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EP 238: Finding Your Way in the New Facebook / Instagram Ads Landscape with Tara Zirker

If the recent changes to the Facebook and Instagram ads landscape have left you frustrated, confused, and ready to throw in the towel, I want to encourage you to, first, take a deep breath. 

Next, plug in your earbuds because today we’re going to kick that mind mess to the curb and get real on what’s really happening with Facebook and Instagram ads.

And back with me on the mic for this episode of  Spa Marketing Made Easy is the Facebook Ads goddess herself, Tara Zirker! 

Tara is my dear friend, a multi-time guest here on the podcast, and the founder of Successful Ads Club. 

Tara has helped her clients and students generate millions of dollars in profit for their businesses, and what I think is most critical, is that she has helped her clients and students do this in the simplest way possible. 

So, put your woes at ease, Tara is here to give you the real talk on what in the world is going on in ads land plus some major encouragement when it comes to modern day online marketing and advertising. 

In this episode, we discuss: 

  •  What the new iOS 14 changes mean for business owners looking to run ads and how it will shift your paid ads strategy moving forward
  • The 4 key things to understand about the most recent changes Facebook has made with its advertising platform to comply with the iOS shift and what you need to have in your backpocket as an advertiser on the platform
  • What types of creative elements are currently working best for ads and Tara’s top recommendations on where to spend your time, energy and budget on the Facebook and Instagram platforms 
  • Where Tara sees the digital marketing and paid ads landscape shifting in the next 1-2 years and steps for how we can best be prepared 

References Mentioned in Episode #238: Finding Your Way in the New Facebook / Instagram Ads Landscape with Tara Zirker

  • Learn more about and join The Successful Ads Club 
  • Get Tara’s free download, “The Anatomy of the Perfect Ad”  at www.youradkit.com/freebie
  • Connect with Tara on Facebook and Instagram 
  • Listen to Episode #139 with Tara – 10 Ways to 10X Your Revenue with Facebook Ads
  • Listen to Episode #003 with Tara – The Fundamentals of Facebook Ads for Spa Marketing
  • To keep the conversation going, ask questions, and connect with other like-minded aestheticians building thriving careers, click here to join the free Spa Marketing Made Easy Podcast community. 

As a thank you for being a loyal listener to the Spa Marketing Made Easy podcast and for helping us to reach more aestheticians working on growing their businesses and creating a life they love, we have created a free resource portal just for you! 

 

It’s totally free to join, and for every 25 reviews we get on iTunes, we’ll add a new training video, PDF, tracker, or other high-value resource to help you grow your aesthetic business!

 

If you have yet to leave a review, click here to leave one on iTunes, and click here to access the free resources already unlocked


Episode Transcript

00:00

You’re listening to the Spa marketing Made Easy Podcast where we share simple, proven strategies just for spa industry professionals to help you get more clients in the door so that you can create a life you love. I’m your host, Daniela Woerner licensed aesthetician and spa marketing strategist. 

00:22

Hello my dears, Daniela here and welcome to another episode of the Spa Marketing Made Easy Podcast. I am so excited to welcome back my dear friend and Facebook ads expert, Tara Zirker. She is the founder of successful ads club many of you in the spa industry, I’m sure have heard me talk about her have joined her program to learn about Facebook ads. She’s absolutely incredible and has a ton of knowledge in the spa industry. And she has one of our most downloaded podcast episodes to date. So we thought that it was time to bring her back to talk about these iOS updates to talk about how you can use that as a competitive advantage. And some different low cost ad strategies that you can be utilizing in your business. So tons of information, you’re definitely gonna want to grab a pen and paper, take down some notes, maybe listen to this episode again. So I’m just going to do this super short intro and let you guys just dive right into the good stuff because there is a lot of good stuff. Alright, let’s go ahead and play that interview. 

01:32

All right, Tara, welcome back to the Spa Marketing Made Easy Podcast. So excited to have you. Here you are. I think you’re in our top three episodes of downloads. 

01:44

Oh

01:44

How to 10X, 10 ways to 10X revenue with Facebook ads. So that was one of our like, most downloaded most love tongue, tons of questions, tons of actions taken from that episode. And when we asked like, Hey, who do you want to see on the podcast? We were getting DMS requesting to have you back on. So I’m so excited because there has been a lot that has gone on with Facebook and ads. Since that episode. A lot. 

02:19

Yes, a lot exclamation mark. 

02:21

So why don’t we just just dive right in and start off with these iOS updates? Oh, what is the deal with them? What’s going on? Why do we care?

02:32

Okay, elephant in the room, right? Let’s just look after it. All right. So iOS 14, basically, here’s why you care. 80% of people who access Facebook are accessing Facebook by mobile only meaning in a whole year, they’re not logging on one time from their desktop, it is on their phone. So you have to understand Facebook and Instagram. So many of us as business owners, we’re still accessing these things on our desktops, right? Most of the world is not 80% of the world is not 80%. Can you believe that? So now you have to consider if you are an aesthetician in the US in Canada, in the UK, you know all these big countries, most of your traffic about half of it? Well, most of your traffic number one is mobile, and about half of that traffic is going to be from people on their iPhones, people on their iPads, etc. So they’re running off of the iOS platform products, Apple products. And essentially what Apple said was, you know, we don’t really like all of these advertisers being able to chase people around the web with their ads. And that’s called, you know, third party tracking is basically what enables that. And so instead, we are going to ask people, they have to literally opt in, not opt out but opt in, if they want to be tracked by advertisers. So most people are saying no, and they’re clicking the no button. And it’s about 80 90% of people are opting out of the ability to be tracked. So means a few things. 

04:10

Number one, it means there’s going to be a huge shift over time in the strategy of retargeting.

04:15

Number two, it means there’s going to be new tools and techniques implemented in order to capture your own data, turn third party data into first party data that’s already happening. 

04:25

Number three, it means that you’re going to also see all the other big players following suit, right? So this is not once Apple does something everyone else is going to as well. So, you know, as these as this continues to evolve, you will see that this continues to change. You know, Android I’m sure will be next to go and then all you know it’s every single basically operating platform is going to follow suit to this change. So you have to know even though it’s only Apple, it is going to affect everything eventually. 

04:57

And what are we on number four, you know, the big thing to know is that they’re still effective, you just can’t see the exact data that you could see before. So if a sale happens if a lead happens if somebody puts in their email is still happening, it’s just that there’s now a curtain between you and your data. And Facebook is not allowed to report it. So they can say, you know, things are still happening, there’s still conversions happening. But unfortunately, with the iOS change, Facebook’s not allowed to report unless somebody opted in to being tracked, they’re not allowed to report that back to the ads manager back to your dashboard.

05:45

Now, the other thing that I knew I noticed for us, and I imagine this is true, I’m sure this is true for brick and mortar spas, we had to verify all of our page domain, so we would not be able to do ads, unless we owned those particular pages.

06:04

Exactly. So let me see if I can revoke that.

06:08

Looks like you were doing a Reel.

06:12

For everybody listening in my camera, just so that we go went out of focus, because I’m jumping around too much with about all of this I Oh, okay. Yes, exactly. So, in order to advertise now, on Facebook, it is mandatory that you do two things, number one, verify your domain. And I want to say something really important about that. And number two, that you basically prioritize which events are most important to you? Is it the lead capture? Is it the purchase? Because there’s, there’s, you know, a few little nuances and rules and changes to how Facebook can report the data that people are, if there is somebody opting in, then Facebook can report the first conversion event, they can report across nine campaigns, and they can report across eight types of events so they could report a lead, a purchase, etc. You just have to prioritize to Facebook, which ones are most important to you? Now, is this a good place to insert a really important detail? 

07:17

Yeah, go for it. 

07:18

Okay.  Here’s my IMO, in my opinion, I believe that this little, it’s a 30 to 40 minute chore, verifying your domain so that you’re able to advertise. Whenever you start seeing stuff like that. I want everybody to who’s listening to really listen to this, whenever you start seeing things like this, the most normal reaction is to freak out, and everything you’re doing and saying, Oh my gosh, I’ve got to hire someone. Okay. Oh, put it on my list. I’ll you know, go on Upwork find some ads person to do all my goodness, this is going to take me months. That right there. Okay, hopefully, this is what separates you, from everyone else. Because as soon as you see things like that, what should be clicking in your mind is, this is my competitive advantage. This is my opportunity. 

08:16

100% 

08:17

Right now, D , I know you this, I know you do you know you you train people this way too, because most people are backing off. And you’re going to say how long is this going to take me a 30 to 40 minutes, oh, I’m doing this. And I know that most of my competitors will not get around to doing this because of like their own mindset issues for months.

08:40

So they are not going to be even if you like, are following all the rules of Facebook, if your pages are not verified, you cannot run ads and they will not let you run ads. So all of your your competitors, I say that in quotes, right? But all of your competitors if they’re not doing that, and you are think about all the exposure to different people that you can have, and likely at a lower rate to write because yes, yeah, yeah, it’s Facebook is that kind of like supply and demand, whatever. For me, it’s amazing, right? Because I’ll go and do the work.

09:20

You’ll do the 30 to 40 minute chore, and you’ll keep going and you’ll keep getting better and better and better. Meanwhile, you know, so many people in your industry around you in your market, they’re like whoa, you know, they’re literally delaying their success by months. And I’m not even joking when I say sometimes this will take people a year or two, because they will back so completely off. Or they’ll switch you know platforms or they’ll go chase some other strategy. You know, the shiny object syndrome, right? Something that is easier, that looks easier, and then that will change too and then they’ll have to circle back around and speaking of that changing too, I mean, Apples really, they’re really on a rampage this year, because they also just introduced, you know, some email things that is going to, you know, people who are like, Oh my gosh, this is only affecting the ads, people and all the ads, people are just, you know, trying to figure all this out and whatnot and feeling like we’re pioneers in this whole new world of advertising. Guess what, they just changed the landscape with email. And over the next couple of years, you’re going to see that email open rates? Well, they’re, they’re doing away with the mechanisms that make it possible to really track that effectively. So Apple’s kind of leading the way in privacy in a way that’s really shaking up the entire marketing world. And, you know, if you’re a business owner, I know that your first priority never wanted to be to be a marketer. But I hate to tell you, if you’re a business owner, you have to know marketing, you don’t have to know all the nitty gritty, you don’t have to know how to do everything. You have to know the big picture landscape so that you can start to adjust your strategy because your role is the visionary, and to hold your team accountable. But you need to know like what’s changing, so that you can help guide and lead your business to success. And marketing is a huge part of any businesses, you know, success journey for sure.

11:11

I 100%. Agree, I think it’s so so important question on the tracking in relation to iOS updates. So we noticed on this past launch that we did. Typically, when we’re doing when we’re looking at our results from our ads, and then our results that we’re seeing in our CRM, they were way off.

11:38

For sure.

11:39

What like more like Facebook said you had X amount of sales. And then our CRM, we use Ontraport. Ontraport said you have this many sales. So it was like two different planets. Yeah, yeah. Is that from the update?

11:56

Totally from the update, and it will continue to get more dramatic as people keep updating their platforms, right, some people are still running, a ton of people are still running off of old, you know, iOS platforms and operating systems. So as they update, then they’re going to get these little messages, do you want to opt into being tracked? You know, again, we know 80 to 90% of people are clicking No. So it’ll continue to become, you know, more and more dramatic these differences.

12:28

As marketers or as business owners, how do we measure that Facebook ads, or whatever advertising we’re doing? You know, we talk a lot about cost per lead earnings per lead, like all of these, you know, return on adspend. Right? If we’re not getting the right metrics, how can we make an objective decision on where we’re going to put our money?

12:53

Okay, now, I want to preface this by saying I am not an attribution expert, nor did I ever intend to be, but I’ve had to become one. Thanks to all of these changes, right? It’s amazing. And I feel like in a spa world, I mean, everyone understands this, it’s amazing how you take one little platform like Facebook ads, and there’s so many experts that go into this, you know, there’s attribution experts, there’s data scientists, there’s people who run the ads, copywriting experts in video, you know, producers, and it’s amazing how many people can go into one tiny little feature. Or, and, and, and, you know, the same thing when you’re thinking about social media organic, or you’re thinking about the spa world, and how many different expertise is expertises exist there? You know, I don’t even know. 

13:44

It’s a word. That’s a word. 

13:45

We’re gonna we’re gonna go with it. 

13:46

Um, so the so a few ways that you can do this. Number one, there are software tools that will still help you track, okay, so think of things like wicked reports, it’s an investment. And honestly, if you’re just spending a few 100 bucks a month on your ads, it’s not one that I think that you should be making. But if you’ve got a sizable budget, and you really want to know exactly where people are coming from, how long it took them to convert all of these, you know, things then wicked reports is one that’s leading the way with this sort of attribution challenge that now exists more than ever before. 

14:25

Number two, here’s the thing. If you are spending $500 a month, 1000 bucks a month, and maybe you’ve got some stuff from social media, you know, but really, your primary vehicle of marketing is advertising. And maybe you’re a one, you know, you’re a one platform type of person. So it’s all Facebook ads, or it’s all Google ads, even if you can’t and Google Ads isn’t having this problem. Yet, although they will, even if you can’t attribute it directly to Facebook because there’s that curtain between you and your data, you can kind of make some really educated guesstimate right? You can say, Listen, I know that Facebook, you know, Facebook, by the way has always told us there’s a 30% over under situation. So they’ve always said they’ve always admitted to about 30% of the conversions are usually it’s, well, I should say, up to 30% of your conversions can be over or under reported. And now it’s just going to be who knows what it could be a 60% difference, you know, really, truly, especially as this continues to roll out. So if you are able to make you know, conservative and you know, pretty solid, like guesstimates, then I would just go with that. And I wouldn’t worry too too much about it.

15:43

And I think in spa, what most people are doing is running ads to a specific offer. So if you’re just doing that, you know, get a Brazilian wax, get your underarm wax complimentary. Like, if it’s, if that’s that what they’re booking, you have to know what came from that ad, right? 

16:01

Totally. So exactly do so. And by the way, so let’s say you do have, you know, a Brazilian, let’s say the offer is some sort of, you know, Brazilian bikini wax, get it, whatever it is, let’s say that that is the offer. And you’ve got Google and you’ve got Facebook running ads to that, well, you could just create two separate completely separate funnels, they get their own emails, they get their own, and then on your back end, you’ll be able to see it now maybe Facebook is telling you to sales and on your back end, you’re seeing eight sales? Well, that’s fine, you can say you know, with pretty much but nearly you know, 100% confidence. Well, this all came from Facebook, they’re just not allowed to live. They’re literally not allowed to report the data back to me. Because somebody opted out of… 

16:51

No, it’s making the CRM is that we’re choosing where we’re building our funnels, etc. Even more important. 

16:59

Absolutely. 

17:01

Absolutely. Okay, so let’s do a 180. 

17:05

Love it. 

17:06

That’s iOS updates. So let’s get into the creative. Because we’re seeing a lot right now, with Reels on Instagram. And, you know, I’ve been saying Reels are the real deal. You know, it’s Reels are the thing right now, there’s always some thing. And, you know, next month, it might be something new, like who knows, right? But right now, reels are the thing that you’re getting the most organic reach. How are people capitalizing on that? with ads?… what’s the deal? Like? How do we make the most of it?

17:45

Absolutely. Take your, your best Reels, obviously the ones so you want to think about in your your social media, social media strategy, you know, either creating Reels that are specific to your offers, maybe it’s your monthly promotion and evergreen promotion, whatever it is. And, by the way, I mean, Daniela, you could probably share some great tips Reels, the you do a few right, do a few and you’re gonna see how easy they become your mind starts thinking in Reels, you start realizing like a successful Reel can just be a little tour. I mean, literally like a five second tour of your facility. And you know, a couple seconds of showing somebody actually getting the service that you’re talking about, this does not need to be crazy. I do recommend… 

18:30

I think there more, like what I’ve noticed the ones that have done really well in spa are kind of funny. And but they are it’s like brand awareness and connecting people like I’ve seen a couple of spa owners in our Growth Factor program that do them there. They specialize in Brazilian waxing. And so they’re, you know, it’s like one that got over 40,000 views. And this is an account with under 10,000 I think she has like 2000 followers or something. And she got over 40,000 views. And it’s just what I’m thinking about before I get a Brazilian wax it was literally her like this and these different questions coming up. And then that one gal did the different types of in a Brazilian wax you know, we we wax everything front to back. And it was the different types of booty wax, right like the how you get the confused, the perfection is that like all the different ones. It was so creative and so cute. And it just shows her personality. It connects, you know, and she got over 40 I think she was at 42,000. 

19:43

Oh, it’s so good. It’s so good. 

19:46

Yeah, I mean, it can be. I think the intimidating part is just it’s something new to learn. It’s like and I don’t know if this is just now that I’m 40 I’m an old lady and It’s like, man, am I gonna have to start asking my four year old? How did you? Like, when does that start? Because as soon as she can just do my Reels for me, that’ll be great. 

20:13

Oh, literally. 

20:15

I mean, I’m guessing she’s on like a three year sort of

20:18

Three year plan. Yeah, your plan three year…

20:21

Totally. That’s gonna be so good when they can do that. And I have a daughter the same age. So trust me, I’m watching her skill set to like, let’s get this going.

20:31

But the thing is, they have to I know, it’s like, nobody wants to dance. Yeah, nobody knows what to do the editing piece, adding how do we do the video and then adding the text and then the timing. And you guys like, I get it. And I am the biggest proponent of make sure you’re spending your time doing revenue generating activities. 100%. But we are seeing insane, insane results 184% increase in website taps, people going to your website, from the Reel, that means they’re going to be that’s like, Oh, I want to learn more about this business, not just your profile. But clicking over to the website, how can I work more closely with them, right? That is what we want. From our social media, we don’t want people to follow us or engage with us, if they’re not the right ideal client who we’re trying to serve. But we’re just like, I feel like for me, when I switch to doing the podcast from blogging, there was this huge piece where people got to know who I was as a person more. And I feel like with Reels, it’s almost breaking it down that people get to see your personality and a different way. And they get to see like a more fun side or a more creative side of you and your team. And it’s just building a connection

22:02

100% this and you know, we’re saying Reels, right. But this is actually indicative of an entirely new type of marketing that is never going away. And that is short form video. And so really mastering this short form video is honestly probably one of the best skill sets that you can do to take your business into the next 3, 4, 5 years. And the other thing that I think will be on its heels will be you know, this audio revolution that’s happening. We’ve got podcasting, we’ve got, you know, live audio with clubhouse, we actually know…

22:36

Facebook is coming out with a clubhouse competitor. 

22:38

Totally. And in fact, this is actually very cool. Facebook is coming out with the ability to, they’re going to start featuring podcasts on Facebook.

22:52

So that’s why I heard about that, too. 

22:54

Yeah, so imagine that’s going to increase time on platform. So you got to be thinking about as you know, business owner, again, again, you don’t have to be the one executing on this stuff. But you do need to be aware of where the social trends are, where the marketing trends are, because this is how you take your business forward, you know, the next two or three years, and Daniela just gave this beautiful story of like, switching from blog, blogging to podcasting is kind of the primary focus and vehicle and just how it expand. I know Daniela, this is like, absolutely, you followed that, or you got ahead of that trend, actually, I think you were really, you know, insightful about where that was going. And very visionary of you, and you got ahead of it. And now look, you’ve got one of the top podcasts, the top podcasts in your niche, one of the top podcasts in business, I mean, it’s amazing. And so this is where you as a business owner, and so often we just need time to think, you know, thinking time to literally just sit down and say, Where do I see the trends in my community? Because your local, you know, spa owner, you really need to understand that. Who are the influencers in my community? Where do I see the trends on social media? Where do I see the trends going in marketing and how are we stacking up and usually, if you think through those questions, you’re going to unlock so many cool things and it doesn’t, it’s so cool, because it means you’re not copycatting anymore, right? You’re actually creating a vision for you that feels really unique to you, that’s your voice and, and then to watch your team execute that and, you know, unfold that vision is really quite a spectacular thing. 

24:32

And I think that so many brick and mortars think, Oh, well, podcasting is for online businesses or podcasting is, but like as a spa, I think podcasting is one of the greatest things that you can do. If you create a podcast that’s all about like you create a podcast for your ideal client. That’s local, like one of our gals in Growth Factor last year, was planning to do a podcast about aging, and then her city name, right. So she is coming up as searchable. She’s coming up, it’s local, she can talk to other business owners, other wellness experts, right. And so she is the host of this local podcast talking about anti aging or someone else that I was talking you wanted to do like fabulous over 50 in such and such city, right, brought to you by skin rejuvenation spa, the owner of skin rejuvenation spa, right? Like, it’s you have these pieces here that we have to think bigger than advertising and brand awareness is not just buy my thing, here’s an ad buy my thing. It’s building that brand relationship on a bigger level, becoming a name, a household name and your community. So that when someone does think, Oh, I need a wax, or I need my brows done or whatever, you’re the first person that comes to mind and and podcast, remember, are searchable now for SEO. So they are coming up in Google searches. So if you have a podcast titled, whatever in your city, and someone is searching for, you know, whatever insert that thing lashes in your city, or waxing in your city, you’re going to come up in a search result. So it’s I mean, there’s so many pieces of then creating the social ads that can go to this to build that awareness of who you are as a company.

26:30

Absolutely. And the more stuff you have like that, right. So taking this now to the ad strategy, the more stuff you have like that the more effective your ads will be. It’s really hard to run ads, when you have zero assets, you have to at least have a landing page and some good ad copy and things like that. But as you continue to deepen your reputation in your local community, now you’ve got some local media mentions, or some events, you know, some local events that you’ve been involved with, you can start running ads to that very, very cheaply. I mean, I’m talking $1 to $2 a day type of thing, raising that awareness. And then as people come to know your name, you can retarget those people into your conversion offers, right? So that’s where you’ve got your intro offers, whether it be monthly promotions, or evergreen promotions, whatever it is you’re focused on. That’s where people now have trust and rapport built with you. And your advertising can really take off. 

27:30

So let me just understand this. Yeah, I can do a Reel.

27:36

Hmm.

27:36

I can put some ad dollars behind it, and create an audio video view audience in this particular zip code. Right? 

27:47

Yep. 

27:47

And then I can retarget those people in that zip code with my ad. So if I did a Brazilian wax reel, and I want it to be shown to all the people in my zip code, I’m gonna throw 100 bucks behind it. Then I have an audience that I can target that anyone that watched this video for X amount of time, right? The three second rule, I think, three seconds, then I’m going to show them that ad, which is going to make my ad a lot cheaper. Yes. And people that are actually interested in Brazilian waxing, and they already know your name. 

28:23

Absolutely. Well, actually, this is kind of an advanced technique, what you’re describing Daniela, but really, it’s not it’s easy to do. Facebook has made it so easy, and it’s so effective, right. And the other thing that you can do is take some of your more popular Reels. Now, if it’s a Reel, that’s not relevant, but it’s super popular, that’s not going to be effective, right? If you’re opening your fridge, and it for some reason…

28:48

Your dog running around or something. 

28:50

Yeah, your kids like, even if it’s so like it was just so popular, it obviously needs to be relevant to whatever you are advertising for. So you can take some of these Reels that are really relevant to your offers, again, monthly promotions, something that you run all the time, whatever that offer is, and that can be your creative you can use those you can upload those videos as your creative so maybe it’s for you know, it’s a video type. It’s a video views ad or it’s a video conversion ad you can use you can reuse all of these creative pieces for your advertisements, which is pretty awesome. So just think about you know, how can you multipurpose this stuff. I’ve also seen people be you know, just thinking organically again have a lot of great results from putting their reels in their emails, and getting people to click over to whatever the thing is, you know, whether it be again a landing page with an offer back to your social media to follow you. So just really think about recycling these beautiful pieces of marketing collateral because they can be working for you so much harder.

30:03

Okay, so we have talked about a lot of information, I want to wrap up with one last question that might be kind of a long answer. But what do you see in the future? Like what’s coming with Facebook with everyone talks about the algorithm changes, like what is happening? What do we need to know, as business owners for the future?

