Catch the Latest Episode of Spa Marketing Made Easy

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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! 

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. 

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

• How showing up on social media serves as a customer and client support channel by making yourself accessible 
• Why social media communication and accessibility matters not only for helping to support a potential client to the sale, but also existing clientele 
• Our top tips for providing top notch support via the best social media subchannels, but also how to establish boundaries so that you’re not attached to your phone and DMs 24/7

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. 

It’s one of the biggest spa-lidays on the calendar, and this year it felt like it crept up faster than ever before…I’m talking about Mother’s Day! 

With many spas shut down during Mother’s Day in 2020, this year is an opportunity to create a surge of sales both online and in-spa, because, let’s face it, after a year like 2020, mamas need a spa day (scratch that, week!) and plenty of pampering products. 

While I hope you’ve already been hard at work preparing your Mother’s Day promos, I also wanted to get your wheels turning on a few ideas for not just bolstering more Mother’s Day sales, but paving the way for greater relationship building and retention. 

How do you do that? 

Through surprising and delighting the moms in your community and audience. 

In this week’s episode, I’m sharing a few ideas you can put together quickly and without taking too large of a chunk out of your budget. 

Be sure to let me know if you try any of these ideas out in your spa on Mother’s Day by sharing in the Spa Marketing Made Easy Facebook community, I would love to cheer you on and see what you did!  

In this episode, you’ll learn: 

• 3 quick and easy ways to make the moms you’re connected to in your business feel special and cared for 
• Why these ideas work to not only help your clients feel loved in the moment, but also further your relationships for greater retention and loyalty 
• How you can incorporate these ideas even if you’re on a tight budget for “extras,” as well as how to not look at these ideas as “extras” at all, but rather a part of your advertising budget
• My top tips and do’s and don’ts for these ideas to ensure that you’re truly surprising and delighting your clients, giving them a great experience, and making it pay off for you in the long haul!  

References Mentioned in Episode #227: 3 Ways to Surprise and Delight Your Clients This Mother’s Day

• 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! 

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 you should edit your video for various social formats and our top two tools for making the process easy peasy! 
• Highlights on the features of both Wave and Zubtitle and how you can leverage them to create engaging content
• How to use these tools to streamline your overall content marketing plan and social strategy workflow 

Tools mentioned in this episode:

• Wave.video 
• Zubtitle 
• Similarly named, differently spelled, and worth the shoutout: Wavve (a quick editor to create audio-based motion graphics)

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! 

P.S. – Want to learn how to increase your spa’s bookings and sales with social media...without spending hours creating content or trying to crack the algorithm? Watch our new on-demand video training here.

Fact: I am a die-hard fan of Profit First.

It’s simple, yet groundbreaking, and ever since I started Spa Marketing Made Easy over three years ago, today’s guest has been on my interview “bucket list.” 

In the world of entrepreneurship, he needs no introduction, but just in case you’ve never heard of him…

He’s the creator of Profit First, which is used by hundreds of thousands of companies across the globe to drive profit. He is the creator of Clockwork, a powerful method to make any business run on automatic. (And our current read for this month’s Aesthetician Book Club). And his latest, arguably most impactful discovery, is Fix This Next. 

In this must-listen episode, Mike Michalowicz, prolific author and shareholder (more on that in the episode, you’ll just have to tune in 😉) and I touch on all three of his powerful business concepts and how spa owners can power up their profits, mindset, and systems for growth on all levels of life and business. 

At a crucial time in global business and entrepreneurship, this discussion is both right on time for our industry as we move forward from some of the biggest pivots our businesses may ever see, and timeless in that the principles Mike illustrates through his words and body of work will always be applicable. 

In addition to being a sharp entrepreneur, he’s just a down-to-earth guy who takes big biz concepts and makes them relatable, easy to understand, and dare I say pretty damn fun. 

