Before 2020, the idea of closing your salon for a week or two sounded like a nightmare. And a shutdown of two months? Impossible.

Now, owners across the country are navigating the impossible, trying to stay afloat and wondering how they’ll grow during continued uncertainty. Fortunately, there’s a path, and it’s fully guided.

The Salon People’s Virtual Business Academy gives owners systems and tools to create new goals and start rebuilding their salons with clear strategies in all areas of business. We talked to three owners who are using the Academy’s systems to thrive and grow as they move forward in unprecedented times.

Art of Life Salon

Shelley Bettis, owner of Art of Life Salon in Urbandale, Iowa, is currently enrolled in The Virtual Business Academy. A webinar series, it features live Q&As every session, which users can listen to the live or the recorded versions at their leisure. Users also have access to all Business Academy content, videos, tools and calculators and can have up to three logins per salon group.

“I’ve always been interested in learning more about improving my business,” Bettis says. “And during the shutdown, I was impressed with The Salon People’s financial advice regarding planning and benchmarks.”

Bettis, who has been successfully growing her salon for 20 years, knew she had room for improvement, and wanted an extra push post-shutdown.

“I was really interested in the Business Academy’s leveling system,” she says. “I’ve never relied on benchmarks and numbers for the next increase in pricing, and this gave me the roadmap to do it.”

Based on the Academy’s leveled compensation system (which includes 15 levels for stylists to work through), Bettis was able to convert her team into levels and have the confidence to bump up prices.

“I used to just do a small price increase yearly—$2 on a cut and $3 on color,” she says. “Now, I’m getting all my stylists into levels so they can raise their prices every six months IF they’ve hit the required benchmarks (including retail, prebooking and average ticket price).”

Right now, Bettis is focusing on getting her team to a baseline and aligning color and cut prices to the levels. Once they’ve all been established in the right spot, they’ll have to work harder to move up a level and get a price increase.

“The roadmap I have from the Business Academy is a great coaching tool,” she says. “It gives the team the confidence to raise prices because they can see how many clients they have and what they are spending.”

Source: The Salon People Facebook

Bettis is also changing the way she coaches with the Academy’s “Hopes and Dreams” review system.

“It’s hard not to have your personal feelings come into play when you’re meeting with a stylist,” she says. “But now, I ask them about their hopes and dreams, and am able to show them with numbers and benchmarks how to achieve them on a timeline.”

Compared to 2019, Art of Life was down five percent in September and four percent in October (with a top stylist out on maternity leave). But Bettis is anticipating growth in November and December based on her new leveling system.

“Going to the Virtual Academy was so simple for me,” she says. “It’s easier to take things in little pieces—I love the format and the roadmap for myself and my team.”

Grove Salon

Allison Agresta, owner of Grove Salons in Kissimmee and Lake Nona, Florida, has been to the TSP Business Academy in person a couple of times, and has found herself relying on what she learned to grow her business in a pandemic. 

“When you go through the Business Academy, you’re reimagining your entire business,” she says. “There’s a lot of information, and you can’t implement it all at once. We started making changes in April 2019, starting with the tiered pricing format through the 15-level system.”

Before making the change, Agresta only had four levels in her structure. Now her stylists have the opportunity to get promoted more often.

“It’s very motivating for the team,” she says. “There’s more room for growth and specific pricing guidelines to follow, which we did exactly.”

Agresta says another tool from the Academy she has used to generate revenue is “Project the Day.”

The team receives a printout schedule in the morning, and they look for additional service opportunities with each client.

“For example, maybe a gloss or Botanical Repair treatment on a cut client,” Agresta says. “You can start out with a service total of $250 for the day, but if you do add-on services, you could reach $800.”

Implementing these tools led to an additional $108,000 in revenue in 2019 over 2018 for Grove, and Agresta says her stylists are more motivated with a clear path to promotion.

Agresta also uses the social media techniques she learned, like proper hashtagging.

“I use a mix of local trade and inspiration hashtags,” she says. “I also check in at new restaurants and tag them in photos. We’ve partnered with a local photographer who gives us hair credits in her social media.”

Local partnerships and investing in Google Ads have paid off, particularly in Grove’s new location in Lake Nona, a small, tight-knit community.

“When people Googled ‘Lake Nona hairdresser’ we wanted to be the first to come up,” she says. “We put marketing funds towards Instagram, Facebook and Google ad words, and it worked.”

Focused on growth, Agresta is considering going back to the Academy next year.

“I’m the third person to own this location in Kissimmee since 2009. Nobody has been able to get it over $1.2 million, and in 2019, we did $1.330 million,” she says. “And it was due to implementing the level system with tiered pricing and Project the Day.”

Panache Salon & Spa

Kristy Weeks and Michelle Vijgen, co-owners of Panache Salon & Spa in St. Augustine, Florida, also went to the Business Academy in person last year, right before they shut down.

“It was a lot of information, so you have to take it one piece at a time,” Weeks says. “I have attended before, so I was already benchmarking and getting my business financially healthy, and I’m so grateful that’s how we went into COVID.

“I knew what percentage of our profit should be in the bank and had implemented the Business Academy’s suggested leveling system and price increases six months earlier, giving us a strong bottom line,” she adds.

It was Vijgen’s first time attending, and she focused more on the marketing and human resources segments.

“I also learned a lot about best practices for social media and how to be transparent in communicating with our guests, which was incredibly useful during the pandemic,” she says.

Weeks says, “My biggest takeaway from the Academy was about how we make decisions.

During the two months they were shut down, Weeks says every decision they made went back to those three questions—including closing a few days earlier than mandated.

Fast forward to now, and Weeks and Vijgen have signed a new lease, expanding into another 1,200 square feet next door to accommodate an actively growing team.

“At the Academy, we learned we have to balance feeling with facts in all business decisions, which was hard during the shut down,” Weeks says. “But we couldn’t get carried away by fear. We knew by studying our numbers that we were making wise, sound decisions, and not doing anything risky.”

Vijgen says coaching to the team’s Hopes and Dreams, another lesson learned at the Academy, is more important than ever.

“We have almost 40 people, and the conversations with the team are what motivate them, making our culture stronger,” she says.

As they continue to move through the pandemic, Weeks and Vijgen benchmark everything, using the SalonBiz app to track goals. Achieving those benchmarks in a COVID climate isn’t easy, but they know they have the tools they need to do it.