30:23

And I don’t know how long this will be relevant for about tell you what I see in the very near future. Okay, so Facebook, who’s paying the bills at Facebook, it’s us, right? It’s advertisers, small business owners, etc. Their job is to keep us happy. And right now, they kind of have a little bit of a hornet’s nest happening with the updates with iOS not being able to track people are taking their budgets to all sorts of other platforms, right? They’re trying Tiktok and Pinterest. And what does Facebook want, they want to keep us on their platform. So I’m going to just I’m going to stake my my place in the ground, mark my words, I bet over the next six to 12 months, I’m going to give it a 12 month span, it might be a little bit less, it could be a lot more. I see Facebook, loosening the algorithm on a few things. 

31:11

Number one, I think that organic posts like on your Facebook page, you know how those have been dead for a long time, I see that having a major comeback, I would not be surprised if we see over the next few months, our posts suddenly getting more and more reach. I also wouldn’t be surprised if we see things. So I have always been a proponent of especially last few years conversion ads, right, you have to set up the pixel and do all the tracking and blah, blah, blah. What used to be super effective was boosting posts and website traffic ads used to be amazing. And then you had to learn all of these other strategies because of how Facebook kind of categorized all of us and learned our behavior. And, you know, they were going to say purchase ads for people who wanted to get purchases, and they were going to save traffic ads for people who just wanted more blog views or things like that, right. So I would not be surprised if traffic ads take off. Again, I would not be surprised if boosted posts were super effective again. So it would not surprise me if Facebook in kind of creating this, this new world of advertising, if they kind of go back to how things were two or three or even four years ago, when it was much simpler, much easier to do. There wasn’t as much advanced tracking with pixels and whatnot, while they figure out truly what will become the new solution, right. So I just would not be surprised if you start noticing. I don’t think there’ll be any announcements or anything like this. But as you’re, as you’re putting stuff out there, you’re boosting posts, don’t be surprised if you start to see these things be being like, Whoa, this is like taking off like Facebook is really prioritizing that. And the last thing I’ll say and this is kind of a trend that’s been happening for a while is groups have been hot. Facebook’s been very vocal about it’s all groups on Facebook. So if you’re on Facebook, I have seen so many local businesses be so successful with Facebook groups. And the way that you become really successful with a Facebook group is yes, you’re promoting your services in there. But you’re also promoting community events, you’re also promoting other businesses that are complementary to yours. And you’re getting a group, you know, you’re getting like a group of business owners in there who are really providing relevant local content, right? So it has to be local content. nobody really cares about you know, like, I don’t know, generic stuff has to be local, relevant content. But if you’re like, Hey, you know, who’s coming to yoga this week, yoga on the beach, like, I’ll be there, my whole crew will be there. You know, we’re partnered with the local community at yoga, yoga studio, and we hope to see so many…

34:00

We’re seeing right now that’s just working incredibly for brick and mortar spa, moms groups, so much. 

34:08

Sure. 

34:09

We all like you’ll see pretty much every town has like Moms of Bethesda, Moms, Moms of Potomac, you know, there’s like all these different moms groups, and they’re posting in there. Oh, I went to this spa, into this. I have one gal who’s getting 10 new clients a week for months from this group. And one group months. 

34:33

Yeah.

34:34

If they just keep going and going and going. So it’s like how can you even if you don’t want to manage your own group, how can you participate add value don’t be spammy and promotional, but how can you add value share information and people will talk about you, you know, in those groups, one of the best ways to that, that’s referral, like, right there.

35:04

Referral on a in such a hugely scalable, you know, way like, and that’s what I do all the time, like, Oh, I want to, you know, I want to find a new salad place, oh, I’ll go post it in the moms group, you know. So, think about moms groups, think about having your own group, the big thing to know, as groups is, that’s what Facebook is putting at the top of the newsfeed. So every day, we have 1500 posts, in any given day, new posts in our newsfeed. And businesses typically are the, you know, the bottom of the pile, the low, you know, five to 10% is all your business posts. But you know, what’s not, is the group post, group post go right to the top of the newsfeed. So be thinking about how can you leverage again, looking at whether what the trends are right now? And how can you leverage that for your business?

35:52

Okay, one last thing, Messenger ads you had mentioned, Messenger ads are working really well for brick and mortar.

36:01

Messenger ads. And I will also add in one more note, but I won’t talk about it lead generation ads as well, that’s where people stay on Facebook to fill out forms Messenger ads. So the thing with Messenger ads is you need to be on it with your backends. So somebody messages you, you really have a short window, I would say maximum four hours to respond to them, or they’re not going to be very interested. Now you can create little bots and things like that, to kind of make sure that they get an instant response. But you can also just do it manually. And I’ve seen so much success with this so easy. You have a great video or great image of you, your your studio, your team, whatever your services, whatever it is you’re promoting, right, so some image or video that’s relevant to that great copy. By the way, I recommend you go through a testing protocol, the way I teach it, you’re testing, copy imagery and your headlines. And then obviously your offers landing pages etc. If that if those apply. And then you’re just encouraging people message us, just message us and then you.. 

37:06

Something your front desk can be responding to. 

37:09

100% absolutely, you’re taking, you’re simply taking that conversation over to messenger, it could be messaged us to schedule your first appointment messages to schedule your free consultation, whatever it is, message us take that over to messenger follow up on that backend, make sure you’re following up plenty of times. And you know template, the response test, test, test, test, test all of your responses, template, the ones that work best for you and your team. Put that into a Google Doc make that you know your standard operating procedure and, and just scale it, scale it until you full capacity. I mean, really, that’s kind of the simplified, but actually it’s a really simple funnel. But that’s like a very simple explanation of it. But take that and run with it. Messenger ads are doing great right now.

37:56

You love that. Okay, so you guys, if you want to learn more about Facebook ads from the best of the best go visit Successful Ads club, Tara, where what is how can they find you? How can they learn more about ads?

38:08

Absolutely. Successfuladsclub.com is our main page. I also have a toolkit that I made from literally hundreds of conversations with business owners, I took the major themes of those conversations packed into a toolkit, you know, 21 words to avoid headline, swipe, headline swipe ideas that you can just steal from us and use for your offers. It has everything in there. So you can go to Youradkit.com, Youradkit.com and you can get that for free.

38:40

We all include these links. So yeah, we’ll include it all below to make it much much easier. But yes.. all of that out. You guys. I have built my entire business using Facebook ads. And Tara if you guys hear me talking about when I didn’t know what funnels were Taro was the one that I called. And I was like, What is the funnel? What is everybody talking about? I feel like I’m going crazy. Tara is the one that so patiently explained to me everything with ads with funnels, all of that stuff way back in the day. And here we are seven years later to…pretty well. 

39:20

Amazing. Daniela, thank you so much. It was so lovely to be here with you and your amazing audience today. You know, I just want to add one last thing like you were the real deal and people who learn from you are so lucky. And I know that you you change so many lives with how you serve your aestheticians and spa owners and you change their financial futures your change their family legacies and really I mean it goes such a hard thing for you and I know it goes so beyond the surface of what you offer which is absolutely amazing but it goes into trouble. really changing lives because you’re teaching them how to change lives for other women and I was one of those women that had their lives, you know, changed by the spa industry in such a profound way and that’s why I’ve been so passionate about it ever since. So yeah, you’re just you’re you’re the real deal and people who learn from you, I mean, just the way you teach them and the systems you teach them and how to create all this freedom for themselves. I just, I just want to say that you are absolutely incredible.

40:29

Thank you. I will receive that very much. All right, you guys if you want to keep this conversation going head on over to the Spa Marketing Made Easy Facebook group, right the group’s. So head on over to the group. keep the conversation going ask us questions, let us know how we can help and support you, and we will catch you on the next episode. 

40:51

As always, if you want to keep the conversation going, I want you to head on over to the Spa Marketing Made Easy Facebook group. The number one free resource out there for aestheticians focused on business building. We’ve got weekly marketing tips, a monthly goal setting and planning session, monthly aesthetician business book club, plus a community of thousands of aestheticians. Committed to business building in the spa industry. I’ll see you there.

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EP 237: Mastering Your CEO Mindset and Goals with Tanya Dalton

You’re ambitious, a dedicated friend, family member, boss, a dreamer who knows they’re destined to live a life they love and do work in the world that, well, doesn’t even feel like work. 

But the *how* piece of that equation can make some days feel like you’re working your buns off, but for what? 

As my guest on this episode of Spa Marketing Made Easy explains, leaning into your North Star of your vision, mission and values to create a dream life you love doesn’t happen by accident. 

It happens on purpose. 

Joining me in this conversation is Tanya Dalton, a best-selling author, speaker, sought after business coach for women entrepreneurs, and nationally recognized productivity expert. 

In addition to her work as an author being featured in the world’s leading publications including Forbes, Fortune, Inc., Fast Company, and Real Simple, Tanya is also the Founder + CEO of inkWELL Press Productivity Co., a multi-million dollar company that provides tools to help women do less while achieving more.

Whether you’re brand new to being a business owner or you’re a well-seasoned spa owner, I just know you’re going to love Tanya’s nuggets of wisdom and genius insights surrounding how to dial in your vision to craft a game plan so you can do more of what lights you up in life and with your work. 

In this episode, you’ll learn:

  •  Why it is absolutely critical to figure out what you want out of your life, relationships, and your work so you can build a company that supports your vision and fuels it
  • The purpose of casting a 5, 10, and 20 year vision and the pieces and steps that go into crafting it and getting clear on what that vision is
  • Reverse engineering your vision into realistic goals and how to devise a plan to meet them
  • Why everything you do in making progress toward your goals and vision needs to be rooted in purpose

References Mentioned in Episode #237: Mastering Your CEO Mindset and Goals with Tanya Dalton

 

  • Learn more about Tanya’s work, books, and programs via her website and listen to her podcast, The Intentional Advantage
  • Read Tanya’s book, The Joy of Missing Out and pre-order her upcoming title, On Purpose
  • Connect with Tanya via Facebook, Instagram and Twitter
  • To keep the conversation going, ask questions, and connect with other like-minded aestheticians building thriving careers, click here to join the free Spa Marketing Made Easy Podcast community. 

As a thank you for being a loyal listener to the Spa Marketing Made Easy podcast and for helping us to reach more aestheticians working on growing their businesses and creating a life they love, we have created a free resource portal just for you! 

 

It’s totally free to join, and for every 25 reviews we get on iTunes, we’ll add a new training video, PDF, tracker, or other high-value resource to help you grow your aesthetic business!

 

If you have yet to leave a review, click here to leave one on iTunes, and click here to access the free resources already unlocked


Episode Transcript

00:00

You’re listening to the Spa Marketing Made Easy Podcast where we share simple, proven strategies just for spa industry professionals to help you get more clients in the door so that you can create a life you love. I’m your host, Daniela Woerner licensed aesthetician and spa marketing strategist.

 

00:22

Hello my dears, Daniela here and welcome to another episode of the Spa Marketing Made Easy Podcast. Now I just finished an interview with an incredible woman, I think she might be a new business bestie she and I were just aligned on so many topics. That was incredible. And her name. My guest today is Tanya Dalton. So we had an incredible conversation about the journey of the business owner. So we start out as a solopreneurs, solo aesthetician, we move into the entrepreneur role. And then we step into the role of the CEO. We talk about that as the spa CEO. Alright, but more importantly, how do we move through that journey with intention? So that you’re actually creating the life that you want to live? Are you looking for time freedom, financial freedom, lifestyle freedom, right? You’ve got to know what it is that you want to create, in order to create it and we talk about all of that today. 

 

01:22

Okay, so let me do a quick read of Tanya’s bio and then we will jump right into that interview. So, Tanya Dalton is a nationally recognized productivity expert, best selling author and speaker. Tanya serves as a growth strategist for female leaders in corporate and entrepreneurial sectors. In addition to having her book being named one of the top 10 business books of 2019 by Fortune Magazine, Tanya’s podcast the “Intentional Advantage” is ranked among the top 50 in the self improvement category on iTunes. She’s also a featured expert on several networks, including NBC and Fox, and as a VIP contributor for entrepreneur.com. Tanya has been featured in some of the world’s leading publications, including Forbes, Fast Company, and Real Simple. She has been awarded the Elite Enterprising Women Award and has been named the female entrepreneur to watch in the state of North Carolina. Tanya is also the founder and CEO of Inkwell press productivity company, a multimillion dollar company providing tools that work as a catalyst in helping women do less while achieving maximum success. Okay, incredible woman, great interview. Let’s go ahead and jump right in. And be sure if you have any further questions to head on over to the Spa Marketing Made Easy Facebook group. Alright, enjoy. 

 

02:42

Alright, Tanya, welcome to the Spa Marketing Made Easy Podcast, super excited to have you here. Something that we were talking about a little bit before the show was that transition that happens from solopreneur, to entrepreneur, to CEO and, and they really are three very different distinctions. And I see spa owners going through that so frequently, in you know, they start out as an aesthetician they want to become, you know, they’re going to be solo because they they want the freedom and the flexibility and the financial growth and all of these things. And they’re like, what the heck, it’s just mean, I’m wearing all these hats, I actually create a prison cell for myself, instead of what I actually wanted. So I’m so excited to get into this conversation with you today.

 

03:35

Yes, I am to because it really is a progression. Because a lot of times you start your business with what you are excited about what you’re passionate about, and you are doing everything you love the idea of you’re not taking orders from somebody else, right, you’re your own boss, but your hands are in everything, which makes it almost impossible to feel like you can step away that you can have the freedoms that you’re really looking for. Because you’re so in the thick of it, you’re in the weeds of it. And so then you move into entrepreneurship, when you start to bring on some team or you start to see how you could expand, whether that’s big, you want to be really large, you can be an Amazon or whether you want to be just you know, a $500,000 spa, or you want to be a million dollar spa. And so then, as you move into CEO ship, that’s really when you get those systems in place. That’s really when you start delegating more, that’s when you are able to truly start to unplug from your business. And that’s when I say you really do get the freedom. You can have the time freedom because you can step out of your business because it’s designed to run without you that’s what being a CEO is it’s really stepping into the visionary role even more so that maybe you’re not working directly with clients or if you are it’s at very high level, very select clients that you’re hands on with. Most of your time is being spent on the visionary work on where is it you want to go. Really leaning into what I like to call your Northstar, your mission, your vision, your core values, where it is you want that business to go long term, to create that lifestyle for yourself. And so it is every time you get to these those levels, there’s a mindset shift that has to happen as well.

 

05:15

So let’s, let’s talk about this a little bit. Because, you know, how do you figure out what you want? And I know that that seems like, what kind of What do you mean, but when I find when I’m talking with spa owners, and I’m trying to get them to imagine like, how much do you want to pay yourself? How many hours do you want to work? Do you want to go on vacation once a year, twice a year or half the year? Like, what do you want for yourself? People will get to this place where they they can tell you? Well, I know I don’t want that. And I don’t want that. But they don’t actually do the work to figure out what makes them happy? Do they care more about time freedom? Do they care more about financial freedom? Like? How do you start that process of figuring out what the heck that you want? So you can build a company that supports that?

 

06:07

Yes, I love that question. Because you do want to know what the vision is? Do you want to be a giant company? Do you want to be a smaller, medium sized company, there’s no right or wrong? whatever size that works for you is really what you want. But how do you know what you want? So I like to say you have to look backwards?

 

06:26

Go ahead.

 

06:27

I was gonna say doesn’t it come down to first, like, if you figure out what you want, you have to figure out how much you’re going to pay yourself to support that lifestyle, which in turn would figure out the size of your company? Right? 

 

06:40

Yeah, I do this, I do this exercise with a lot of the women that I work with where we we talk about redefining success, because I think the problem is a lot of times success is defined by society, by other people by what things look like. And really when we stop, and we look at who we are. And I don’t just mean who we are as the business owner, but who we are, you know, with our our lives in all different aspects, what is it that we want, with our relationships with our finances, with where we live, and, and all of those pieces of ourselves. So if we don’t take time to really think about what we want that to look like, it’s hard to work backwards. So we actually go through this exercise where we, we look at where we are today. And we write that down. Okay, this is where I am, this is what things are like, for me, these are the things I want to do. Here’s where I’m living. This is what my relationships are like, these are the things I want my money to do for me. Because I think so often too, when we talk about money, we think of it just as money in the bank, but money is the vehicle, right? It’s the vehicle to get you whatever it is you want. Are you wanting to save up money so your kids can go to college? Are you wanting to save up so you can live on a sailboat? For five years? Are you wanting to save up money? Because you want to be able to buy houses for your children? when they when they grow up? What What is it you’re wanting your money to do? What does that look like right now? What is your money doing for you right now? What is your life look like? Then let’s just go forward just a year? Because that’s manageable? Well, what does it look like there? What do you what do you dream your life could look like? Then we work on the finances last, right? What does it look like? What kinds of things Am I wanting to experience? What kinds of relationships Am I going to be in with my kids, especially that’s a big driver with where your kids are thinking about their ages and the things that have been going on in their lives? And then figuring out okay, what is my money need to look like? So I can have that lifestyle? Then we move five years, then we move 10 years, and then we even stretch over to 20 years. And that makes it where it’s like these little incremental steps. And we think about how we want our lifestyle to look, is it really the time freedom? Is it the location freedom? Is it the financial freedom, which of those freedoms are really showing up in those dreams? And I like to tell people, if you’re feeling really stuck, like you’re saying, I just have no idea. Start with regret. Because we move away from pain so much faster than we move towards pleasure. It’s true, right? You think about. 

 

09:10

Yeah… 

 

09:10

We don’t decide to lose weight until your pants get too tight, or you know, we don’t decide to quit working so hard until you realize that your kids haven’t seen you for three weekends in a row, that we have that pain, and that moves us to where we want to go. So when we go and we look at our past, if you look backwards, that tells you where you want to move forward. Start with what you do regret. What are the things that you wish were different? Don’t spend time in Oh, this is terrible. Think about what life could look like the opposite of regret is resilience. So let’s choose the opposite of that as you’re visioning and you’re thinking about what that future looks like, what is the opposite of what you didn’t like, look like for you? 1 year, 5 years, 10 years down the road, and then we figure out the finances.

 

09:54

I love that and a couple of reasons. One, I think that women in general have so many blocks around money, that when you tell the.. yeah, the stories, the blocks what it means that it ended up, right. But when you put a tangible thing behind it, then it’s it makes it easier, I need this much money. This is the tool that’s going to provide me with this, it’s easier to visualize, it’s easy to easier to comprehend. It’s a, it’s a goal to work towards. So I love that aspect of it. And I love the aspect of moving away from pain. Something else I wanted to kind of add to that is if you are someone who has such a blessed life, that you don’t have a tremendous amount of pain, then I think another beautiful thing to do is look at other people and see, oh, I would love to have a life like that. That looks interesting. How can I do that? You know, that was actually how I found the coach that I work with. Now one of the reasons I started working with her is because of her lifestyle. I said, She’s got two kids, she works from nine to three. That’s what I want, right? How did she do that? If she can do it, I can do it too. And trying to figure that out. So I think that’s another great tool that you can use if you can’t figure out what you want. But look at other people and realize if they can do it, you can do it.

 

11:28

Yes, it really mining those. Those qualities that you admire in those people. What is it I admire? Because we don’t get caught up in comparisonism. Right? Because that’s easy to do. I love that though. Looking at other people and and figuring out, what is it in their lifestyle that I really admire? What is it that they are doing that looks exciting to me? What what draws me to them? What attracts me to whatever they’re doing, and start pulling from that. That’s a great idea. I love that.

 

11:56

Okay, so we’re figuring out what we want. We’re creating these, we’ve got these plans, the 1, the 5, the 20. You know, I think there was a 10 in there also. So then when we’re creating our action, right, it’s not just okay, this is what I want to do in a year. Well, now we get into the reverse engineering, right, like, so how do we actually take the the steps and do the work to make that happen? Oh, well, I, I love…

 

12:29

 And can you answer that in three minutes, please?

 

12:33

Well, it’s funny is I actually answered this question in like 63,000 words, because this is actually the topic of my next book that’s coming out in October with Harper Collins. It’s called “On Purpose”, the busy Woman’s Guide to an extraordinary life of meaning and success, because we don’t know what we want. And we we set these goals arbitrarily. And we do it because we look around and we think Well, everybody else is doing these things. So I should do them. But if we choose instead to look at the long term at that 5, 10, 15, 20 year vision of where we want to go and start backing it up to decide, okay, if this is what I want, in 20 years, what do I think that’s what’s what’s your potential is? What do I think is possible? So you start with what’s your potential? What is possible in three to five years? what’s possible then? And if I back that up even more, well, if that’s what’s possible, what is practical, in 12 to 18 months. And that’s what’s practical, right in 12 to 18 months, then if we back that up even more, and break that down into maybe like three or six month periods, what do I want to prioritize? Those are really your goals. So we start with that long vision, and we almost work backwards. Like it’s a map, instead of saying, this is where the map is taking us. How do I work backwards from where I want to go back to where I am today? And that’s how we choose what our goals want to be or what would they I hate to say should look like because I don’t like shooting on ourselves because I think women do that far too much. But this is this gives you an idea of, of the direction you want to go in. And I think that’s really when our when our lives, when our businesses become more meaningful, because we’re making progress towards that big vision, what we’re what our potential is. And the thing is, is so often we set goals, and then they happen and then we think now what there’s this goal setting paradox of what do I do now I’ve already gotten to this goal, where do I go and you start looking around for something else. If you continually make progress by setting goals, one after the next that are aligned to that 20 year vision, that’s when they begin to have a lot more meaning that’s when the goals become part of the fun of living every day with that unhurried purpose.

 

14:46

Okay, so tell me the story of how this book came to be because there’s got to be something behind it. What happened in your life, what happened in your business that prompted you to write 63,000 words. On honest because I mean, it’s it’s a question that, you know, gets asked, I think by business owners that gets asked by busy moms that gets, you know, just women in general. So what was the thing that triggered this or the catalyst that kind of brought this book to life? 

 

15:20

Well, I feel like I hear from a lot of women that they don’t understand their choices. In my first book, “The joy of missing out”, really is about how we make meaning in every single day. And so how do you prioritize? How do you understand how to create a life that feels good every day? And people were asking me, Well, what does it look like bigger than that? How does it look like, you know, if I look even further than just this today, or this week, and for me, I knew that I started my first business back in 2008. Because while I started with $50, it was supposed to be this little side business that I was just doing, because it was something fun, I was a stay at home mom, I thought this will be great gives me something to do. And my husband travels or he did travel. He was doing international marketing. So he would leave our home in Dallas, Texas and you buy an around the world ticket, that was the name of the ticket, he would fly and he would touch every continent, he’d be gone for like three or four weeks. And I had a conversation with him on one of these trips, where he’s on the other side of the planet, where I’m telling him all the things that kids are doing. And I’m excited. You know, this is what Kate saying today, and this is what’s happening here. And he got really quiet. And he said, I’m missing everything. I’m missing the moments, I’m missing the milestones, I’m missing seeing the kids. And I was like, No, no, no, you’re not. You know, they love you. It’s good. But I hope the phone that night, and I realized that my husband was not satisfied with what he was doing. He was he wanted to be more of a hands on dad. And I stood in my kitchen. And I thought you know what, I’m going to grow this business to absorb his MBA income. So he can come and work alongside of me. And I’m going to make this happen that became this giant vision for me if this is what I really want to do. I want to create a lifestyle for ourselves. I wanted the lifestyle freedom so that he could come work alongside of me.

 

17:09

And this business that you have right now…

 

17:14

Okay, this is something different. Yes. And, you know, I had no business experience zero. So what an audacious crazy thing to even think to yourself. But I sat down, I mapped out what this could look like. I had a husband who traveled for three or four weeks at a time I had two tiny children playing at my feet. But within about a year, I made that goal happen. He started working with me, we’ve been working together since 2009. We sit across the desk from each other, where I like to say work together like 28 hours a day. But it works for us. And so I created that life for myself, which then we chose to move we had location freedom. Well, we can live anywhere. Why don’t we move to Asheville, North Carolina, we have location freedom. And then I looked at my husband and I said, I’m not really fulfilled by what we creates, like I love you, I love working with you. But the business itself wasn’t what I wanted. And he was like, we have the freedom to do what we want to do. So that’s when I shifted into owning Inkwell press and doing the coaching. And for me, that purpose of creating that lifestyle for my family where my husband could be the one who makes lunches, who drives carpool, who’s here every day. And that was really my purpose. And people have always asked me like, how do you make that happen? How do you make that work? And I’m like, I am nothing special. You can do it if I can do it. It’s just really knowing where you want to go. So taking that big vision backing it up and deciding what those goals were. That’s what’s led me to where I am today. You know, multiple seven figure business owner with two companies and and loving what I do with my husband by my side.

