Being a salon studio owner is actually really easy to do, but truly owning your business takes creating a system of organization in your salon studio so you can truly thrive and make your business the best it can be. I have owned my salon studio for 9 years now…whew how time flies!
Honestly, I always felt like I was pretty organized. I had binders with random business papers in it. A taxes binder and digital copies of things in a computer file. I kept track of my inventory, always knew the money I was bringing in and the money that was going out, used the tools available to me built into my booking system, which if you’ve read on my blog posts before, you know is Vagaro.
I got by for a really long time with these habits but to be honest, I was still always a bit scattered.
When Covid-19 hit us back in March 2020, we all felt our world flipping upside down. We all had uncertainty about what the future of our businesses would look like. To be honest, I was dealing with some physical challenges leading up to this time and the break from behind the chair, gave my body the rest it needed to heal. So, when looking back at the darkest time any of our businesses ever had, I try to focus on that as my silver lining.
Fast forward to the end of 2020, when my area finally allowed salons to reopen for a short period of time. Our time was 2 months. We didn’t know this when we re-opened, we didn’t know anything. It was a beautiful glimmer of hope. My surviving clients, I say surviving because San Francisco had an exodus if you haven’t heard. SO MANY people were fleeing from the city in search for more space seeing as almost all industries in the financial district were put on work from home indefinitely.
Back to what I was saying. My surviving clients started pouring in and seeing their faces again and getting to put my hands back in their hair was a feeling only you will understand. I knew I missed them and they missed me but there was a fulfilling feeling during those first few visits.
We shut back down again for the holidays in 2020.
During this time I had the realization that my business would not be what it was in 2019. I took a look at my clientele that had returned with fresh eyes and said to myself, “It’s time to pivot”.
Back in 2019 my salon was busier than it had ever been. Not in a short burst kind of way but in a, I finally built the salon business of my dreams. My clients were the exact clientele I was trying to attract. I worked whatever days I wanted. I was traveling more because I had built it into my business habits knowing I needed the break and inspiration that it gives me to be the best stylist I can be for my customers.
In 2021, I stepped away from this platform to re-focus myself and restructure how my business operated entirely. This meant, going back to square one.
- I moved into a new space within Sola.
- I rebuilt my website.
- I rebranded.
- I re-wrote who my ideal client was.
I also realized, my system of organization needed to be more in my hands and less in the hands of my booking system.
You see, my booking system is great, when people paid through it. However, after lockdown, more and more of my clients were paying with cash and sending me electronic payments like Venmo, Zelle, Apple Cash. When may payments started spreading out amongst all of these platforms, it got a little messy to keep track of my income.
If you’ve been following along here for any amount of time, its not secret to you that I also am very goal oriented and this was something I leaned even further into when I created my system of organization. Everything I have tried to use as a planner has left me having to add my own little boxes for things I felt were important to me in my salon studio. Most planners also emphasized unimportant things in my business and left out things that were, retail goals and running totals.
Being a huge advocate of being your own competition and when you have your running totals it not only gives you an idea of where you are in the week as far as reaching your goals, it gives you that extra push you might need to beat your own total from the week before. Most of the things I wanted in a planner was to help remind myself of the little details that help build our clientele and make my business the one I envisioned when I opened my salon.
Seeing as I could not find anything that fit me, I created one for myself!
Not only have I loved using these planner pages, I have given the PDF files to some of my neighboring salon studios and everyone has loved them. I knew I had to get these out into the world because there were other salon studio owners that felt like they were unable to find anything that worked for them also. So, I created an Etsy Shop and In My Salon Designs was born!!
When you look in my shop you will find I have just a few options so far but all of them are simple and clean and can be used in all aspects of the beauty industry. From hair to nails to waxers and estheticians, these pages are designed for us.
You can buy the pages individually or as a bundle. I made the daily page double sided for maximum efficiency as well as the Week Ahead and Weekly Review page. I have a video I will add below of how I set my own binder up with these pages but here also is a quick breakdown.