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why Mike has made it his mission to eradicate entrepreneurial poverty and what that actually means
• What investing in your business entails and when it’s a good idea to make different investments
• The two biggest challenges that entrepreneurs face and Mike’s thoughts on the key traits, solutions and core values needed to overcome them
• How shifting our identities as aestheticians or spa owners to that of a “shareholder” can change our businesses 
• Mike’s top insights on where to start plugging in the holes of a leaky business to build a strong systemized organization that feeds your passion and fuels a life of freedom

References Mentioned in Episode #225: Becoming a Profitable Shareholder of Your Business with Mike Michalowicz

• Learn more about Mike, his books, and ethos via his website and connect with him on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube
• See all of Mike’s books here and learn more about titles specifically mentioned in this episode: Profit First, Clockwork, and Fix This Next 

• 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 am so excited about this episode and I know I get excited about a lot of our episodes because we really have had some pretty awesome guests this year especially. 

00:39

But my friends, today we have a pretty awesome guest we’ve got an interview with Mike Michalowicz, the author of “Profit First,” “Clockwork,” which is actually our book club pick this month over in the Spa Marketing Made Easy Facebook group. 

00:53

He’s the author of the “Toilet Paper Entrepreneur,” “Surge,” “Fix This Next,” lots and lots of great business books. And we’ve been sharing his systems inside of our programs for years, we use the Profit First method to operate our business. And I can tell you that when the pandemic first hit back in March of 2020, I was so glad that I had a business savings that I had been running and operating my business in the correct manner. 

01:23

And I can tell you if I had not been using that system and had not been focused on saving and paying myself first and all the things we would be in a very different place right now as a company. Now, if you are a business owner and entrepreneur or as you’ll hear in this episode, Mike referring rather than entrepreneur business owner, he uses the term “shareholder” in that episode, and he’ll explain why. But if you identify as any of those, and you’ve been in a position where you see money coming in, but at the end of the month, you have nothing to show for it. You’re barely making ends meet. You must read “Profit First.” 

02:08

Now this system around finances, around accounting, just about how you operate your business. It is such a game changer. And we’re talking specifically about how estheticians can implement Profit First in their spas. Now let me do a quick read of Mike’s bio, and then we’ll jump right into the good stuff in the interview. Okay, so Mike Michalowicz launched and sold to multimillion dollar companies, and is the co-founder of the Profit First Professionals, a membership organization of accountants, bookkeepers, and coaches who teach the Profit First method. He’s a former columnist for The Wall Street Journal. He’s a popular keynote speaker and he shared his insights on business and entrepreneurship at TEDx, Creative Live, and other conferences. He’s the author of the “Pumpkin Plan,” “Surge,” “Clockwork,” and “The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur.” His columns have appeared in Entrepreneur, Open Forum, and Harvard Business Review. Alright guys, without further ado, let’s go ahead and play that interview.

03:12

All right, Mike Michalowicz. Welcome to the Spa Marketing Made Easy Podcast. I am so beyond excited and honored to have you here, Daniela, it’s a joy to be with you. 

03:23

Thanks for the invite.

03:26

Okay, so spa owners and and really the whole world, we have gone through such a crazy year with COVID. So many, I mean, there’s always I feel like there’s a silver lining to everything. I feel like as business owners, we pushed ourselves out of our comfort zone quite a bit. We’ve had to pivot we’ve had to really look at look at and refine our systems. And the businesses that were doing Profit First are really grateful that they were doing Profit First. Yeah, when everything happened.

04:01

I know that in all of your works, and and I’ve got the books behind me. I’m a big fan of everything that you’ve created. But really, there’s this common theme of eradicating entrepreneurial poverty, really.

04:16

Let me show…actually, check this out. This is my office here, and there it is on my wall…eradication from poverty. 

04:23

Yes, it’s a very visceral thing for me because I struggled with it. It’s funny I was I just did a keynote this morning for a conference a virtual one and they open up like “oh, you know he’s sold multiple businesses, he this”…. I sound like the biggest tool on the planet when I hear that, because you hear the bullet points of like, when wonderful successful things. But when they don’t share because I had that I wrote myself is that I struggled. I lost all my money. I started a business venture, right? No clue what I was doing. I had multiple businesses that outwardly look successful, but inwardly, we’re just dying. 

05:02

And the common theme between all those businesses was a lack of understanding of now we’re icons from poverty, that we need finances to have a runway, we need profitability. But we also need time, you know, there’s this, this hustle and grind mentality, which was seconds means like, oh, if you’re an entrepreneur, you gotta sacrifice everything in your life, screw your family, screw, screw your life, work harder, which has never been the intent of entrepreneurship, right? That’s a form of poverty. 

