Why You’re Not Levelling Up In Your Beauty Business
Why Are You Not Doing The Things?
Hello Beauty Boss!
Let’s get real for a minute, as beauty bosses we always know how important it is to level up in our business. We know that setting aside some time for expansion and growth is so vital these days so we started collection information from podcast, ebooks, masterclasses, the whole palaver. However, even though there is so much amazing content out there to help us move forward, its now much harder to scale, so why is that?
We all have noticed how many beauty bosses were signing up to many free contents like podcasts, ebooks, webinars and, let’s face it, we hardly ever open up the products. We see all these amazing free things pop up, but then overwhelm creeps in mixed with shiny object syndrome. Why are we having these issues? We can sign up to the free content, that’s the easy part, but opening them up let alone implementing the teachings is the hard part. A lot of people have been leaning into mentors and coaching since the lockdowns as the world leans more and more to a digital age, but what’s the point in investing and utilising all that help if no one even implements it.
Here’s why you’re not taking action:
Getting Distracted
We are all guilty, we easily get distracted, overwhelmed, too busy or we just have bad time management. I admit it, I go through this myself; I regularly go through the Trello cards on the business board and there are some cards that are allocated to certain people, meaning there are jobs that only the graphic designer can do, jobs that only Lauren- my copywriter can do, and then jobs only I can do. Like you, salon boss owners, there are only jobs you can do. And before I look at these tasks, I’ll start thinking “d’you know? Before I actually look at that, I’m just going to go check my emails and see if any new messages have popped in.” Then when I come back to the project I start thinking “actually, before I start that job, I’m just going to quickly check my DMs on Instagram… Then I’m going to check my PMs on Facebook” You know what happens then? You guessed it! Those platforms suck us into reels and then we’ve lost an hour, maybe two. Then we start sharing content we found hilarious to others and before you know it, a whole chunk of your day is gone! We get distracted, even though we planned our day differently, we get so distracted that the entire day gets wasted.
When we are distracted as humans, we say:
“Oh it’s my emails! It got me!”
“Oh, it’s those bloody reels, they stole my attention!”
“Oh, it was those messages and DMs!”
But in reality, that’s only 10% of the reason for your distractions. Which blew my mind, that statistic blew my mind completely. Because at the end of the day, you’re left thinking:
“why didn’t you finish writing that beauty course?”
“Why Didn’t you finish writing up the minutes in that meeting?”
“Why didn’t you finish that consultation?”
Whatever business or niche you’re in, whether you’re a salon or a training provider- why didn’t you finish it?
The response is always “I’ve been scrolling too much, I was hooked on the news feed, I was obsessed with a celebrity’s Instagram story” but that’s only 10% of the reason. So, if that’s just 10%, then what is really preventing us from moving the needle in our business or working on our goals, or working on our launches? What’s the 90%?
The 90%
We have something called internal triggers and external triggers, internal triggers are the 90%, external triggers are the 10%. The external triggers are what we allow ourselves to get distracted by, but the internal triggers are the feelings, and human emotions we have.
These bottled feelings that manifest themselves as procrastination stem from the feelings of uncertainty, boredom, loneliness, fatigue, and even stress. So, if we ever feel like we’re a bit anxious about something, or we feel a bit bored in our business or lives, it’s those internal triggers that become the real distractions and become the reason why we then do not do what we set out to do for the day.
When I heard this, that it’s our inner bottled up emotions that’s ‘passenger seat driving’ our consciousness, I thought, well it’s true, social media and other similar distractions are not the real problem. Social media is just something addicting that makes it easy for our minds to escape. It makes us feel good and gives us a daily dose of dopamine, so it becomes a perfect distraction, it becomes an easy excuse.
Your Next Steps
So, now we know that social media and all the other distractions we have are nothing but excuses, if we completely strip everything bare and look at what’s left, you can then start asking yourself:
What is stressing you out?
What is making you feel anxious in your business?
Why are you feeling this way?
What is the very root of the problem?
