Top 4 Mistakes Salon Owners Make... and How to Fix Them by Cole Thompson
For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Cole Thompson. I am the Creative Director and founder of Elevation H, which supplies apprenticeship and training programs to schools and salons around the world. I am also a leading artist for Hattori Hanzo Shears and former youngest Creative Director of Vidal Sasson Academy, where I also ran their global education department called School Connection.
Now that my resumé is out of the way, I’d like to share some pointers that I have picked up over my twenty years of styling and global education experience.
But first, I want to let you in on a secret... The mistakes on this list were easy to gather.
I don’t mean that they were quick to assemble. As I said, it took me twenty years to figure out what the top four mistakes salon owners make are. But, while accumulating this knowledge was a lengthy process, it was easy to look back and identify these key issues because they are the same all across the globe!
Seriously. No matter where I’ve been, from The UK (where I’m from), to the US (where I live now), to Europe, to Australia, to Canada, to Asia, to Africa, I’ve seen the same mistakes being made over and over and over by salon owners all over the world.
If you are a salon owner, do not despair for two reasons:
I am about to give you solutions to each of these common mistakes.
It is with these common salon issues in mind that I created my company Elevation H.
Elevation H has helped thousands of stylists all over the world with everything on this list and beyond. If you finish this blog post and still feel a little lost, or you just want a chat, please feel free to email me at info@elevationH.com anytime. You can also check out our website at www.ElevationH.com. We would love to connect with you and help you achieve your goals. Helping stylists to thrive is my passion, after all.
Now, without further ado, here are the top four mistakes salon owners make and how to fix them.
1) Failing to bridge the gap.
I still wake up in night sweats remembering the nightmare that was my early hairstyling experience. I can still picture myself, hands trembling behind the chair while my boss, an industry-leading hairstylist at the time, yelled at me to “graduate that bob!”
“But what does that mean?” I pleaded with him, wishing he would keep his voice down in front of the client, who was growing more and more uncomfortable in her chair as the situation escalated.
“I said graduate it!” was the only explanation my boss gave me.
Finally, I executed what I thought he wanted and, inevitably, got it wrong and ruined the entire cut.
This moment stands out in particular not only because it was traumatic, although that is part of the reason it is still so vivid in my memory, not to mention a frequent setting for my nightmares. But also because this moment illustrates the first big mistake salon owners make: They do not know how to bridge the gap between school and salon life.
Salon owners expect schools to teach stylists everything they need to know, but most schools focus mainly on passing government regulated tests. These tests are a vital part of a stylist’s journey, but tests alone do not make a stylist salon-ready, which leads to frustrated salon owners and traumatised stylists.
The best solution for the bridge-the-gap mistake is to put an apprenticeship program in place that connects everything the stylist learned in school to everything they need to know in day-to-day salon life. In other words, salon owners need to bridge the gap between what an apprentice learns as a student and what they have yet to learn in a salon.
As I said before, programs like Elevation H are designed to bridge the gap for you so that you can get back to running your business and doing hair.
2) Not building team loyalty.
I wish I could say the following is only true for one salon, but unfortunately, I have seen the following scenario play out too many times to count:
A prominent salon, we’ll call it Salon H, was thriving. There was a detailed, organised, and consistent apprenticeship program in place so that each apprentice became salon-ready and profitable as quickly and seamlessly as possible.
Apprentices were happy because they knew what they were working towards. All stylists were happy because they felt a sense of camaraderie and clear understanding, thanks to the consistent language and standards set by the program. Salon H owner was happy because the salon was thriving and, thanks to the program, this owner was able to focus on the business rather than having to train each apprentice themselves—a daunting and nearly impossible task that too many salon owners tend to place upon themselves.
A few years of thriving business went by, and Salon H got bought out. But the new owners of Salon H made a terrible mistake. The new owners decided to remove the apprentice training program from the salon.
Within months, every single stylist quit, and each one went on to start their own private business.