05:31

There’s even this what I call soulful poverty, where people are losing touch with why I started a business in the first place. So I hate what I do. Like, that’s totally not the reason why we started our business. So to me, this is very visceral, I’m out to cure that for myself, honestly, because I struggled with it, and for as many entrepreneurs as I can. 

05:50

So what do you think has shifted with what we’ve gone through? Do you feel like we are stronger as business owners? Do you feel like we’re weaker? Have you seen like, the systems, the frameworks, the things that you believe in preach? Has that shifted? Since we’ve gone through the pandemic? 

06:11

Yeah, I see. I’ve seen both sides. I think the common thing is we’re more aware of the vulnerability of a business to the macro economy. And I have seen some businesses explode. And they’re so successful. It’s almost like shameful, right. They’re like, I don’t want to tell anyone, things are so good, because every other business owner is buried and, and dying and wants to give up. But the common theme is consistently that we are vulnerable to the macro economy. We need to put in a foundation today that brings longevity and protection to the business long term. I think one of the key indicators if your business has been, or is surviving, check by check, you’re very vulnerable. Meaning, if you need to make sales immediately today to cover the bills for tomorrow, let alone pay yourself, you are extremely vulnerable. 

07:05

So these business owners that have survived this, and sadly, some businesses are just wiped off the face of the planet. Now, hopefully, those entrepreneur will come back in a new flavor. But the business that survived this, this isn’t like a we’re gonna return to it the new normal or an old normal or any kind of normal, something will present itself going forward. But it’ll change again, it’ll change again, that we have to put in foundational principles to maintain the healthy organization through the volatility that we experience.

07:34

Something that has been this ongoing struggle for me as an entrepreneur, and a lot of other of my friends that are in the entrepreneurial space is this conversation that goes on is, what does it mean to invest in your business? And when are you you know, like, when is that a good idea? And when is it a good at, you know, you don’t want to just dump money and that you’re not going to get back? but in the same time? You know, there’s that you need money to make money, right. So when is it right to put the money in? And when is it you know, being financially responsible? And when are you like, “hey, I can’t afford to hire I need to stay?” 

08:16

So I’m actually at odds with that term, that we need money to make money. I actually don’t think that’s true. But it is such a popular term or like, well, if you want to make money, you have to have money. I think what makes money is innovation, out-of-the box thinking, sometimes just pure frugality can actually serve you in making money. At the end of day, I think there’s a lot of great businesses that are missing on two things. 

08:42

They’re not controlling their costs. And or just commonly, they’re not controlling their margins or amplifying them. There’s a theorem I talked about in Profit First called Parkinson’s Law. And so Parkinson was a theorist in the 1950s, nothing to do with Parkinson’s disease, different guy is studying human behavior. And what he noticed is that as a resource expands its availability, we actually consume more of it, right? So what was funny, like, the bigger the closet in your home, the more clothes you have, like where they all come from, you can never have a big enough closet.

09:15

Right? When it comes to time, if you and I were discussing a contract, say, and I’ll say, Hey, I can get that to you in a week. it’ll likely take me a week to get to you. But the same people the same conversation around the same contract, and I say, I’ll get you tomorrow, I’ll likely get to tomorrow. So the resource of time has been compressed. My efficiency, my use my necessity to get done, amplifies. Well, this is true for money, too. So the problem is, as more money flows into the business, the more we spend, and you see this constantly, that a business you know, it’s kind of growing kind of growing, but gosh, I can’t get that one big client that never seems to appear to get into the range of profit. They’re just getting by, like, “Oh, I need that loan.” So, now we think we get someone else’s money in. All right. Okay, finally, in the money’s gone within a few months…”oh my gosh, here we are again. Now I am laden with debt.” 

10:06

The thing is, as more money comes in, we inherently consume more. And so the key – I don’t think it takes money to make money. It takes innovation, frugality. And one thing is you can force frugality. I also teach us and Profit First, I’m not trying to be like all promoting here. 

10:20

Oh no, everybody that’s listening has already, we read the book as book club… like, oh yeah, buy another one of my books! 