When you learn to deal with these problems, you can then start prioritising the projects that move the needle in your business. In fact, not only would you move the needle, but you’re also going to pick up speed, you’re going to build up momentum, you’re going to own it, and you’re going to go far and fast.
Another thing to add, when you were in distracted mode and procrastinating on all the important projects, you were also further stagnating yourself and your business by doing things that make you feel like you’re moving the needle; which is why you’d been downloading the webinars, signing up to the challenges and downloading the eBooks. Because if you’re actively signing up to things that should help you grow but you never read those products or listen to them or maybe you are but you’re doing nothing about them, then you’re just preventing your success by making you feel like you’re moving the needle. But remember, that’s all still the 10% of your distraction.
This is something that can happen a lot with mobile businesses, like nail technicians, lash technicians and so on. Amazingly, 65% of the beauty industry is mobile, this means there’s no staff room, there’s no team morale, no secret Santa. With this fact in mind, there’s no wonder that many mobile businesses experience certain states of minds like loneliness, fatigue, boredom, and uncertainty. Of course, for obvious reasons, we know that because of the pandemic there is a lot of uncertainty for anyone, not just the beauty industry. Anxiety levels are raising, stress levels are through the roof, so what we do is we try to escape, and so we pick up our phones and begin the cycle. What’s worse is, social media platforms are designed to try and keep you on the platform for as long as possible as this is how they make money off of you.
So, let’s say you actually wanted to check Instagram for 2 minutes in the morning before starting your day, you clearly just want to catch up on the messages and statistics but then you get caught watching nail art videos for the next 30 minutes. Then in that 30 minutes you completely forget what you were supposed to be doing and now your whole morning is gone because Instagram knows what you like getting distracted to- and what’s worse is, your internal triggers are more than happy to let it distract you.
So, when you understand what distraction actually means, in fact, look at the actual word DISTRACTION, you will see that there is DIS, and then there is TRACTION. The word itself proves that it draws us away from our goals and dreams for our beauty business because DIS is to take us away from the TRACTION that moves us forward. However, you can always find something positive in this word that seems so negative.
The next thing to do, now that we know all of these facts, is to just own it and make sure we understand why we are distracted. As a beauty boss, you need to set your own rules and boundaries to keep you accountable, you can even allocate some time to just get distracted and even set a timer for 10 minutes to mentally clock out.
Getting Overwhelmed
This is where the struggle is real, where I see overwhelm get the best of us. We get sold to left right and centre, we get taught to by all the best mentors in the industry, we’ve signed up to all the masterclasses and webinars, we’re going to all the courses and groups but there’s TOO MUCH. There’s too much going on and there’s too much of everything going around.
Everyone from the beauty industry is signing up to the same courses who have the same problems being unable to level up and hoping to learn something that will solve everything. So, they’re listening and listening, and reading and reading, but no one is ever doing anything with the information they learn, and no one respects their own time.
Overwhelm happens more so with the free content then it does with the paid. You have to take charge of the overwhelm and show it who’s boss. I see it everywhere in the industry, I notice it in the paid programs I offer as well as the free, and I’ve noticed that the overwhelm is stronger in those that choose the free content over the paid. Because when you pay for the content, you also:
- Pay attention
- It also holds you accountable it makes sure that you are less overwhelmed
- Allows you to get creative while actually implementing the strategies
And when you start actually implementing, you start getting proud and give yourself a pat on the back then you’re more motivated to keep going.
Overwhelmed By Time
I know you must be thinking that maybe you’re overwhelmed because of time, as a service-based provider, you’re likely away from the desk, away from the computer and phone. You’re in the salon, chatting to clients and working on them continuously all day, so I can understand that you are very likely to be time poor. So where do you find that time to up-level your beauty business?
These things don’t just happen they take planning, you’re got to map things out. You need to learn how to incorporate it into your working day, but you already have maybe seven or eight hours’ worth of clients coming through your doors, where are you going to find the time to implement? This is where the overwhelm starts to creep in. And yet I know many of you who are determined to live the hustler-life are working after hours exhausting yourself, which is no way to live. Overwhelm is getting the better of you, when all you need to do is take ownership of your time. You do the thing in the moment, and you keep yourself accountability.
