you can reduce costs in any way, shape or form, it allows you to be more profitable. Now, again, I like what was being shared about the fact that it's like, hey, listen, this might also be able to show us where you know what. We can kind of look at some of these service prices and say, hey, listen, I want to be in a different space for those, for any number of reasons, like Tim gave some really great reasons why you might want to have some different price. I mean, all that becomes, hey, if I'm able to reduce my costs but also adjust my pricing in a way. That's all that we create is a greater gap of health. That's simply it. We just create greater health for the business, and I love that and I love what you made me think about, which is a really cool.
Speaker 2:Just again, I think a process that we don't often consider is the fact that, like you said, it's like, hey, listen, if I got someone that's every six, eight weeks on a regular, but then I got someone that's 12 weeks, 15 weeks or very sporadic. You are exactly right, we're still kind of doing that we're charging for now. Again, even if you practice what we typically advocate, doesn't matter which way you practice this. Well, maybe it does take more time, so I'm going to charge for that time. Well, that's good. I mean because you're being more. You know that's the right way, but still, probably most people look at that and go, well, that's a highlight type of service or dimensional color service, and it is different. We know it's different by what's contained in that. That's awesome stuff for us to think about and I'll go back to the core. I'm going to go back to the core of this is I love how you're able to take through through Vish, how you're able to take an area that still, while we quote I'm using air quotes now while we monitor it, all right, we don't really monitor it. I mean, this is a big charge that, like said again, most of you are probably still thinking about that 27% loss and those. You know the amount of tubes of color and product and things like that you know. So, while we may be monitoring, you know we aren't. There's a way to do this at a higher level that does.
Speaker 2:Going back to the kind of the anchor statement so far profitability through efficiency, because we are better able to be more efficient with probably, not probably, but if you're in a traditional hair environment, this is the number one cost. You know that you are absorbing as a business is buying. You know you're, you know the color for your business. And and again, if, even if you're listening here and going, well, none of this really applies to me. You know, maybe you're in a different world of skin or things like that. You know, apply all these same ideas because it all still holds true no matter what industry you are in. This whole, this whole concept, speaks to everyone. So I love where we are with this and I love the idea of this. You also made me think about and I'm going to go back to something you said at the beginning. You made me realize something that you know once you do just like we say, when you're building your first cash flow plan and things like that. Well, sometimes you got to take a few guesses before you find out what the cost actually is.
Speaker 2:Sounds like again, it's the same process where it's like, hey, we may overmix the first time or two, but now we're able to get that dialed in where I don't have to go back and remix three times. I know where. You know there's a lot of times where I see people do it all the time, so I'll go back and I'll remix again. And it's like, okay, I'm glad, but maybe we overmixed on that second hit because we thought we needed, you know, another ounce. We only needed a half and all those things all add up and, just honestly, just the time it takes to have to go remix you know that's a 10 minute turnaround a lot of times to do that and that's inefficient. So this allows you to dial in and go. I know exactly what. I'll use me as an example. I know exactly how much Michael needs, because we know it through the course of doing this a couple of times and logging that information.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and one of the things that it becomes really obvious after that. So typically what we do is at first, 35, 30 to 45 days. In the beginning we just want you to use Vish, re-weigh your bowls, let's get ready on your waste journey. Analyze the data at that first point and then that's where we introduce product charges. Now, whether you're commissioned or you're an hourly based along, like Michael said, there's no difference. You know you're still, you still could be losing money, you still need to be price adjusting and some salons will come at that point. So you know what we're good on this. You know we. We track every extra bit of color that we use and we charge it out to the guest. So in all the hundreds, or you know however many meetings I've had with salons at this point, there's only been once that they've ever been accurately charging for those extra.
Speaker 3:You think about it as a hairdresser. Maybe you did just over mix. You know, and this lady's been coming to you for a long time and you're aware of her budget. We make these decisions to not charge them based on the relationship that we have with this person, or maybe they were dissatisfied with their color. So we continually the discount and discount and what we see is that, yeah, the extra bowls of color are not consistently charged, but for salons that do charge for it, keep that process going. If you pay out on that, great, keep that process going. But the product charges that we do A it's not always clear to your hairdressers how much to charge. There's not always a great pricing schedule that's available to them when they use a little bit more color than should. So we automate that and we and we retract that at the beginning, so that you know. Everybody initially thinks, well, what are the guests going to feel? Well, a guest knows that if she's out of her normal cycle for coming back in, that there's going to be a little bit extra charge because more work was done. So there's a lot of these things that need coaching but are quite easy to implement if you're focused on. You know, kind of providing your team the data so that they understand why you're doing it and give them an explanation.