 

18:54

So that’s really…

 

18:55

Its reminding me, um, we interviewed Jamie Curran Lima on the podcast, when her book “Believe it” came out. I don’t know if you’ve read that book, but it’s an incredible book. 

 

19:06

I have it on my list. 

 

19:08

Yeah, so she is the founder of It Cosmetics. She built it from her living room and then sold it to L’Oreal for 1.2 billion within 10 years incredible woman and it was very similar. It was it was her main point was through all the ups and downs all the behind the scenes, all the crazy things. She believed that she could. And so often I think women say like, oh, who am I to do that? How could I could never build a seven figure business. I could never, you know in spa. So often we’re hearing like, you know that first big milestone is when you hit 100,000. And everyone’s like, I want $100,000 business. I’m like, do you because what are you paying yourself if you’re if you have 100,000 business, you need much more than that. You want to pay yourself If 100,000 or more, right? 

 

20:01

Yes, so there’s a big difference. 

 

20:03

But that is a very much a mindset piece I think that so many entrepreneurs and specifically female business owners struggle with is what is possible for me? What do I believe I can actually do and it sounds like you have a healthy confidence, which is great, right? Like going into business, like knowing your strengths, knowing who you are, and what’s possible for you. And I think also, knowing what the end goal was, was, I want to retire my husband, right? or retire him from this job, so he can work with me. That I think is a bigger motivator, then I want to make seven figures. Right? 

 

20:48

Absolutely. 

 

20:48

It goes into I have this family, I have my kids, etc. So I think that what I’m taking away from this, for the spa owners that are listening is, again, what do you want? What’s the end goal? What motivates you every single day? To get out of bed? Is it having your spouse be able to, you know, to retire your spouse is at that lifestyle freedom, right? And, and you guys, just because you have a brick and mortar spa, does not mean that you can’t have that lifestyle freedom, when you step into that role of CEO, and you are truly an owner and not an operator? You go wherever the heck you want. Right? So it’s not …, there are no limits on what is possible. There’s really not you’ve got to believe in yourself, you’ve got to do the work, right? I’m sure like for you building to seven figure companies or multi seven figure companies. I’m sure you weren’t just like eating bonbons on your couch every day, you know, like…

 

21:58

Yeah, that sounds really nice…  

 

22:01

No, you’re right… 

 

22:02

But it’s still like you do it with that bigger vision of this is more important. And this is going to push me out of the fear of going live on Facebook or push me out of the fear of negotiating the terms of my lease or whatever the thing is that needs to happen to take your business to that next level.

 

22:32

Yes, absolutely. I couldn’t agree with you more. It’s the limiting beliefs. We are the ones who put limits on ourselves, there are no limits, other than the ones that we place upon ourselves. And we can look at obstacles, we can look at stumbling blocks, and we can say these are in our way. Or we can say these are opportunities for me to be innovative. And for me to be creative. And for me to find ways around it. I like to say when I see an obstacle in my mind’s eye, I see it as a wall. And my choices are, I can go around it, I can I can climb over it, I can tunnel underneath it, or I can just burn it to the ground. All of those are options, but they’re all opportunities to do something on your own terms. And you’re right, having that six figure goal sounds like oh, that’s gonna motivate me. Is that really what’s gonna motivate you? Or is it what that six figure lifestyle gets you? Whatever that is. That’s why it’s so important to really redefine success on your own terms. This is, you know, when I go through businesses, we do a three step system of simplify, and then scale and then strategize that simplify is really important. What is it that you want? How can we really focus in. Let’s stop offering everything to everyone and choose instead to narrow in and decide what it is I want to offer to what I call your soulmate clients? What is it that I feel on fire for? And let’s do more of that, because we tend to undervalue joy. We tend to undervalue happiness. we’re so busy looking at that bottom line, what does the P&L statement say? That we need to make sure that we’re really taking care of ourselves with with how we feel with our own well being that needs …

 

24:18

The craziest thing is that when you do, your numbers actually go up.

 

24:23

Oh, when you…

 

24:26

Personal growth leads to professional growth, which leads to more personal growth, which leads to more professional growth. When you get to those new levels and you take care of yourself. And you really look at your mindset to make the shifts and the adjustments needed. That’s how you achieve the next level every time you’re ready to uplevel in your business. The first thing you want to do is take a look at your mindset. What are the lies that I tell myself about what’s possible and what’s impossible? What are the things I tell myself that I don’t know how to do when I all I have to do is figure out how to do them right or Who not how it right figure out who can help me do that instead of me figuring out how to do it. So there’s lots of ways we can look at these obstacles as opportunities. And that is 100%, a mindset shift.

 

25:13

I love that. Okay, so in wrapping up, what advice would you give to a solopreneur? Or spa owner? Right? Who’s wanting to get to that CEO role? What’s the one thing they can do today just to get that even if it’s just an inch closer? 

 

25:34

Yeah, I would say really, really look at delegation, not as decision making, understanding that when you get that art of delegation, under control, and you’re able to delegate and have other people step in, that’s when you start to get that first taste of freedom. That’s when you begin to understand that not everything has to be done by you. So starting with delegation is a really good place to really begin your journey into up leveling to that next because you can’t get there on your own. That’s almost impossible to get there by yourself. Not without wearing yourself out. So take a step towards delegation and understand it means taking you out of the decision making process sometimes and giving them some ownership. That’s what I think is the next best step.

 

26:19

I love that. Okay, so where can people find you follow you stay in touch with you learn about your books, all the things? 

 

26:27

Yes, well, the best place to find me is at TanyaDalton.com. You can find links to my podcast, the Intentional Advantage there you can find links to my books, and even to my products, I planners and those types of things and my coaching programs. So TanyaDalton.com.

 

26:42

Perfect, we’ll include that link. Thank you. So so much so informative. I feel like we’re so aligned in so many different ways. I love that. And for those of you listening, if you want to keep the conversation going, please head on over to the Spa Marketing Made Easy Facebook group, tag me, let me know your questions, and I will catch you on the next episode. 

 

27:02

As always, if you want to keep the conversation going, I want you to head on over to the Spa Marketing Made Easy Facebook group. The number one free resource out there for aestheticians focused on business building. We’ve got weekly marketing tips, a monthly goal setting and planning session, monthly aesthetician business book club, plus a community of thousands of aestheticians committed to business building in the spa industry. I’ll see you there.

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EP 236: Using Personal Strengths in Professional Negotiations with Susie Tomenchok

If the word “negotiation” jolts your shoulders up to your ears and immediately makes your face contort, you can’t afford to miss this episode of Spa Marketing Made Easy. Because whether you like it or not, as a spa owner and CEO, negotiation is a non-negotiable part of business.  

Now, here’s the good news, anyone can learn to be a smooth sailing negotiator, and here to show you how is my guest, Susie Tomenchok. 

Susie works with individuals and organizations to amplify their strengths and unleash their internal negotiation skills to increase professional success. 

With over twenty-five years as a corporate executive with a Fortune 50 company, Susie and her team were responsible for end-to-end agreements valued at more than $80M annually and her portfolio of clients included ESPN, Discovery, Viacom, NBC, CBS and Boeing. 

From big boardrooms to small business owners, strengthening your negotiation skill set is for everyone. 

In this episode, we discuss:

  •  Why most small business owners need to shift their mindset around negotiation and understanding its role in business beyond what we commonly think of (i.e. salary negotiations)
  • How to get out of your own way when it comes to ressisting negotiation and leaving opportunity on the table 
  • What it really means to be a good negotiator and why you don’t have to be inauthentic, but rather embrace your personal strengths to leverage negotiations 
  • The breakdown of Susie’s P.A.C.E. Method and how it facilitates walking away with a win-win situation

References Mentioned in Episode #236: Using Personal Strengths in Professional Negotiations with Susie Tomenchok

  • Connect with Susie via her website, Instagram or LinkedIn
  • Get Susie’s free Negotiation Love resource by clicking here
  • Learn more about your Myers-Briggs Type Indicator 
  • To keep the conversation going, ask questions, and connect with other like-minded aestheticians building thriving careers, click here to join the free Spa Marketing Made Easy Podcast community. 

As a thank you for being a loyal listener to the Spa Marketing Made Easy podcast and for helping us to reach more aestheticians working on growing their businesses and creating a life they love, we have created a free resource portal just for you! 

 

It’s totally free to join, and for every 25 reviews we get on iTunes, we’ll add a new training video, PDF, tracker, or other high-value resource to help you grow your aesthetic business!

 

If you have yet to leave a review, click here to leave one on iTunes, and click here to access the free resources already unlocked


Episode Transcript

00:00

You’re listening to the Spa Marketing Made Easy Podcast where we share simple, proven strategies just for spa industry professionals to help you get more clients in the door so that you can create a life you love. I’m your host, Daniela Woerner licensed aesthetician and spa marketing strategist. 

 

00:22

Hello my dears, Daniela here and welcome to another episode of the Spa Marketing Made Easy Podcast. Now let me ask you a question. Are you comfortable negotiating for yourself? Have you ever asked for a raise? Have you ever negotiated terms of a least, maybe you have. But my guess is that it probably wasn’t your favorite thing to do. But it is my belief that we as women, if we want to step into more leadership roles if we want to bring our companies to new levels, it’s a skill that we have to master. That’s why I’m so excited to have my friend Susie on the show. Now Susie is an accomplished businesswoman. She’s had an incredible corporate career. And now she helps women master the skill of negotiating. So let me take a quick second here and read you her bio. And then we will jump right into the interview.

 

01:13

Susie Tomenchok, works with individuals and organizations to amplify their strengths and to help unleash their internal negotiation skills increasing professional success. She believes that when people learn how to use negotiation strategies every day, they create more opportunities to walk away with a win win. It matters most. With over 25 years as a corporate executive with a fortune 50 company Susie and her team were responsible for end to end agreements valued at more than $80 million a year. Her portfolio of clients included ESPN, Discovery, Viacom, NBC, CBS, and Boeing. She’s now committed to helping clients, especially female executives, or business owners, to choose a better option than being the path of least resistance and letting their careers or businesses happen to them, not for them. 

 

02:06

It’s a great interview. I love everything that Susie talks about. And I especially love, you know, what really hit me was talking about how we show up in business, when we are asking for the things that we need. When we are negotiating. We’re actually teaching our children, specifically our daughters, how that skill, right because kids learn from watching as well. So that was a big piece for me that really stood out. And you know, as a way that I can educate my daughter is by making sure that I’m negotiating that I’m asking for the things that are important for me. Great episode, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Alright, let’s go ahead and play that interview. 

 

02:48

Susie, welcome to the Spa Marketing Made Easy Podcast. I’m so excited to have you on. I’m so excited about this conversation. Because I think it is so, so important, not only I mean for women in general, to talk about negotiation to talk about how to improve that as a skill set, right and going after what it is that we want, but incorporating it into our everyday lives. But also as business owners, there’s so many pieces, so many areas where women just don’t have that same. And I’m over generalizing here, but we don’t tend to go after things as aggressively. as men, we don’t we tend to say, Oh, that’s what it is, instead of asking for more or compromise negotiating on the topic. Why do you think that is?

 

03:46

Oh, it’s such a good question. And there’s been a lot of research around it. And a lot of it has to do with just that mindset that we expect to be seen. Or we expect if we work really hard, we’ll get what’s deserved. And so just changing that mindset, I mean, little simple things that we could do to just create curiosity, asking more and thinking about things in pieces of leverage, and discovering and just thinking through the conversation can really shift that mindset. I think just the awareness around that can help you understand and be aware of what’s happening around you.

 

04:28

Yeah, I, you know, I didn’t really have awareness around the, you know, you always hear about like, women get paid less than men. It’s like 76 cents on the dollar or something like that. You know, women are not in leadership roles, like all of these stats, but I didn’t really understand the mindset piece or how, how it was affecting me as a woman every single day of my life, really until probably about 10 years ago. And because you think I don’t feel Like I’m being discriminated against, or I don’t feel like this or that, you know, but when you realize that as women, I wouldn’t apply for a job if I didn’t have every single criteria. Right? Where I think there was a study that men, if they just have three, they’ll be like, great. I’m qualified. Right? So, really like, I don’t know if that’s because of the way that we’re raised or because like, I have no idea the why behind it. But I think just being aware that sometimes things are so ingrained in who we are, as people, we don’t even see it. We don’t even realize that pretty much everything can be a negotiation. If it doesn’t break the laws of physics, right? I mean, yeah.

 

05:48

And yeah, for sure. And, and one of the things another mindset shift is, the research does show that women are great negotiators when it’s not for themselves. So how do you reframe that, you know, if you are negotiating something that feels very personally, personal. How do you reframe that for advantage for your family? Without feel, you know, like, how do you do that? Or it’s for your team, or even as, as a woman, doing something different just to show other people another way? So how do you it’s a very personal but reframing that in a way, and then thinking, the other stat to that is really interesting, as men are really good at negotiating ambiguity, where women need to know the details. So like, if you’re told, you know, this position is $120,000 value, then the woman’s going to fight for that, because she has a reason she has the facts around it. So even if you make up the facts as business owners, about what you’re willing to have, having that clarity, can also lead you to the end. Because if when women have that power, how do you leverage that to get what you want?

 

07:06

What are some? So, you know, I read your bio, in the beginning, you’ve had a really impressive career. How do you, can you just give us the highlights of how negotiation helped you build the career that you have? Like, what where were you using it in your life and your business in the day to day? Like, it’s not always just I’m negotiating for my salary. It’s, you know, everyday conversations, how did that help you create this incredibly remarkable career?

 

07:45

It’s, it’s such a great question, I had some aha moments for myself. One was being a mom of three girls. And seeing that even early on, they started asking more and advocating for themselves because of, they kind of mimicked me, there was one situation where my two daughters were on two computers and other parts of the home. And she was saying, you know, I understand your proposal, I appreciate it. But we need more strategy, less tactics, do it again, and come back to me. And then they have since admitted they’re all in their 20s now that they used to have a target strategy about getting what they wanted at Target and thinking about timing and asking and who has relationship equity and, and knowing you know what to present to me. So that was an aha for me around how important it is to show others and that happens every day. And then, when I was at corporate, one of the big aha moments for me, my coach, my peer was a man. We had been were pretty high up in the organization. We both were given new offices at overlook the mountains had a conference table, that both offices were exactly the same size. And I was so happy that they gave me this great office on executive row, you know, I was just appreciative. And my coach said to me, you know, the difference between your office between yours and Dean’s is his isn’t at the end of the hallway. So he has the corner office. You need to ask for the corner office. I was like, Oh, I don’t want to ask for the corner office that’s so selfish. And he said, you know, for other women you need to so I went to my boss said I wanted it she was just like she kind of knew me and she was like seriously, but she went to the COO and said, you know, she wants to corner office blah blah blah took like a week later and they and she came back to me and said the seat, COO had thought about that, but they like you better so they want you closer to them and they intentionally just put them on the end of the hall. And I was just like shoo you know, like done and Just because I did it, I was proud of myself for doing it. But my coach said, Do you know why they didn’t give you the corner office, because they knew you wouldn’t say anything. And they knew he would fight. So I thought, don’t be the path of least resistance. And so I that awakened my awareness around, it happens all the time around us. And if we’re not aware, we’re opting out of an opportunity, maybe don’t get that project or those things. So it happens all the time, in retail as business owners, so…

 

10:34

What I’m thinking about so much as you know, a lot of aestheticians, they’ll start out solo, a lot of times, they’ll be in solo suites, which are these kind of one person, one organization, or a franchise owns all these different rooms, and there’s all these independent businesses within there. So they’ll start out there, build their books, and then they go out and do a storefront. So they’re renting a space. And there’s so much that goes into opening a storefront. And it starts with, you know, negotiation around ti dollars, right, and negotiation around price per square foot, and all of these things. So many just go in there and say, what’s the, how much does this cost per month? Right? And sometimes that can make such a huge difference in the like, if you’re doing a build out, you know, what type of improvements is the landlord growing to pay versus what you can pay the landlord’s paying it, then you automatically have that extra money for advertising, marketing, hiring, right? But if you don’t ask, it’s not going to just be given to you.

 

11:44

Yeah, completely. And if I was going to coach, somebody that was looking at those things, I would I, I have a framework, and I’m going to give something to your audience to help them think this through. But it’s all about preparing an understanding that the negotiation starts at the first conversation. And so asking out of curiosity, before you get to the specifics, understanding the lay of the land, asking questions to understand what is negotiable.

 

12:17

So let’s use let’s use a storefront. Okay, as an example, and can you walk us through your framework? And how someone would negotiate renting a space? Like what are the what types of questions would they be asking? Out of curiosity?

 

12:33

Yeah, so as so the framework is, is four parts, it’s just a way of thinking. One is, its pace, prepare, aware, close and evaluate. Okay, so the most important part of negotiation that’s often overlooked, is preparing. And that’s because we don’t like to negotiate. So we don’t want to spend that time we just want to get in, get it over with. But preparing is really important. so in this situation, I would say, who can you ask who’s rented from this person before? Or this organization? How does it work? How do they make decisions? Get the lay of the land, ask what had worked before? What are some of the terms that they use, you know, if you’re new to negotiation, just ask a lot of questions, ask other people around you, then find out and understand who the decision maker is. And what are think through what’s important to you. And what’s important to them. Maybe timing is important to them. Maybe those adjustments and things that you want to have control over that you mentioned, is important to you. But really being clear about all of the pieces of leverage that they have, and that you have. And then being clear about what you want making a list of all the things that are important to you, in the short term and the long term. Because the key is going to aware is being as objective as you can. So being really clear about what you want to get out of it, and what their interests are so that you can really adapt and change in the moment. Does that make sense?

 

14:16

It does. And I think also like, being able to think clearly, and without emotion during the negotiation piece because we can get we all have our own triggers. We all have our own stories. And, and just knowing what that walkaway point is, like, you know, for me, I’m thinking about this situation when I bought a car and I was like, Okay, well, I’m just, this is my walkaway point. I knew that in my mind. And if I didn’t get the price down to that particular point, then I was just going to walk away. So it makes so much sense that you know that ahead of time and I’m not going to go in and be like, Oh, I really want the car. And it’s this much. Like I, I did not let my emotions get in the piece get in the way, because I had made that I had thought it out and looked at my budget and did all this stuff ahead of time. And I think that’s so important in in business, right to know, like, okay, there’s so many opportunities, if this one doesn’t work, if this one doesn’t get you what you need, there will be other opportunities. 

 

15:36

Absolutely. And there’s the emotion does cloud your thinking, positive and negative, both ways. So you should never make a final decision without it. And I love what you said, have a walk away, and be ready to walk away. And the way to make that really comfortable is have options, even if it’s not what you want, have looked at other places that you could go so that you feel more comfortable, because that will drive you to be more objective. So having those those pieces is absolutely important to think about how do you get objective, and also framing it as you know, this is benefit to them, too. So this is a win win, how do I make them feel like they got what they needed. But I have to ensure that I get what I need to.

 

16:26

And I will say I mean, this is a little bit off off topic. But I think that it’s relevant. You know, we talk about removing the emotion, and all of that, I do believe that emotional intelligence and having emotion around our team and team development can be a really beautiful thing that women are so good at. But it’s understanding and like on the Myers Briggs, I’m an F, like, I am an emotional person. But I have had to train myself to how do I think of objectively about this decision? How do I any decision that I’m making in business, for my business for my company, for the company of my clients that I’m, you know, coaching. How do we look at that from a purely objective standpoint, and make that decision?

 

17:21

Mm hmm. And you can become more, it’s so important, it’s you can become more objective by having more data. Like, I know, you like data around how things go and looking back at that, you know, for your business to say, Oh, yeah, negotiation, all the data, even if you have options, and you know, square footage from other places, comparatively, and you look at the story, and you frame it, right. If you have that plan, it is all about managing your reaction, your emotion, even pacing, because you can come across really confident. And knowing your position, which can give you power just by applying silence. And sometimes when we’re nervous, understanding, we’re going to be nervous, sometimes we just have to say Okay, and now I’m going to be nervous, because this is a high stakes negotiation. How am I going to leave that in my body and just get through it? But knowing that having that objectivity having those decisions already made about your walkaway, then in that moment, you don’t have to think about it, you’ve already made that choice.

 

18:34

Okay, so let’s continue through the framework.

 

18:38

Yep. So awareness is is getting in there, you already have your prep done, you really know what you’re, how you’re going to get through it. It’s being aware of those triggers that you have being really clear about your frame, like really thinking about what is your story, and what is important to you and how you want to walk that person through the negotiation. You want to continue to have them look at it from your perspective. So that awareness is about what is happening to them. You also don’t want them to go through emotional ups and downs. Don’t make them frustrated, if you feel like they’re getting a little bit out of control. How can you take a break? How can you keep them also objective because that’s the key. And then understanding where you are in it don’t oversell when they’ve agreed to it, know that it’s time to move to close. And then in prep, you can also anticipate all of those relationship things along the way. And there’s awareness around that even personality types. You know, there’s a lot of data around salespeople and with introverts, extroverts, and ambiverts and they found that ambiverts, the middle between extroverts, introverts are actually better at negotiation. extroverts talk too much. They don’t know when to close, they don’t have that awareness, the other person doesn’t feel heard. And then introverts sometimes don’t speak up enough to tell the story. So I think about that is how do you think about your personality and give equal time? or allow that to happen? This is a relationship. So how do you do that? That’s all about awareness.

 

20:29

I love that. I love that and you have a little handout or download for everybody

 

20:34

Perfect, that’ll be so helpful. Because I’m like, trying to like go through all the steps. In my mind, it’s so helpful to have something visual that as you’re because anything that does make you a little bit nervous or uncomfortable, like, the more you do it, the better you get. But for me, I find that if I have a checklist, or I have a resource or something, it just makes it so much easier. That’s like, Am I doing this? Am I doing this? Right? Absolutely. I love that. So any other advice? for aestheticians, for business owners, in how to incorporate negotiation just in their day to day lives?

 

20:34

Yes.

 

21:15

Yeah, that’s such a great, I love to talk about silence. And the thing about negotiation, if you practice it every day, you do find those tactics that work for you, or you get comfortable doing it when the stakes are high. So you really want to have that. So like you said, the more you do it, the more you understand how to get better at it. And so the key is how do you practice those things? So some of the things that people practicing silence with somebody that you know, and changing the pace of a conversation, it’s just interesting to see what happens.

 

21:49

Well, and I know with when we’re recommending homecare products, so often, like I say, a confused mind always says no. So if you’re making recommendations and and for us as aestheticians, we’re, so I’m interested in ingredients, and the technology and the science and all of this kind of stuff. But if you’re talking to someone, right after they have a facial, and they’re in facial fog, and they’re all blissed out, and so happy, and you’re talking about glycosaminoglycans and changing…, they’re gonna be like, what, what is this going to do for my skin? And so sometimes just saying, here’s the homecare that I recommend, this is what I want you to do, and the am and pm, you know, just making the recommendation and then being quiet, and letting them make the choice or letting them answer the question. And I think knowing that their decision, if they say no, they’re not saying no to you as a person. They’re saying, No, that doesn’t feel like the right fit like that homecare, or whatever. It’s, I think a lot of times in negotiation, just my personal belief. We take it personal. If someone says no to us, and it really has nothing to do with us. It’s we either haven’t communicated the value of what we’re offering in a clear way. And we need to work on how we can communicate that in a better way. Or it simply just wasn’t the right fit, right? 

 

23:30

Completely. Clarity and that awareness around the know, like and trust factor, because after you’ve given a service like that, the trust is really high. So they don’t need a lot of information. If you say this, you know, either. And if they’re not ready to say yes, just have that awareness around how where the relationship is.

