Recently I have had the privilege of interviewing salons and spas around the world who are the industry giants (more than 10 employees, relocated or expanded significantly to accommodate growth and have been in business for 10 or more years). What I was specifically looking for was their secrets as well as the challenges that come with this level of success. Today I am going to share with you the top 2 challenges and the top 2 secrets to success.

Keep in mind as you read that these salons and spas are from Canada, the United States, Dubai and Australia. Also know that they are thriving regardless of what the economic times dictate. In fact one salon owner I spoke with from Michigan is relocating to a larger space for the third time in 5 years taking his initial 7 employees to over 35. They obviously have found the key to growing a business but it does not come without challenges they are just different when you reach these levels of growth.

One challenge they all shared was their inability to know how to compensate or reward senior technicians who had reached full capacity to take new clients and who were working at full productivity at the top of the salon’s service price and the top of their earning potential.  The struggle was to keep these employees motivated to grow and learn when they have reached the peak of their careers.

The biggest challenge was their struggle to find balance between their home life and career. It seems that those who are also technicians in their salons found it very difficult to find the time to be at home more when the administrative duties at the salons kept them there later than they wanted to be. Also included in this equation was the emotional pull of choosing one over the other.

One of the secrets to success they had in common was the shift in thinking required to see their salons through the eyes of a business owner rather than the artist. For those salon owners who were technicians as well as owners, they attribute their success to this single factor. They started operating from a sense of what the business needed to succeed rather than from what they thought it needed. Some took marketing, business and management courses while others stepped away from their technical roles to those of managers and ceo or cmo. In fact, amongst the salons that I interviewed who experienced rapid growth were those who were never a technician in their businesses at all.

Another key to their success was that all of these salon and spa owners had an ongoing marketing plan that was consistently and effectively being promoted in and out of the salon. There was marketing to attract new clients and there was marketing to the existing clients. They were using every resource available to them and every position in the salon was responsible for implementing their own set of strategies. There was no hit and miss, they know who they are marketing to, they know what they are marketing and they were doing it.

So next time you are thinking that they know something you don’t realize that you know what they do, they have just taken the steps to make the changes needed to get them where they are today and you can too.