So, what happened? When the new owners got rid of the training program, they did not just cut costs. They cut the thread that tied the entire salon structure together. They cut off their salon culture. Once there was no more consistent language, no more consistent standards, no more bridging the gap between school and salon life in a detailed and organised way, the salon became scattered. Each stylist ended up losing loyalty to the salon and felt that since they were basically functioning on a private island within the salon, they might as well leave and start their own business since they were not receiving training and support front Salon H’s owners anymore anyway.
So, how to fix the problem of not building team loyalty? Offer consistent education and team culture based on consistent language and expected standards.
3) Failing to create consistency.
This one feeds off of our last issue. If there is no consistency, there is no culture, and if there is no culture, there is no loyalty. If there is no loyalty, there is no salon.
Often, the biggest issue with not creating consistency within the salon is that apprentices feel intimidated and confused about what exactly is expected of them (please refer back to my nightmarish experience in topic #1).
Another issue that comes from a lack of consistency is that the more seasoned stylists do not respect the apprentices. This leads to a rift in the team, which will inevitably lead to a failed business.
Think of this in terms of a college degree. Let’s say that one Ph.D. holder meets another person who also has a Ph.D. Under normal circumstances, there is shared respect between the two Ph.D. holders because they have each been through similarly rigorous training with comparable tasks, expectations, and outcomes.
But, what if not everyone had to go through a similar process to get a Ph.D.? What if the first person had to go through years and years of researching, taking classes, and writing a thesis, while the other person just had to read a book and email their teacher a synopsis in order to attain a Ph.D.?
This is an extreme example, obviously, but it proves my point. If one stylist in your salon has years and years of rigorous training and experience, how can they be expected to respect a newbie stylist who is not going to be put through a similar track? When you have consistency in the salon, each stylist goes through the exact same training, which builds respect and camaraderie amongst the team members. This is vital to a smoothly-functioning salon.
4) Making it so that the salon cannot function without them.
My twin brother, Paul, is a successful salon owner in the UK. He was also the most stressed person in his salon when he started.
When Paul started his salon, it was for the same reason many salon owners choose to take on their own business—he was doing well as a stylist and had built up an impressive and extensive client list. This is a great reason to start a salon. You love the business, you are thriving, you feel you can grow this to the next level. I say go for it!
But, there is one problem. Being a salon owner is a very different animal from being a thriving stylist. The biggest difference is that a salon is a team effort. Not a solo effort.
Paul was the perfect example of this problem. He started off by running his salon the same way he ran his independent hairstyling career. He made himself the busiest person in the salon with the most clients while also dealing with the many time-consuming and draining demands of running and operating a full-scale business. This was exactly why Paul was so stressed.
Paul and I had a conversation about why he was putting so much pressure on himself when owning a hair salon is pressure enough as it is. We discovered that Paul was hesitant to pass on responsibility and clients to his other stylists because of some of the issues we have already covered in this blog post. He was worried that the level of work would not be as high from anyone else in the salon, or that the level of service they delivered would not be as consistent.
This conversation with Paul was back in the early days of Elevation H’s inception when I had just left my job at Sasson’s. When Paul added the Elevation H program to his business, his stress levels went down, and his concerns about consistency and standards disappeared.
And there you have them - the top four mistakes salon owners make.
Before I say goodbye, I want to address the fact that all of these above problems can be solved by a good training program. You may have noticed that I have a lot of faith in my education company, and that is for one reason only—it just works. Every time.
Whether you choose to go with Elevation H, or another route for your business, I cannot stress enough how important it is for hairstylists to continue their education, which you clearly are already doing just by subscribing to Hairdressing Live. Just remember, the more you learn, the more you earn.
Most importantly, I wish you all the success in your endeavours in this industry and beyond. We are all so blessed to do what we do—to touch people’s lives every day and make people feel good in the way only a great stylist can. So, for reading my blog post here on Hairdressing Live, and for allowing me to be a part of such a wonderful and important community, thank you.
Much love, Cole
Written by Cole Thompson, of Elevation H
Follow:
@elevationh on Instagram
Cole and his brother Paul filmed two masterclasses with Hairdressing Live: A Day In The Salon with Elevation H.
In these two masterclasses they focus on the behind the chair stylist who needs quick easy new techniques and ways to make the everyday more fun, inspirational and effective. Find out more here