How To Combat Overwhelm
Overwhelm is a real thing, but how you combat that struggle is by dealing with it in that moment. One thing I recommend is to just unsubscribe from all the things you don’t intend on doing right now. Get it off your desk, get it off your digital-desk, get it off your plate and mind.
It might sound amazing wanting to learn more from these free products but if you’re subscribed to 10 different people, 10 different companies, 10 different hour-long classes you need to watch, thinking that each and every one of them was going to be the answer that will help you scale, then you won’t scale at all because it’s too much. Unsubscribing from anything that you’re not going to take action on then and there, doesn’t mean you’re never going to work with that person, or never going to buy their products that will help you up-level you beauty business. It just means that it’s not going to be right now and that you are taking ownership for your time.
In the long run, by removing the bulk of the unneeded workload, you are freeing up your mind from overwhelm, and in an unexpected way, by having less to do, you will end up doing more as the motivation grows and the overwhelm lessens. When the overwhelm shrinks, you’ll then be able to map out when you’re ready to learn more, you can become more strategic with your time and the necessary workload you want to add.
I’d recommend that you spend a couple hours incorporating this into your working day because even though you might lose some money in the beginning, you will be making even more money over time when you work on up levelling your business.
Poor Time Management
As someone who used to run a beauty salon, I know how important it is to stick to the specific appointment times, we are dedicated to the clock, we are dedicated to our time. We even get upset with our clients if they’re late and have poor time management themselves. In fact, we even teach our own clients how to have better time management skills by turning up to the appointments early. So, this means we are so blocked up with clients that scaling takes a back seat.
Time management is everything in a business, to the point where we even find that resentment is a common emotion that comes up in the beauty industry. We find that we are resenting our clients that take forever to do or are late, to even our own team, and as beauty bosses, the business owner, we are different from the rest of the team. The owners are the ones who watch the rest of the team rush off home while you still have to lock up. We are just not the same. So, finding the time to scale massively so you can make more money and even free up your time so much so you no longer have to work in a salon is a massive must, with great risk comes a great reward after all.
What You Can Do
We have to manage our own time other wise we would give our time to someone else which is a dangerous thing to do. Running your own business and scaling comes with being disciplined with your own time.
It’s not a ground-breaking idea but having to-do lists is everything. Sometimes we are always looking for the next new thing to solve our problems that we neglect the old basics that still work.
Like I said it’s not ground-breaking, but when you’re ticking off the things you’ve done on the list, you brain gets a dose of dopamine, and you feel good about whizzing through the workload.
Now, when creating your lists, this might seem quite obvious but it’s something that’s easily forgotten; make sure you prioritise. You might have 30 things to do today, but do 20 of those things need to be done by Monday morning? Probably not. So, you start with those 10 things, then imagine you tick off all 10 items on your list by the Friday? How amazing would you feel that you accomplished all the heavy load way before the deadline?
The idea is that you segment your list and prioritise your tasks. Separate it into two columns, column 1 being most important and column 2 most urgent, trust me, they’re not the same thing. Something might be important for the business, but it might not need doing until next month, whereas you might have something maybe equally as important, but the deadline is tomorrow so it urgently needs to get done. This is why you need to build a to-do list that really works so you’re not just writing for the sake of writing.
What’s more amazing is delegating workloads, if you can delegate the work then it frees up so much more of your time. Become a delegate queen and open up your time for the new opportunities. Although you might be thinking that you’re a control freak or you love micro-managing so delegating might not be an option, well trust me when I say that delegating is something you learn over time and eventually you can step away and trust the process.
Of course, there are only some things we can do as the boss, it’s natural, there are somethings that the staff can’t do, but that doesn’t mean you’re doing everything because you’re not meant to do it all. But eventually, by having a team and prioritising the important and urgent things that can help you scale, you would only ever need to work a couple days a week and even earn more money than you did before.