Speaker 3:The other side of it is just in the being efficient part of the inventory. A whole counting process is really inefficient. Again, if you're manually doing it, question yourself why Is there a way that we can automate this so we're not taking two, three, four hours a week counting our inventory, ripping off tabs, storing it in a bin and hopefully that's accurate, and then you're going to use that to reorder your inventory. Well, we, that's not always accurate and what I see all the time in salons is that they're replenishing these products because they use them, but are they going through enough? Like, if you think of a dark color, like two-end? You're replenishing that every week that you're ordering, or every two weeks, but you're never getting through the ones that you have. So one of the common practices that we do is we look at six months worth of data and we see how much of your inventory are you actually using, how much can you slim down on that? So you're freeing up cash flow, and not just cash flow but space. So again, these are a lot of.
Speaker 3:There's a lot that we can offer, but it's just a matter of taking these out bite-sized pieces. I don't know. Michael, you and I talked about this is great. There's a lot of data here. There's a lot of change that we can have impact in the salon, but how do you implement it?
Speaker 3:A lot of the problems that come from the Color Bar is because there's not necessarily a lot of rules established at the Color Bar or your team are running the show and making decisions with your money that maybe you just don't have insight on or maybe we're a little bit afraid to have these conversations with our staff.
Speaker 3:But by having the data, by having a dashboard that you can look at so you can do these one-on-ones, you can set benchmarks for your whole salon. Again, it's about coaching. That's what you do really well and you can set some insight there. But the salons that we interact with and strategies is one of our earliest partners. It's always much easier when we come into a salon to onboard it, for them to get value, when they have some structure already in place, like strategy. Things are accountable for. It's very much that, as we offer a lot of solutions, but it's still up to you as a salon owner and a manager and a team of hairdressers to implement some of these changes. We had talked quite a bit about that on last call. I don't know if you want to shed some insight there or have any questions.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's something we're so on the same page with this is, I think this is one and this leads to. I had asked you again when we were prepping, some of the mistakes that you often see out there, so we'll share those in a second, but my thought to where the conversation is right now is you're exactly right, this is one of those areas that this is one of those, I think, mistake areas that we don't coach enough around, the areas of, and have the right conversations with, people in the areas that can matter and make a difference in our business, Even something along this line of hey guys, this is how we want to manage this key area of our company. I want to make sure we all understand the approach that we're taking, that we all understand the language we want to use, we all understand the impact positively or negatively, with what our actions are. All of this is here's one thing that I would see that I think happens from a coaching standpoint to this whole concept of what we're talking about is business owners will go in and they'll go. Guys, we need to get more efficient with our back bar. We've got some waste going on. We want to be more efficient, so let's go be more efficient. That is the beginning and the end of the coaching. It's like, let's just get better. It's like, well, how do I get better?
Speaker 2:Then again, we might give one thing that is very topical, but we don't go that depth that we need to go. We might give one answer that sounds good, but when you really think about it, it's like, okay, that's great, but does it really make a difference? What really needs to be discussed is this idea of guys this is the impact on our business. This is what this looks like. Again, let me be very clear when I say the impact on the business the amount of detail that you want to share about your company when it comes to finances and things like that, that's your decision. But I see no harm in letting people know that, hey guys, going back to 27%, we waste 27%. That's a number that we need to share with people, because if we don't do that, here's what this looks like being better about what we need to do and letting people know. This is why we do this, because this number one allows us to do these other things the fact that we're more efficient here and makes us a more profitable business and, in turn that allows us to put fuel and tank for other things that we want to be able to do.
Speaker 2:So coaching the right way around. This, I think, is so often where we do miss the mark and we just kind of leave it, as our coaching just simply looks like hey guys, let's get better, we don't want to waste as much. And so and I think I hate to say it, but I'm sure of it because just life, I'm sure there are people that use Vish really properly and I'm sure there are people that use Vish and go that doesn't work and I can guarantee you the reason it doesn't work is because we don't use it the right way. Anyway, because it does work, because it's just, it's simple and it's data and it's just follow. The system I mean is our software perfect?