10:30

So, then to you’re probably familiar with this, with Profit First, if you remove your profitability, if you take your compensation, if you reserved for taxes, all these liabilities and things you want to do first, then the remaining money is truly available for the business. It’s actually forced frugality, the beautiful thing is you start becoming very innovative. When you have less available cash, we have to find ways to get the results. And so we control costs, we, more importantly, we find ways to amplify margins, we kind of package our spa services differently or a new way, or we can dictate a bigger margin. So the key here is actually to remove the access of money, it’ll force you to think smart.

11:10

So, do you feel like that is one of the biggest competitive advantages of businesses that are using your systems using Profit First? First, it’s, it’s forcing that innovation, and that’s what’s putting them ahead? 

11:25

For sure. So, so we have we know of over 500,000 businesses have implemented Profit First, I never anticipated or expected, which is just as amazing, but I couldn’t compute it in the beginning, was the businesses that implement a Profit First consistently, are outpacing their contemporaries in growth. They’re growing faster, which at face value makes no sense. If they’re taking their profit first, and they’re more profitable, they have less money to spend, how can you grow with less money spent? But what happens? They take their money first. 

11:58

And then they say, “Well, I can’t spend the way I was in the past. So I’ll spend more prudently, they become much more selective in how I spend it,” because everyone’s doing Facebook ads doesn’t mean Facebook ads is a good choice to do, or to make. So they’re becoming more selective. They were also thinking more frugally. Why do we need to buy all brand new equipment, there’s a place down the road that shut down, why don’t we just take over their equipment? And they started thinking that way. And those two elements of innovative thinking, being be more focused on what’s working and amplifying, and frugality started this them to grow faster. The beautiful thing too, is they have a cache of cash, a reserve of cash that’s building to partly go into the owners, but partially is what’s called a cash equity position, they have a reserve of cash, so they become opportunistic, when something presents itself, like, “Oh, that’s going to grow me I know, grow me, I can jump on things.” But the check to check survival. I’ve spent every dime they have, when an opportunity presents itself, they can’t grab it.

12:53

Yeah, and it’s it’s such an important concept just in personal finance, in general. And I don’t want to remember if it was “Profit First” or one of your other books, but there was a story that you were saying, the gentleman was saying, “Oh, I’m gonna wait just one more day…” One more day, right. And I was like, “Oh, wow.” 

13:11

You know, like, that’s a great, I’ve actually used that in my business, but also in my personal life. Do I need this? Can I wait just one more day and see how that changes? 

13:23

And we’ve all I’ll tell you, we all do this. So the “wait one more day” is really a necessity. And in the moment, it feels that way, emotion is where we got to get it. But if we don’t, then sometimes that necessity fades away. It was just a feeling. Well, we’ve all done with Amazon. Have you ever said like I need to get on Amazon, you buy it and you didn’t realize you didn’t buy it? It just went to the cart? And then two days later, you’re like, “wasn’t supposed to get something?” And then a month later, what was it, and you go back in your cart…and you see it sitting there like, “Oh, that was a big deal a month ago, I don’t need that.”

13:56

Well, I think with one of the positive things with the pandemic is realizing, you know, how much, or something that I’ve experienced, is how much we can get by without and still truly be happy.

14:09

We need so little to be happy, in my opinion.

14:13

Listen, stuff is nice, but also stuff requires maintenance, and maintenance. So I’m thinking my own business. The biggest I’ve ever had, I had a big business in definition by the SBA, SBA calls a big business, if you’re over $25 million in revenue, by the company’s doing 7 million, we have 30 employees. It was a great braggadocious thing. Uh, gosh, the maintenance required the politics that was going on. It was so it was it was actually I wanted to pull my hair out. Today we have a tiny business there’s there’s 17 people in total and most of us are part-timers here. It’s a tiny little business. Oh my gosh, so much more joyful. So you know the time wealth and money wealth, right? Yeah, time, wealth and money wealth. 

14:56

Yeah, exactly. And so the interesting thing is this, this is extremely more powerful than anything I’ve ever had. I have way more time to do things. But actually my wife was just funny her before he came on here, she texted me said, “Hey, how’s it going I have an apppointment tomorrow, Friday, do you mind is taking me? I don’t want to go by myself.” So I’m like, “Yeah!,” and it’s so easy. But I’ll tell you 10 to 18 years ago, but no, I have to work. I have to work every single day, I gotta work this Saturday, I got to work. It’s a hustle and grind. And now what I have today is a business that isn’t depend on any one person, including my colleagues, there’s redundancy in place, there’s appointments that need to be taken care of tomorrow, but doesn’t have to be me. There’s other people here. 