So, if you want to get to that stage, the only way how is to be disciplined with yourself on your timing, you need to respect your own time. Being self-aware is everything. Respect your time over making money. Make sure you remove distractions when it’s time for work, make sure you have boundaries with your family, friends, staff and yourself to get work done. Even in your diary, book out your distractions. It sounds counter-productive, but us beauty bosses have to go online anyway because we create posts in order to get people to DM us or email us, and we all know how jumping on social media can be a major distraction as soon as we open up the apps.
Our social media are our virtual salon windows and we do need to keep up to date regularly as we are wanting people to contact us. So, allocate the time for when you need to go online anyway to respond to potential clients and use that as your distraction time- but never let this consume you and always set a time to remind yourself just in case.
One last thing to mention about time management is that you have to start feeling comfortable with saying no. Not everyone is going to respect your time, and you need that time to up-level. So, You need to start saying no for anything unimportant and that will waste your time.
You’re Not Keeping Yourself Accountable
We didn’t go to beauty college to learn how to show up on camera and learn how to run a virtual salon window, we went to learn how to wax legs, paint nails etc. Then, once we finally get to working on floor and mastering the art of serving clients each day, we then want to be our own boss and run a salon of our own. But then you have a whole new world of challenges where you’re still booked out for clients, you also have to train and run a team, you have to pay bills and rent and not to forget, wages! Eventually, we want to come completely away and let the business run itself. We don’t want to be working every single day because then we wouldn’t see the benefits of working for yourself.
So many salon owners are already savvy failing and falling when it comes to taking action because of the overwhelm and limiting beliefs that they are facing. But what people forget is that the business must work for you not the other way around.
What You Can Do Today
To help you take action today, grab your pen and a notebook and start writing down 20 reasons why you are not taking action. Why are you not doing the things that will make you even more successful? Why are you avoiding completing the important and urgent things on your to-do list that will make you happier in the future?
Everything comes back to accountability. If you work for yourself, if you are your own boss and your own team leader, who’s telling you off when you’re not bothering to do your job? Who’s saying “hang-on, why didn’t you do that?” who’s giving you your disciplinaries for slacking? No one. So accountability is everything.
Of course, you know you can keep your team accountable, you hold team meetings, you assign work for your team members, and if someone slacks off- you know you would tell them off for it. It’s easy to hold someone else accountable, it’s easy to pinpoint who did what wrong and what they should do better, but if you’re not holding yourself accountable and respecting your own time, then who’s going to kick your behind in gear?
Accountability is important because it eliminates time wasting and creates more productive behaviours in your daily life. Accountability eliminates anything considered as unproductive. When you realise, you’re doing something that’s not moving the needle, you can hold yourself accountable and start trusting yourself more to do the thing. When you start trusting yourself, you build momentum, and everything starts to move quickly for you.
One thing you can start doing is owning your time, if something “got you” and captured your attention longer than anticipated, then own it and say, “yeah I let this distract me, it got me.” Going back to previous advice, once you recognise your own mistakes and own them, you can then allocate time to allow yourself to get distracted. Another thing to add is you need to start dishing those projects out. Even delegate them out to get it all done much faster.
Another really good bit of advice is that you should always provide feedback to yourself not just your team, the more feedback you give, the more accountability you give to yourself and the people around you. Start asking yourself “did I get what I wanted to get done within the timeframe I wanted it done by” if the answer is no, then reconsider the timeframe, is it unrealistic? How could you get the workload done faster and more efficiently? We don’t want to give ourselves expectations and then not live up to them because then we won’t feel great about ourselves. You can also get an accountability partner where you hold each other accountable.
I also recommend that you get a partner who is just as serious if not more about achieving goals, because if you have an accountability partner who likes to regularly slack off, they will never hold you accountable for anything.
What Your Next Steps Could Be
I and the Beauty Boss team have been working on a new project on how we serve anyone who relates to the above. We all know the pain and the struggle to stay focused, find the time, and keep going every single day even if it feels like you’re going nowhere. If you feel fed up with wasting your own time and want to start getting the needle moving again, then this might be for you, just click here to find out more.
