I am a person that likes to set goals. I feel that goals give you focus. I practice goal setting myself and I also get my business growth coaching clients to set goals as well. The first lesson inside my SALON GOALS program is actually all on goal setting. So you would be surprised how many people do not actually set goals, and I used to be one of them! I used to really just flounder my way through business for the first two or three years. I would genuinely be surprised at the end of every month or the end of the financial year on how much money we made and I’m just like “whoa, that’s cool. How do we do that?”. I don’t know. Because I didn’t have anything to measure it against.

I was looking at previous months and then the current month and there wasn’t a huge difference, but sometimes it’d be the difference of $5,000, $7,000, $10,000 and I really wanted to have some consistency. I wanted to build on what we were already doing. I wanted to look at the months gone by and see that we’re actually getting somewhere.

So what I did was I started setting monthly goals for my salon business and sharing them with the team and doing team rewards as incentives so that my team had something to work towards. You don’t have to share it with your team or if you work on your own obviously, but you could share it with your accountant or your partner or your best friend or your business bestie or if you’ve got a business coach. I would hope that you are goal setting and sharing with someone.

Goal setting really gives you focus. It gives you something to come back to, or you might hear some people refer to it as your “why” and sometimes your “why” is actually bigger than goals. Sometimes your goals can be set based on your “why”.

So for example, your “why” could be to make more money in your business because you want to be financially secure and save for a deposit on a house or your “why” could be that you want to make more money in your business because you want to move into a bigger location or you want to buy new equipment etc. So if you are setting a goal based on a really legitimate “why” (and you need to have a “why”, you can’t not have a “why”, otherwise you’ll find yourself really floundering and not seeing the point to setting goals. You won’t have the motivation to do reach the goals because you don’t know why you’re doing what you’re doing in the first place. You’ll be going through the motions, through the day to day, doing the same thing, going into the salon or going into your salon space at home and you’ll be working on clients all day, then going home and repeating the next day, then you’re posting on your social media, doing admin work day in day out, GRINDI
NG, becoming burnt out and not enjoying your business anymore. And it’s not fun when business is not fun anymore. You won’t want to do it. So you’ve got to have a “why”. Before you start setting any goals, work out your “why”.

So once you know your “why”, you can set some goals. Setting financial goals (and this doesn’t just apply to financial goals, it applies to any goal in your life, but for the sake of this activity i’m going to use revenue as a goal) means your total salon revenue for the year. And we are going to break it right down to monthly, then weekly, then daily, then hourly! So you can actually look back and say, “Okay, we didn’t achieve what we set out to achieve. What went wrong and how can we fix it? How can we make it better? How can we build on that?” Or if it did go well, “how can we build on that?” I love being able to measure success by goal setting. And it really really helps me stay motivated.

Throughout the month I come back and I remember my “why”. I remember where I’m headed and why I’m doing the things I’m doing. It keeps me going and also it helps me beat procrastination. Honestly, I am a bit of a procrastinator. I admit it. I do have pretty good self discipline though. So I do always manage to get the work done but it’s usually coming down to the deadline, but I still always get it done. I just need that extra bit of pressure I think, to force me to do it. I must like to live life on the edge or something (I also do this with putting fuel in my car). But it does help me beat procrastination because when I am procrastinating something, I stop and I ask myself “what’s gonna happen if I don’t do this today?” And I go, “Okay, well, if I don’t do this today, I’m not going to make that sale, that client’s not going to get booked in”. As long as you can recognise that it will impact you meeting your goal you are going to be much much more likely to take action if you have something that you’re working towards and not procrastinate on it.

So this is how I break it down!

It’s pretty basic.

This is not rocket science. I suck at maths. I really do. I was in the basic maths group at school but for some reason I’m good with money. I’m good at working out money.

So just for shits and giggles, I’m going to put a goal out there of $350,000.

Now, if you are a solo lash artist or makeup artist, depending on your pricing and where you’re located, this can change. I’ve just pulled a figure that is not based on myself or anyone I know in particular. Use this method to break down any number. But for those of you out there that may have one or two staff $350,000 per year is actually a totally achievable amount. If you are doing well, if you’re consistently booked and your services are priced correctly.

1st of July through to 30th of June. So $350,000 divided by 12 months. Assuming that you’re open for 12 months of the year, you may want to change that if you are a solo operator and you take four weeks holiday (your income will totally stop for one month).

$350,000 divided by 12 = $29,166 per month.

I can hear you saying “Oh crap! That’s a lot of money! I can’t do 30k a month, what the hell!” but let’s break it down even more.

$29,160 divided by 4 weeks = $7,291 per week as a salon.

Just say you’re open 5 days; Monday to Friday or Tuesday through to Saturday. You might even be open 6 days. I’m just going to use 5 days for this example.

$7,291 per week divided by 5 = $1,458 per day.

This is looking a little bit more achievable yes? Especially when you think this salon has 3 staff.

$1,458 divided by 3 is $486 each.

$496 is all that the three staff members need to make each per day, in your salon, to make $350,000 a year!

If you want to break that down even smaller.

$486 per staff member divided by the average working hours in a day, which is 7.6. 7.6 bookable client time hours.

$486 divided by 7.6 = $64.

$64 per hour!

So if you want to make $350k and you have 2 staff and you yourself work in the salon on clients, you only need to make $64 an hour if you are open 5 days a week to make $350,000 in a year.

Of course if you follow me on Instagram or listen to my podcast, I always recommend that if you’re in a commercial salon space, you should, at a minimum be charging yourself out or charging all of your services at a minimum of $100 an hour. So $64 is actually quite low. This would allow for some gaps in your appointment calendar, maybe some last minute cancellations.

You can even reverse engineer this if you like If there’s not many gaps in your schedule and you have no problems retaining clients and your staff are pretty booked as well, you could look at your average client spend per hour. You should be able to gain this knowledge from your booking system. There should be a report for your average client spend rather than how much you’re earning per hour. Reach for the sky I say. It can’t be easy. You can’t be comfortable. It’s all well and good to go “Oh yeah, we make about $600 bucks a day each” and to base your goal off that, but you’re not really growing or achieving the next level. So always add a little bit more and then I’ll break it down again to actually see if it is achievable. Yes, it should be hard, it should be difficult for you, but it still should be achievable. But if you are not setting goals that don’t push you, you’re actually not growing at all.

Then eventually you might want to make 350k in 6 months, then 3 months. And then before you know it you’re a million dollar salon! So, no matter what the figure is, if you work on your own, and you want to just make six figures use this method. Break it down. Have your monthly goal in front of you somewhere you can see it all the time.

I have been known to have my goals, written in notes, I’ll screenshot them and actually use them as my lock screen on my phone so that they’re at the front of my mind. All the time. I remember why I am working so hard. I remember why I am doing whatever it is I’m doing. Why I’m staying up late and why I’m going into work early. I remember why.

Lauren x