 

23:51

Mm hmm. Yeah. No means not yet.

 

23:55

 Yes, it’s a starting point in this. 

 

23:59

Yeah. Very good. So Susie, tell us where people can find you follow you stay in touch with you. I know, we’re going to include our links below this. And we’re going to include your resource, but what’s the best place to kind of stay in touch with what you’re doing?

 

24:12

Yeah. So all the places where you can find me is my Susie Tomenchok , which I have to figure out an easy way to dispel it. But the good thing is, it’s the one I use everywhere. So you can find me on Instagram, and I’m very active on LinkedIn. And because I work with a lot of corporate people as well, and then we will have that resource. And if there are any questions for your audience, I would be more than happy to, if they reach out to me, help them guide them and help them figure out what negotiation strategies they can start to use.

 

24:50

I love that. Thank you so much for your time, Susie. This has been incredible and I know it’s going to help some of our spa owners, all of our spa owners, right anyone that puts into practice just advocating for yourself. You know, knowing that no means that yet right it’s just the start just the start. I love that. All right if you want to keep this conversation going head on over to the spa marketing Made Easy Facebook group. We love to talk strategy we love to talk business, we love to talk all of those things. So hang out in there join us and we’ll catch you on the next episode. 

 

25:26

As always, if you want to keep the conversation going, I want you to head on over to the Spa Marketing Made Easy Facebook group. The number one free resource out there for aestheticians focused on business building. We’ve got weekly marketing tips, a monthly goal setting and planning session monthly, aesthetician business book club, plus a community of thousands of aestheticians committed to business building in the spa industry. I’ll see you there.

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EP 235: How a CFO Helps You Meet Your Big Vision Goals with Kristi Thiel

Finances are the ultimate two-sided coin of business — on one side, it’s the lifeblood that can lead to quite a bit of entrepreneurial pressure. 

And on the other side, having a financially successful business is one of the keys to relieving all the pressure and unlocking true freedom, both in time and ability to do what we want not just with our business trajectory, but our lives. 

And it’s this aspect of business finances that my guest, Kristi Thiel, and I are discussing in this episode of Spa Marketing Made Easy. 

With more than 15 years and a unique blend of accounting and financial advisory experience under her belt, Kristi’s role as an Outsourced CFO is to help companies implement a strategy that ensures growth and profitability on track to achieving the long-term financial success they envision in both business and life. 

Tune in as we talk about Kristi’s approach to finances and how a CFO can function as a collaborative partner in your business to ensure that all your financial bases are covered. 

 

In this episode, we discuss: 

  •  How a CFO differs from a bookkeeper and CPA, and what they uniquely can do for a business in regards to finances 
  • What CFOs do and how they work to help you achieve your goals 
  • How to know when it’s the right time to consider bringing on a CFO and what pieces you need to have in place to onboard one effectively 
  • Kristi’s unique approach and on boarding process that helps her client get a grasp of how their financials look today where they’ll move in the future to support both personal and professional goals

References Mentioned in Episode #235: How a CFO Helps You Meet Your Big Vision Goals with Kristi Thiel

  • Learn more about Kristi and her work as an Outsourced CFO via her website ktcpallc.com
  • Connect with Kristi on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn 
  • To keep the conversation going, ask questions, and connect with other like-minded aestheticians building thriving careers, click here to join the free Spa Marketing Made Easy Podcast community. 

As a thank you for being a loyal listener to the Spa Marketing Made Easy podcast and for helping us to reach more aestheticians working on growing their businesses and creating a life they love, we have created a free resource portal just for you! 

 

It’s totally free to join, and for every 25 reviews we get on iTunes, we’ll add a new training video, PDF, tracker, or other high-value resource to help you grow your aesthetic business!

 

If you have yet to leave a review, click here to leave one on iTunes, and click here to access the free resources already unlocked


Episode Transcript

00:00

You’re listening to the Spa Marketing Made Easy Podcast where we share simple, proven strategies just for spa industry professionals to help you get more clients in the door so that you can create a life you love. I’m your host, Daniela Woerner licensed aesthetician and spa marketing strategist.

 

00:22

Hello My dears, Daniela here and welcome to another episode of the Spa Marketing Made Easy Podcast. Now when I ask our students to create an org chart for the vision of their company in the next year, I’m always surprised at how many leave off the finance department. Now, I know that you may not have a finance team on site at your spa. But they are an incredibly important piece of your business structure, a division of your company that can really make or break you. That’s why I was really excited to talk to Kristi Thiel about the role of your financial team. What should they be doing? What should you be talking to them about?

 

01:03

So we got into the difference between a bookkeeper a CPA and a CFO. So a CPA is a certified public accountant. A CFO is a chief financial officer. So really interesting to look at what each of these roles do and how they can help and support your business. Now, remember that in creating your business, you need to begin with the end in mind. What is it that you’re wanting to create for yourself? So if you’re wanting to create a multi six, seven, or even an eight figure company, you’ve got to start acting like a multi six, seven or eight figure business owner today. And how do they act? Well, I can tell you for sure that they have a financial team that they are consulting with that they’re being guided by, that’s helping them make the right decisions as they grow into the next level. 

 

01:59

Now, I’m going to go ahead and do a quick read of Kristi’s bio and then we can jump right in to the good stuff. With more than 15 years and a unique blend of accounting and financial advisory experience. Kristi’s role as an outsourced CFO is to create and help companies implement a strategy that ensures growth and profitability on track to achieving the long term financial success they envision. She becomes a collaborative partner in your business to ensure that your financial bases are covered. So go ahead and listen and take some notes and start to think about what your financial team looks like in your company. Alright, let’s go ahead and play that interview. 

 

02:42

All right, Kristi, welcome to the Spa Marketing Made Easy Podcast, I am so excited to have you on to have this conversation we met online. I always think that that’s funny, we met on LinkedIn reached out you sent a really, really nice post a lot of times like on LinkedIn, they have those spammy messages and yours was really something about it just caught my attention. And and we had a great conversation about what is a topic that I think is so important in spa, and that’s for those spa owners that are at that like 200 – 300k and revenue. And they’re wanting to get to a million. There’s this missing piece that nobody really talks about. And that is the relationship that you have with your CPA, your CFO, your your finance team in general. And that’s what you do. That’s what you are, that is your world. And so I felt like bringing you on to really shine some light on that topic was going to be just so so valuable. 

 

03:53

Thank you. Thanks for having me. 

 

03:55

Yeah. So you know, we did your bio in the intro, but can you just give like the in a nutshell version of how you got to where what you’re doing today?

 

04:07

Yeah, so I have over 15 years of experience, not just an accounting, but also, I’m a former financial statement, auditor, I’ve done tax, I’ve done consulting, and I’ve also been on the private side. And I took what I really liked about all of those things, and decided that I wanted to serve companies in a greater way. And in order to do that I needed to provide services in a different way. We frequently see companies that interact with their CPA once a year or on a quarterly basis when they feel that they need something but CPAs have the power by having the exposure to all of those numbers and that information and exposure to a greater number of companies to see what works well. And so in this role, I have The ability to jump in and help was so much more than just producing financial statements or filing tax returns. So really, the purpose of it is to help provide some clarity, and align financial goals with the strategic plan and the vision of the company, and really help find a path forward so that business owners can get where they want to go.

 

05:25

So for listeners who are not clear on what these different roles in the financial piece are, can you explain the difference between a bookkeeper, a CPA and a CFO?

 

05:41

Okay, so a bookkeeper is making sure that the books and records are in order, everything that has happened in the past is recorded, it’s reported, and you have that information to use a CPA can help with anything from audits to tax preparation. CPAs also do consulting. But a CFO really is responsible for the financial management and the strategy of the company. So they are more involved in the company and the operations, financing and investing decisions going forward.

 

06:19

Yeah, and this is something that that we learned, you know, as we were growing as a company, it’s like, so often as the business owner, like the first goal is just getting to 100,000. Right? It’s like everyone wants to get there. And then you get into those multi six figures. And you’re like, Okay, yes. And then the next hurdle is a million. But there’s so many, like, Are you an LLC? Are you filing as an S corp? Right, like structure changes that can that’s a question you would talk with a CFO or CPA about, right? 

 

06:53

Yes. 

 

06:54

How? What is your strategy bringing on employees? What is your strategy and investing? What is your strategy, like? All of these types of things that are kind of like, you know, you’re no longer running a hobby business like this is really being developed into a company that you are creating, rather than just creating a job for yourself? And how do you structure that? And I feel like so often in the world of business, we talk about the marketing and the social and all the like, sexy parts of it, right? But the, the part that’s really going to save you thousands of dollars or push you over that hurdle is understanding and having a clear strategy for taxes for paying yourself or under for understanding long term growth of the company, because no one wants to get hit with a huge tax bill without being prepared for it, right? 

 

07:53

Yes, definitely. So in a spa, you have a multitude of things that you’re doing as a business owner or managing operations. And there’s so there’s a combination of so many different things that can bring you to the right place. But getting all of those pieces in order. There are so many details involved in that. And so what a CFO can do is really take a step back from those tiny details, and get it to the high level and help guide you in that direction.

 

08:27

I know for us over the pandemic, and our like whole finance team. They were the ones that were like, okay, here’s what the ideal is, here’s what the PPP is, here’s what you know, they were giving us all the information and digesting, like, okay, the Cares Act came out. And this is what this means, right? Like, if you don’t have a CPA or a CFO that’s helping guide you through those pieces. That can be so challenging, because you’re just trying to like, how am I going to keep my business afloat with all of this that’s going on, right? So it allows you to, okay, I don’t have to figure that piece out. My finance team can tell me how you qualify for this, or here’s your options. Here’s what we suggest or don’t suggest, here’s the pros and cons, right? Like looking at all of those pieces, which I think especially in the past year and a half, right, it’s just been so incredibly important, important to understand what all of that is.

 

09:35

Yes, and CPAs, and especially CFOs. They have exposure and they have the resources at their fingertips, to know what’s going on and what’s available to be used and how to get there. There’s so much in the laws, regulations and the rules for obtaining different sources for funding and so to look into that you really need someone who understands the lingo and Instead of trying to read the whole thing yourself and get to that point.

 

10:05

So, at what point in business, does it make financial sense to bring someone on that is a CFO?

 

10:15

So I think you’ve reached the point where you know, what you want your company to look like, and you’ve started operating. And you’ve already got your accounting is in order, and you’re able to analyze your financial performance. But you really need that strategic step forward, on the financial side.

 

10:37

So you know, what you want your business to look like, like, you have your 5, 10, 20, you have your exit strategy, right? You know, like, when the business is fully realized? What is it going to look like? Am I going to sell? Am I going to create a, a company where I just truly become an owner and not an operator. You know, all of these pieces we need to think about? And so often I see spa owners, especially if they’re solo, there is no, they’re just going day to day, right? They’re not thinking about what is the long term growth of the company. But yeah, to hire a CFO, and give them the direction of the goals that you want them to achieve? You’ve got to know like, what you’re going for? When do you want to retire? When do you want to? You know, are you going to hire a team? Are you going to sell, right? Because I imagine your financial statements should be done with all of that in mind.

 

11:40

Yes, definitely. And it also depends on do you have a plan for succession? Do you have a plan to sell. But also, I think a lot of owners, they have that dream and vision in mind before they start. And then they get into operations. And some of that gets forgotten because they get in the routine. And it’s tough to break that mold or start hiring staff when you’re not quite sure how to go about doing it. So there’s definitely some guidance that’s needed there. But it’s really that next step, once you’ve reached multiple, six figures, and you’re wanting to scale and grow, and you have different services in mind that you’ve considered offering that you think would complement everything else you do. So well. And so you need that guidance financially on how to get there.

 

12:36

Does the CFO, you know, one of the questions that has been asked regularly with our Growth Factor clients now who are doing kind of what is my exit strategy? What does that look like? And, and so much of it, especially as a small business owner, you know, a lot of these businesses are single member LLCs, or, you know, LLC filing as an S Corp. And your personal finances are very much involved in that. So does the CFO of your company, you know, if you hire a CFO, are they looking at your entire financial health and well being including? You know, like the finances of your spouse, when you are wanting to retire? If you have children? If you’re saving for college? Is that a CFO? Or is that financial advisor? Like how do you piece all of those things together to set the goals for your company based on what you’re wanting to create for yourself?

 

13:41

Right, so a CFO in a traditional sense, working directly for a company, they’re focused on that company, some outsource CFOs, myself, in particular, we have a big discussion upfront about personal goals, and where they are and where they want to be personally, because it all flows into the business. And what you decide to do financially affects your personal side as well. And so there’s an element of Yes, it’s easy to make a decision based on immediate bottom line impact. But you also have to consider what that means for your life and does it fit with everything that you want. So I definitely include that as part of the process.

 

14:28

So walk me through what your onboarding process is like when you bring on a small business.

 

14:36

Yes, so I like to have an initial consultation. I like to make sure that we’re a good fit. You need someone that you can work with and trust to help you in that strategic direction. And you need to be fully aligned on where things are going to go and how you’re going to commit to the process to make things happen and reach those goals. Maybe adjust as needed as time goes by the last year and a half has taught us how to adapt to change quickly. So, you know, it’s, for me, it’s about finding a good fit to, and you want someone who’s going to meet all of the needs that you have in mind for this type of service. And so what I do is first consultation, make sure we’re a good fit. And I also make sure that, you know, the spa owner is fully committed to the process, open to making changes to make things happen, open to potential investments in technology. And just being part of that process, and committing to meeting every month, so that we can work through things and know where things are going and where we stand and what we’ve done well, and what needs to improve. And then we read me on a regular basis. But there’s also ongoing support in between, they can pick up the phone or send me an email. So we can talk through things. Some clients prefer like a Google Sheet with objectives and tasks so that we can update each other regularly, without having to interrupt the day to day. So what I love about what I do is that is truly different for every client, I like to really customize based on the needs of my client. So usually, in that initial consultation, I can identify three to four key areas that we can really work on that would help reach those financial goals. So that’s kind of what drives how we set up what we’re doing.

 

16:46

That’s great. And this is, as I’m listening to you talk, I’m just thinking like, this is the definition of working on your business, you know, when everyone talks about like working on your business, rather than in it, this is like one of the key pieces, you’ve got marketing, PR fulfillment, and finance as really like the core areas of any company. And finance is something that, you know, it’s not uncommon for me to be talking with an aesthetician and then to have no idea what they’re even what their revenue is in October. And it’s like they’re pulling their stuff together for taxes. And it’s just one of those things that, you know, numbers can be scary for a lot of people. But it is it gives you so much power and so much peace of mind to really understand and own that part of your business. And shift the shift the the story or block or whatever it is around money that I’m not good with money, or I don’t like numbers or whatever it is like when you pay attention to it and learn and grow. It shifts that story. And that shifts so many other things in just your day to day operations of how you’re running and operating your business.

 

18:08

Yes, definitely. And, you know, part of the process is reverse engineering what you’re doing. So with business owners, I often get them to shift their thinking on expenses. What’s the benefit of that? Are you making a return on that? And so, you know, you talk about wanting to have a certain amount of profit, well, how do we get there, we have an idea where our sales are going to go based on history and trends, and you know, seasonality during the year. And so you have that, and you know how much you want your profit to be. And so then expenses, it really becomes going through those big expenses. And is this benefiting me? Or is it something I can live without?

 

18:56

Right isn’t an investment that you’re actually getting an ROI on? or… 

 

19:01

Yes.

 

19:02

Yeah, that’s huge. That’s for sure. 

 

19:05

Yeah. 

 

19:06

Okay. So any, what advice in wrapping up? What would you What advice would you give to an aesthetician who’s kind of on the fence and saying, Is this an expense to hire a CFO? Right? Is that an expense? Am I in that space? What benefit Am I going to get? Like? What would you say to that person?

 

19:29

Yes. So the intent of my process is to get a significant return and help give you that clarity so that you know where to go forward. And so, you know, if if we’re not getting a return, there’s a problem that needs to be fixed right away. And usually, if there’s a little hiccup in the process, it’s because there hasn’t been the full commitment to tracking and meeting those goals. Anytime you skip a monthly meeting or you know you’re not tracking your goals, you’re kind of letting things slide a little bit. So the point is when we have set meetings every month, there’s accountability there. When there’s tracking of goals, there’s accountability, to make sure that things are happening.

 

20:20

Love that. Perfect. So where can people find you follow you stay in touch with you? 

 

20:25

Yes. So I have my own website. I’m listed as Katie CPA LLC. And I’m also on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.

 

20:37

Perfect. Well, we will include all of those links. I encourage you spa owners to check Kristi out, do some research, you know, look into your finances, ask yourself, Am I giving my finances the attention that they need that they deserve? to really take me to the next level, because that is such an important piece in your company. So if you want to keep this conversation going, please head on over to the Spa Marketing Made Easy Facebook group we’re going to we talked about all kinds of good stuff in there, around structure, around finance, around sales, all of these cases, head on over in the group tag us if you have any questions and we’ll catch you on the next episode. 

 

21:25

As always, if you want to keep the conversation going, I want you to head on over to the Spa Marketing Made Easy Facebook group. The number one free resource out there for aestheticians focused on business building. We’ve got weekly marketing tips, a monthly goal setting and planning session, monthly aesthetician business book club, plus a community of thousands of aestheticians committed to business building in the spa industry. I’ll see you there.

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EP 234: Excelling with Ecommerce in the Beauty Space with Matt Edmundson

Ecommerce has been the spa industry’s hot topic ever since last spring when the pandemic forced spas across the globe to close, however, ecommerce is nothing new. 

Now, that begs the question: have you already missed the boat on starting your own ecommerce store? 

Well, slight spoiler, but the answer is “NO!” 

And my guest on this week’s episode of Spa Marketing Made Easy, Matt Edmundson, shares why (among a plethora of other tips and takeaways you can’t miss). 

A quick intro of Matt — he is a real-world eCommerce entrepreneur as well as a coach who shows newbie and seasoned entrepreneurs alike how to leverage the power of ecommerce. 

As the CEO of the Jersey Company, a group of health, wellness and beauty companies that deliver products and services to over 120,000 loyal customers and has achieved global sales of $75 million, it’s fair to say that Matt is a true ecommerce expert. 

But beyond the monetary success metrics, he’s walked the journey of ecommerce entrepreneurship since 2006, an era where online shopping was still a bit of the Wild, Wild West and you could get away with the “if you build it, they will come” philosophy. 

In this interview, Matt shares not only his story, which illuminates just how much of an opportunity there currently is in the ecommerce beauty space, but he also provides a wealth of tangible tips and takeaways that will be helpful whether you’re in the considering-jumping-into-ecommerce phase or looking to scale what you started last year.

In this episode, you’ll learn: 

  • How ecommerce has shifted in the last decade (and how it hasn’t), and why now is one of the best times to jump into building this arm of your business
  • Where ecommerce can fit under your existing brand as an extension or how it can become an entirely new business altogether 
  • Matt’s top tips for those considering embarking on their ecommerce journey and how to set yourself up for future success
  • The triangle of business and which two qualities will be most vital for your brand and growth
  • Matt’s key metrics that he advises every ecommerce business keep their eye on and the top digital marketing strategies he would deploy if he was just starting today 

References Mentioned in Episode #234: Excelling with Ecommerce in the Beauty Space 

  • Connect with Matt through his ecommerce consulting and education business and tune into his podcast, The eCommerce Podcast 
  • Visit Matt’s ecommerce beauty store, Jersey Beauty Company 
  • Connect with Matt and Jersey Beauty Company on LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube
  • Read TechCrunch’s article, “COVID-19 pandemic accelerated shift to e-commerce by 5 years”
  • Learn more about website platforms that offer ecommerce solutions such as Shopify
  • To keep the conversation going, ask questions, and connect with other like-minded aestheticians building thriving careers, click here to join the free Spa Marketing Made Easy Podcast community. 

As a thank you for being a loyal listener to the Spa Marketing Made Easy podcast and for helping us to reach more aestheticians working on growing their businesses and creating a life they love, we have created a free resource portal just for you! 

 

It’s totally free to join, and for every 25 reviews we get on iTunes, we’ll add a new training video, PDF, tracker, or other high-value resource to help you grow your aesthetic business!

 

If you have yet to leave a review, click here to leave one on iTunes, and click here to access the free resources already unlocked


Episode Transcript

00:00

You’re listening to the Spa Marketing Made Easy Podcast where we share simple proven strategies just for spa industry professionals to help you get more clients in the door so that you can create a life you love. I’m your host, Daniela Woerner licensed aesthetician and spa marketing strategist. 

00:22

Hello, my dears, Daniela here and welcome to another episode of the Spa Marketing Made Easy Podcast. Hey, were you hanging out with us for the Spa Business Bootcamp? Well, if you were on day five, when we were talking about the scale phase, I was telling a story about a gentleman who started an ecommerce store and had done 75 million in sales to date $75 million in skincare sales from his ecommerce site. Incredible. That gentleman’s name, that man’s name is Matt Edmundson, and he is the guest on our podcast today. Now, Matt shares some interesting marketing ideas and strategies on how to promote your store and simultaneously help people solve their skincare problems. I love that bit. He was also really honest, and saying that whatever time you think it’ll take to grow your ecom store, which is essentially starting an entirely new business, right, you should actually double that. We always think, oh, if we, I want to start an ecom store, and I want to start a private label winer or I want to become a spell coach or whatever those things are. It is essentially starting a whole new business. And there’s so many more things that go into it. That, you know, you don’t know what you don’t know. So I was I love that he was just really honest and saying, you know, you should actually double that. If you’re wanting to have, you know, the wide reach that that he was and I know so many of you are. So let me just do a quick read of his bio and then we can jump into all the good stuff. 

01:58

Okay, so Matt is a real world ecommerce entrepreneur and coach, His goal is to show aspiring entrepreneurs, sure and simple steps in getting a digital business off the ground and seasoned entrepreneurs on how to take their business to the next level. Matt is also the CEO of Jersey company, a group of health, wellness and beauty companies that deliver products and services to over 120,000 loyal customers. The group includes the e commerce business jersey beauty company, which went online in 2006. And since then, has achieved global sales of $75 million. That’s over 7 million products shipped. Matt also has a podcast where he chats with experts in the field of ecommerce on how to grow and develop online businesses. Alright, there it is, you guys, this is a good one. Without further ado, let’s go ahead and play that interview. 

02:53

All right, Matt, welcome to the Spa Marketing Made Easy Podcast I’m so excited to have you on because ecom has just been it’s been exploding, I read, I read an article that ecom grow advanced five years, just in the pandemic of the technology. And, and I know in our community in the spa world, there’s so many people that are wanting to add this additional stream of revenue to really not have all their eggs in one basket. Right. And we’ve seen a lot of success. But I think that your experience your background, you know, we briefly did your bio and the intro, but you run a beauty ecom site, it’s done over 75 million in sales you’ve been in from the beginning from you know 2006 even before that you’ve got a love for spa like what what are your thoughts on what has happened in the past year, like what has been going through your mind as it goes to ecom you know, like seeing all of these people and seeing everybody trying to jump into this, this business model?

04:04

Yeah, it’s an interesting one, isn’t it? I think you’re right, the the amount of people that have decided to ecommerce businesses over the last 12 months has has shot up at some incredible rate of knots. And of course, the amount of people wanting to buy online has also shot up. And so I have not read that stat that is accelerated five years in the last year. But it wouldn’t surprise me if that was actually the case. Because I mean, you’ve seen it yourself. You’ve done it yourself. How much more stuff do you now buy online? This, you know, compared to this time last year?

04:37

Yeah, I think Shopify did an article about it. Well, we’ll put the link below this episode. But yeah, I can send it to you as well. But it was a really interesting article that Shopify did about just the advancements in ecom and how comfortable people are and you know, now we’re seeing grandmas on Zoom. And, you know, before it was one of those things, that’s like, ah, So what do you think is the biggest difference between the ecom world in 2006? versus the ecom world today?