15:37

So this kind of leads me into a topic that’s very much been in every coaching call, you know, it’s just, I imagine it’s in all industries, but this feeling of overwhelm. So how do we, how do we address that? How, over that, right, because it can be like, Okay, I get that I should be doing Profit First, I get that I should be using, you know, the systems and Clockwork, I should be doing all this stuff. But that’s, I feel so overwhelmed just thinking about it. I don’t even know, you know, all of this stuff. 

16:11

I will share something with you, which I suspect you’ve never heard before. And it’s so simple, but it starts the entire process. The label we use for ourselves is, I would argue the worst label use. Even though it’s my favorite word, is entrepreneur. If you call yourself an entrepreneur or a business owner, those terms have become bastardized. It is equated to hustle and grind. And there’s pundants out there saying you’ve got to hustle and grind. And that’s bullshit. It is bullshit. 

16:37

Entrepreneurship was originally defined as someone who has a vision for an outcome and then organizes resources to make that outcome a reality. We take the risk of coordinating things and putting resources together and people together. But our goal is to be vision creators. But it’s been translated to just pure workaholism, which is just the worst thing. So here’s the step I suggest you take starting today…now we can do this, it’s not simple. It’s not easy, is to change your title. Start calling yourself a shareholder of a small business, which I’ll tell you is very weird. 

17:09

Next time, you’re like out with some friends, like, “so what are you doing?” Like, “I’m a shareholder of a small business.” Right? What the hell’s that mean? Like, some wacko guy on a podcast told me to say this, I don’t even know what I mean. But here’s what a shareholder does. I have some stock in Ford. I own 100 shares, like big investor here. But here’s the deal when Ford sends their profit distribution, which is send me one for $13, thank you…. when they sent it, I didn’t say “Oh, Ford, I have to earn this back, I gotta head down to the factory and hustle and grind for you, so I can earn this.” 

17:40

No. I invest in the business, the value of Ford stock hopefully will go up, it can go down, I’ve taken on risk as an investor. By starting our own businesses, we’ve taken on risk, the value could go up or go down. And we’re the ones who made that investment. Now Ford does give me two things – One, is they give me a profit distribution. The second thing is they give me voting rights, I give strategic direction to Ford with the other shareholders, on who the board of directors will be, and what strategic direction we’re gonna take.

18:08

Well, that’s also true for my small business. Now, the other thing is, are the thing in my businesses, I own 100%. And I think many people listening in right now own a vast majority or a big chunk of the business. That means you’re your big time, shareholder, your job is to collect the profits (thank you for taking the risk) and give strategic direction, not to run into the factory. If you simply change the label, it changes your identity, and you got to stick with this. This isn’t a one time deal. Every single time. 

18:36

You’re a shareholder, you’re a shareholder. Over the weeks and coming months, you’ll start opening your eyes to your behavior, and then the behavior starts changing, which takes you out of the business and more on the business. 

18:47

That’s really interesting, because in our industry, so many people identify as aestheticians. And so they’re not even thinking about being an entrepreneur. And I’m always, I identify as a problem solver. That’s been something for me is okay, how can I solve this problem? But that’s still that still does put stress on you to a certain degree. 

19:09

Totally, you know, it’s, it’s very much…we comply with our label, right? So if you’re a problem solver, I strongly suspect you get a lot of problems by people coming to “Hey, Daniela, real quick…” and it’s like, oh, Superhero’s here, I’ll answer because I’m a problem solver. I say I’m an aesthetician, I kind of be playing around so skin like, right, but it gives me the creeps. 

19:32

Have you ever had a facial? No, I need one so bad. 

19:35

Oh my gosh, are you in Jersey? I am! Okay, I’m going to send you an email with the best two Jersey girls that will do a facial for you. There we go. There we go. And a shout out to Sykes and Lanno. Okay, and I’ll gladly reciprocate too in supporting them helping them in some capacity.