Speaker 3:No, right, is it a? You know, is it something you just buy and turn on and the team are going to start using it? Love it? Definitely not right. Like, everybody has to work at something If you're implementing change, right, so you're. You know some salons. If they turn around tomorrow and say, look, everybody has to work all black or all jeans on Friday, that's not just going to work every time, right, you still have to keep managing that process as it goes.
Speaker 2:And yeah, I mean I wish it was a slam dunk, I wish it was just like here turn this on and immediately you're going to start seeing profits, but it's coaching and managing along the way, every step of the way I love that we had talked about and this kind of sets up something that and again I'm referring back to some of the notes that we had kind of in our initial call we talked about three areas. I asked you identify three areas that you see the greatest mistakes kind of happen. I'd love for you to share, from your line of sight, what you think some of the common mistakes are that people just that you just see made over and over so that the listener can say I hope I'm not making that mistake or if I am, I'm going to go correct that mistake.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I think the first area that we spoke of and again, this is not an order of importance or in severity, this is just the three areas One of them that I see that requires a lot of rethinking is around the service menu. We come into Salons and now we work as we import your service menu into Bish and sometimes I see them at their five pages long and they're priced all over the place and when it's up they're confusing, right. So the team misused them or they know the ones that they should use when they wanna charge a certain price. Maybe it's less to the customer because they're close to them. But also, how confusing is that if you offer online booking and that causes a world of problems. If your client doesn't understand it, your team don't understand it, you're gonna get a lot of mistakes made in your appointment book. So, like a restaurant, keep that menu simple, concise, easy to understand, and make sure that everything on that menu you can do well and make sure that everything on that menu is profitable. And again, I see toners coming in as your number one service and a lot of salons are at least in the top three and if it's your least profitable one, why would you want that to be in your top three? My least profitable service. I wanna do them very rarely, if not never, right? So that's one area that I think salons can and also.
Speaker 3:I ask salons regularly about how they price and structure their menu and where do they get that price from? What are they looking at? What is their cost of goods on that baleage with a toner, and do they know, and how does that affect or impact what you're charging for? How often are you changing your pricing? You know, one of the things that we're able to do is you know hair color manufacturers. They put up prices all the time and you know some of them have done two this year alone. Are you absorbing that money or are you passing that along to the customer where it should go? Again, inventory is inventory. So if the manufacturer changes that bottle of shampoo costs from $10 to 12, are you still only marking it up to the same amount? You're not. You're recouping that right away. So treat your hair color inventory the same way.
Speaker 3:The second area is just really it's about structure in your salon. So we are able to. You know we have a very known problem in the industry which is around, you know the waste of the color bar and how we manage it. So salons are really quick to jump into, sign on to Vish, but there's not often enough structure in your business to implement the software or implement any change. So really work with you know, look at your coaches, look at us and then just look at your own practices as you're there and then understand, like Michael I was just saying, this isn't a slam dunk.
Speaker 3:You have to have that structure there if you're going to implement, change your hairdressers. So what you're asking of them is to do something completely different, which in the beginning we'll take them a little bit more time. Do they know what the benefit is to them? Do they know what the benefit is to the client and to the salon itself? So really being able to manage that and coach that along the way will ensure much more likely success than if you just put something in and hope it's going to work and then the third one is it I guess it's kind of around that it's just the general resistance to change overall.
Speaker 3:I always find that funny in our industry because we give change every day, that is what we do, but we are the ones that are most resistant to it. So I think that all falls back to are you having regular staff meetings? Are you doing what on once with your team? Do they know what your goals are? And I'm not just saying this because we're on the call together, but the transparency that strategies professors and encourages their salons to do it makes a huge impact. Understanding with the bottom line is understanding how the whole structure works and how people are paid. If you don't have that, it's very hard to get them on board with the changes that you're going, that you're proposing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that, like three great areas that I wholeheartedly agree with. Like I said, I love how you bring up just again. First thing you said was service menus that are just can be confusing. If it's confusing ultimately, if it's confusing for the consumer, your client, it's going to be hard to interact and do business with you as a business and, trust me, if it's confusing to them, it's probably confusing to at least 50% of your team as well would fall under that. They just don't want to bring it up or they don't want to be the one to raise the hand and say I don't understand. And so I love that you bring that up.