My intention was to have a rolling system, so I bought a simple binder, and two sets of dividers.
One set of dividers is to separate my month into weeks, week 1-5 for those 5 week months and the second set was for a daily, weekly, monthly, annual and misc section.
The second set is for your back stock and saved for filing later for forms that you’ve already used. I print out a bunch of each of these pages and put them into their section to easily refill the weeks as they go by without having to go back and print multiple times. For those of you who don’t have a printer at home, you can go to a local library to print or find a staples, copy center, etc.
After you have your sections set up and your back stock filled, its time to fill your upcoming month of pages.
In each week you will add in the correct amount of days for you. I work 4 days per week so for me I add in 4 daily pages. Then in the back I put in the Weekly Review page with the Week Ahead page in the back. After I fill each week with the appropriate amount of pages, I add a Color Order Form into the first week and a Monthly Income and Expenses Page to the last week. I also have an Annual Tax Prep Form I add into the last week as well, in the back.
The binder set up is:
- As you go through your days you will be filling out your Daily Page.
- At the end of the week you’ll take the info from your last day of working and transfer it onto your Weekly Review Page.
- After it is completed, you move this page now to the front of the next week along with the Color Order Form.
- Fill out your Week Ahead Page now or save that for another day when you are setting your next week intentions. (I talk about an hour of intentional goal setting per week in my 21 Days of Successful Salon Business Habits Bootcamp launching in January!! Keep an eye out)
- Week 2 you will use your Week Ahead page to help fill in your daily tasks, marketing goals and revenue goals as well as clients you will be seeing and any other important things you want to remember or keep in mind.
- At the end of your month you will use your Weekly Review Pages to fill in your Monthly Income and Expenses Page which you will then collect in the back with your Annual Tax Prep Form for the end of the year.
- Then take your used daily and weekly pages and stash them away for filing.
A question I get is, how long should I keep records like this? I keep my pages for 1 year just incase I need to look back during tax time. This ensures if you have any questions about something that happened throughout the year, you can retrace your steps and have no doubts about when something happened. It can also help jog your memory when it comes time to find a few extra write offs, although now that you are using this system, you shouldn’t have any items you have forgotten about.
I want to talk really quick about 2 pages I haven’t mentioned much that are included in this Hairstylist Organization Bundle, the Color Order Form and the Client Records Page.
The Color Order Form I mentioned goes in the beginning of your month and moves with each week. I use this form in my binder because as I am using color on clients I can fill in what I’ve used to make sure I am only ordering the colors I actually use on my clients. As small businesses we really do not need the whole portfolio of 5 million shades each color line offers, even if we wish we had them, we likely don’t have space in our salons to store them. This is the system I have found that works best for me.
Another place I have toyed with keeping this page, is in my second binder that is specifically for client records. Listen, I was always anti-client records when it comes to formulas and stuff. I had an incredible memory when I was younger and never had a problem remembering down to the gram what I used on someone even months before.
Nowadays, things slip by. Not only formulas but client preferences and the prices I’ve charged for something. I love my Client Records Pages because not only are they really informative for me in the salon, they are simple and clean and so easy to follow. If you find keeping your Color Order Form in here, more power to you. Its your business, run it how you want!
That is basically the entire breakdown of how I have my binders set up, using my Hairstylist Organization Bundle of Planner pages. I hope you have found this post useful and that you decide to purchase for your business. Remember, you can only accomplish the goals you set and you can only measure your growth by keeping track!
You are in great luck if you are reading this post as it has been posted because through the end of 2022 I am offering 30% (already included when you check out on Etsy) on my Hairstylist Organization Bundle and all other individual pages in my shop. This deal will only be going on of the next few days so get it now and be ready for 2023 and your best year yet!!
Keep an eye out in the next week or so for more really great designs and that 21 Days of Successful Salon Business Habits Bootcamp launching in January 2023!
Cheers!
