“Is it hard having a big team?”

And my answer is – you need to choose your hard! 

Because yes, having a large team is hard. But working on your own and doing everything yourself within your business is also very, very hard.

Working with a team:

• With a team you need to be working on your marketing constantly. So you need to understand marketing. You need to understand your ideal clients and speak to them directly with your paid and free marketing, for example social media posts as well as any paid advertising that you’re putting out there (Social media or advertising on television or radio or at your local cinema etc). You need to set aside time every week to be focusing on your marketing, content creation and engaging with your audiences on your social media platforms. So it’s no good if you have a large team and you are paying them to be at work and they are all standing around doing nothing. It’s the worst feeling when you’re paying someone to do a job and they’re not doing it for whatever reason. You need to be focusing on your marketing to bring in new clients all the time.

• You also need to be constantly developing systems and processes for your team to follow. So procedures and policies around all of the tasks that the job requires. These can be very, very simple, like as simple as how to unlock the salon each morning and get it ready for the first client to walk in the door. A lot of people take these things for granted, but some people need a written procedure to follow. And I can tell you now that it is a lot faster to get new team members up and running if you have a procedure manual for your business.

  An example is:

  How to prepare the salon in the morning. Which will include how to unlock the doors, how to disarm the alarm, how to turn the computers and the wax pots on, to put the sign out and the foot mat at the door, which lights need to be turned on, what the air conditioner needs to be set at etc.

These very simple things, but your business will run a lot more smoothly without you there all the time if you have these things in writing and you have some sort of process for your team to follow. So I am always looking at my systems in my salon procedure manual and thinking of ways we can simplify things and make them easier. Whether we should have these stored in paper format or in digital format (I actually have it in both). And it’s made my life a whole lot easier because whenever someone asked me a question about how to do something, I don’t have to physically go in and show them how to do it. It’s not the best use of my time, especially if it’s a job that somebody is going to have to do over and over and over again.

If you have something in writing it’s a very streamlined way to get new team members up and running. And it saves you a lot of time in the future if you have something like that for your business.

• You need to manage your team. If you have a team you obviously need to put time into managing them. And by managing the team, I mean training them. You need to have some sort of incentive and bonus system in place to keep them motivated and happy. You need to have team meetings. I have team meetings in my salon once a week. These are non-negotiable; they are at 11am Every Monday, and everyone is expected to attend. Because it is not negotiable, everyone’s paid for this time. Because communication is key. I really think within a business and if you have a reasonably large team, most of the problems that occur within your team are because of some sort of communication breakdown. And if you don’t have good communication in place, that’s when things start to go wrong. So I put a lot of effort into making sure I understand my team. I spend a lot of time with them. We have monthly team rewards so everyone stays motivated through the month. I also have individual bonuses and incentives set up with my team. I also do individual weekly lunch meetings as well with each of my team members. So once a week, I will take one person out for lunch and we will basically have an informal catch up and we’ll discuss anything that needs to be addressed or if I need to pull them up on anything. I’m really lucky because I have a fantastic team I don’t need to pull them up on anything. And if I do, it’s just casual. It’s not like a serious talking to or anything like that. So I just roll through everyone with one staff member a week and it takes about six or seven weeks for them to get back around to have another meeting with me. But I also have a really casual sort of open door policy with my staff. I make myself very approachable and let them know that they can come to me with any problems or anything at all. Just come to me and tell me straight away because like I said, most problems within a team will occur after some sort of communication breakdown. When things are left unsaid that’s when tension builds.

  I have a team manager/salon manager as well. So she looks after client complaints and the day to day running of the salon and administration things that my full time receptionist can’t handle. She will take over and she doesn’t tend to bother me with the little things. My job is to focus on marketing, systems and processes, procedures and policies and managing the team. I always want my team to be performing at their optimum level. So I really put a lot of effort into making sure everyone is happy and everyone’s getting along and I’m always asking them if there’s anything I can do for them or anything to help wherever I can.

  I also just want to mention there are pros and cons with everything, and obviously when you have a large team another pro for me is that I have flexibility. I don’t need to be in my salon every day all day. I don’t have to be there to unlock the door and start everything up in the morning. I don’t have to be there to lock it every night. I can take off for a few days on short notice if I need to because I have a team that can do my clients for me. And I also have a full time receptionist that can reschedule everyone! I don’t even need to do that. Also obviously I make a lot more money than I did when I was solo because when it’s just yourself there’s only a certain amount of hours in the day that you can work. There’s only a certain amount of energy that you have; it’s not infinite. Now, I only work on clients one day a week in my salon and I am looking at cutting that down as we go into 2022 because I just don’t need to be there. I’ve grown my team to a point where I’m quite happy with how everything is going without me.

Now, moving on to the CONS of having a team.