Speaker 2:I love the statement around not enough structured implement change. That is so key because we don't communicate enough and we don't put the right systems in place at the beginning and we don't build that for lack of a better way to say it is we don't build that strong base and that strong foundation to have the change that we want to sustain in place. We just kind of introduce things and go and cool. I think this is listen. I've heard about Vish. I think it's a really cool thing. I'm going to bring it in and we introduce things and this happens all the time, whether it's this or anything. I mean, I see it happen all the time with the things that we talk about. Strategies, just like listen before you go and do that. You need to set the foundations first before you're going to see the benefit of X, whatever that is. And so too many times I think we start too high. This could get me on a whole another topic, but one of the things that I've learned a lot in researching and studying other areas is, if the level you start at is the system level, it's too high up the food chain. You need to build foundational levels before you even introduce the systems first if you want to see those systems deliver the best results. And so the last thing and I love that you said resistance to change. I've made this. Sometimes I make it a joke, sometimes I hit it serious, but it's all the same thing. Like I said, for an industry that prides itself on, we are constantly changing, we're constantly evolving. We got to keep up with the latest trends and this and that and the other man. When it comes to our own personal lives, our own personal, we want the A, b and the C to be A, b and C, and we don't want it to read differently. Even though we profess to be be change people, it's like, well, you got to be open to change too. So I love that you said those things.
Speaker 2:This has been a great conversation. A lot of things I feel like we're just scratching surfaces on. For sure loved to have some more dialogue, but we are in a great space right now. I hope for everyone listening. It got your mind thinking about, like one, how you can just be more efficient in your business, just flat out more efficient in your business. And that goes back to what Tim was sharing that first, really first half to three quarter of this conversation and the impact that can have alone on your bottom line. Love that. And then that last bit of conversation there, those three mistakes. Where are we falling into some of those traps and how do we get ourselves away from that and move forward? So, tim, any last thoughts before we wrap today up that might be in your brain. Go man, I want to share this real quick before we wrap things up because there might be something genius in there.
Speaker 3:I mean, yeah, I mean I can talk on this topic for hours because I'm so passionate about it, but there is a lot to digest here. There's a lot of info. We're going to be at the strategies conference in October and we're going to be hosting a cocktail event beforehand. So if anybody wants to come along, have questions, if you would like to see something beforehand, we'd be happy to.
Speaker 3:But I think the biggest takeaway is just like you said, build that foundation if you're going to implement any change, anything new in your salon, and then stick with it while you're there. Neil Dukoff said it to me before right, they said we have the same problem with some salons is that they say, oh, but it's so hard doing the work and getting the meetings and doing the spreadsheets and getting into to do all that work. He's like, yeah, it is hard work, but so is going bankrupt, or so is how you start again, right? So I'm really excited about this. Like I said, we have new technology coming out. We really hope to automate our inventory, to make life easier for salon owners to read the data, to make these changes, and if you're interested in finding out more, we'd be happy to have a conversation with everybody.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Well, like I said, you guys are being in-person at our conference. I will say, though, if they're not going to be able to be there, what would be the most direct way to find out more about you? If they want to, what's the best way to get in touch?
Speaker 3:If you go to getvishcom, g-e-c, v-i-s-hcom there's tons of white papers, there's tons of videos. If you want to book a demo, to get a walkthrough, by all means book a demo. You can also search us on social media, which is bishsalons as one word V-I-S-H, s-l-o-n-s, yeah or reach out anything. We're here to help and we're here to make impact on salons bottom line and make them more sustainable and more profitable, awesome, love it.
Speaker 2:Thank you, tim. And again, it's strategies, big fans, because again, we love partnering and we love talking to and making having great relationships with companies. That just all we all want the same thing in the end, which is we want to see businesses surviving or not surviving thriving, not just surviving, is what I meant to say Thriving, not just surviving and this is just another way that that absolutely can happen. So appreciate what you're doing for the industry, tim. Thank you so much and look forward to seeing you here in a couple months in Scottsdale. But with that in mind, this has been a great conversation today. Thank you for everyone that's joined us and listened in, and we will talk to you again soon. Have a great day.
Speaker 1:Thanks again for listening to the Beauty Business Strategies podcast. If you liked this episode, be sure to hit follow and please share the episode link with anyone who you think could benefit from today's content. To learn more about how strategies can help create more fun, profit and growth potential for you, your company and your team, we invite you to schedule a free 60-minute strategy session by clicking the direct link in the description of this episode. There you'll also find links to our wide array of coaching, seminar and learning opportunities, all of which can be found at Strategiescom.