OMG Have you seen Charlie Sheen’s 20/20 interview?

…here’s the spoof.

Are you winning in business?

What can we learn from this? Comment below.

…now go make someone’s day because you are loved!
-Christopher

…is it who you know? It is, but only to an extent. Really, it’s who you help.

We’ve become quite the networkers this last year. In our quest to find new and better cutting edge information on marketing to share with you, we’ve developed our own strategies on how to network. So far just this past year we’ve been to the nation’s top seminars, cruises, masterminds and coaching sessions (the kids barely remember what we look like!).

At all these events, there’s the “typical” types: “Hi! I’m So-n-so, what do you do? Really, great! We should do something together” (which really means you should buy my stuff). INSTEAD of that, we focus on getting to know people and figuring out how we can help them. Bizarre, I know…

This “helping” strategy, based on real friendships, has proven wise for us. We don’t even tell people what we do. The result? (aside from a sense of mystery:), is that people gravitate towards us. They want to know what we do, how we do it, how we can work together. Since we don’t chase people down, and actually become real (no matter how “big” the other guy is), they gravitate towards us. This has began such relationships where our business will grow tenfold this year (yes, 10x).

So what can you do? How can you help? What can you do to reach out, be real, and give?

Doing so will not only land you great friends, partners and press, but will also give you a sense of pride. Taking the higher road has always served me best.

“Who loves ya?”
-Christopher

PS By the way, my plans for the SalonSpaBootcamp.com has just taken another giant leap forward in what I can do to HELP you. Send in your application now because time is ticking.

One of my marketing friends, Pat Rigsby, is in the fitness industry and his recent post was so awesome, I just had to share (slightly adapted) because he makes a great point…

“I don’t have time.”

I hear that from owners all too often.

Salon Spa owners don’t have time to work on their business, they don’t have time to market it, they don’t have time to grow it.

Guess what… we’re all busy. So we need to make that time to be successful BUT it doesn’t take hours and hours as many of us think.

As a matter of fact , here are 19 things that will take 5 minutes or less that will help you network, generate referrals, become more organized and build a more profitable salon and spa business:

1. Ask For a Referral – After a client visit, ask for a referral. During a conversation with a friend or a client, ask for a referral. While networking, ask for a referral. The bets marketing strategy there is – asking for referrals – it literally takes seconds to do.

2. Send a Personal Email to a Client – A simple ‘How are things going? Is there anything I can do to help you achieve your goals even more quickly?’ goes a long way.

3. Document One Business Process – Do you want to finally develop systems for your business? Here’s the easy way to start: As soon as you complete a task – write down the exact steps to took to accomplish that task. It will take less than 5 minutes and within a couple of weeks you’ll have simple processes for most every task in your business.

4. Make A Call To A Prospect or Client – There are 2 things that can really make you stand apart from your competition… the quality of your service and your personal attention. A quick call or card to check up on them is a great example of how you can set yourself apart from the rest.

5. Offer Retail – This is probably the easiest way to increase your revenue, immediately after making an initial sale. This is when people are most likely to buy, since their credit card is already in hand. Offer a complimentary product (or program at a discount). At least 20% of the clients will take you up on it and it takes only seconds.

6. Send A Card – In a world that has gone all electronic a personal card to a client or friend goes a long way.

7. Ask them to Reschedule– Don’t wait for people to try to remember to come back to you… you should rebook them immediately and ideally move everyone into 12 month memberships.

8. Send A Gift – A simple way to say thanks for a referral, for being a client or just because – and it will set you apart from 99% of the other businesses your clients interact with.

9. Map Out Your Day – Before you go to bed, map out your tomorrow. This 5 minute exercise will easily double your productivity and only takes a pen and paper to do so.

10. Hand Out A Gift Certificate– To clients to give to their friends. To people you meet when you’re out and about. At networking events. Any time you can spread the word about your business. We practice this activity constantly and it’s our main holiday promotion.

11. Make a Facebook Post – Congratulate a client on referring you. Post a photo of the someone’s visit or group party, tagging all the clients in the picture. Post a link to your free info or report online. Keep your business front and center in people’s minds.

