When I first came to Misbehaven I was a booth renter. To say there were no service standards in the nail department is an understatement. We each had our own ideas about what the service should be, what products should be used, and how long it should last. Our clients knew what to expect from us, but if they had to go to someone else for a service they couldn’t be sure what they would get. It was really frustrating at times.

I am also a product educator, and consider myself a good one, but I struggled with the best way to use those skills on the business end. I too was sick of taking classes geared towards hair stylists and trying to figure out how it applied to me and my business.

Fast forward a couple of years … The owner had gone to a Summit Salon Business Seminar and had come back with the intention of moving from a booth rent situation to an employee/employer one. It was a big change for us and we weren’t sure what to think or expect. We had our salon coach come in and he was extremely helpful in making it as smooth of a transition as it could be.

We then had Jill come in to our salon to help us to set standards in our nail department. At that time we had three nail techs and one of them refused to provide pedicure services. We now just have the two of us and the couple of stylists who help out with pedicures. Now I have had to really impress upon them when I train them to our service standard the importance of providing the same quality of service. Some of the stylists at first didn’t really get it. They just wanted to fill their time, like Jill said. Now they really understand the reasons behind it and why we can’t let them each do whatever they want.

Then the beginning of last year I was asked to be a part of this coaching blog weekly to help other nail tech see the challenges, successes, and failures of some of these business ideas and strategies. It is amazing the growth we have seen just since then.

As a result of this type of coaching our nail department sold over $250,000 in services and retail last year. This has proved to be nearly 12% of the salon’s income. And there are only the two of us doing it full time; the rest of the salon has 22 service providers, to give you an idea how many more people there are to bring in service and retail dollars that are not in the nail department. I think that the coaching we have had has been instrumental in our department having this type of success. Now we just need more nail techs!  I can only look forward with excitement to see what adding another member to our department can help us accomplish.

— Sandy