Default of Design, How are You Living Your Business Journey By David Watts

By David Watts, The Zing Project

There are many times we change things in our business because we must. Situations arise and we are forced to act in the moment to prevent a disaster or quickly rectify a situation. Unfortunately, we create additional stress for ourselves when we live this way. With some foresight and a little planning many of these spot fires could have been avoided. When you begin to master this, you can begin to live your life, and manage your salon by design.

There are some things that you will do by default in the salon, particularly technical tasks. They simply come naturally to you after years of practise and execution. These are not the things you need to worry about, it’s the other things in your business that you have no plans for, things that you will need to address, and the earlier you do it the better.

Think about the tasks that you have had to spend time on, those things that just appear out of nowhere, when you least expect them. Frustratingly, you need to stop what you’re doing to deal with them, and it always comes at the most inconvenient time. If you think about it there would be so many times these urgent tasks could have been planned for, you could have designed a smoother outcome.

I think that when we are running our salons by default we are running on autopilot, doing things mindlessly, not making decisions based on facts and then wondering why we are not achieving our goals. In the short term it seems like all is working, but in the end, it comes back to bite us, and sometimes in a bad way.

You have probably made decisions today without even thinking about the consequences, perhaps a short-term fix to a longer-term problem. If you are running your salon that way, it’s probably having an impact on you emotionally and financially. I want you to read this article and walk away saying NO MORE, I am going to start planning more in my business.

Planning sounds a little heavy, like a lot of hard work, but it doesn’t have to be. If you set a clear outcome, you are well on your way. You could almost say that your outcome is your intention, you have decided what you want and written it down. Keep your intention simple and make sure it is something positive, this will allow you to stay focused. you want your team to look like? What services would you like to do more of? How are you going to market your salon to attract the right clients? What will your customer experience be like?

Think about what is happening now in your business and what may happen in the future then you can plan or design it. Next you need to break this bad boy down! Taking your goal and creating smaller easily achievable actions will enable you to chip away at it over time.

A hot tip with these actions is to make sure they are small enough tasks that you could complete before you get bored or distracted. Personally, I find I can’t focus on a task for more than 30 minutes without feeling the need to look at or do something else. It’s important to do this, it will maintain your energy levels and concentration, finding what timeframe works for you will be best.

It’s important you create time to work on these actions. Simply having a to do list does not mean what’s on it will be done. Putting time aside in your diary to work on these actions will give you a greater chance of success.

When you allocate the time, the next bottleneck you may face is being disciplined to doing the task when you have it scheduled. To help with this you should also set some mini deadlines along the way, this will help keep you on track. These deadlines will allow you to celebrate your small wins and stop the overwhelm that can come when working on big projects.

There’s an essential word you need to start using more every day and that is NO. It’s easier to say yes, but it’s also a default response to things you may not want or need to be doing. It is important to sometimes say no to the good, so you can yes to the great.

Take control of your time and decisions and you will achieve more allocated to complete them, everything should be a fine? Not quite. Next you need to review your progress towards your goal, I would suggest doing this weekly. Reconnecting with your intention is a great way to stay on track and remind you why the time you have allocated is important.

This review time is also your opportunity to make any changes to the actions you have planned, being flexible is just as important as being organised. Never stay committed to actions if they no longer serve you or won’t help you achieve your outcome. This is not an excuse to “abandon ship” if things get difficult or push you out of your comfort zone, remember discomfort is where you find growth.

The final piece of the puzzle that will help you with your journey to design not default is to be more mindful. Make sure you take time every day to breath, focus and take notice of your feelings. Being mindful will make you more present for those around you and importantly clearer yourself. There is so much great content available on mindfulness that I encourage you to check out.

You do not want to be a passenger in your own life or business journey. Start being more deliberate in your actions, do this consistently and you can stop things happening to you and start creating your own intention fuelled future filled with success.

David. XoX

A salon owner and support coach on Team Chrissy – The ZING Project. David has a diverse background in sales, marketing and operations and is passionate about improving the professionalism of the industry. Contact David via email davidsc@zingcoach.com.au or DM on Instagram @davidwatts_zing