05:08

Oh, geez. So very good question. I would say everything has changed, but nothing has changed. And it’s a really, I appreciate that sounds like a bit of a strange statement to make. But everything has changed in terms of the way you do marketing, for example, has changed, but the principles haven’t changed. The way you run your ecommerce website has changed, but the principles behind it haven’t. And this is this is one of those things that I think people find hard to understand the basic principles, the fundamental principles of business, give a great product, give a great service, be kind to your customers, gentlemen, give good value. those principles are still true in e commerce are true in 2006. They true in 2021. Okay, so those things still the same, the way we fulfill that the way that we do that has probably changed a lot since 2006. The classic example for me would be Google AdWords, you know, when we first started, Jersey, Jersey beauty company in 2006. Honestly, it was back then a case of if you build it, they will come. Because that’s what happened. We we literally set the site live on evening in August. And I had not told Google I you know, we there was no such thing really as Facebook marketing back then. We just literally set the site live. And then the next day, we come in and find out people have sort of somehow found it an ordered product offers. And we were amazed that that doesn’t happen anymore. You know, I mean, very, very rarely. I mean, we were very lucky with our timing. But yeah, so I’d say the principles are still the same. The outworking of it has changed quite a bit.

06:47

So being lucky with the timing, do you feel like this is a good time? or a challenging time to get into ecom?

06:59

Oh, good question. Yeah, I would say both. It’s good, because there has never been such a demand for online as there is right now. Nor has there ever been such an acceptance of online as there is right now people have gotten used to buying online. And not just, you know, beauty products and buying literally everything you know, the local restaurant has is now doing takeout, you know, you can order online, whereas before you had to go in the restaurant and sit down. But I think people have gotten used to this idea that actually online is much more accessible. So you’ve got a much bigger, much bigger market, I would say it’s challenging, because actually, it’s like I said before, you know, we had this, if you build it, they will come. It’s not like that anymore. I mean, we were talking about that before you started recording. But the It’s not like that, you have to when you build your ecommerce website, when you build your ecommerce business, you have to approach it as a business, which is more than just throwing up a website and hoping it works, right, you’ve got to be much more strategic, you’ve got to have a plan, you’ve got to have an understanding of what you’re doing. Because there are 1000 other people now doing the same thing, you know, all getting trained for that consumers attention. 

08:16

Really understanding the competitive advantage. And like building an ecom site is essentially starting a completely separate business. And if you’re a spa, right, if you’re a brick and mortar spa, it can be an extension of your brand. But your ideal client, you know, you may be worth your brick and mortar, you may be marketing to those in a 10 mile radius of your spa. With econ, you could be marketing to the entire country. Right? 

08:46

Absolutely.

08:47

How you’re communicating with them how you’re going to stand out from the other spas, what types of services are you offering? How are you going to stand out from other e commerce sites? These are all things that need to be thought about. And and I think, I don’t know, I’m curious about your thoughts on this. But anytime someone starts something new in their company, I always say give yourself at least 20% more time than you think you’re going to need. Because there’s always something additional that comes up. There’s always something that you’re like, Oh, I didn’t think about that. Or I didn’t you know, it just always takes longer and more resources than you had originally imagined.

09:27

Yeah, it’s very, very true. I would say actually, you’re being very generous with the 20%. We always say to clients double it, you know? Yeah, whatever time you think it’s gonna be double it, because that’s probably a slightly more realistic, especially if you’ve never done it before. Because there’s so much you’re learning you’ve got to do to sort of figure out your way through Does that make sense? And so that always takes a lot longer than you expect it’s going to it’s unfortunately not a case of watching a YouTube video in your master right? It just doesn’t work like that.

10:02

Part of what you do on the consulting side of your company is you help brands with their econ. Right? You’re helping them with that. So, with your clients that you are helping with econ, what do you feel like are their biggest challenges when they’re launching their brands?

10:21

The biggest challenge anybody ever faces when they’re launched an ecommerce business, and this is especially true for people in the spa world, in the beauty world in that coffee is if your aim is to sell product, you know, like a beauty products, it is incredibly competitive, and is probably the most competitive industry online, or certainly one of them. And so, the where I see most people fail 99% of the time, is the way they approach ecommerce, it’s like, they’ve not thought about the product. Fundamentally, ecommerce is an online shop where people buy a product, or a service or a digital product or a download or something, they’re buying something. And you’ve really got to think about that product that people are going to buy. Okay? If you don’t think that through and take the time necessary to get that right. You’ve got no chance. And this is where I think a lot of people fail. And this is where I think a lot of people are going to struggle in the pandemic, they’ve just literally thrown anything online to try and generate some cash, which I totally understand, but it’s the wrong approach.

11:35

So when you say they’ve got to think about the product, how are we clearly communicating? Are we having reviews up there? Are we having multiple images? Like that type of thing? Or like how you’re positioning like positioning?

11:49

Yeah, think think about all of it. Okay, so let’s take a typical product that someone’s going to sell in a spa, what would that be? 

11:57

A moisturizer,.

11:58

A moisturizer, okay? So if you take a moisturizer, and is that moisturizer, a branded moisturizer? Or is it a moisturizer that is either created or white labeled by the spa? 

12:10

Yeah, let’s say a white label a private label. 

12:13

So we’ve got a white labeled product in the moisturizer space, okay. Now I run an online beauty business. I know. I mean, I know how complicated it is to try and get somebody to switch their moisturizer from one that they’re currently using, especially if the one that they’ve got is working. Okay. So if they’re buying a moisturizer already, and that’s working well for them, getting them to switch to your moisturizer, that is gonna take a lot of thinking. So you have got to position that product. So so well. And you’ve got to think about how do I get them to switch? What is it that’s going to take them to switch? What’s the language that I use? When I’m talking to somebody in the spa? How do I get them switch? Normally, my experience here is they have a sample of that product, and they try it and they go, yeah, this is great for my skin, the price is a good price for what it is that I get. I like the therapist that selling it to me, there’s a relationship there. How do I do that on my website. And so that, when I say that needs it, when you think about, you’ve got to think about the product, that’s what you’ve got to do, you’ve got to get yourself in the head of a consumer. So if you’re, if you’re putting your ecommerce website up, and you’re selling to your existing customers, awesome, that’s going to be really straightforward. But if you’re wanting to build that business out, and you’re wanting to sell to someone on the opposite side of the country, how do you do that? That’s a really fascinating question,

13:45

I think as aestheticians and beauty therapists, as you guys call them in the UK, and I think that we do have the advantage of building relationship on a different level. And we’re seeing a lot of these complimentary virtual consult. Let’s hop on Zoom, let’s look at your skin, let’s do a custom home care regimen. And it’s by someone who’s trained in this space. And so I think that for spa owners, how do you position that to be to create as much of an experience as it’s like going in the spa, but create that in your ecom site? where they can look at things they can ask questions, they can feel like they’re getting something customized to them. I think that that is really the powerful piece and and having a very, very dialed in brand. And who are you targeting? Right? are you targeting 40 year old moms that drive a minivan or are you targeting a single 30 something that lives in a city that you know what I mean? Like just the more niche you can go, the better because I believe the brand that does everything is the brand that does nothing.

15:03

And so exactly right. And it’s much harder to advertise the products and let’s be real, you’re going to have to do some kind of paid media to grow this 100%. So yeah, you, the more you can niche your audience down, the more you can niche your product to a specific audience, the better your advertising is going to be. Because you can then gear your landing page all around that product for that person with the right imagery, the right language, the right copy, you know, the right price, all of those things. You’re right, the more you can niche that down, the more likelihood you’re going to get in that sale.

15:40

So I want to hear a little backstory of Jersey Beauty Company. So you said you know, timing you got right. What else did you get? Right?

15:52

We, we built a business. It was a let me be totally fine. We were quite lucky I’m going to be I wasn’t an ecommerce expert in 2006, we were just a little bit lucky. And we thought, you know, if we could sell, we launched in August 2006. And we thought by the end of 2006, if we could sell 10 grands worth of product, we would be stoked, we would be super happy German, we would be on target. And so by the end of December 2006, we didn’t reach a 10,000 pound target, we’d sold 400,000 pounds worth of product, right? That’s about what 700,000 US dollars worth of product in four months. It was crazy. It just absolutely blew up overnight.

16:40

Are you doing paid advertising right from the beginning? Or not? I mean, I know day one, you said like people found you. But once people started finding it, when did you start doing the paid?

16:52

We did, we did Google AdWords, which looked very different back then. And that’s how we started to reach an audience. And the other thing that we tapped into, again, quite by accident was the forums. And so there’s a forum in the UK called mums net. And one or two of our customers posted things on Mumsnet. And that’s when it took off. Everybody from that forum saw these posts, and then they started coming to us in the thousands. And just buying the products, which was fantastic.

17:24

So logistic,

17:26

Like, I know, I know, you’re saying okay, luck, but you don’t sell $75 million of product with like, there has to be some business acumen behind it. Right? Like, yes, you knew what to do, like, logistically, when you go from zero to 700,000. There’s a lot and fulfillment and distribution in all of that, like, were you just really flying by the seat of your pants and making decisions every single day?

18:00

Yeah, I wish I could say, you know, is different. But no, we were totally flying by the seat of our pants. And every day was a challenge every day was and don’t get me wrong, it was a beautiful problem to solve. You know, it was it was it was a much better problem to have to solve. How do I do this today? How do I solve this logistic problem? How do I get the shipping cost down? How do I get the product quicker? How do I inform the customer better. And one of the things that we realize what happened between 2006 and 2010, and the company grew, right. And it grew really, really quickly.

18:36

 2010, we had a major step change in our business. And this was when I, I pretty much took over the running of the company at this point. And we we wanted to change the business model. And this was I think, really, really pivotal for us as a business. A friend of mine drew on, on a napkin, a triangle, so you can kind of picture this in your head, you may have seen it before he drew a triangle. And in one corner, he wrote the word price. And another corner, he wrote the word service. And in another word, another corner, he wrote the word quality, so price service and quality. And he said to me, You can only pick two because you can’t do all three. In other words, you can’t offer a quality product at a low price and still deliver good quality customer service. Okay. You can’t offer you know, your customer high customer service and a high price but then deliver really poor quality product. Do you see what I mean? You’ve got to you’ve got to pick, pick which ones and we were at that time, I would say we were a price quality model. We had a quality product which we delivered very cheaply. And that’s part of the reason why we grew. But our customer service wasn’t great. And so in 2010 we switched our business model and we said what we’re going to do is we’re going to become a quality service business. In other words, our prices are going to go way up. But we are going to invest an awful lot more into delivering customer service. And so if you track our sales from 2010, so to 2011, we made this decision sales for slightly, I was very nervous at this point, I’m not gonna lie, because sales are different. But 2012, we had the best year we’d ever had, it took about a year for that, that model to change and for customers to understand what was going on. And 2012 was our best year at that point. I mean, it just totally exploded.

20:36

Do you think that is because focusing on that high level of customer service, you’re retaining more customers and getting them to repurchase from you?

20:46

That’s exactly right. Yeah, and that’s exactly right. We, we understood, we got to the point of thinking where we’re like, we looked at how much business was coming from repeat customers. And we thought man alive, it’s so much easier to sell to a repeat customer if we could invest in our customer service. So now over, I think over half of our income comes from repeat customers. So you know, it’s, it’s, it’s a massive part of our business right now.

21:14

I’m such a believer in client retention and keeping your existing clients feeling like VIPs. And so often in the spa world, and I think in businesses in general, it’s how do I get new clients? How do I get new clients constantly on that hamster wheel, but there’s so many studies out there that will show like, it’s so much easier to sell to an existing client you’ve built that know, like, and trust factor. And yet, we are just constantly on this, like, new client special or, you know, like, first time client thing, and it’s really just missing the boat on like, how do you go deep, instead of going wide?

21:56

Yeah, so important.

21:57

When you do that, what we discovered quite quickly was those customers that had great customer service, the ones that come back time and time again, not only do they spend more, not only does their lifetime value go up, they’re the ones which will share you on social media, they’re the ones which will tell their friends to come buy from you.

22:16

What are the main KPIs that you’re tracking? So you you’ve mentioned lifetime customer value? But what are the main KPIs that you’re tracking? In an ecommerce business?

22:28

Where you’re going to track the obvious ones? You’re going to track? How many people are coming to your website? How many of those people are converting into buyers? What’s my conversion rate? Is that going up? Is that going down? You’re going to come you’re going to track things like we call it on ramping. So if you for example, if you go to a product page, and you’re not ready to buy the product, what else can I do to connect with you? which is normally getting an email address out of somebody? What How can I do that. So you want to measure how successful your main call to action is, you want to measure how successful your onramp call to action is the sort of secondary one, you’re going to want to measure how long people are on your website, you’re going to want to measure things like bounce rates and other sort of standard Google Analytics stuff. I think you’re going to want to measure all of those, but you’re gonna want to measure things like how many of our customers are recommending us to other customers? How many customer service emails have we got, gentlemen? And how many? How many times… 

23:27

How long does it take us to respond to a customer service email? 

23:30

Yeah. And how many times do we get asked the same question, you know, that’s always a bit of a telltale sign, it means you’re not giving the information out properly in the first place. So you’re going to whatever works for your business, you’re going to find these little nooks these little crannies, as we like to call them and go actually, if we do well here, it really benefits. So you’re going to want to measure the main ones turnover, for example, how much are we actually doing in sales, but it’s the other ones, you’re going to want to measure? The three main ones I was always taught to measure. And I think it’s still true today. There was only three numbers you really needed to be aware of number one was how many customers have you got number two was the average order value, and number three was the average order frequency. And so if you understood those three numbers, and you could grow any one of those three things, you would grow your business. So if I increase the number of customers, if I increase their average order value, so how can I increase the spend when they come on the website? And the third one average order frequency, how can I get them to come back sooner? Rather than if my average gap between orders is six months? How do I get that down to five months? How do I get that down to four months? What can I do to increase those three things? And I think if you focus on those three things, you can build a really, really great ecommerce business.

24:48

Yeah, it sounds like digital marketing is such a huge piece in any any ecom business. It’s it’s really understanding paid advertising, understanding. funnels and email marketing and all of those pieces really, really play into it and are skills that I think would greatly benefit any business owner that’s wanting to go ecom.

25:14

I would say yes, if you’re wanting to grow quick, if you’re wanting to grow organically, it’s not as important. And the reason I say this is because when you use words, or when I’ve used not new, but when I’ve used words in the past, like funnels and digital marketing and paid advertising, it scares a lot of people off. So it’s like, I don’t want to do that. I’ve heard too many horror stories. I don’t want to, I don’t want to go down that road. A few years ago, we we set up our own beauty brand. So we had our own branded moisturizer. And we were like, right, how do we sell this? We could do the paid media routes. And that is, you know, if you know how to do paid media, definitely go down that road if you know what you’re doing. But you can be creative. So one of the things that we did, we had a girl at the time working for us, Esther, a beautiful young lady, who was part of our customer service team. And we just said to Esther, listen, I just want you to spend all day on Twitter. That’s what I want you to do. I want you to go on Twitter and see if anybody is writing on there. Oh, my skin’s feeling a bit dry today or my I’ve got a breakout…

26:22

Amazing stuff that people write on Twitter about their skin, right. And so we just hit set some alerts, which was always searching Twitter, when something popped up. We try quite quickly to respond. Hey, listen, sorry to hear about that. We’ve got some samples of a product, which I think is going to really help you with dot dot dot. Would you like me to send them out to you? If you’d like, I can send them out to totally free of charge, just head over to the website to this page, use this code. And I’ll make sure you don’t pay anything to get them and just all I ask is you just let me know how you get on. Do me know whatever works for you. And we must have got 10-20 leads a day just doing that.

27:02

Wow. Yeah, it’s kind of like the Gary Vee strategy. Have you? Do you listen to Gary Vee at all? He’s a Yeah, started his company by just listening and responding and helping on social media.

27:16

Yes, this is incredible, right? So don’t let the funnels don’t have a digital marketing, the paid media and all that sort of stuff, put you off starting because you can start very simply, you can start organically, you can say right, what I’m going to do is, is actually make sure we service our own customers super, super well online. And I’m going to reward them if they share it out to their friends, right, you’re not going to grow as quick you’re not going to grow as fast. But it will be that organic growth. whilst you’re figuring out the funnels whilst you’re figuring out the paid media. You don’t have to know everything before you hit the ground, you just have to know a few things really well. And I still think the best marketing strategy is taking care of customers.

27:54

I love that advice. Anything else you want to add for spa owners aestheticians that are wanting to jump into the world of ecommerce for you to make this episode feel complete.

28:08

Oh, there’s so much we can throw out there. I think the bottom line is, you know what do it get online, because because it makes an awful lot of sense to take this opportunity because I don’t know how often these opportunities are going to come around. But as things currently stand, setting up an e commerce business makes an awful lot of sense. And don’t let fear or anxiety put you off doing it. You can just literally go to Shopify and set up an account. You don’t have to spend lots of money or Squarespace or you know, whichever one you prefer. And you can set up an account very cheaply and very easily, you usually don’t need any coding experience to get going. You just need to be consistent and show up every day. And I think if you do that and look after your customers, well, all the other stuff, all of that you can learn to remain. But get your fundamentals right get your product, right your product images, your product, copy the positioning of it, you know, definitely do a product video talking about the product, all this stuff, which you can do in your voice that no one else can do. Just like you were talking to a you know, a client in the room in your spot, figure out a way to bring that voice to your website. And I think you’ll do super super well. I love the idea that you mentioned earlier the online consultations I think that’s great. And doing those kinds of things. If it was me, I would be doing a Facebook Live pretty much every day, especially if my client clients were in there sort of 40s if that was my main my main range, I would be like you know what I’m going to be I’m going to start getting into live streaming where I can start doing q&a as if my clients are younger. I’m probably going to do it on Instagram because I can do that. You can do that with a mobile phone. Everyone’s got a mobile phone, right and just start building your tribe. that’s fundamentally right just to attract people, they’re going to start asking you questions, build your tribe. And then the other thing that I would say is don’t limit your e commerce business, to just product. Now, what I mean by this is, if I was in the spa business, and I do know this bar industry quite well, if I was in this bar business, there would be a number of things I’d be looking to sell online. 

30:26

Number one, I would be looking to sell products, okay, I’d be looking to sell my own branded products, and I would probably go out there and get some branded products to sell on there as well just to start to build traffic and get people in. 

30:39

The second type of product I’m going to be selling, okay, is a digital product. How, how can I create a digital product that’s going to help my clients, for example, we’re working with a lady here in the UK called Joan Jewett. And she is she is a really, really fun, beautiful lady. Okay, she’s in her 60s. She won’t mind me saying that at all. She’s from the northeast of England and has a really strong accent. She is just as straight as a diamond. The way she talks you either love it or you hate her. She’s we in England we say she’s like Marmite, German, you’re either turned off or you’re turned on by. And I just love her. She’s just great Joe. And Joe is fascinating to me, because here’s a here’s a lady who is a professional makeup artist in her 60s. And when you read her client list, right, so you go down. Madonna is interesting. Bette Midler. Okay, Princess Diana, to remain especially in the modern world. Everyone’s fascinated with Harry. Well, he was Harry’s mother, she was Harry’s mom’s makeup artist. And so we build a website tried selling the products or products thing didn’t really work. But what is starting to work for Joe is her facebook or her Instagram lives, where she’s showing how to do makeup tutorials online. Okay, guess what, guess what’s being developed. Now we’ve got some digital products being done, where she is going to go in depth into doing these tutorials. And they won’t be that expensive, maybe 27 to 37 bucks to get into. But she can do those and people want them to see what I mean.

32:18

I can’t tell you how many times when I was practicing as an aesthetician and doing makeup. How do you do a smoky eye? Right? It’s like this question of and putting something up of a tutorial. That’s that low price point. I’ve known a few makeup artists that have done have done things like that and done very well. So yes, I love love that advice.

32:39

Yeah, digital products work. You have a knowledge you have a skill that people want. And if you present it in the right way people will buy it. And that’s another big learning. I think under COVID a lot of the digital ecommerce business has gone crazy. But one of the products which is outstripping every other product is digital products, the online course. And what can you do that would generate, you know, an extra income? What kind of course could you create? You know, what kind of tutorials? What kind of lessons could you create? And I think it’s a it’s a fun is a phenomenal opportunity. Right now. It really is a phenomenal opportunity. So I’d be selling products, I’d be selling digital products. And I would actually be selling services online as well. 

33:28

I’m into your spa or, or Yeah, yeah. Yeah. 100%.

33:32

Yeah, absolutely. And if you know, people like across the country, if there’s like four or five of you that can get together and it’s like, well, we’ll get we’ll get together and we’ll, we’ll form like a little group. And it’s like, Well, okay, we’ll sell, you know, massage. And you can get it here, here, here or here. You know, wherever you are in the country. Create, you know, create the nice days of people can fly in and do and you pick them up from the airport. You know, it’s why not? People are interested in that sort of thing. 

33:57

Why not?

33:59

That’s a great way, a great way to close this episode. So Matt, tell everyone where they can find you follow you stay in touch with you. Keep learning from you. where’s the best place?

34:11

Well, yeah, you can reach out to me at mattedmundson.com that’s my website or if you go to Instagram or Facebook or any of them really into search for me, you’ll find me. We have a weekly podcast called the ecommerce podcast if you want to know more about e commerce where we were a bit like you I get to interview some some phenomenal guests. And so you can you can get into that. Of course, I have a digital product. Why would I not right? But yeah, all the information is available on my website madness.com. You’ll find it all there.

34:42

Perfect. Thank you so so much. I really appreciate it. We’ll include all the links below this episode. And if you guys want to keep this conversation going, be sure to head on over to the Spa Marketing Made Easy Facebook group. We’ve got tons of additional resources and love answering questions and keeping the conversation going. Alright, I will catch you on the next episode. 

35:04

As always, if you want to keep the conversation going, I want you to head on over to the Spa marketing Made Easy Facebook group, the number one free resource out there for aestheticians focused on business building. We’ve got weekly marketing tips, a monthly goal setting and planning session monthly aesthetician business book club, plus a community of thousands of aestheticians committed to business building in the spa industry. I’ll see you there.

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EP 233: Trademarking 101 with Keren de Zwart

There are a lot of fun topics to discuss in business – sales and profits, marketing and product development…but what’s not so fun? 

The legal stuff, specifically, trademarking and even more specifically, getting slapped with a cease and desist for infringing on a trademark. 

Thankfully, my guest on today’s episode actually makes the topic of trademarking approachable, understandable and dare I say, fun (especially when you learn what you need to cover your brand’s behind legally)!

Joining me on this episode is Keren de Zwart, who after working for 10 years in the corporate arena, left to fill the legal gap for entrepreneurs and small businesses by replacing the outdated billable hour model with flat-fee pricing. 

With a decade of experience in corporate transactions, Keren has worked with every type of business: from side hustlers and businesses raising millions of dollars to taking companies public. 

And today, she helps entrepreneurs get #legallylegit through her law firm, Not Your Father’s Lawyer (that name alone should tell you that she makes the topic of trademarks anything but boring!)

If you’ve been putting the topic of trademarking on the back burner for your business because you just don’t want to deal with the legalese, or you didn’t know trademarking is kind of a big deal in business, even if you’re small, this episode is a must-listen. 

In this episode, you’ll learn:

  • What a trademark is and how they function in the world of business and commerce 
  • Understanding the different classes of trademarks and answering the questions: when should we get one? And why does it matter?
  • The various nuances of trademarks and how they differ on the federal and state level
  • Keren’s top tips for getting a trademark, what to expect, and how to navigate the process whether you’ve infringed on a trademark or other brands are infringing on yours

References Mentioned in Episode #233: Trademarking 101 with Keren de Zwart

  • Connect with Keren and learn more about her services and expertise at www.notyourfatherslawyer.com
  • Connect with Keren on Instagram and Facebook at @notyourfatherslawyer
  • Explore the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) website here 
  • To keep the conversation going, ask questions, and connect with other like-minded aestheticians building thriving careers, click here to join the free Spa Marketing Made Easy Podcast community. 

As a thank you for being a loyal listener to the Spa Marketing Made Easy podcast and for helping us to reach more aestheticians working on growing their businesses and creating a life they love, we have created a free resource portal just for you! 