20:00

I used to call myself an entrepreneur which I equated to a superhero, I could swoop in and fix things my business and guess what I did, swoop in and fix things, and wreck things behind me, which I didn’t notice with my colleagues had to clean up. Once I started acting like a shareholder, here’s what’s fascinating. I’ve been news for a couple years, I’ve removed myself, my identity, from being in the business doing all the different work. But as a shareholder who owns 100%, I also have the right to re-insert myself in the way it gives me joy. 

20:28

I love being the spokesperson, kind of we’re doing now, I love talking about entrepreneur concepts. I love writing books. So, I continue to do that. But I first removed myself so the business could continue and actually grow in my absence, which it does. And I can just do what gives me joy. I think the one fear some entrepreneurs have, shareholders, is that they run themselves out of a job, and we love to do what we do. It’s okay to love to do what you do, but we have to this in stages, don’t do what you love first, because at a certain point, you’re going to hate it. Instead, build a business that’s sustainable, and then insert yourself in a way that you love.

21:03

So, shifting your identity is a really complex thing….Or is it? It can be? It can be, but I think that we we build our identity from the time that we’re little girls, you know, or little. So there’s all these things of I am this type of person, I am that type of person. And if you spend so much of your life dedicated to “Okay, I’m an entrepreneur, I am doing this.” I imagine you had to go through a process, having several businesses, what was it that helped you make that switch? Was it kind of hitting rock bottom? I remember one of your books, you were like drinking a beer on a couch or something? 

21:51

A beeer? Like 100? Yeah. So it was a trauma trigger. And I’ll tell you, everyone listening in right now has experienced trauma. My trauma was around financial trauma, I wiped out and lost everything, which was a big identity crisis. Sadly, that’s mild compared to what many people, particularly women, face.

22:13

I do believe we can leverage trauma, and I do believe it is important to get professional therapy through this. I’m not a therapist by any stretch of the imagination, but I do believe that point can be a line in the sand where we say that thing, that thing happened will never happen to me or anyone else. It can become that visceral. The day I said, I lost all my money, just out of my own arrogance and ego, when I said, I will never allow an entrepreneur again to suffer financially or myself….

22:42

The day I drew a line in the sand, I keep on looking back at that. And I keep asking myself to for me to play out the highest level, what capacity must I serve? And it’s not to be the in the job aesthetician, it’s not to be the guy who’s doing all the work. It’s to build a company that can amplify this. So, there’s a reason you are an aesthetician, there’s a reason we went down this path and somebody it’s happenstance. But we can anchor into that trauma experience, I believe, and make it a statement for amplification. And then we can make a decision, if need to have the impact I want to have, does it have to be carried on my shoulders? And that’s what you choose, fine, that’s okay. Or you can say, is this something that I’m going to leverage others to support me in so we can have a bigger and greater impact? And it’s a choice. I think if we point back to that moment, the day I looked at that moment with clarity, everything changed. It was like an overnight change. I said, Oh, no longer am I a doer, I’m a designer. 

23:39

You found your “Why,” and I believe that our traumas or failures, or whatever happens, those are our biggest opportunities for growth. Right?! Really shittiest package…

23:56

And as someone who has had quite a bit of challenging things happen and in her life, I look at them as my greatest gifts. You know, I really, really do. And I think that that is what has shifted my beliefs and allowed me to reach the level of success that I have is by looking at it in that way.

24:17

I’m not surprised. You I meet some people who are just so driven. They’re such overachievers. I look at them, like they must have real big trauma, causing that. But, sadly, are some people that go the other direction and I understand why the trauma is so significant, it just compresses or depresses their progress and holds them down. And it reverts to, you know, behaviors that actually doesn’t become more harmful. So it’s, it’s ironic that the exact same instance, it’s just we have a choice to frame it as a positive springboard or something that can suppress us. So, especially then let’s make it a springboard.

24:58

Let’s let’s go back to your books here as we’re kind of wrapping up. And I feel like we have talked quite a bit about Profit First, you know, not directly here, but in our communities, in the Spa Marketing Made Easy Facebook group, we talked about that a lot. But for the aestheticians, or for the the spa owners that are just maybe hearing about you for the first time. Where do you suggest they start? What’s the most impactful? Is it Profit First? Is it Clockwork? Is it Pumpkin Plan? Like, what is the…where do they start?

