This article was written by our amazing guest contributor, Lexi Lomax.
Step one
How to step into your business step one.
Have clear goals, expectations and boundaries in your business. With yourself, clients, and co-workers or employees. Know what you’re here for, your purpose and your why. Don’t violate your own agreement.
Getting clarity in your business is the best way to forge ahead and reach success. Look at your business from an outsider’s perspective and take a hard look at what is going on and make notes of what needs attention.
Examine these things first:
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Your environment – Your salon, your workspace, your tools, your personal presentation
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Your clients – The number of clients, the type of clients, the type of services they are requesting,
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Your work – What kind of services do you do most, do you hate? Love? What is the caliber of work you are turning out?
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Your marketing – Your current marketing strategy vs previous strategies. What works, what doesn’t provide results? What kills you in the process?
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Your attitude and mindset – What is your current mindset in your business? Toward your clients? Towards yourself?
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Your revenue and profit – How much are you making? How much is actual profit? How much does it cost you to operate your business?
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Your employees and co-workers – Are they serving you well, need a redirection, or clearer boundaries?
Once you have thought over this list start to think about how you can improve any areas that you think could be improved. What would your perfect business look like? And feel like? Dreaming about this helps you to create goals and to create a plan to move forward towards your success.
Once you know what your goals are, don’t violate the agreement. Honor what you want for yourself and your business. Figure out what motivates you and what you are doing in the beauty business. Find your why. What you absolutely wouldn’t compromise to achieve your success. Why do you want the success in the first place? If your answer is money, maybe go a little deeper… why do you want the money? Work it out, so that you have clarity in this department too. Once you know your why and your priorities honor them through your actions.
Everything has been done before, and you can do it too. You are filled with ideas. You just need to start, and stick with it. Having clarity almost always moves you to take action. What first step are you going to move on in your business?
Step two
The second step to stepping into your business bad-assery is to have control over your finances. Not your finances controlling you.
Step two:
Get your money situation straight, if your biz makes plenty of money and you spend it all- that’s not straight. Be ready for a rainy day.
Yuck. Money. It’s like a dirty word for some people. It makes them uncomfortable, and full of shame. Let that go. If you are uncomfortable already then keep reading, this is for you.
Look here’s the thing. We ALL need money. It makes the world go round, and it makes life easier, and can buy you pretty sparkly things. But so many of us have a hard time with it. It owns us. It can be debilitating and paralyze us from chasing our dreams and achieving our goals.
Ultimately all of that comes down to mindset and the story we tell ourselves based on our earliest childhood experiences with money. The way our parents dealt with money, and what they showed us either intentionally or not, shapes the way that we in turn handle money.
If your parents were always struggling, paycheck to paycheck, you saw a scarcity mindset, and most likely ultimately developed it too. Do you feel like there is never enough money? Like always there is something that comes up just when you start to get ahead?
Or maybe your parents modeled that money is just a tool, and it comes when you need it? That there is plenty to go around, and you can use it to achieve your goals?
Do you feel like money is just money, cash money, dollah dollah bills y’all, and don’t have a ton of emotion connected to it. You have what you need and it’s there when you need it? But not in excess?
Figure out what your money mindset is, and why you might feel that way. Read I AM A BADASS AT MAKING MONEY by Jen Sincero, and determine your new mindset. Own your new money mindset and watch what happens.
Then get all of your finances out from the last 6 months to a year and look at all of your costs, your profit, and figure out where you stand. Get your business on a budget, and start saving money, even if you are in debt. Dave Ramsey is a great resource for all things finance. Believe me, you won’t ever regret saving money.
You should create financial goals for yourself and your business too. Figure out how to make more, save more, and spend less. This is also where you should begin to prepare for your future with a retirement plan, some investments if you can, and supplemental insurance in case of an accident or a situation in which you couldn’t work. The future is unpredictable. You want to be as prepared as possible, and pray you never need the preparation, and get to go hog wild in retirement. Wahoo!
Whatever goals you set for yourself that are financial, honor them through your actions. Set up financial systems and back up plans that work for you. I love the app GoodBudget, Quickbooks, and my CPA. Don’t violate the agreement, and watch your bank account grow, and a sense of calm set in.
Step three
Stepping up in your business is all about you. What you do, your habits and your lifestyle choices.
That brings us to the last pillar of stepping into your business fully, and step number three:
Be consistent. Set up daily routines that set you in the direction of your goals. Be diligent in your routine and let nothing stop you from achieving your dream life and biz. You deserve it.
We all have daily routines whether established and recognized, or haphazard and happening to us. Our brains are crazy powerful tools that we don’t utilize fully, in my opinion. So many of us are less present in our day to day because it’s just what we do, or what we have always done. There’s no rhyme or reason why we do them… it is just what happens. And we don’t question it for a second.
Take one day this week, and write down what you do all day long. There’s also apps to track this that make it pretty easy. Keep track in 15 -30 minute segments. If you were to track a couple of days you would see patterns, and see that you have certain things you do daily without even thinking about it. These patterns are learned habits. Habits you created over time probably without even thinking about them.
The best news is that you can learn to do anything, especially create new habits. Imagine if you took back 30 minutes of your own time you normally waste, to focus on your business and did something daily in that time to move you towards your goals??
Whoa. That could be huge! The power that focus and consistent daily effort towards one thing has is unreal. Seriously, 15-30 minutes every day is not that much. I probably spend double that aimlessly on social media.
Look back at what you have created in steps one and two, and pick one task that is the most important to you at the moment. Do something each day that moves you toward that being completed. Maybe it’s learning a new technique to use in the salon. For example you could practice the technique, watch youtube, research how you can improve, etc. etc. until it is achieved, and then move onto something else from your list.
I also love to set my day up for success, and decide what I will do the night before. I sleep better with a clear mind, and love to wake up to a plan. Sometimes I even plan the whole week out on Monday, and know what tasks I’m going to do in that 15-30 minute time period for the whole week. And then there’s no guess work, and it feels so good to be on task, and follow a schedule.
I also map out all of my time, and my schedule to have control over my life. Even in the salon- we have habits there too! I don’t think anyone likes chaos, but we see so many beauty pros who are unorganized and running around like a headless chicken. Don’t let that be you, organize your time, and use habits and create your daily routine to have the control over your business and life.
You are in charge of you. You determine your outcome, you alone have that power. Stuff can happen to you, but even then, you determine how you react. Having clarity and organization daily improves all aspects of your life and business. Couple that with your habits and daily routine you will be unstoppable. Harness the power, and implement daily progress towards your goals for a week, and compare how you feel a week from now! Happy Habit building!
About Lexi
Lexi is a salon business coach & teaches expert strategies on how to thrive owning your own salon! She has been in the industry and educating for over 13 years.
Follow Lexi here on Instagram.
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