 

It’s totally free to join, and for every 25 reviews we get on iTunes, we’ll add a new training video, PDF, tracker, or other high-value resource to help you grow your aesthetic business!

 

If you have yet to leave a review, click here to leave one on iTunes, and click here to access the free resources already unlocked


Episode Transcript

Have you heard about the free Spa Business Bootcamp happening May 31st to June 4th in the Spa Marketing Made Easy Facebook group?

 

00:08

Each day, we’re going to take a deep dive into the four phases of the Growth Factor Framework, your sales process, your social media, your systems and your structure before wrapping up on the final day with how to scale this bootcamp is a must for spa owners who are truly looking to build a company and a brand not just create a job for themselves. Click the link in the show notes to get registered and I can’t wait to see you in the group. 

 

00:35

You’re listening to the Spa Marketing Made Easy podcast where we share simple proven strategies just respond to street professionals to help you get more clients in the door so that you can create a life you love. I’m your host, Daniela Woerner, licenced aesthetician and spa marketing strategist. 

 

00:58

Hello, my dears, Daniela here and welcome to another episode of the Spa Marketing Made Easy Podcast. Now I’m really excited for today’s guest because we’re going to be talking about one of the most overlooked parts of business, and that is protecting your intellectual property through trademarking. 

 

01:16

Now, imagine starting your business working so hard to get clients in the door, finally hitting that six figure milestone, and then bam, one day you get a letter in the mail that says you’re infringing on someone’s trademark. And you’ve got to stop using the name of your business immediately. Could you imagine the cost associated with new signage, new website, new marketing materials, all of the things and worse yet, what have you invested thousands in packaging for your private label line, only to find out that legally, you cannot use it anymore. This is the risk that you’re taking when you’re not trademarking your business. 

 

01:57

Now, I don’t want to totally freak you out, because many business owners don’t start this process until they have a proven concept. But in my opinion, this is one of the first things you do once you start generating consistent revenue in your company. Not when you know not in that space, where you’re like what I’m finally paying myself what I desire, but actually creating consistent revenue. And if you are doing a private label line, you know, I would at least do the search on the name of your brand before you invest in any labels or packaging, because that is the last thing that you want to deal with. Now, when I first started Addo Aesthetics, we went through the trademarking process, and it took close to three years to go through the entire thing, the officially registered have my trademark all of that. 

 

02:45

But as our business grew, we saw the need to trademark our programs and even our podcast. And Keren and attorney who was referred to me from a close friend, is who we brought in to help with the trademarking of our podcast and programs. And I’m really excited to have her as a guest today to shine some light on this topic. So let me go ahead and read you her bio, and then we’ll jump right into that episode. 

 

03:07

So after working for 10 years in the corporate arena, Keren had a desire to fill the legal gap for entrepreneurs and small businesses by replacing the outdated billable hour model with flat fee pricing. With a decade of experience in corporate transactions, Keren has worked in every type of business, from side hustlers to raising millions of dollars and taking companies public. Today, she helps entrepreneurs get legally legit through her law firm, not your father’s lawyer. She lives in Orange County, California with her husband and two children. So Keren is super easy to talk to. I loved working with her on this process. And I’m super excited to share this interview with you. So without further ado, let’s go ahead and play that interview. 

 

03:53

All right, Karen. Welcome to the Spa Marketing Made Easy Podcast. I’m so excited to have you on. I think that trademarking our topic of the topic of the moment is something that’s really not talked about enough. It’s kind of one of those like boring topics, but it’s not boring at all. If you get a cease and desist letter, or you get something that’s like, like the risk benefit of going through trademarking and is just so huge. And so many spa owners don’t even know what it is or don’t even know what they should be trademarking or the different classes or what the process is. And so I really, I’m so excited to have you on the show and just shine some light, shine some clarity on to this topic.

 

04:43

Well, thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be here. And I agree, people think of trademark is kind of boring or unimportant, but it’s a really important part of running a business. 

 

04:55

So let’s just start off by defining what a trademark is the different classes like, because I know for me in my business, I trademarked my business as one of the first things that I did. But it was a new, it was kind of like a learning curve for me as we added different programs in the podcast, right like trademarking the podcast. So for a spa, you want to trademark your brick and mortar, but then you also if you’re developing your own private label line, or you know, those types of things. So how do we understand number one, what a trademark is? And number two, what the heck is supposed to be trademarked?

 

05:36

That’s a great question. And you kind of hit the nail on the head there, which is, I mean, ensure a trademark is a set of intellectual property rights for a it’s, you know, a product or service. And it’s basically to identify the origin of goods or services. So the idea is, you know, how can a consumer or the public know who owns this product or service and obviously, you can think of it in the most obvious ways, like, you know, I can’t start a company called like, Nike sneakers, because I can confuse a consumer about, you know, is this the Nike? Or is this not the Nike? and, and so the idea is to give an owner of goods and services the right to protect their brand, you can think of a trademark, there’s a couple of ways that you can trademark obviously, a word mark is just the basic word. So the word Nike, for example, is trademarked as just the basic words, no, no specific font or colors or anything, but you also can trademark designs, or logos, any sort of design, icons that people might use. 

 

06:44

So there’s actually two different kinds of trademarks. And you can do either or both. So sometimes, when people start out at that’s a big question, because obviously, it’s two different, you know, costs, it’s two different, you know, the research to make sure that the logo isn’t infringing is different than the research to make sure that the word mark isn’t infringing. And what I like to tell people, when they’re just starting out is, a lot of it depends on how you are marketing your business. So some people or I would say a lot of people have the actual words of their trademark brand in the logo. So if Spa Marketing Made Easy is in, you know, stylized form, obviously, you have that logo, and you can go out and protect that. But at the beginning, when you’re just starting out, and you only maybe have resources to go one way or the other, if your logo has the words in it, then you know, if it’s just a stylized version of the words, then you can trademark the word. And sometimes that’s better. Because when you’re just starting out, maybe you change your mind, and you want to change the logo. And if you trademark the logo itself, you’re only protecting it in that version. So if you change your logo down the road, you have to, obviously, trademark that. So that’s something to consider, as well. 

 

08:07

And you talked a little bit about the classification. So basically, there are a number of different international classifications, which are basically a kind of a standardized set of classes that things fall into. And they’re kind of like half products and half services. And this is one of the most important pieces of trademark law because where you trademark it and the description that you give it can change fundamentally change what is and is not protected. So a great example, like you said is you have a brick and mortar retail, you know, space, but maybe you have a product line, those are two completely different trademark classes. Maybe you have an e-commerce store, that’s another one. And so you have to think kind of strategically about, you know, what am I doing? Where is the protection? I mean, in a perfect world, you protect yourself across all of those categories, but small business owners often have you know, limited resources and you kind of have to think through where, where are my biggest exposure points and go in that order of priority.

 

09:14

Now when you’re trademarking is this, you said there’s international trademarks. For a brick and mortar spa, you know, there’s a lot of like, common names that are used, you know, if it’s just like the relaxation spa, right? Like, I don’t know if anyone has that name. But if I had the relaxation spa in Washington, DC, and I had the relaxations and there was another one in Texas. Would the trademark print, is it per state? Or is it like in the entire United States? No one can use this name for a brick and mortar spa.

 

09:51

This is a fantastic question. So technically speaking to register a trademark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office to register as used, there’s, we’ll get to this a little bit. But as used in commerce as in today, it’s offered in commerce, it’s actually in interstate commerce. 

 

10:09

So to register a trademark federally, it has to be across state lines. So an easy way to think of that is obviously on an e-commerce site, people can, you know, access your site from wherever they can shoot, you know, you can ship your products to wherever that is interstate commerce, and can be subject to a federally registered trademark. However, if you have a brick and mortar in Washington, DC, and that’s all you have, and you’re selling products there, but maybe not on e-commerce site, you’re actually you can’t qualify for a registered trademark with the USPTO. But every state has their own state registration. And that would be a great option for things like, you know, a brick and mortar that you’re only if you have multiple, you know, multiple places, but they’re only in state, that’s a great option for people. If they’re not, I mean, today, so many people have something online that they probably meet the interstate commerce rules. But that’s something to think about. For example, if you have a brick and mortar space, and you want to protect that name, then you might only be able to register it at the state level. Whereas you could register the e-commerce site, for example, you know, on the on the USPTO, which gives you the federal registration.

 

11:28

Now what happens, if you start your business, and you’re rockin and rollin, you’re going into year one, you’re generating six figures, you’re super excited. And then all of a sudden, you find out you didn’t trademark your business and you’re infringing on someone else’s name?

 

11:47

Yes, this is a very common problem. I mean, people get excited about their business, they’re focused on the important things like getting set up finding a place to lease, you know, getting clients. And it kind of falls on the backburner. So in a perfect world, you do some of this research upfront, but it very often doesn’t happen. And the worst case scenario, obviously, is getting a cease and desist. 

 

12:14

So there’s kind of two versions that happens that I see one, of course, is you get the scary letter from somebody’s attorney that says you’re infringing on our trademark. And the other is kind of right before that, where somebody says, like, I just found out that there’s somebody else in this space, and they have the same name, what do I do, and in both cases, there’s obviously the risk of infringement. So a cease and desist letter can kind of run the gamut, depending on, you know, how big the trademark owner is, how, you know, proficient, their attorney is in intellectual property law, and how big you are, because obviously, the more the larger you are, in terms of visibility and revenue, the more likely they’re going to come harder on an infringement case. So the cease and desist letter can run from, Hey, stop using this immediately to, not only do we want you to stop using this, we want an accounting of the last, you know, two years that you’ve been using this mark, and we’re going to seek damages for basically whatever they, you know, whatever they can get from you. So, people are a little bit more aware of this in the copyright space. Because, you know, if you take like a picture from Google that’s copyrighted, and you put it on your website, and somebody says, like, take it down, and you owe us $5,000, taking it down does not prevent the infringement. You know, so when you think about it, you have to kind of ask yourself, what is the risk of, of doing this and the risk is that the more likely the consumer was confused, and the more likely it was on purpose, right, like on the spectrum, the more likely you’re going to end up having to pay a lot of money to resolve it. Most of the time, these infringement cases are not like that. It’s not like Oh, I like that spawning. I’m gonna take it and then I’m gonna run, you know, run with it. It’s, it’s tends to be more on accident. So typically, a cease and desist says, stop immediately. 

 

12:28

And sometime,

 

14:19

which still can be costly, right? If you have to redo your I mean, just thinking about signage, right? If you change the name of your spa, if you have to change, like all your emails, your brand and website like that, that still is a pretty hefty chunk of change.

 

14:38

100% and I mean, I always tell people don’t automatically assume if you get a cease and desist that you have violated a trademark because there are people who are more likely to go after things that are either similar or the same. A lot of people may not have a registered trademark, there’s a number of reasons Why but maybe they don’t have a registered trademark, but they they’re telling you that you’re they’re violating common law trademark, which is possible you we all own rights in our brands from its first in time concept, but your rights are extremely limited without a registered trademark. So I always say if you do get it, like take a deep breath and reach out to an attorney, see what they say, sometimes it’s just kind of like a bully who’s pushing a little bit beyond the reach of their registered trademark or their their rights under trademark law. And that there’s, you know, you don’t have to go through that whole rebranding without, you know, without consulting with an attorney. 

 

15:41

But that is definitely, there’s kind of the two worst case scenarios, obviously, the worst worst is that you have to change everything and potentially pay to get out of it. But that tends to really be more when things are done, kind of intentionally, and you but like you said, you know, rebranding, especially I mean, every if you’ve ever had to pay for a sign on a building, they’re several $1,000. So that alone plus, again, redoing the website and the loss of your brand, you know that that…

 

16:08

 The goodwill that you’ve built with that name recognition.

 

16:16

Absolutely. So something that I tell people, because sometimes people freak out, like, Oh, my gosh, I didn’t do this, what if I am, what do I do, even if you did it at the beginning, or if you didn’t, I always say like, put it on your calendar, once a quarter, do a Google search, like see what’s out there with your name or similar names, see what’s out there, you know, on on social media, and number one that’s important for yourself to protect your own brand, obviously, but also, it helps you kind of see what’s out there and what other people are using in the industry to make sure that there isn’t a problem, because it’s so you know, if you got here to today, and there is and sometimes this happens, by the way that somebody says, Oh, my gosh, I did what you said, I went and searched. And it turns out, there’s like, you know, a competitor of mine out of, you know, some other state that has 150,000 followers on Instagram, and I’m just little me, but then we go and we run a trademark search. And it’s like, Well, to be honest, you’ve been using this mark longer, they don’t have a registered trademark, let’s file their trademark, and then we get to send them a cease and desist, you know, and so there are a lot of ways to kind of look at it and strategize, even if you didn’t do it at the beginning.

 

17:34

Okay, so let’s just clarify a little bit the difference between, you know, for your state trademark, the federal trademark, if you’re a brick and mortar spa, versus having the product line versus having the e-commerce store, because there’s so many different variations, if you are the relaxation spa, and you just have a section on your website, that is where to purchase products, that could essentially be a an extension of your current business. 

 

18:06

But what I’m seeing a lot of spa owners do with the especially with, you know, 2020, and all of the, you know, COVID, and all the things, they’re starting their own skincare lines, which are essentially completely different businesses. 

 

18:23

Exactly. 

 

18:23

So they’re having, they would have to run a full separate trademark, likely in a different classification.

 

18:32

Right. So I mean, definitely in a different classification. So let’s say you already have a trademark for your, you know, brick and mortar store, even if that’s on the state level. So we kind of touched on that at the beginning, right is that anything that’s an interstate commerce can and should be registered on the federal level, and you don’t need to do a state level and a federal level trademark, there might be some strategic reasons. But rarely, if you can register at the federal level, that’s usually what you’re doing. If you want to do you know, a skincare line at the federal level, but you have this one brick and mortar in your state, that’s probably going to be a state specific trademark, because again, the the actual spa services that are being provided only within state lines are not going to be subject to interstate commerce, trademarks under the federal protection. 

 

19:25

So you can have a trademark with the same name relaxation spa, let’s say you get that, you know, within the state of Maryland, or whatever, and then you have the skincare line. Now you’re going to register that with the USPTO. And it’s going to be a completely different class. So when you register a trademark, there’s two ways you can register it is already used in commerce, which is kind of what we’re talking about, right? It’s being sold in interstate commerce. 

 

19:53

The second piece is with an intent to use and the thing about an intent to use is that trademark laws can’t just people can’t just squat trademarks, right? So you can file an intent to use application. So if you think you have this great idea, and it’s a competitive market, and you don’t want somebody else to steal it, but you haven’t launched yet, you can file it and get the process going, while you’re kind of doing this, and then once you get the approval, then you have to, you basically have six months with some extensions to actually prove to the USPTO, that you use it in commerce, otherwise, it goes away and it’s abandoned, then you don’t have the right to the trademark. So if you file, you know, if you’re setting up a vertical in your business, and you already in let’s say, your, I guess this is all to say, let’s say you are like, well, I don’t have a trademark right now, I, you know, I want to do it for the my e-commerce site, but I’m also working on the skincare line. So maybe I want to do too, you can file one trademark where some of the classifications are used in commerce, and some are intent to use. And it basically kind of goes through this process where they’ll approve the part, you know, that’s, you kind of go through to the to get to the registration on the use and commerce, and then you have to kind of catch up with the, you know, with the intent to use stuff, but at least everything’s kind of there. Like I said, it’s a first in time concept. So obviously, if if you kind of wait on the registration, because you haven’t launched it yet, but somebody beats you to the punch in terms of filing registration with the USPTO, it puts you in this position to like prove otherwise, which is effectively litigation, so it becomes costly, and then most people don’t do it.

 

21:34

So logistically, how long does filing a trademark? Typically? I know, that’s like a big question but

 

21:43

a really long time,

 

21:45

a really long time. How long does it take? How much does it cost? Like, what’s the range of these types of things? 

 

21:50

Sure. So a trademark that doesn’t have any issues whatsoever goes like this, you file the applicant. Well, your attorney or the platform you use or whatever you do does the research to to confirm that it’s, you know, likely to be trade markable. Basically, that means number one, that there’s no conflict, or no major conflict or a conflict, that’s not kind of strong enough that you still want to pursue. 

 

22:13

Number two, that it’s actually registerable. One of the things about it, and we kind of joke is we were talking about relaxation spa, which is there’s like a spectrum of registrability with the trademark office and basically the more arbitrary or fanciful, which are the technical words, but the more arbitrary would be like Apple, right? You think of. 

 

22:33

Before Apple computers, nobody associated the word Apple with technology. So it’s arbitrary, but it’s a real word. It’s just arbitrarily associated with that brand that that industry, obviously fanciful is something totally made up. And then it goes down the spectrum from you know, to things that are a little bit more descriptive. If it’s descriptive, there supposed to be some kind of mental leap that people have to make. And then generic would be like, I can’t just, I can’t trademark Business Law Firm that’s just generic, if there’s nothing to it, descriptive could be more like relaxation spa, right? Like, it’s pretty descriptive. It’s almost generic, it’s questionable about whether that could be registerable. So that whole process has to be done up front. 

 

23:19

 Then the second piece, obviously, as you file the application, and then it just sits there. And typically, an application has no issues is six months. And even now, just I think with COVID, and, you know, the examining attorneys are working from home and everything’s I’ve never seen in 12 years, it take this long, but sometimes it takes six months even to be like assigned to an examining attorney. 

 

23:44

So six months to a year, longer if you have, you know, if somebody files an opposition, if they if the USPTO has an issue that you have to respond to. So the kind of the process is you file the application, it gets assigned to an examining attorney, they’ll run their own search, if they don’t have any conflicts with it, they will schedule it for publication in the Official Gazette, which is basically it’s published in a searchable medium for 30 days so that if somebody out there wants to oppose it, they would file an opposition say like we oppose the this registration, because the USPTO isn’t like going out on Google and looking at what’s out there. They’re only looking what’s registered with the USPTO. But obviously, other people might have rights that they want to oppose, but it’s their job to go out and pursue that. Then if no opposition gets filed, you wait and wait and wait. But eventually you get that notice of registration and that’s when you get the you know, our with the circle symbol and you have your registered trademark. 

 

24:46

In between that what happens a lot is that the USPTO submits an Office Action, which is basically it could be anything from this is it registerable because there’s a conflict too. We don’t like the specimen you provide Or we want you to disclaim this word. So there’s a lot of little or big issues that can come up in the process. Obviously, if they think that it’s too similar to an existing trademark, then, you know, you’re typically an attorney, because it requires, you know, case law and research that they respond and say, you know, here’s all the reasons the factual and and kind of case precedent reasons why we don’t think we don’t agree, and you kind of try to overcome that. And that’s kind of the process. But you do get to hold your spot in line, so to say, Correct, correct. And that’s why we go back to that first in time concept, which is, even if you file you know, it’s sometimes it takes people three years to get mark or five years because of whatever process they go through. But at the end of the day, they started it, you know, if they started it in 2015, and they don’t get it till 2021, it’s still theirs. And anybody in the process that had tried to, you know, come up with something similar, will still have, you know, that person will have superior rights to those later uses. 

 

26:04

Okay, so, what advice just in kind of wrapping this up, what advice would you give to someone? If they’re looking for an attorney like you like you do trademarking? We’ll share your information below. But what are they looking for in an attorney? What  questions are they asking what’s important when trying to choose an attorney or a company to do trademarking with?

 

26:28

That’s a great question. I personally believe and this is not just trademarking, this is any legal work is that you should really feel comfortable with your attorney, I think, you know, people have have, they’re kind of it’s like the caricature of an attorney. They’re kind of like mean and grumpy and talk condescendingly to people. And I always say, you know, I have like, the legal knowledge, but you are the business owner, you have, you’re the expert in your business. So I’m not going to tell you what to do, I need you to tell me what you do. And I’m just going to fill in the legal part, you know, and I think that that’s really important to have somebody who’s willing to listen to you to understand your business. And when it comes to trademarking, that’s especially important, because like we said, the classifications really matter. And you want to make sure that you’re covering yourself in the most kind of robust way so that you are protected in all of the verticals that you offer, and that you have, you know, the protections that you’re seeking, when you apply. 

 

27:27

The second piece to that, obviously, is somebody who’s familiar with trademark. And, you know, it’s a complex area of law. And a lot of business attorneys do do trademark and other intellectual property work, but some don’t. So it’s important to understand, you know, do they file trademarks? Do they file them in your industry? Have they worked with people in your industry before, so that they really understand kind of what they’re getting, and making sure that they have somebody that understands the industry and the business. And then I think the other piece to that which is kind of ancillary, but really important is there are a lot of platforms out there, like the legal zooms, and there’s some kind of cheap, trademarking platforms that really are quite a bit more cost effective. And I get the question a lot like, what’s, what do you get with a lawyer versus this? And the short answer is you don’t get a lawyer when you work with those, they’re algorithmically based. And if you have simple and straightforward trademarks, they’re often a really good option, there’s two problems to that, right. 

 

28:29

One is, you don’t know if you’re going to get the right protection, and you don’t have the benefit of going back and forth and talking to somebody, you know, to make sure that everything’s properly described, because the classifications there are kind of like pre approved ones, but you can also write your own if your, if yours doesn’t really fit exactly into those. And so there’s a lot of different pieces. And then the second piece is, what about, if you get an Office Action? Is that extra money? Or do you have to go now find a lawyer to do that, and all of that piece? So I think understanding kind of what you get in terms of cost, and how they’re going to guide you through the whole process and not just filing the application, but you know, do they respond to the office actions? Is that additional cost? Or is it included in whatever fee you pay? You know, are they going to take you through the whole process? And and that’s an important thing to consider?

 

29:22

I don’t think we answered that question of what is the range of price?

 

29:27

Oh, so fees themselves, the actual USPTO filing fee is $250 per class and it can go up if you I said we could make these custom ones and the custom costs a little bit more because and they’re also much harder to get approved. So you want if you can you want to fit into like the pre approved bubbles. But if you don’t, then you definitely want to work with a trademark attorney who’s familiar with it so that they can write you kind of a custom description that’s going to get approved. So it’s $250 to like $300 and you know, $50 per class. So again, if you have the brick and mortar, and then you have the, and I guess it’s different with state, but you know, if you have a retail stores plus a skincare line plus an e commerce store plus a clothing line, right, whatever that that might be for different classes. So if you’re filing for different classes, it’s time to 250. So that’s just the filing fee itself. 

 

30:23

In terms of the attorneys, it can range, I mean, the platform’s can range from a couple 100 bucks. I mean, you know, big intellectual property firm is going to charge tens of thousands of dollars, a smaller firm is going to be more like in the, you know, maybe as low as 1000 as high as $5,000 range. But it really runs the gamut, I could probably find you a $500 attorney and a $50,000 attorney for the same work, you know.

 

30:52

 Yeah, I know, it’s so it’s hard with legal, but it’s one of those things like, I’m such a rule follower, I’m like, you know, I just want to make sure that it’s done right, and my taxes are paid. So for me, it’s like having that protection is just so so important because I don’t even want to think about someone sending me a letter, like there’s enough that we’re doing to grow our business and serve our clients. But that’s the last thing you want to be thinking about.

 

31:22

Yes. And, you know, I mean, people have different levels of risk tolerance. And so I think some people operate I mean, obviously, I’m a lawyer, so I’m risk averse by nature. So I’m also a rule follower. And, but but I work with a lot of people who have different levels of risk tolerance, and some people say, you know, I will, I’ll kind of see what’s out there myself in a in an informal way, and hope for the best. And some people say no way, this is one of the first things I want to invest in for my business.

 

31:53

I always tell people, you know, the more proprietary your your brand is, obviously, when you think about like a skincare line, and e-commerce that really is easy for people to kind of get in your space, you know, versus like a brick and mortar is going to be a little bit harder for somebody to like, show up across the street with the same or similar name, you know, that you’re it’s a little bit easier to be aware of that in the in the community, but online, it’s a big, wide open space. And it’s a little bit of the Wild West still. And so you know, that protection as you grow a brand and like you said, right, the cost of you know, changing a sign on the, we think it’s expensive to change a sign on a brick and mortar building. But to change, like your packaging on 100,000 units of, you know, of inventory is significantly more expensive. So it…

 

32:45

Oh, 100%. So a little bit is that kind of that risk tolerance that you have, obviously, you know, it’s one thing to have 5000 units of inventory and trying something out and kind of seeing what sticks, maybe that won’t be as costly, as you know. And then a website might be not as costly. Maybe you don’t have your own skincare line and you only sell third party sites and a website. rebranding isn’t necessarily as costly from a from a financial standpoint, it can like we spoke about in the kind of the goodwill space be pretty costly to the brand and the business.

