5 time management tips for beauty pros
By Marie-Louise Coster | 16 August 2024 | Expert Advice, Feature
Session nail stylist, salon owner & educator, Marie-Louise Coster, reveals her advice to healthily manage your time and achieve all your tasks…
How good are you at managing your time? If you add up all the time you spent scrolling on social media, googling what you have seen an actress in before, being angry about the person who cut you up on a roundabout and stressing about things beyond your control – how much extra time would you have had?
You can always earn more money, but you can never earn more time. And because of this, it enrages me when people waste my time, waste their own time and when I waste my time, because we are never getting it back.
Time management is an essential business skill, and I would argue that it is an essential life skill. So how can you manage your time effectively?
1. Plan out tasks and events.
I am a lover of a list and always have an annual planner on the go. This maps out my business focuses, for example my product and treatment of the month, launches, promotions, when tax bills are due, holidays and special occasions. I compile the basis of this planner the year before, when things are a little quieter.
I also have a book containing weekly planners (I am an old-fashioned girl and like paper and pen), but you can easily draw one up yourself in a notebook or on an iPad. On a Sunday night, I sit down and write all of the things I need to do the following week and allocate each job to a day of the week. If for any reason I haven’t managed to get everything done, it gets circled and is completed the next day.
2. Schedule social media posts.
Sunday night is also my night for scheduling social media posts for the week ahead. I don’t have the time or inclination to do this daily, and this allows my pages to drip-feed information. I also host an ad hoc Facebook live here and there, when I have a spare five minutes and some information I need to share.
3. Get yourself in an organised routine.
Set aside time – whenever works for you and your business – and make this your uninterrupted time to get jobs done. Block out distractions when doing this: turn off your phone and the TV, don’t check your personal social media and just focus on what you have tasked yourself with, to ensure everything gets completed.
Organising and prioritising your time will reduce unnecessary stress, make you more productive and give you a great sense of achievement, because who doesn’t love achieving their goals?
4. Give yourself time limits.
Give yourself a time limit for each task you set yourself. Writing social media posts can’t take hours. Doing a stock take or placing orders can’t take half the day. You need to be strict with your time and set realistic limits.
5. Delegate responsibilities.
If you have staff, utilise them by giving them tasks to do. Employees want to be involved, and it is everyone’s responsibility to make your business a success, so share the load. This will free up a lot of your time, allowing you to do other things.
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