4 Key Things That’ll Make You A Better Salon Owner

Hiring the right stylists and ensuring your salon stays afloat are just two things that make you a good salon owner. But things like learning how to work proactively with millennials, being more conscious of how your attitude affects the team and always being a professional (even on your off days) are a few factors that’ll make you a great salon owner!

While in San Antonio for Sport Clips 25th Anniversary National Huddle, we grabbed four pieces of advice from this year’s speaker showcase—Jabez LeBret, a business writer for Forbes CMO Network; Stephanie Kocielski, Paul Mitchell VP of Key Customer Relationships and Danny Amorim, GIBS Grooming Director of Education—that’ll make you an even better leader. Read it all below!

1. How To Work With Millennials

• To understand a millennial’s work ethic, you first need to understand their priorities. Why? Priorities drive the decisions we make.

• While friends and family are high up on the list, millennials also value a team atmosphere because they grew up less on individual work and more on team work. “Lean on that,” advised Jabez. “Use it to your advantage rather than viewing it automatically as a disadvantage.”

• Is one millennial team member known to be flaky? Jabez says it’s because they have other priorities over work. Combat this by letting them know how their behavior is directly affecting the team. “If they start to view their team as their friends and family, you elevated work to a higher status for them,” shared Jabez.

2. Acknowledge Positive Moments

• It’s easy to reprimand when a stylist is doing something wrong, but encouraging someone while they’re heading in the right direction will help speed up productivity.

• That doesn’t mean you’ll never have to course correct again, but Jabez said take notice of those moments when someone is going in the right direction and give them praise/acknowledge that they’re doing something good.

3. Be Aware Of Your Lens

• Our lenses are how we choose to view the world, which Jabez says is super important because the lens we project on others is the lens we get back.

• Have a team member you’re constantly butting heads with? Your lens, aka what you think and how you view others, has a bigger impact on how they act.

• “When you enter into the room and you’re looking at a team member and you’ve got preconceived ideas that are negative about that person, you get negative back,” said Jabez.

4. Always Act Like A Professional

• To Danny, being a professional means showing up every single day—even the days you’re in a mood. “We all have our days. We all have personal lives,” he said. “But when you walk in that door, that all stays inside.”

• Just because you reached salon owner status doesn’t mean goals don’t exist anymore. “Sometimes we’re asked to do things—do it with a smile, do it with passion and purpose and guess what? You too can never give up on your dreams and goals,” said Stephanie. 

• Don’t forget—you’re a professional, not an amateur. Here’s how Danny differentiates the two:

“Professionals set goals and they stick to them. Amateurs get caught up in daily life. Amateurs get distracted by what’s going on in life. Professionals—they know purpose is everything. They know what they want. If they want to be more creative, they have to work at it and make time for it. They know that success does not just happen.”

Here’s How Sport Clips Celebrated Its 25th Anniversary At The National Huddle!