 

33:20

Very good. Share where our listeners can find you follow you get in touch with you.

 

33:26

Yes, you can follow my website isnotyourfatherslawyer.com and you can find me on Instagram, mostly @notyourfatherslawyer and, you know, happy to talk to people but there’s a lot of free resources out there, myself and from others that you know, to make sure that people are getting the information that they need in terms of you know, starting and running their businesses.

 

33:51

Super, super helpful. Keren, thank you so much. We’ll include the links below this episode so you can stay in touch with Keren you can learn about trademarking, decide if that’s something that you want to do in your business. 

 

34:03

And if you have questions, be sure to head on over to the Spa Marketing Made Easy Facebook group and we’ll catch you on the next episode. 

 

34:12

As always, if you want to keep the conversation going, I want you to head on over to the Spa Marketing Made Easy Facebook group. The number one free resource out there for aestheticians focused on business building. We’ve got weekly marketing tips, a monthly goal setting and planning session, monthly aesthetician business book club, plus a community of thousands of aestheticians committed to business building in the spa industry. I’ll see you there.

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EP 232: #SpaSocialBeat – Why Engagement Is So Critical in Today’s Social Landscape

Welcome to our weekly #SpaSocialBeat! From our best tips and tricks to simplify your social media strategy to our top recommended tools, these are bite-sized episodes that pack a punch of practical advice so you can stop stressing over social media for your spa. 

In this week’s #SpaSocialBeat, we’re discussing:

  • What it means to be engaged on social media and the signal it sends to the algorithm, but more importantly, your audience
  • Why the key to getting more engagement on your social media profiles starts with you engaging more 
  • Our top tips and strategies for engaging with your audience to grow your following and your lead generation

Tune in every Friday for a new #SpaSocialBeat episode with Daniela and Danielle, and be sure to connect with us inside the Spa Marketing Made Easy community to share your biggest takeaways and how you’re putting these tips into play! 

From our best tips and tricks to simplify your social media strategy to our top recommended tools, our Spa Social Beats are bite-sized episodes that pack a punch of practical advice so you can stop stressing over social media for your spa. 

To learn more about Post With Purpose and watch our free on-demand video training, “How to Increase Your Spa’s Bookings + Sales With Social Media,” click here


EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

00:00

You’re listening to the Spa Marketing Made Easy Podcast and this is a special Spa Social Beats episode, where we give you quick tangible information to help you uplevel your social media game, so you can get more clients in the door.

 

00:16

I’m your host, Daniela Woerner, and I’m joined by my business partner in Post With Purpose Danielle Pastula.

 

00:22

Get ready to take some notes and more importantly, take action. 

 

00:29

All right, my dears, welcome back to the Spa Marketing Made Easy Podcast. This is a special Spa Social Beats. And today we are talking about social media giveaways. We’re going to touch on the good, the bad, and the ugly. So Danielle, let’s start off with what are the good pieces of giveaway?

 

00:50

Yeah, so I think the natural thing and what most people think of is like, it’s an excitement bursts like people like giveaways, it’s it drums up, it gives you something to like really hype up and to, to get some excitement around and get people you know, actively engaged. And then that’s where some of the other leads come in. Yeah, careful about what you’re doing. But yeah, the good element is that it really can be a good booster for engagement, a good boost for just having people. You know, it depends on what your goal is with the giveaway.

 

01:26

So warming your people up. So if you’re somebody who you’re like, hey, I’ve been building my email list, or I, you know, I but I haven’t emailed them for three months or four months, or whatever I’ve been, I had to take a break from Instagram because of you know, X, Y or Z. And now I just how do I go back and start talking to those people again, doing a giveaway is a great way to boost the engagement and excitement and kind of get the conversation started get people not thinking about you again. But what is the bad, what’s the bad of giveaways?

 

02:04

The bad can be warm. So I think around he don’t take the right strategy with around the giveaway. And that’s where I was kinda like hesitant around the good, because I really can be good. But where the bad comes into play it will, let me kind of back here, 

 

02:21

What can be good is especially and you mentioned that like if you can build an email list, and you maybe do a little reengagement giveaway as well, when you’re talking to people who are already in your circle, and who are already warm audience members, people that are on your email list, people are already following you on social media, it’s not necessarily this big, come one come all type of grab it new, you know, new people, because a giveaway may not be the best way to attract the right people to your brand. So that’s where I would say the bad comes into play is if you’re not going about targeting your giveaway toward the right audience for what your goal is, you can start to just attract the wrong type of people to your brand. 

 

03:10

When I say the wrong type of people, the people who are not your ideal client, the people who are not going to become loyal client tells who you can retain, they might be people who are just looking for a good deal, or, hey, if they win something great, but they have no intention of becoming a long term client that doesn’t serve you well to get their email address if they never had that intention.

 

03:34

Yeah, so what we see a lot with giveaways, especially on like Instagram is, you know, tag three friends, they all must be following your page type of thing, right? But as we talked about so much like, if you’re a brick and mortar spa business, you want to really focus on having a local following, right, you want to make sure, because our sole intention is that you are getting an ROI on your social media. 

 

04:03

So if you run one of these contests, that’s like tag three friends, you have no idea if those friends where they are in the country where they are in the world, and that can really screw up your algorithm. And also, those three friends. You know, are they as you were saying, are they ideal clients to your spa? You know, maybe but most likely not. And, and in our experience, what we’ve seen was spas is the ones that do the contest, as you were saying, Danielle, when you’re doing it with your existing clients, to really re engage and get them excited. It’s awesome. It can be really, really good. But when you do it as just like, hey, I want to get more followers. It can really that’s the bad that’s the bad is that it can be like yeah, you might get a lot of followers but it’s the wrong people and we care so much more about quality over quantity, we want to make sure that we are not in the vanity numbers, you know, needing to have all of these, these followers and these likes and these engagements, that means nothing if they’re not coming in and receiving services from you. 

 

05:21

Okay, so let’s talk about the ugly, what is the ugly of giveaways?

 

05:26

So I’m not gonna lie, the ugly is enough for me to not want to partake this year back. But it’s like, it’s just too much. Um, Facebook and Instagram are very picky about their contest and giveaway rules. They have rules in place, people break them all the time, I get questions constantly about like, if I do this, is it breaking a rule, and it’s like, I don’t know, the rules could have changed in the last 48 hours since the last time I looked at them, they change constantly. And the rules that are in place pretty consistently, every time that I go look at them, are things you’re not allowed to encourage people to tag, you’re not allowed to encourage people to share, like, it’s all the things that you know, kind of an essence want to do. And that’s then going back to why I like contests and giveaways when it’s internal. Like if it’s to your email list, you can do whatever you want. You don’t have to worry about rules, because it’s your rules. It’s your email list. 

 

06:27

But with Facebook and Instagram, they do have rules around tagging, they have rules around things like commenting. And you have to look at it specifically because there are certain contests or I should say posts where you can encourage people to tag. But it depends on what you’re giving away. And it depends on the contest. There’s just so many like little details that you really have to make sure that you’re abiding by. And I will say I see people break the rules constantly and nothing happened. It’s no big deal. And I’m sure Facebook does not have enough people to like be checking on all the things. But my thought processes is I don’t want to do something that’s going to get my page banned, or shut my ads account down. Generally, I find if you’re going to do a contest and posted on your social organically, you’re going to be fine. It’s when people try to put ad dollars behind a giveaway type post that you can really run into some trouble if you’re not following all those detailed rules, because getting your ads account shut down is…

 

07:33

So one contest that I’ve seen work really well that I thought was very sweet. You know, this month, it’s Mother’s Day, right? And so having a post that’s like, we’re giving away a complimentary facial to a deserving mom tag a mom to get to enter her into the contest, right? 

 

07:54

So that’s a way that you’re tagging somebody who is likely local, because they’re entering to win. You’re giving away something, right? We’re giving away a facial to a deserving mom. So it makes it not as spammy or ad people are excited to be tagged like, Oh, you entered me not like tag three friends. And you’re like, Who is this? What is so many targets? Oh, like here, you’re tagging me to win a free facial? Because you think I’m an awesome mom and deserving it right? So think about how you can kind of shift the approach. Like a lot of times, I was just hearing my coach talk about creating referrals for brick and mortars. And, you know, like, if you have a certain the energy of referring someone is totally different if you get something and they get something versus just if you get something so if it’s like oh, you know, refer a friend and receive $100 it’s refer a friend and you both receive this and this, then it’s like, it makes it it just shifts the energy in in the way that you’re doing things. So think about that. As you’re running as you if you do decide to run a contest, how can you shift the energy to make it not that just like tag three people follow us? Did it like shift the energy in a way? Okay, Danielle, anything else that you want to add about social media giveaways?

 

09:22

Not really. I feel like we covered it all. I guess it would just be that. Yeah, really think through the full strategy, like think of the goal of the contest and giveaway be clear on the audience. And then the execution like go full force with a complete plan and not just the like, here’s the thing we want to giveaway, slap it up. hope it works. You can see it a difference, especially in the results that you get. So put some time in, do the plan and take those steps and if you do decide to do a giveaway, I think you’ll see a lot better results with it. That approach. Perfect. 

 

09:56

So let’s keep this conversation going over in the Spa Marketing Made Easy Facebook group who has done a giveaway what’s worked well for you guys? Let us know so that we can all benefit right? Remember we are collaboration, not competition, the rising tide floats all boats and come up with some more instagrammable quotes here but it’s as long as we are all supporting each other. We are all benefiting so let’s keep this conversation going over there and we’ll catch you on the next episode. 

 

10:29

Thank you so much for listening. If you’re loving this Spa Social Beats episodes there is a whole lot more where that came from inside of our social media membership site just for spas, Post With Purpose. We teach you how to turn likes into clients by creating targeted messaging combined with beautiful imagery just for your ideal clients. 

 

10:49

Head on over to our Instagram @AddoAesthetics and click the link in our bio to learn more

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EP 231: Creating the Core Four and the Systems that Allow Us to Grow

The concept of the “dream team” is one many of us know well and aim to assemble, but for any entrepreneur who’s ever set out to create their dream team, you know it is easier said than done.

In full transparency, it took me years to build what we at AddoAesthetics call “The Core Four,” so today, I wanted to get us all on the mic as we discuss the journey to getting where we are today and how we make it work. 

Hint: we talk heavy on the systems. 

As a fully remote team (in addition to The Core Four, there are 10+ additional freelancers and contractors on Team AddoAesthetics), systems have been critical for our growth and success since Day One when it was just me running the company from my kitchen table. 

As we’ve grown, Annie, Christy, and Danielle have built up and witnessed the backend evolution of the company and it’s systems, and in this episode, we’re giving you a peek behind the curtain so you can steal some of our insights and use them to reinforce your own systems-based business.  

In this episode, we discuss:

  • Everyone’s key job responsibilities and how we’re structured within the AddoAesthetics organization chart to take ownership over certain focus areas in the company 
  • What specific systems are critical for everyone’s individual roles and how these systems play into the overall picture and vision of the company
  • Why systems are critical for being able to reach our quarterly and annual goals as well as move closer to the overall mission and vision
  • How we each approach our roles from a systems-based perspective and structured framework plus how our core values predicate our individual and collective success 

References Mentioned in Episode #231: Creating the Core Four and the Systems that Allow Us to Grow

  • Easily run payroll for your company with Gusto (affiliate link)
  • Books referenced in this episode: Dare to Lead by Brené Brown, Clockwork by Mike Michalowicz, E-Myth by Michael E. Gerber, and Traction by Gino Wickman 
  • Tools mentioned in this episode: Process Street (for SOPS), Monday.com and Asana (for project and task management)
  • Take the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator via 16Personalities 
  • To keep the conversation going, ask questions, and connect with other like-minded aestheticians building thriving careers, click here to join the free Spa Marketing Made Easy Podcast community. 

P.S. – Ready to scale your spa to the next level? Join us for the 5-Day Spa Business Bootcamp kicking off May 31 at 3 p.m. EST! Head here to learn more and register!

As a thank you for being a loyal listener to the Spa Marketing Made Easy podcast and for helping us to reach more aestheticians working on growing their businesses and creating a life they love, we have created a free resource portal just for you! 

 

It’s totally free to join, and for every 25 reviews we get on iTunes, we’ll add a new training video, PDF, tracker, or other high-value resource to help you grow your aesthetic business!

 

If you have yet to leave a review, click here to leave one on iTunes, and click here to access the free resources already unlocked


EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

00:00

Have you heard about the free Spa Business Bootcamp happening May 31st to June 4th in the Spa Marketing Made Easy Facebook group?

 

00:08

Each day, we’re going to take a deep dive into the four phases of the Growth Factor Framework, your sales process, your social media, your systems and your structure before wrapping up on the final day with how to scale this bootcamp is a must for spa owners who are truly looking to build a company and a brand not just create a job for themselves. Click the link in the show notes to get registered and I can’t wait to see you in the group. 

 

00:35

You’re listening to the Spa Marketing Made Easy Podcast where we share simple proven strategies just respond to street professionals to help you get more clients in the door so that you can create a life you love. I’m your host, Daniela Woerner, licensed aesthetician and spa marketing strategist.

 

00:58

Hello, my dears, Daniela here and welcome to the Spa Marketing Made Easy Podcast. Hey, let me ask you a question. Are you making money in your business every single day? And let me just go a little bit deeper with that, okay. If you don’t work, would your business still make money every day, that may be the biggest vulnerability that I see with solo aesthetician. And really, even with spas that are still developing their teams. And I know you may be thinking, I don’t want to manage people or it just may not align with your vision. 

 

01:35

But building a team does not have to mean building a team of providers. You don’t have to have other aestheticians or massage therapists, even if you are a solo, I believe that you still need a team of people around you to help you grow this business to help you manage multiple streams of revenue. Okay. 

 

01:59

So there’s marketing, there’s customer support, there’s project management, there’s social media, there’s admin and tech, right? So there’s all these important areas that need your attention for your company to grow. Now, I had my son in April of 2020. And I went on to take a four month maternity leave during a global pandemic, when all of the spas were shut down. And we actually ended up having it was our best year ever, we had some pretty massive growth from the year before. Think about that for a second that as a company, the leader, the owner of the company, was out for four months, during a global pandemic, we still had our biggest year, right? 

 

02:45

That’s what I want for you. That’s what I want you to create for yourself. And I know that that would not be possible without a team. It’s as simple as that. But team development is hard, right? knowing who to hire, how to train, how to manage, it is a real skill. It’s a learned skill. And I’m really grateful to have worked in some incredible companies prior to starting my own business because I learned so much in this area, right? So bits and pieces that I have taken with me to create my own leadership style. I just want to do a side note real quick. I know we talk about books all the time, but the “Five Dysfunctions of A Team”. I think it’s such a quick read, but it is such a great read for someone that’s learning how to manage their team. 

 

03:38

Okay, now we get a ton of questions in Growth Factor about team development, about leadership, who does what, so we thought it would be really fun to do an episode with our leadership team. I like to call them our Core Four. So it’s me, Annie, Danielle and Christy, right? We wanted to give you an idea or just to give you an idea. We currently have five employees and seven contractors that we work with on a regular basis. 

 

04:04

But you guys, it started with just me doing all the things. Okay, we are currently in year seven of our company. And I brought on a VA shortly after. I think it was it was at the end of year one I probably brought on the VA and then Danielle came on pretty much right after that. So Danielle has been with us. She’s been like six years now. I think were in year six. 

 

04:30

So we have grown each year, which has enabled us to hire and yes, we do have a lot of people on our team. But time wealth is something that is incredibly important to everyone here at Team Addo. So we are going to continue to grow so that we can all have this, you know freedom and flexibility that we desire. And you’ll see as we do this interview, knowing what your people want is incredibly important to you. Building a successful team. 

 

05:01

Okay, so in this episode, we’re talking about what each person in the Core Four does, what helps them to thrive in that role and kind of getting their two cents, which was really a neat perspective. 

 

05:14

We also give examples of what the role would be in a brick and mortar spa. So I really hope that this behind the scenes look at Team Addo helps. Feel free to tag us over in the Spa Marketing Made Easy Facebook group if you guys have any questions. But remember, a team is not just about providers, there’s so many other areas of your company that really need help and support. Because if you are doing it all, you are doing a disservice to your company, right? You’ve really got you cannot be the person that’s doing the treatments and handling marketing and being the visionary. And doing customer support, you will burn out, right and you will not your company will not grow as fast as it possibly could. Because you just don’t know one person can do all of those things. 

 

06:08

Alright, so lots of love to you guys. Let’s go ahead and play that interview. And again, be sure to tag us if you have any questions.

 

06:17

Alright guys, this is going to be a really cool behind the scenes interview with the core four on the Addo Aesthetics Team. We wanted to do this podcast episode because I get so many questions about how do I build my team? Who do I hire next? What do these people do? How do you find them? And it’s really important to note that when I first started, it was me, myself and I doing all the roles. And my first hire was a VA from the Philippines. So it started, you know, very small, I think Danielle was, when did we connect Danielle?

 

06:58

Like right after your VA like a month after.

 

07:01

Yeah, so Danielle has been with the she has been on the whole journey with us. And I I don’t think I can actually take credit for how awesome she is. That was pure luck. But we’ve been able to grow and develop year over year over year. So what I want to do in this interview in this episode is really give you some insight into who’s each person on the team, what is their role, what do they do, what systems are crucial, and how we interact with one another. 

 

07:34

So let’s just go through and just first like maybe each one of you guys will start with Christy, maybe Christy you can just introduce yourself and say like what your role is at the company. Then we’ll go to Annie and Danielle.

 

07:47

Right. I’m Christy. And I think my title is Client Success Manager.

 

07:53

I know we gave you…

 

07:57

It feels so fancy, like I’m so not fancy. Um, but I feel like I do a lot of different things like community management, accountability, and…

 

08:10

That’s right, watering plants, my specialty, the calendar, just a lot of different random things.

 

08:17

Very good. Annie?

 

08:20

But um, well, I feel like with me, it’s always been a little bit uncertain what is any doing, but I do have the title of Director of Operations, and also Project Manager. And yeah, creating SOPs, updating SOPs. And I would say just overall making sure that everyone knows what they need to do and when they need to do it. And yeah, just making sure everyone is clear on what’s happening and by when.

 

08:49

And Danielle,

 

08:51

I am I think my title is Content Director. I’m kind of in the same boat as Christy where I’m like, changed, but basically anything. Yeah, it’s evolved. But any piece of content, social media, podcast emails, any piece of content is something I’m typically writing or touching in some sort of way. And that’s my role all things content.

 

09:17

So when I look at each of you guys, like I see Christy, as really being the high touch person with our students she’s client facing, she’s handling all the little details to make sure that we are a very high touch company that each of our people feel loved and supported. All the small touches and then also keeping my life organized. That is a huge I mean, Christy always will be sending me reminders and even like sweet little messages on boxer like, Oh, you know, just just great things that really keeps the keeps us organized. Keeps all have us feeling loved and happy and appreciated. And Annie basically runs the company. So it should be Annieaesthetics.

 

10:12

But Annie, really like all of the, me as the visionary coming up with, here’s the idea. Here’s what I want to do. I have the idea, I have the direction, and Annie figures out how we’re going to make that happen, and how we’re going to who we’re going to assign what I’m and Danielle, you, you create the content, right? You create the content. And I think, something that you do as well, that is not really talked about, but you are brilliant with strategy and funnel mapping and really understanding offers, and where, yes, you’re creating content, but you, you really do have a marketing mind and a branding mind, which has been incredibly helpful. And so for, and I guess, you know, I kind of touched on the fact that me as the owner, as the CEO, I’m acting as the visionary, I’m really the face of the brand right now delivering the content. But what I’m doing behind the scenes is a lot of team development. You know, we’ve talked a lot about, okay, we have these fancy titles now, but like, my job is to take each person, develop them, find the direction that they want to go, this is what we do with our students. But this is also what we do in our team to a big degree, make sure that everybody’s happy. And find what they thrive in what they’re the best at. And make sure that we have a clear path for growth. 

 

11:46

Because I am a big believer in when you’re bringing on a team, you want to make sure that you get the right people and that when you do have those right people that you keep them happy, right, that’s a very important thing. And, and part of the way that you do that is by regularly checking in understanding what motivates them understanding what they want their life to look like, right? And that’s different for every single person. But I think that that if I have to say, one of my superpowers, I think is really being able to check in regularly, and create a space where everybody on the team can kind of carve out their path that works for their lifestyle.

 

12:34

Um, okay, so let’s jump into Christy, you as the Customer Success Manager, that’s your fancy title. What are the what are some of the things that you’re doing? What are some of the systems that make your life easier, so for anyone who would have customer support customer success, this would probably in a brick and mortar spa, this would likely be filled by someone who’s doing the front desk, what sort of things have really helped you what sort of systems have just been like game changers in your role.

 

13:13

So I would say, definitely starting out having really good SOPs. So we store all of our SOPs in Process St. And that’s something that Annie started and continues to update, I feel like it’s a full time job. But those in general, have been amazing, because I know, they’re, you know, very detailed and labeled. And I know if I get some questions relating to a specific program, I can go right to that SOP, I can copy and paste and then kind of fill in the details from there. So I would say that’s probably for someone in customer support. That’s probably the number one system that you really need to have in place. I think it would have been a lot harder to make it as I go. So so nice to just jump into the role and just have those. 

 

14:02

Yeah, and and what Christy is referring to for those of you that are in spa, so we have our frequently asked questions, right? So in customer support in a spa, you’re going to get a lot of the same questions. What are what’s this policy? What’s that policy? What’s the pre-care instructions? What’s the post-care instructions? Do you have this available, etc. And what’s your membership about so having templated emails in an easy to access place that and your customer support person can actually create these if you’re just bringing if you’re a solo and you’re just bringing somebody on for the first time. All you have to do is every email that you’re sending out as you’re transitioning this over you template that and you just say okay, now add this to our SOP portal you may be used Process St. , you may be using Google Drive, whatever it is, but making it as easy as possible that your front desk person can then just copy and paste the response. And just add one or two customized slides in there. 

 

15:18

Okay, Annie, so as Project Manager, and as someone who works with the visionary in the company, right. So the CEO role, a lot of times, I think one of the things that you do quite a bit for me, is, okay, yes, you think you like, I have all these ideas and think that we can do it in a quarter. And you’re like, let’s take it back a notch and see what we can actually do. Because there’s a big difference in having an idea. But then when you really break it down, to see Well, what needs to happen in that, that’s where, like, the magic of actually getting things done, happens, because you’re not putting so many things on the plate. So for you, what do you think are the most important systems and what has really allowed you to thrive in this role?

 

16:15

Well, to be honest, I feel there’s, there’s a couple of things that will really bring things together. For me, everything always starts with the owner, which is you and then you know, your great at, already coming in as a role model, who is already supporting and investing into systems, because it’s really hard if you’re coming into a company and you want to make a change, but if that’s not already supported by the owner, so in general, just as a company, and the owner always comes as a role model is having the mindset of creating systems, and having the mindset that, like always seeing which task, every task that is being repeated should in the end of very soon be created as an SOP. And then being automated, because that’s how it takes time. And it takes a little bit of an investment in the beginning to set those SOPs up. 

 

17:09

But they’re gonna pay off in the long run really, really quickly. And as long as the Project Manager and the Owner are having the same mindset, and the same vision that already helps big times. And besides that, I would say, my number one thing really is having a project management tool. I feel like I mean, we use Monday.com. But there’s also another tool out there, which is Asana, that’s even for free. It’s super intuitive, but it’s basically replacing the old school to do list. It’s everything that needs to be done, it needs to be written down. And it needs to be outlined every single step, which is what you just said, it’s, it’s so easy to have a vision in mind. And we usually have a tendency to always think we can get so much more done in a shorter period of time, or when we actually sit down and we we lay out the year, the quarter and the month. And we actually write on every single step with a deadline, we actually end up noticing, it’s definitely going to take a little bit more time. It’s all just a little bit. But that’s why it’s important to have that clarity with a project management tool.