25:30

Great question. And I so I used to answer that by saying, “Oh, you must read….” and I’d say whatever I’m hyped up on, the starting point, maybe is one of my books, I’d be honored if it is, but maybe it’s not. Here’s a starting point: We need to identify what the biggest impedance or challenge is in our business. What’s the biggest problem we have right now? That’s the thing we need to solve. And we need them to find the resources that solve that. So, if you have a problem, financial problem, that’s your biggest problem, maybe Profit First is the solution, if it’s efficiency, Clockwork, if it’s HR, I haven’t written that book, yet. I plan to…

26:06

There’s so much going on with HR right now. 

26:12

So there’s there’s amazing books out there for that, and we look for the resource. I will tell you though, why I wrote my most recent published book, which is, “Fixed This Next,” was I have found that for most business owners, most shareholders, the biggest challenge they face is knowing, in fact, what their biggest challenge is. So “Fix This Next,” is a compass tool, it helps navigate and tells you, “this is what you need to do, and then that, and then that after.” So if you don’t know what your business’s biggest challenge or problem is, then I invite you to look at “Fix This Next,” next.

26:44

Perfect, so where can people find you? Follow you? Learn about your books? Get in your circle? What is what is the place to go?

26:52

Yeah, well, you could try to go to MikeMichalowiz.com, but here’s one, no one can spell it!

26:58

I know, my name, my maiden name, is Konstantinos, I’m Greek. And then I married a German, who spelled Woerner, and now it’s like “no.”

27:11

My mother’s German. So here’s the place to go, is Mike Motorbike, an old nickname from high school, as in the rhyme Mike Motorbike just because people like to say that even though I’ve never driven a motorcycle. Ironic. I know. If you go to Mikemotorbike.com. That’s the mecca for me. All my books, free chapter downloads, I used to write for the Wall Street Journal, you can get those articles. And there’s lots of videos and other content up there. All free. Mikemotorbike.com.

27:42

Perfect. And we will link that up below this. Thank you so so much for your time, for your expertise, for your contribution to the shareholders.

27:55

There you go! 3D check that out. That’s awesome.

28:00

I so appreciate it. For those of you that want to keep this conversation going, be sure to head over to the Spa Marketing Made Easy Facebook group, and we will continue it over there. 

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:

• How to approach new features that roll out across various social platforms and look at them through the lens of your brand and social media strategy 
• Our top tips for learning more about new features and our top considerations that we make when deciding to utilize a new feature straight out the gate or to wait awhile 
• The benefits of being an early adopter to a new social media feature as well as the potential drawbacks

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! 

Want to learn how to increase your spa’s bookings and sales with social media...without spending hours creating content or trying to crack the algorithm? Watch our new on-demand video training here.

When you think of Pinterest, you likely think of finding easy weeknight recipes, curating an inspiration board for your kid’s birthday party, and interior design ideas, but did you know that Pinterest is quickly becoming one of the most profitable platforms for product sellers?

With the introduction of the Shop tab, Product Pins, and a Shopify integration, Pinterest has really upped the ante for ecommerce sellers, and online skincare stores are no exception. 

In this episode of Spa Marketing Made Easy, I sat down with Pinterest expert and founder of Simple Pin Media, Kate Ahl, who teaches entrepreneurs, product sellers and bloggers how to find and convert their perfect person on Pinterest. 

Settle in as we discuss this search-focused platform and how you can best leverage it to see ecommerce success for your spa.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• How Pinterest operates in the social media landscape and how you can make the leap from personal user to brand marketer on Pinterest 
• Pinterest’s increased focus on Shopping capabilities for consumers that are helping to further bolster ecommerce sales 
• Kate’s two-pronged approach for product sellers on how they can set forth with their Pinterest strategy and why having multiple entry points for your potential customer is key
• Kate’s top tips for optimizing your profile and pinning for optimal performance 

References Mentioned in Episode #223: The Power of Pinterest for Your Spa’s Ecommerce Store with Kate Ahl:

• Learn more about Kate’s company, Simple Pin Media via their website 
• Connect with Simple Pin Media on Pinterest, Facebook, and Instagram 
• Subscribe to the Simple Pin Podcast 

• 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!