• Obviously, managing lots of people is not everyone’s cup of tea. There have been times where it has been quite difficult for me as well, but as time has gone on and I’ve become more experienced as a manager and a leader and i’ve come to realise that the problems that were occurring in the past were caused by not having the right people working for me. So I learnt to interview better and spot people that weren’t going to be problematic. I put a lot of effort into my communication and ensuring my team can approach me if needed, as I’ve described earlier.

• Another CON is the RESPONSIBILITY of it all. I know that some people don’t like the idea of being responsible for paying the wages of multiple people and their livelihood, but I try not to think about it because I know that my business will always be successful. There’s also the responsibility of keeping everyone happy. Some people don’t want to have to deal with that. And that’s something I think that is ingrained in my personality. I am a classic people pleaser. I struggle with my boundaries sometimes because I like to keep everyone happy, sometimes at the expense of myself. It’s something that I’ve done my whole life. I loved to keep people happy when I was doing lashes full time and as a beauty therapist working in a spa based salon. I love making people feel good. Now my role has shifted a little bit to keeping my team happy and then ensuring that they keep all the clients happy. So it has changed a little bit over the years, but essentially it does come down to the same thing. 

BUT – The CONS of working on your own.

• When you are working on your own, you’re going to be working on clients most of your working hours. So if your salon is open Tuesday through to Saturday, 9-5, you’re typically going to be working those hours. So basically, you are kind of more like an employee in your business because you are stuck there. You’re the sole person that’s responsible for bringing income in, so your income level is directly correlated to the amount of time you spend working on clients. You also need to be focusing on your marketing as well, because you need to always market yourself so that you have new clients coming in. I know there’s a lot of people out there that will close their books because they’re so booked out with their current clients but I believe that it’s quite arrogant to think that you don’t need to advertise ever again for any new clients because things happen! People decide not to get lashes all the time or they might have a change in their financial circumstances or they may develop an allergy etc. And suddenly you’ve got a spot for someone new, so I don’t think that anyone should ever just completely stop marketing themselves altogether when you’re in business. You need to continue to put in effort with that.

• You also need to keep your salon clean and tidy. Whether you’re in a home salon or a commercial salon, you need to be keeping it clean. You need to be making an effort to keep it presented really, really well all the time. You will also need to be doing administration work, as in keeping appointments, rescheduling people, getting back to voicemails etc. So, if you don’t have anyone to do that for you, you need to be doing it and you need to be scheduling in time for that too. And if you’ve just done an 11 or 12 hour day with clients and then you’ve got half an hour worth of voicemails to listen to and get back to, it just extends your working hours so remember that too. If you haven’t been following up with voicemails and texts, Instagram/Facebook messages etc. with people wanting to make new appointments or clients changing appointments around, you’re not going to have people booked in and if you don’t have people booked in, you don’t make money. So a big focus goes to administration as well. Plus all the other things that business owners have to do like stock ordering, organising any sort of renovations, uniforms, your branding, all that stuff all falls on your shoulders, so it is still really hard working on your own, it’s just a different kind of hard. When you work alone, you are working for your clients, essentially you’re an employee of your own business. You have to work very, very hard physically because you need to be physically in your business to earn money. And that that is quite difficult, especially when you have to do all of the other things that I just mentioned.

BUT some of the PROS are:

• You don’t have to worry about anybody else. So you don’t have to worry about what anybody else is doing in your business and this might really suit some fellow control freaks out there. I wish I had lost my control freak tendencies a little bit earlier on in my life, but I am a recovering control freak. And I found it very, very difficult to hand over clients that I had had for years to my team members. And I know that a lot of us struggle with that. So if you’re working on your own and you’re a bit of a control freak, you don’t have to worry about anybody else. Honestly, you don’t! You don’t have to worry about stressing about what anybody else is doing in your business or whether your team members are looking after your clients as good as you could.

Having done both over the years, I’ve worked alone, I worked at home on my own, then I was in a commercial salon on my own for 12 months and then I started growing my team and I 100% know that I would always choose having a team over working alone. I love the flexibility of it. I love that I can spend time with my kids. I can go pick them up I can drop them off at school every day if I want to. I can take time off whenever I need to. And I know that I have a fantastic team in there running the day to day stuff in the salon. I don’t have to worry about the little things anymore. Having a team working in my salon business is SO much easier. They’ve simplified my life and I just find it a lot easier and a lot more rewarding. I do still work a lot. I may not be physically seeing clients in my salon but I have a couple of businesses on the go. I don’t have a lot of time for socialising. And I feel like my team is kind of my social outlet as well. We all really we get along well and we’re all really good friends. Think about what you see for yourself in the future.

And if you see yourself building a team, shoot me an email or book a call with me here and we can chat about some coaching.

Lauren x