 

18:24

Yeah, and I’m thinking for spas like if they are hosting an event or something, right. Like when we get back to that space where we can do in person events. It’s like, yeah, let’s have an evening of beauty. But you have to what is the offer going to be? What are you going to be doing live demos? Are you going to be connecting with the reps? How are you going to invite the people? How are you going to market the people, I mean, there’s a huge project management board that goes into creating a successful event. And, you know, we have that instagrammable quote, that’s like when you fail to plan you plan to fail. And planning an event can be the difference of 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of dollars. If you spend an hour or two mapping out what you actually need to do, you can have just an event that is like, Whoa, like knocks your socks off. But if you just put it together last minute. And that is the power of a Project Manager, a Project Manager is really making sure that every single thing that you do in your company is planned out and organized. You work as Project Manager, but you do also simultaneously work as Director of Operations and really just making sure that every single person on our team and I think now there’s 12 people, if I’m correct. So we’ve got this is our leadership team here. 

 

19:55

But I think we have 12 people combination of employees and contractors and Making sure that everybody has their what you’re calling spark a single point of contact, right? Yes. And so they have their direct report and they understand, like, every single person understand who’s responsible for what. And that is something that having a project management board, and also an org chart in your company can really, really help with.

 

20:26

Yeah. And Daniela, building on that, in general, as a company to be successful. And for projects or everything to get done is, it’s also having that clear understanding of which role is everyone playing, and which ones responsibilities everyone has, and making sure there’s no overlap, that there’s like clear ownership of every person, everyone knows what they need to do. And then also being integrity of what is the work that you’re committed, what are you’re asked to do, and then actually delivering the work because in the end, the whole company and as a team, projects and sustaining a spa, like you have so many members, and team members building something together. So the end, it’s really everyone needs to be crystal clear. What are they doing? What’s their contribution to the company? And then everyone will be delivering on that? Because, yeah, as you’re saying, it’s like everyone has a single person of contact, everyone has some sort of ownership of the task.

 

21:26

Yeah, that’s, I think that’s been extremely helpful. Because, you know, what I think is important, too, is like, you know, we’re sitting here talking about how every single person’s role has evolved. And in a growing business, that’s going to happen, you’re never going to have all your systems figured out, you’re never going to have your exact job description or your exact org chart, because you get it mapped out. And then as the business grows, as the demands change, as family situations change, right, like all of that kind of stuff contributes to what is required in that specific role. 

 

22:05

So you’ve got to be, there’s a another handful of instagrammable quotes today. There’s another one that says, Be like bamboo, strong and flexible. And so you’ve got to be strong as a company and understand, like what’s required, but you also have to have flexibility, because things will always be growing and changing.

 

22:28

Okay, Danielle, tell us about your systems, like what helps you thrive in this role? What systems what processes?

 

22:37

Well, I’m starting my system right now, you probably saw me taking notes. So systems are a really big piece for me, especially because when it comes to a lot of our marketing, I’m the point person that it starts with, with the exception of the podcast where you record first, but then everyone else, their job depends on me getting my job done. And they can’t do what they need to do if I’m behind and not on schedule, or unclear of what my role or responsibility or my task ownership is. So I would say for me, I, a lot of times start from a blank slate in terms of, I get to just create, and I love doing that. But the systems are super important for me to understand how what I’m creating actually ends up as a tangible result that ends up getting seen, distributed, and ultimately helping the company grow and create the impact that we seek to make and move forward with the vision that you’ve set in place. So for me, the systems are really about making sure that I’m in integrity with what we’re doing vision wise.

 

23:47

One thing that I want to point out to you that I think is really interesting, I was just thinking about this as you were talking when we bring people onto our team, we’re big on the “MBTI, Myers Briggs Type Indicator”, I think our Core Four, we are all “ESFJ or “ISFJ”. And that is we are naturally operators, and we are very systems based people. And that is something that can be good or bad, but the way that we operate our company, it’s funny that like because we are all so structured in the way that we like things in the way that we focus on systems, you’ll find that it works either really well to have the same personality type or to have a different personality type that can fill the gaps. 

 

24:38

And I think Annie and I are “ESFJ” and I think Christy and Danielle are “ISFJ”, Is that right? Yeah, yeah. Very cool. I am surrounded by ESFJs, ISFJs and INTJs. So, food for thought. 

 

24:54

Okay, so any advice from any of you guys before we wrap up for spa owners who are looking To build their dream team. Like, what were some of the things  about our company that really helped you thrive? That like, I know having the systems in place, but what is it that really made you feel like you could step into your role and have that ownership that we could translate for something that a spa owner could do as they’re bringing people into their business?

 

25:25

I can start. I just think, Daniela, as you mentioned, you are always checking in and making sure that we’re happy, or that if there are additional tests that we want to do or go in a different direction, I think that can relate to spa because there’s so many different roles that a person could fill, you know, different service or whatnot. But I think it’s important to always be checking in and asking if they are happy, you’re not afraid to say what type of support do you need? I feel like a lot of times, you just know that, but that may not come naturally to some people. So I think just being upfront and asking is a huge thing for someone in a leadership role. Just find out what your people need, and support them and let them know that they have a voice as well. I think that’s one thing that you allow us to do is that even though you are the founder, we all have a voice and we are all encouraged to use it.

 

26:16

Good. So checking in with your people. I think I’m glad you feel that you have a voice. But I think it is so important for us as leaders, a lot of times there’s a problem, and we want to hire somebody, and we just want them to fix it right. And really developing a team is like helping them to understand the vision and what their role is in that company, and how they’re like, helping that vision. So yeah, I think that’s great in any business. 

 

26:43

Annie, do you wanna go next?

 

26:44

Yeah, and like building on what Christy just said, I would say, for me, the biggest part is, I mean, this is our business, and we’re doing our work, but it’s something that you’re great at, and it’s something that’s incredibly important for me is feeling like we’re all humans and being treated as a human and, like receiving that trust and freedom. But trust in the work that I’m doing that I’m gonna do the work. 

 

27:08

There’s micromanagers, macromanagers, and everything, you know, everyone works differently but, especially for me, as a Project Manager, it’s great that I’m not like you’re not micromanaging. I, you’re very clear on the guidance. I always know what’s your vision, and what’s your guidance, and then you let me one with the freedom and the trust that you give me. And that makes it incredibly joyful and easy for me to do the work. And still no, I’m a human. And we’re all having fun. Like in the end, it’s supposed to be fun, as much as we’re working. But it still needs to be fun and joyful.

 

27:44

Yeah. And I think that, you know, one of my mentors from spa, Matt Toronto, he said, Hey, we’re not curing cancer here. And that’s something that’s really important to remember. And that was, you know, we were just talking before we recorded the podcast, and in full transparency, you guys, I am behind on a bunch of my tasks. I am the bottleneck in the business right now. 

 

28:08

But I’m behind, because some of our students are going through some struggle right now with personal stuff. And they just needed some extra support. And so that means that my podcast episode didn’t get recorded. And that means that, you know, some other little tasks that I was supposed to do, didn’t get done. 

 

28:29

But family, for us is a core value and family affects your business. And so for me, if some of our students are having personal family struggles, we’re going to support them 100% even if that means the podcast episode gets pushed back, right. And we do that for our students, we do that for our team, you know, Annie, last week, or the week before you like guys, I’m just not gonna be able to make the meeting. And for me, I was like, Alright, cool. 

 

29:01

Because I know that there is if you say, you can’t make the meeting, I know you can’t make the meeting. It’s not like we have integrity is such a core value of who we are. That if someone says like, I’m sick, I’m not feeling well, I need to take a nap. I need to whatever. It’s like, Alright, I know that if you have that freedom to know that, because I know also, if it were like a crucial deadline, you’d be like, I’m going to do the, whatever needs to be done. And then I’m going to take my nap or whatever, you know, and I think that because we’ve built the relationship and know like what is required, and give each other that trust and flexibility which takes time, right? That’s not something that’s going to happen overnight. But that I think has really helped in everybody’s happiness. And in everybody’s, like, letting this feel like it is work but it’s it’s It is fun, I think that you it’s something that you desire to do and still can be motivated to do which is, is really important. 

 

30:07

So in spa, how can you create that, you know, it’s an It is like, just get interested in your people get to know who they are, and care about them. One of the things that I look for when I’m hiring is do I actually like this person? They may be so talented. But if I don’t like who they are as a person, I’m not going to hire them. Because I’m spending so much of my time with them. And if they are, like, high anxiety, or something that just doesn’t work with my personality, it’s not gonna happen. It’s higher the smile, train the skill, getting the right people is so important. 

 

30:51

Okay, Danielle, you’re up next.

 

30:54

I would say my biggest like tip that I learned through, it’s been interesting, just being one of the first people on the team, I’ve really seen the full evolution of systems like from the beginning. And I would say my big tip would be like, it’s truly never too early to start with systems. Like even if you are a solo, you still have systems. And they’re just living inside your head, and you need to document them. Because I remember when I started with you, you did not hand off this big SOPs to me, there was no Process St. , there was no nothing. 

 

31:28

But you did have I remember, vaguely…it was a Google Doc. Well, it was a Google Doc checklist, basically, of like, here’s what I’m doing. Here’s what I’m expecting in terms of like kind of the end result and what I’m hoping you will achieve with your role. But there was also that thing of you said, Now it’s your turn to like, you come up with the better system. And I think that’s something where it’s like we talked about SOPs. And you mentioned earlier about how it’s never going to be done. It’s always evolving and growing and shifting as the company grows, but starting somewhere and then building that trust with your team, that when someone has ownership and responsibilities over a certain role or process or an area of the business, that you say, now it’s your turn to iterate on the system, make it better, make it your own, so that it works for you, but also like documenting it so that if someone ever needs to step into that they can do it. And that’s how essentially it grows. 

 

32:35

So my biggest thing is just don’t be afraid to like start systems, even if you’re not planning on hiring anytime soon, it will only make the hiring and growth process so much easier when it’s actually time for that if it is ever time for that, which I think most people listening, like do have that goal, eventually, but it’s just, it’s never too early. And even if you’re solo, like having those systems set in place, and having them even very loosely documented is going to set you lightyears ahead and also just leadership wise, like I don’t know if you’ve actually read the book, “Dare To Lead”. Was that a book? Okay. I was gonna say from the beginning…

 

33:14

Clarity is Kindness. That was? Yeah.

 

33:17

Yes, you’ve embodied that from the very beginning, like clarity is kindness. And when it comes to team growth, because I’ve always known, and actually I do remember, when I was first starting you, I think had me rewrite your bio, and I did not nail it. Like, I just didn’t get it the way you were envisioning. And I remember being like, I blew it like, this is so not good. But you’re just like, no, this just didn’t end up how I want. This is what I’m looking for going forward, if we’re ever going to, like do this again. No big deal. And now you kind of know my expectations for this…

 

33:55

I do. Well, I do because I just remember being like, Oh my gosh, I blew the opportunity. Like she’s not gonna like have me write anything else for her. Because it was like an early task. But it was that thing of you didn’t make me feel bad or like I did something wrong. You just said I’m you actually I think took ownership of it. He said I didn’t clearly communicate what it is I was looking for. And I should have done that to begin with. And I just remember that really stuck with me where it was that thing of you told me like, this wasn’t what I was looking for. But I also didn’t clearly communicate that with you worked that out. And it’s been, you know, we have not run into anything like that before. And it’s because that was handled with kindness and clarity. It wasn’t that thing of like, Oh, well, I’m not going to tell her what’s you know, and then, and then you continue to have issues. It’s just there’s always been that culture within Addo Aesthetics. Whether it’s me or anybody else where we always I feel like I can communicate with Christy or Annie or anybody else on the team and say hey, this is can you please do this, this is what I’m looking for. And it’s just that clarity, peace and doing it with kindness. And that saves you every time.

 

35:07

Yeah, and and I think for me something that’s really important, as the owner is letting go of your ego. A lot of times we feel like we’re really cool because we started a business. 

 

35:21

But my job is like, how can I hire people that are better than me that are smarter than me, that can fill in the gaps. And a lot of people get intimidated by people that like, Oh, they know more than me, or Oh, that I never want to be the big fish in the room. And that goes in like my mastermind groups that goes in my friends circle. But it also goes in my team, it’s like, I have zero issue, I’m thrilled that I have people that are better than me, in their areas of expertise. Because the minute you think, you know, everything is the minute that you’re going to fail miserably, right?

 

36:01

And each person has their area that they’re just so good at. And if you can let them carve that out and let them really thrive. And do it don’t I think what I’m taking away here that we’ve done well is like giving you the space to do things in the way that works best for you. But also as the owner being comfortable saying no, that’s not aligned with the vision, let’s work it out, right, because people will be more productive. People will be happier when they can do things in a way that it works for their brain. So I think that’s really important. 

 

36:39

All right, you guys, let’s go ahead and wrap up this episode. So I hope that this helped for all the spa owners out there that are wanting to expand their team. It really like I just want to say even if you are a solo, you know, we’re dealing now like I’ve had some solo aestheticians, they’re having challenges, right, and they’re having to step away from their businesses because of health issues, or family emergencies or whatever. 

 

37:05

If you don’t have a system in place, for when something like that happens, it can feel even more chaotic, right? Because you’re not able to fully focus on the situation at hand. Even if it’s something planned, like maybe you’re going on maternity or maybe you’re going on vacation, and you need someone a virtual assistant for somebody to come in and handle the basic day to days of your company while you’re gone. Having those systems in place can just really tremendously help. So I want to encourage you no matter what level of business you’re at, to really consider that. It will help. Now, I hope you enjoyed this episode. And if you want to keep the conversation going, please head on over to the Spa Marketing Made Easy Facebook group and tag us we’ll be happy to answer your questions. 

 

37:56

As always, if you want to keep the conversation going, I want you to head on over to the Spa Marketing Made Easy Facebook group. The number one free resource out there for aestheticians focused on business building. We’ve got weekly marketing tips, a monthly goal setting and planning session, monthly aesthetician business book club, plus a community of thousands of aestheticians committed to business building in the spa industry. I’ll see you there.

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EP 230: #SpaSocialBeat – Let’s Talk Frequency – How Often Should We Be Posting?

Welcome to our weekly #SpaSocialBeat! From our best tips and tricks to simplify your social media strategy to our top recommended tools, these are bite-sized episodes that pack a punch of practical advice so you can stop stressing over social media for your spa. 

In this week’s #SpaSocialBeat, we’re discussing:

  • Why is there no set answer to “how many times should I post to…[insert your platform of choice here]?
  • How to find and focus your social posting frequency based on your goals and where you’re currently at in business 
  • The other crucial factor in your planning process that coincides with frequency to ensure that if you’re going to spend the time and energy, it’s worth your while! 

Tune in every Friday for a new #SpaSocialBeat episode with Daniela and Danielle, and be sure to connect with us inside the Spa Marketing Made Easy community to share your biggest takeaways and how you’re putting these tips into play! 

To learn more about Post With Purpose and watch our free on-demand video training, “How to Increase Your Spa’s Bookings + Sales With Social Media,” click here


EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

00:00

You’re listening to the Spa Marketing Made Easy Podcast and this is a special Spa Social Beats episode, where we give you quick tangible information to help you uplevel your social media game, so you can get more clients in the door. 

 

00:16

I’m your host, Daniela Woerner, and I’m joined by my business partner in Post With Purpose Danielle Pastula. 

 

00:22

Get ready to take some notes and more importantly, take action. 

 

00:29

All right, my dears, welcome back to the Spa Marketing Made Easy Podcast. This is a Spa Social Beats episode and today we are talking about frequency. How often should you be posting if you’re using Instagram, which in Post With Purpose, that is the platform that we recommend starting with and making sure that you’re fully maximizing. So we talked about the Instagram feed, Instagram stories, IGTV, Reels, Live stream and all the things. How do you break that up? How do you know how much you should be posting and on which platform? 

 

01:05

So Danielle, do you want to start to break that down?

 

01:09

Yeah, so as of like us recording this episode, it’s April 2021. So this is kind of what’s happening currently and can’t say that it will stay the same, and it probably won’t. But the general principle still applies. So when it comes to kind of how to break apart and diversify your content. So currently, Reels is like the newest thing on Instagram, I mean, it’s been out for a little while now like six to nine months somewhere in that window. 

 

01:40

However, it’s still the kind of the hottest way to gain attractions. And it’s because your Reels are being shown to people who are not your followers. So in terms of all content we could be posting to grow your account Reels is the format that is going to be most beneficial for getting new followers onto your page and actually clicking follow to continue watching your stuff. 

 

02:05

Posts are still very important they serve the kind of portfolio of your work the bingeable type of content that someone can go through to get a feel for what your brand is about. The reach on that is not as good, however, is for just mentioned, really important. But also it’s one of the most searchable elements on Instagram. So where Reels and the Stories are a little hard to search, you can just have to go and explore and it shows up on your feed based on the algorithm based what users like to engage with. 

 

02:40

Feed posts are still the most highly searchable if you’re using hashtags correctly. So especially as a skincare expert, spa owner, aesthetician, a lot of people are looking for your stuff based off of search intent keywords like hashtag Miami spa, hashtag Miami esthetician. So that’s where feed posts are really important. It’s for that kind of local base search.

 

03:04

Then you’ve got Stories.

 

03:07

And Stories are really the best way currently to be engaging with your current followership. So though that’s where you’re going to be really engaging with people who are following you, it feels a little bit more intimate. That content is also not around 24/7, so you kind of have to be creating it a little bit more often versus that mainstay feed content. So that’s where when people ask, like, how often should I be posting? Know how is different types of content within the Instagram ecosystem, it depends on what your goal is.

 

03:42

Okay, that was a lot of information.

 

03:47

I tried to condense that down as much as I could, it’s obvious I can get really nerdy at this stuff.

 

03:54

So let’s say you know, as a spa owner, especially as a solo aesthetician, you’re wearing all the hats, right? And you say, Okay, my goal right now is to do like you said, Reels is the way to get the most amount of people in. So are we talking, you know, a Reel every day, are we talking? You know, three times a week, like what is the acceptable number and how do we plan? Like if we’re posting every single day, and we say okay, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I’m going to do reals. Tuesday, Thursday, I’m gonna do stories. And then Saturday, Sunday, I’m gonna do post, like, how do you? How do you break that up into something like if someone’s like, what do I do next?

 

04:44

Yeah, so I would look at what your goal is. And like in the example of a new, maybe a new Spa owner, new Solo Aesthetician who’s like, I need to build a books and I need to get people like my page has kind of gotten started from scratch here. Everyone says start from zero, I would go heavy on Reels to start with. And Instagram doesn’t look at consistency. So I would kind of measure your goal, but also with your bandwidth. So if you’re kinda need to, you know, I need to grow, I’m going to commit to doing Monday through Friday Reels. That’s great. But Instagram is also looking at your consistency factor as well to see, you know, where you get to keep up with that Monday through Friday Reels, and Reels can be a little bit more time intensive, their video content, the editing is a little bit more time intensive. 

 

05:33

So if you can stick with do Monday through Friday Reels and you’re like, I want to really hit the pedal to the metal with growing my account that you need to know that you need to commit to that for like, at least a month before you start scaling back. If that bandwidth sounds in, you’re like, there’s no way I could do that, a few Reels a week will do amazing things for account, it will get you growth. And then yes, you can divide the rest of your time between whatever other form of content is going to be most beneficial to you, I would say if you’re newer to growing your account, I would focus on the feed posts, just building up your feed a little bit. And then maybe month in once you’ve stuck with that consistency, like maybe you can kind of pull away from doing one of those feed posts or one of those Reels and switch into doing utilizing that time and that bandwidth to do more story because now you’ve got your followership grown a little bit and now you want to start engaging with them more. Or you could kind of do an even third split, right, like, I’ve got my week, I’m going to spend a third of my time doing Reels, a third of it doing Stories and a third of it doing feed posts that also work.

 

06:51

Yeah, and, and the thing with Reels, like when they first came out, it was you know, they’re wanting it to be almost like the, you know, the competitor to tick tock these really edited videos that and a lot of them are super funny, and like they’re really entertaining, you know, but if you look at the ones that are doing really well, like it doesn’t, you don’t have to jam pack all of this information, like you can easily do just a 15 second clip of you performing like maybe your Dermaplaning and you just do a 15 second clip and you give like, three benefits of Dermaplaning in text or something.

 

07:28

Don’t overthink it, just say, you know, like, look at what’s working and say, Okay, if I can do this consistently, and maybe one of my videos is more edited, and you know, like that, and then I just do the other ones to have the consistency. That’s okay, too. Right?

 

07:48

It’s done is better than perfect. Putting that first step forward, and then getting better and better as you go. Okay, awesome. So, but the I think the theme of this story when we’re talking frequency, whatever your I know, that we mentioned, like what is your ultimate goal? What are you trying to accomplish? But I think the, you know, moral of the story is no matter what you want to be posting to the different platforms at least five days a week.

 

08:19

Yeah, five days a week is really what you need to be doing to stay on the radar and to be showing up in feeds. Regardless of where you’re posting the content. Five days a week is kind of that, that minimum bar is what’s gonna keep you kind of staying relevant at the top of Instagram.

 

08:44

Perfect. Well,

 

08:45

Let’s keep this conversation going over in the Spa Marketing Made Easy Facebook group. Let us know what’s working for you how often you’re posting. Are you seeing great results from Reels from stories from the feed? Let us know and we will catch you on the next episode. 

 

09:03

Thank you so much for listening. If you’re loving this Spa Social Beats episodes, there is a whole lot more where that came from inside of our social media membership site just for spas, Post With Purpose. We teach you how to turn likes into clients by creating targeted messaging combined with beautiful imagery just for your ideal clients. 

 

09:23

Head on over to our Instagram at Addo Aesthetics and click the link in our bio to learn more.

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EP 229: Defining and Living Your Core Values with Terrance Bonner

If I were to ask you, “what are your core values?” You might ponder for a moment and think “respect, integrity…you know, the Golden Rule!” Core values are all things we intrinsically have and have developed through our life experiences, but where they become powerful in guiding our journey and growth as people and entrepreneurs is when we define them. 

On this episode of Spa Marketing Made Easy, I’m joined by Terrance Bonner, an esthetician and licensed massage therapist, a massage therapy instructor, and CE provider with a diverse approach to massage and skincare, which has led him to be featured on CBS, FOX, NBC, and The New York Times. 

Terrance is also the author of, “Determination+Core Values=Success,” a workbook-style guide that helps you build a successful business on the foundation of your core values. Listen in as Terrance shares his story behind his core values and insights on how you can find yours to lead you to new opportunities. 

In this episode, we discuss: 

  • What core values are and the role they play in seeing your dreams come to fruition and building a brand and successful business 
  • Why it’s critical to define your personal core values and how they can take shape and display themselves in your business practices and leadership style 
  • Terrance’s backstory behind his core values and how they’ve guided his career and business path 
  • How to know when you’re living your  core values and are in alignment with them

References Mentioned in Episode #229: Defining and Living Your Core Values with Terrance Bonner

  • Learn more about Terrance and his company, The Bonner Institute via his website and get a copy of his book, “Determination + Core Values = Success” 
  • Visit Terrance’s personal website
  • Connect with Terrance on social media via Facebook and Instagram
  • To keep the conversation going, ask questions, and connect with other like-minded aestheticians building thriving careers, click here to join the free Spa Marketing Made Easy Podcast community. 

As a thank you for being a loyal listener to the Spa Marketing Made Easy podcast and for helping us to reach more aestheticians working on growing their businesses and creating a life they love, we have created a free resource portal just for you! 

 

It’s totally free to join, and for every 25 reviews we get on iTunes, we’ll add a new training video, PDF, tracker, or other high-value resource to help you grow your aesthetic business!

 

If you have yet to leave a review, click here to leave one on iTunes, and click here to access the free resources already unlocked

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