Ten Tactics to building a resilient beauty business

It’s no secret that the pandemic pummeled many a beautypreneur. Salons and studios were closed, Style Seat accounts were clear and glam squads were grounded. Juxtapose that to the unshaken and forever growing global beauty industry, where products were still being launched and sold. How is that practitioners, the human glue that keeps the beauty industry alive, were struggling while retailers were able to withstand the shock? I’ll tell you how it could happen, business resilience.

As beauty practitioners, it’s crucial for us to understand our place in a global industry valued at over $500b. ?While I’m not a practicing MUA, I am a Brand Strategist who holds my dome brush in my left hand and my pen in the other. As a result of that, I strongly advocate for beautypreneurs to be strategic business owners who build businesses designed for longevity, so I’m going to tell you ten things you can do right now to build resilience into your beauty business, so even a pandemic can’t knock you off your feet.

Resilience Tactic 1: Have a Vision for your beauty brand

Just like any large corporation, you’ve got to have a vision for your beauty business. Having at least some idea of where you’d like to see your brand gives a “north star” to keep your eyes on when you plan your days, weeks and months. Decide how you want to uniquely contribute to the beauty industry and take steps towards reaching that goal every day. You may get knocked down every now and then, but if it’s one thing about the north star is that it never leaves the sky, so you can always look for it to guide and you and light your path.

Resilience Tactic 2: Set a mission for yourself as the leader of your beauty business

Setting a mission for yourself as the leader to sustainably grow your business. Being a mission driven business leader puts your mind in a place that hard to shake. Having a mission has the power to move you from the seemingly never-ending rat race where you’re on your feet 12 hours a day styling hair, dusting faces and doing nails, to a strategic business owner who sees the important of building longevity into the DNA of your business. It’s hard to knock a well prepared and mission driven business owner off their feet.

Resilience Tactic 3: Talk to your people before splurging on product

One of the areas of unnecessary resource waste is jumping into products that clients don't want or projects that won’t help you. Always talk to your people before taking the leap on any new acquisition meant to benefit them. We always want to watch what we spend and make every spend an investment and not an overhead.

Resilience Tactic 4: Build your community alongside your business

I cannot emphasise the importance of having a community that stands by your side when things get tough. Don’t be so caught up in chasing the almighty dollar that no one sees you unless they book an appointment with you. You need community to help you grow and you especially need them when things get difficult to support you in whatever pivot you make. Even if they don’t book your premium services in tough economic times, they may very well buy your products and DIY. In such times, every dollar counts.

Resilience Tactic 5: Diversify your business income streams

This can’t be overstated especially for hands-on work like beauty services. Most beautypreneurs are solopreneurs. You don’t have a 9-5 where you get a guaranteed salary. More than likely, you've rented a chair or station within a larger salon. Therefore, in many cases, if you don’t work, you don’t eat. Diversification of your income streams is imperative for you. From beauty products to beauty education or even consulting, you have to find ways to package your knowledge and sell it. Diversity in income streams will allow you to be flexible in what you can do, what you can afford and how you can work.

Resilience Tactic 6: Constantly practice risk assessment and have a back up plan to handle risk

Assessing your business risks is something you should be doing every single day as beautypreneurs. As a matter of fact, some of you already practice risk management by having insurance policies to cover any potential damage to customers. But never forget yourself in that mix. You should always be planning for your future or insuring your tools, or event insuring yourself. Covid 19 was a occurrence no one saw coming and it had massive impact on entire industries. Always scan your environment and plan how you will manage risk.

Resilience Tactic 7: Always keep your ear to the ground and welcome feedback

As creatives, sometimes we can be sensitive about our work. However as a business owners, we have to learn to turn down the emotion and turn up our ability to listen critically so we can accept and assess feedback. Feedback is a gift that customers give us to help us improve our business. A business owner who doesn’t use feedback a source of data to improve their customer experience is being short sighted in her vision. The more unhappy customers you acquire, the lower your business resilience.

Resilience Tactic 8: Create systems and automate as much as you can

A resilient beauty business is a business built on policies, systems, routines and automations. Working by guess with no plans or doing everything manually means that you’re limited in the amount of tasks you can get done at any given time. It also means that any small change in your system can completely throw you off. Creating systems for the way you find clients, answer questions, serve customers, manage complaints remain visible, process payment or even hire staff are critical to your long term success. You need standard operating procedures to guide the activity as well as tools and technology to increase output and efficiency. The better your systems the more resilient your business.

Resilience Tactic 9: Practise the profit first system to manage your cashflow

Cashflow management can make or break your business. The profit first system will teach how to become a better manager of your income so you’re not one bad month away from closing your business. Mike Machalowicz’ simple system for not just paying yourself first, but for saving, covering your operating expenses and taxes will move you from the precarious tightrope that is often characteristic of entrepreneurship and make you a more confident manager in control of your enterprise.

Resilience Tactic 10: Continuous Personal Development

The most important investment you can make in your business resilience is the one you make in your own development. ?You cannot effectively lead, set a vision, create a mission, strategise, identify and manage risk or create any kind of system if you don’t make time to continuously sharpen your management skills. Learning new beauty tricks and secrets is good, but being a highly valuable professional will transform you and any beauty business you lead.

Want to know what it takes to build a system to market and sell out your beauty brand? Click here to get my 13 point checklist