How To Push Your Salon Into The Next Level .. Read if You’re Stuck Seriously – If results in your salon are the same week in, week out, year after year. No change in profits, clients, staff or anything … You’re heading for trouble. One of my favourite clients to work with are salons that…
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It’s Alan, The Salon Punk here. Last December I had a call from a salon owner that had just 4 weeks to survive. By the end of January not only had they experienced their best weeks ever they managed to stabilise and pay off a load of invoices. When they started SALON MENTOR EXTREME things…
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Why is my salon marketing not working is probably the biggest question most salon owners ask me? “ Alan, we do everything in our salon business but nothing works – NOTHING!” This year I saw the reasons becoming more obvious than ever before. Research reveals some shocking facts that most salon owners and marketers are…
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Do you know what does Valentino and Alibaba have in common or for your salon brand? This week we’ve been sending out some ideas about how to do things differently in your salon, I hope they were inspiring for you? Anyways, inspired by the theme, how to be different, I came across some cool examples which…
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After writing The Salon Column Builder in 1999; After Creating a big how-to guide for salon management SalonExtreme 21; and around 10 other books on the subject of hair salon building, we asked Alan Forrest Smith, why he wrote The Salon Punk Book, and what was so different about this book. From the salon stories…
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This is a quick one. You guys keep asking so it’s easier to reply like this. SALON EXTREME21 (SX-21) VS. SALON MENTOR EXTREME? “Alan I’m not sure what to do, SX-21 or Salon Mentor Extreme – what’s the differences?” Both are very different so I’ll try and explain. SX-21 £245 SX-21 is a guide, manual,…
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Scary monsters aside, it’s a great time for you to reconnect with your salon clients. Halloween-themed hair salon promotions and creativity can help your shop to attract new people through the door. But getting your clients interested enough to get into the spirit and spend money requires more than putting a scary costume on. Here are some tactics…
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I’m not sure why but as soon as the kids are walking back along the street to school my brain goes into something that is still 12-weeks away – Christmas in the salon. What are we doing, where are we eating, who are we seeing and what will I buy my darling wife so she…
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Missing Salon Client Kit – has been updated for 2018. Good news for salon owners, if you already purchased the product in the past you should have received the updated link to the product, simply go ahead and check out the newer version (check your email). If you have not got the product yet, for…
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My salon accountant, Graham, looked like one of the Bee Gees. His hair was perfectly coiffured with every 120,000 hairs held in place with at least 3 layers of falcon hairspray for men. His shirt was always open almost to his navel exposing his thinning grey chest hairs and a huge cheap gold medallion with…
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Exciting news. My new book The Salon Punk can be ordered from today. So what do you get for £10? Around 250 pages that I hope will help you realise that everything is possible in your salon. I went from a new, hopeless and almost catastrophic salon owner to having an insanely busy No.1 salon…
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From salon management to solving staff problems; From pricing up to successful salon marketing; From running a hair salon during a bad economy to figuring out different ways to take your salon to the market, and more, during this 28minute salon group call, salon owners like you ask questions that every salon owner or manager has on their mind. Enjoy…
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SALON MENTOR EXTREME can transform your salon – proof below. Let’s be honest … £10,000 is a huge amount to invest in the advice and opinion of another person you hardly know. Yet that is exactly what James and Izaak decided to do at MOD SALONS LEEDS. What happened? Was it worth it? Did they…
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How can you make your salon shop more mobile friendly and get better results from your salon marketing? In the previous article, I have shared the excitement of how the future of brick-and-mortar shops like your salons are bright. After all with the 92% of clients wanting to continue to visit the “real” shop, it’s always a…
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Tell me where is your salon business focus right now? A salon owner emailed me and told me how hard they push on their retail. They push so hard in a single week they pulled in just over £600 in retail sales. He was amazed and felt thrilled about the sales. I asked him how?…
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Yes, Yes, Yes and it does work. But let me tell you, I am amazed by the amount of salons that try a letter, send it out, get no response and wonder why there was no response so give up, is that you or your salon? How hard is it for you to get a…
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My test! This is a slightly different front line as I thought we would run a test for you all. I think you will enjoy it so here are the nuts and bolts behind it. This test took place in Manchester ( UK). It was in a Number one salon and it was with a…
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Every now and then you have to take a leap of faith. Life’s like that. Love, relationships, health, business it’s just life. Some risk can feel higher than others especially where money is involved. I once paid a consultant in the USA $5,000 for 30 -minutes of advice. I spent maybe 3-years thinking about it.…