12. Make a Craigslist Post – It’s free, quick and pretty simple – why not?

13. Practice Your Consultation or Presentations – If you want to make more you need to get better at converting a higher percentage of prospects. Practicing your consultation, facility tour, gift certificate presentation – preferably with someone else – will take you just a few minutes and dramatically improve your results.

14. Talk With A Client – The 2 minutes it takes to make a personal connection will bond you to your clients like nothing else.

15. Study – Study something on our site if you’re a member. Read a forum, blog post or a few pages in a book. Commit to getting better every day. Personally, I try to read a chapter of a book if I get 5 minutes free between scheduled phone calls and it helps me get through over 75 books a year.

16. Drop In On A Business – Take an extra 5 minutes if you’re out and about to drop in on a business to say hi and introduce yourself. Ask how you can help them. Build a relationship and hand out some gift cards.

17. Make A Call To A Local Business or Organization – A phone call (or stopping in) to set up a referral, free gift or healtcare program takes just a few minutes and can yield big results.

18. Get Motivated – Read, listen or watch something motivational (your favorite song!). It will make everything else you do a little bit better.

19. Fix a Detail – Train your staff. Pick up something. Organize your office. You can always be doing something…

There are a lot of business growth activities that take an hour or more. A bunch of others that take a half an hour or so. But don’t ever let a lack of time stop you from reaching your goals. There is always something you can do.

One more thing – we’re putting together the industry’s first and best business retreat, hit “reply” and let me know what you’d like to see in it.

“Who Loves Ya?”
-Christopher
SalonSpaOwner.com

P.S. Comment below because I’d love to hear your thoughts
P.P.S. Have you subscribed to our blog yet via the “rss feed?”

I was interviewed today by a national salon magazine about the negative effects of Groupon.

Although I personally feel that “daily deal” sites are bad not only for the small businesses who run them, but for the economy and ultimately people who buy them, I know many will still succumb.

Which brings me to a moral dilemma.

Should I offer a “How to successfully use daily deal sites for your salon spa business”? …Even though I feel you shouldn’t use them at all?

“Who loves ya?”
-Christopher

P.S. Please comment below to help me decide.

Despite the economy, and other business owners spouting “doom and gloom” all the time, we just KILLED IT during our most recent holiday promotion. Almost DOUBLE over what we did last year. Why? How? Am I lying? …no, I’m not lying. Things are going well, up, up & up. People say “flat” is the new “growth” in these times, I say “Bah! Humbug!” to that. GROWTH is GROWTH.

Here’s a study of a recent blog post, that highlights part of the reason for our success.

We received a recent email from a soldier in Afghanistan, asking about a spa day for his fiance’ on her birthday so she wouldn’t be alone. Our blog post about it is here if you haven’t seen it yet: Our salon spas blog story

1st – We were willing to do the work. We went back and forth and back and forth with emails getting everything lined up. Not only did we have to get the day decided upon service-wise, but then scheduled, paid for etc. This is no biggie, but took a while via email. Then we had to coordinate gifts. He had a gift shipped to our home. Flowers shipped to the spa. We went out and picked up his favorite champagne for her. There was definitely some “above and beyond” going on.

2nd – We were lucky enough that he shot a video for us and put it on youtube. I told him how to title the headline (titled for search terms, not the name of our spa), with a backlink url in the description (to give us google juice via a link back to our site).

3rd – Then we made sure to take some good candid shots when she was here. This personal touch I think is vital since it shows not only how much the clients enjoy us, but us as people. The more people know, like & trust YOU, the more they’ll buy from you.

4th – The VIDEO of her, toasting her man Eric, is Very moving and powerful. It shows love, it shows emotion, it conveys a STORY… which we all enjoy. It also shows that a spa day for a birthday gift is a Good thing

5th – The ENTIRE blog it’s on is keyworded for search terms. The blog itself, the post headline, the keywords, all of it… will show up in the search results when someone searches for “gift certificates” or “birthday gifts” in our city. Then what will they see? They’ll see her crying with joy. THAT is the perfect testimonial… and there’s our link waiting to be clicked so they can buy their own gift certificate and spread the circle of joy.

6th – Not only do we now have a GREAT keyworded page online (& on youtube), I’m now going to distribute this to a few hundred video sharing sites, use it as a testimonial and share the blog post to our facebook group.

