What is your biggest fear? Is it losing the steady stream of income and clients from the salon you are working at? Do you have a full time job that you are already earning an income from?

Making the decision to stay at home and open a home based salon can be a terrifying experience. When we made the decision to open the salon at home we had spent a year and a half contemplating, being tempted then backing away because we felt like we couldn’t afford to make the jump.

Our theory was flawed. We were doubting ourselves! Julia had the talent and was providing great value to the few clients she did have. We became ingrained to American culture of working an 8-5 job and knowing we would be getting that paycheck of X amount every two weeks. Being responsible for our own income was scary and we doubted ourselves.

Finally, shortly after our daughter was born, the pressure of trying to coordinate daycare, us both working full time and wanting to take care of our own children, the scale was tipped to taking the leap of faith. At the time, Mike was still in school but we had a modest 3 months worth of an emergency fund.

Julia gave her two weeks notice  at the car dealership and we started telling everyone on Facebook to come get haircuts, dye’s and nails done. We were desperate! We didn’t have a real business plan for growing her book of business. All we had was fair pricing and a bit of talent.

Facebook and client referrals turned out to be our saving grace and helped us grow the business rapidly.

In our next post we will talk about how we utilized both of those tools.

 

What is your biggest fear in making the leap into controlling your future and opening a home based salon?

Welcome!

Today we want to talk about providing value to your clients. You are now completing cosmetology school, ready to leave a salon or just getting back into the business after a break away from it. Let’s talk about knowing if you are ready to take the jump into a home based salon.

When we decided to make this jump, Julia didn’t have an existing clientele so we wanted to be sure that she could be competitive. We wanted to make sure she was providing value to her clients and that they would be good repeat clients in her salon.

Julia had been doing a few friends and family’s hair and nails for a while now so she had a good collection of photos. She went to her friends and peers that had been working in the industry and asked for an honest evaluation of her work. She received great feedback and even a few tips on how to improve her service.

1. Tip-
   • Make sure you have the talent to keep bringing clients back to your home based salon.
     • If you don’t have the skills and provide the quality that a client is looking for, they will not return.

If you feel like your skills aren’t where they should be or you aren’t sure what trends are popular right now there are many resources for you:

• YouTube
  • From learning new hair styles and techniques to nail tutorials, millions of options are available online. Don’t be afraid to binge for a while to find one new technique that you can then work to perfect.
• Mentor
  • The home based salon community tends to be tight knit, don’t be afraid to reach out to a neighbor, ask a Facebook friend, or join a group on Facebook. All of these resources will be more than willing to provide advice and or feedback on how to improve your skills.
• Facebook
  • Don’t be afraid to befriend local home based salon owners. They can be a great resource on products used, how to balance home chores and work, and even provide you leads if they are not taking any new clients.

Now, you have some great skills you have learned. You are going to be valuable to your new clients and they will be happy with your service. The second half of providing great value to your customer’s is setting the prices for your service.

2. Pricing:

One of the big questions you should be asking is how much do I charge? The complicated answer is, “You should be charging at a level that the client perceives the value of the service.”

When Julia started her home based business we did a ton of research. We called every salon within ten miles, she reached out to her friends from Cosmetology school to find out what they charged. We then took those prices and assumed that since we didn’t have the overhead of booth rent, or commission to a salon owner, we could discount her prices by nearly 30%! This was the first mistake we made in our salon adventure.

We discounted prices by nearly 30%. We highly undervalued the talent and hard work that Julia was doing. Julia wasn’t 1/3 worse than her peers working in a salon. We didn’t realize at the time that we should price services based on the value she was providing her clients. We priced solely on our perceived costs.

The last impact of pricing too low was the type of client it attracted. Julia was doing a lot of “one off” clients. These were clients getting hair and nails done for a wedding, a dance, or a formal event. It wasn’t regular consistent clients that maintained a relationship and a regular schedule where they would keep returning.

Many salons run one off specials to attract that type of clientele, however to see success at home, you need to create a consistent returning customer base.

Today we talked about providing a valuable service at the right price. For those of you already starting your at home business adventure, what kind of problems did you run into pricing and providing value to your customers?

 

 

Welcome to Salonfromhome.com. We are building this site in hopes that it is a great source of information and inspiration. Our goal is to help you as you graduate school, look to change careers, or transition from a traditional salon to working at home. We plan to teach you everything you will need to be successful from home.

Here are some of the topics we will be covering:

• Offering quality products and service.
  • Tips and how to’s on new hair and nail techniques.
• Pricing your services
  • What is the right price?
• Building Value that keeps clients coming back.
• Growing your client list rapidly.
• Increasing your income without working more hours.
• When is the right time to raise my prices?

Julia and Michael started Julia’s home salon out of a desire for a better work/ life balance with children. We didn’t want our kids in Day care but we still needed the income. We found that with Julia working from home, we didn’t have day care expenses, Julia made more money than a 9-5 job could ever provide and Julia isn’t sharing her profit’s with a salon owner.

Please follow along and share this blog as we help you all become more successful. Leave us a comment and let us know where you are from and what you hope to learn and what we can help with!