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Sometimes however you want to try you just can’t drag the clients in, after all, if they are parting in Ibiza, the best thing seems to do is to join them. But, it’s also a great time to become creative and actually, increase the footfall into the shop. Here are some ideas 1. Throw your own party…
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Summer in salons is traditionally quiet, but you can still earn more money, maximize the sales and use it to your advantage to create a stronger salon for the rest of the year. Here’s how! 5-minute inspirations and focus tips from Alan Forrest Smith. Salon Punk
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If you have no interest in being the best salon, busiest salon and most successful salon for miles and miles … please don’t read the following. One of our salons on SALON MENTOR EXTREME has just finished their program and the results are way off the chart. They have finished on their best week ever…
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I FIRED THEIR MANAGER … What Happened Next Unbelievable! When I started working with this salon they told me about their manager and how great she was. So, as usual, I got all the info I needed via reports and more and then got back to my salon mentor client. They asked what do I…
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At Salon Punk we’ve been testing what works, what does not work and everything in between for your salon, here’s what we discovered: 1. Discounting – a blunt tool of salon promotions More than any other times brands are vowing to refocus on value and service as opposed to promotions (including salon promotions), after the increasing…
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Emily is a 21-year old hairdresser. The problem was when I started working with her and her team was this. She was just a hairdresser. She acted like a hairdresser, worked like a hairdresser and did things like a hairdresser. Now she has completely become extreme. Here’s how. Her column was poor, average and massively…
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From £5,500 to £9,000 Easter time is traditionally slower for most salons. It was traditionally slow even for this salon. We changed everything. The result has been amazing. So … How do you go from £5,500 to pulling in £9,000 (both number rounded up) the weekly amount in a space of just 10-weeks? This was a case…
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Are you using salon software systems? quickly discover… Why using your salon software for scheduling and tilling is a mistake that is costing you money; Why marketing using salon software means rethinking the salon management; The best and the worst ideas while using salon software systems. Listen to the 10-minute recording before you open your…
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From no clients to 63 new clients a week; From no upsells to every stylist forming a new habit of upselling, while keeping clients happy; From poor management to extremely effective salon management; We catch up with Alan over a cup of coffee (excuse the cafe noise) and ask to share some of the salon…
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How do you know it is time to rebuild your salon team? From stylists to salon receptionists what does perfect team mean? How do you hire, fire and promote your stylists? How do you define stylists performance and how do you keep the team spirit high regardless of circumstances? These an more questions related to…
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From the original Salon Punk Archives Here’s why Paul Mitchell Makes Sense For Your Salon Profits! Alan Here. I am going to be mega-fast today. You’ll like this one. Here’s why! This is taken directly from their website. “In 1979, John Paul DeJoria and Paul Mitchell first decided to launch a professional hair care system.…
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Long before the click and go websites, there were only a handful of brick and mortar shops to offer ecommerce never mind online appointments and selling hairdressing online. Today we look back at our salon journey and how our e-commerce salons paved the way through the 21st century. The Big Scissor Company – 1997 Did…
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What if your clients are not exclusively the millennials who grew up in a check-me in virtual reality world? What if a large segment of your client base still belongs to a generation where Internet did not exist in their time? Or at least what if you also wish to target clients who are not…
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It’s Monday, I’m sleepy and recovering a small storm we had here at the weekend… my mother! I really need another week to recover from her arrival and departure! But it isn’t all bad but there is still a ton of drama that I thought you’d like to hear. Rich is a client of mine.…
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I’m just back from spending a day over at www.modsalons.co.uk with James and Izaak and team. #LOVEDIT! Yesterday I had forgotten what it is like to drive somewhere. Yes, of course, I have a car but a couple of years ago I decided to reduce my car usage and increase my train and plane usage.…
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I wanted to share with you the inspiring salon success story from Salon Mentor Extreme mentees Steph and Richard, in their own words… “So last month Steph and I were buzzing re us beating December total well now February has been and gone of which is notoriously even worse than January with even less days…
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Know the big picture for your hairdressing salon The big what… Yes, the Big picture. For example, you don’t start a training program or an apprenticeship without knowing the end product. Who wants to go through all that stuff Juniors go through ( not me again ) without knowing that one day you will be…