7th – We ask for comments. This shows popularity (or “social proof”) to other readers AND to google, who gives us brownie points in the search results. Also, if YOU comment on this blog post, you can put your url back to your site, giving you more google juice.

…it goes deeper, but you’ve got the gist of things.

If you want to know more about the magic I work with facebook, check out our facebook course for salon spa owners here.

“Who loves ya?”
-Christopher

P.S. Don’t forget to comment below because you deserve some “google juice” for your salon spa too!

Don’t yell at me now, but the rich have gotten a bad rap from the rest of us…

They help out employing the nation, they pay the majority of taxes, are responsible for the stock market, but during these TOUGH TIMES, spending money on yourself has become “taboo.”

Look at it…

If you spend frivolously on luxury items, you’re seen as indulgent. Worse yet, you’re accused of not caring about what’s happening.

Getting high-end services has become hush-hush. Similar to when rich women would go on Safari to get a face-lift (have you heard about that! 2 days of surgery, 2 weeks of safari, return rejuvenated and no one knows!). NOW you get botox and don’t tell anyone NOT because you don’t want them to know you got botox, but because you don’t want them to know you spent a few hundred bucks on yourself. Really!

SO as it often does “Opportunity comes knocking often disguised as misfortune”

…many look at the economy as completely negative, but more millionaire’s are made during a depression than any other time.

Savvy businesses saw this “guilt” associated with spending by the rich so they came out with a spin… using a charity.

The Feed bag is a $60 bag (probably costs 60 cents to make) and they feed children for a year with each one sold. NOW the rich can “brag” they spent money on themselves!

The same has been applied to shoes. Simple canvas shoes selling for big bucks, BECAUSE they donate a pair for each one sold.

You’ve seen the commercial with the kid here in America climbing his back fence and landing in Africa to hand another child a laptop computer, right? Same thing, “buying from us is like donating to charity.”

Here’s an example of how our minds work…

We were even at a seminar a while back where one of the speakers was given 2 times on stage. The first time he sold a small $20 cd (to warm up the crowd) and the second time he brought out the big guns and sold a $2,000 product. Zhenya mentioned to me that HAD he said after collecting all the cash on his first sale that he’d be donating it to charity, she would’ve taken the $2,000 offer.

So how do you implement this in your Salon Spa? Simple. Make a donation to charity with each high dollar salon treatment. Take 10 minutes to be AWARE of what the options and possibilities are and I bet you can come up with an even better idea that will get you on the news (hey, I can’t give ALL my ideas away here, I have to save the best stuff for my members).

“Who loves ya?”
-Christopher
SalonSpaOwner.com

P.S. Reply below because I’d like to hear your thoughts on this.

“Get $2,000 worth of ads for $497 by clicking here“

You’re NOT going to believe what we did these last few weeks, it’s been simply Amazing!

The Saturday before last, we went up to Denver (an hour away) to celebrate our boy’s birthday (he turned 7)… and since Zhenya realized her goal of skydiving this summer, he wanted to go too, so we took him Indoor Skydiving!

…that was just the start of it though. Grandma drove up from NM to celebrate so we got rooms at our favorite hotel in Denver, took all the kids swimming, out to a fancy lunch (and even fancier dinner), rode the tram downtown, went to the lego store (of course!), visited the art museum (King Tut) and created some lifetime memories.

As a Salon Spa Owner, it’s NICE to be able to do these kinds of things. We had such a great time we went up and spent the day in Denver again this past weekend (checking out the mountains this time).

How do we life our “dream life”?

…We’ve got our marketing systems in place, we have special promotional events on all the big money-making holidays, our business is lean and mean and we continue our education learning how to do things better and better. Why? So we can do what we got into business in the first place for…

…we can MAKE MORE while WORKING LESS.

This gives us the FREEDOM to do what we want with our time, which is spend it with the kids while they still are kids (what’s the point of working life away?).

“Who Loves ya?”
-Christopher

P.S. Are you Living your Dream Life??? If you enjoy your Saturdays to do what you want, with who you want (OR would like to!) COMMENT BELOW because I’d love to hear about it.

Whenever there’s a chill in the air, it makes me think of halloween… so I just watched one of my favorite videos of the kiddies again.

TOO FUNNY!

Email me if you’d like one made for you.

P.S. Make sure to comment below!