Salon business planning means looking back

The first thing that everybody should do before starting is to look forward is to look back at the year that has just gone and analyse the highs and lows, advises Elena Lavagni, director of Neville Hair & Beauty, London Without accepting and correcting past mistakes it’s nearly impossible to move on. This is the time to consider getting rid of the member of staff that wasn’t really as productive as you were expecting; to look at your stock, unnecessary expenses, PR mistakes or offers made at the wrong time. Also look at those publications that are really targeting your market audience, thereby offering maximum exposure;  or simply identify your target market. (Most of us tend to have an impression of what our clients really are but only a few of us really know). Positioning our business into the correct market is paramount. The companies that have done the best over the long haul are those who are the most creative and innovative. These organisations don’t copy what others do; instead, they may use innovative ideas from others as a springboard to come up with a unique application, product, or service for themselves. They tend to distance themselves from the competition rather than compete with them. If they see another company copying what they do, they create something new and better. In other words, they are able to leverage their creativity and their innovative capabilities to attain long-term success. Creativity is a function of knowledge of our business that comes from curiosity, imagination, and evaluation. The greater your knowledge base and level of curiosity, the more ideas, patterns, and combinations you can achieve, which then correlates to creating new and innovative products and services. Equally, when you’ve acknowledged that something isn’t working, don’t be afraid to stop it – a good business cuts its losses and moves on. Beauty/hairdressing is one of the few sectors that do so well at this, so this year we need to reinvent ourselves; our structure must be shaken up and presented in a new way. Hairdressers are truly creative people so here my suggestions to put your plan into action:

• Innovations are based on knowledge: you need to know your market, continually expand you knowledge base and read things you don’t read normally.
• Your perception may limit your reasoning – keep an open mind.
• Let your ideas incubate by taking a break from them, this shifts the brain into another place and helps me be more innovative and creative.
• Experience as much as you can. Exposure puts more ideas into your subconscious.
• Redefine your problem completely - one thing I have learned in the past few years is that your problem is not the problem; there is another problem. When you define the real problem you can solve it and move on. After all, if you correctly defined a real problem you would have solved it long ago because all problems have solutions.
• Look where others aren’t looking to see what other aren’t seeing.

In short, this is the year to create our own success.