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A superb tried and tested system to cure your salon problems Attrition Is it killing your salon business? What is attrition? Well simply put it is this…. It is where you lose clients every year due to circumstances other than natural waste. Or put even simpler it is where clients don’t return for reasons such…
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Hire fire and recruitment… whats the answer. With personnel the key to salon business success it becomes essential that ownership and management look at ways to maximize the recruiting process. One of the most useful concepts I have found in recruiting has been continuous recruitment. I first came across continuous recruitment while doing work for…
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Staff in a shortage? Here are 12 really helpful tips how to deal with the crises 1. Take good, hard look at your ‘draw’ potential. Why would someone that can work at many different hair salons want to work in your business? If you are offering the same as everyone else you will get the…
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WHO CONTROLS YOUR SALON… IS IT YOU OR SOMEONE ELSE OR A MORONIC STYLIST? Well, you may think I am going over the top but guess what there are loads of salons out there that are definitely “not” controlled by the salon owner. So who controls the Salon. Listen I have been there and I…
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Yesterday I was on the train coming back from London. During the trip, I got a message on WhatsApp from a mentor extreme student. The message contained a photo. The photo was a large detached four bedroomed house he had recently moved into from his terraced house. He thanked me for helping him to reach…
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Honestly – What the hell happened to salon marketing? It’s lost its way for sure. The great marketing secrets lost their value in the great give everything away of the Internet explosion where the uninformed became informed just a little about a lot yet not enough to create the genius that is needed in true…
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From the archives of the original Salon Punk – Hairee It’s time for the hairdresser to strike back! Trusting The Potato Chip Rep Can Destroy Your Salon … PERIOD! Tony walked into our salon. He was a Rep. I kind of knew that though as he had that smell of cigarettes and subway sandwiches from…
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“YOUR SALON DESERVES TO FAIL …” It isn’t the first time I have told a client that but I have told clients that in the past. When I say clients sometime it is actually a client and others times they don’t become clients. Here is why they deserve to fail. First, what the hell has…
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When was it last time you innovated salon services in your salon? When you have already got a line of retail products and services introducing something new to your clients can feel like an unnecessary exercise but when done right new services can really increase your average takings every week. January is a great time to…
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Collectively we have written and recorded over 200 Free articles and podcasts for your salon, to show you what really works in the salon business, and what does not work. One thing we’ve learned is there are no big secrets or magic formulas. Instead, keeping things simple and modeling a success formula proves to be…
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It was over 20 years ago and a long time before the social media and the Internet when Alan discovered the secrets to really becoming the highest salon retail and color seller. In this short audio recording discover: Why salon clients raved about the hair products he was selling Why they could not buy enough of…
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It’s always a good idea to make some noise, especially during holiday season. But for a busy salon owner, spreading the word and generating excitement for the new audience can bring up a number challenges such as: Not having enough time Not having an access to the audience No ideas for promotions Staff shortages Forgetting to…
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A letter to a salon owner from the archives of Alan’s original hair salon website while still running his salons. How much is too much… or too little. “That will be £9.00 please for your Cut and Blow please”…. come on are you serious. Sadly some are serious and that’s the price. What I am not…
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How are you getting on with the systems you have created from the last article? Did you book the four-week holiday? Not confident enough yet? Ok here’s part two for you towards getting off the salon floor and spending some time relaxing. Who’s your right hand person in the salon? Systems are up and running. But…
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You the salon owner wake up in the morning. What should you do today? After all the salon is going great, everything is cool, the staff is busy, loads of clients, loads of money, great team, they all love you and the salon virtually ruins itself now. Next holiday… Mexico, four weeks here I come. WAKE…
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There is always something new going on to help you market your salon, frankly, it can be hard to keep up sometimes, especially when you have other things to take care off, like looking after the clients, managing your staff, ordering stock and not having a minute to come off the shop floor. One thing never changes though,…
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This is a quick reminder that sometimes it only takes one small salon promotion a day to take more cash at the end of the week. When was it last time your clients heard from you or your stylists? Over the past 3 years, I have tried 3 different salons, and I yet have to…
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