Career Mentor Questions
Mentoring New Hair Salon Owners by Willie Miller
Building a salon that boasts high-end clientele and a booked appointment calendar from month to month is desirous. However, your legacy is incomplete if you are not mentoring students who aspire to be cosmetologists and are currently enrolled at an accredited school. Seek out students who aspire to be taught the business, and make it known that you are willing to help. Not only are you aiding in fulfilling the needs of your salon, but also you’re aiding the growth of an industry by apprenticing new talent! After all, when you retire, you want your brand working for you with future salon owners you trust.
Regardless of how successful your brand is now, you remember the uncertainty as a student, performing a style or services flawlessly, meeting clients objections professionally, establishing and maintaining a positive reputation, and the list goes on. That’s why students need mentors who are successfully doing these things and more to enhance the industry. Moreover, salon owners need to continue the process of brand building and there is no better way to ensure the success of all you’ve worked to establish than to hand select, coach, and train your successors. It’s one of the most powerful, yet under-utilized tools an owners has at their disposal.
“Mentoring is so important because beauty school lasts only six months, which is not a very long time for a neophyte to learn the ins and outs of being a stylist. The dropout rate in this industry is ridiculous and it is because of this. Students graduate and they are out of the comfort zone of the school and all they are given is a station next to another stylist who has been doing this for 20 years,” says Winn Claybaugh, owner of Von Curtis Academy and Paul Mitchell the School.
No matter how you slice it mentoring and Coaching take time and preparation., and high-traffic owner may see this as a deterrent. But consider how much time you’re lost over the course of your career bringing in new stylist and seeing your minimal efforts fade when they leave your salon or even worse quit the business. Here’s a systematic way to undergird your business model and develop lasting devotion to your brand while inspiring new talent. Furthermore, you are lucky to be adding this new value to your business now in the 21st Century! Think beyond having to hold your mentees hand through a hair color. Coordinate a certain day for Skype and have the mentee to ask you questions while you work. Allow your mentee to watch via Skype how you work with your clients; have them to list what was learned. This way, there can be an exchange of ideas while gaining insight. You are the expert and mentor; you get to make the rules. So long as the help meet’s your long-run business objectives, all is fair!
About the Author
Willie Miller is the host and creator of True Salon Support To read more articles on Hair Salon Management and Natural Hair Salon Services, visit our site TrueSalonSupport.com/SalonSupport.