Why you need to approach your beauty business differently in 2021

Layla Tourh, MD of The Creative Beauty Group and founder of Beauty Boss HQ, an online platform dedicated to supporting beauty bosses in the running of their business, shares her top tips & words of wisdom…

It’s time to switch up your ‘New Year, New Me’ approach

The effects of lockdown may mean that we need a new approach to business for 2021.

We all slip into this ‘new year, new me’ mindset, where we want to hit the new year with fresh aspirations and resolutions and want to upskill and make this year bigger and better than the last; now is the time to reeducate yourself, but what about this process needs to change this time?

Traditionally, January is the time of year that you’re encouraged to start exploring and taking part in beauty courses that enable you to expand on your current skills, gain CPD points or branch out into another beauty skill or service. If you have a foundation nail course, the next level may be acrygel or nail art. If you’re trained in lip fillers, a no-needle alternative like Lipnv may be your next best bet, but do you really need another service?

Investing in a business or marketing course is bizarrely not quite on the same pedestal, and we want to make a change to that. The benefits and rewards of business and marketing courses just aren’t as clearly advertised and communicated as they absolutely should be.

Business skills

We completely endorse anyone educating themselves to improve their business and generate more income, but what is it to have new skills with no idea how to market them? You could have a salon full of talented nail techs but no customers. So that’s where we come in. Beauty Boss HQ is home to the business side of beauty, filling the gaps with things that may not have been taught on your beauty course.

This year, learning a new skill just isn’t quite enough when we now know that the world could turn upside down at a moment’s notice.

We want you to not just survive 2021, but to thrive and generate exactly what you need to live the life of luxury you truly deserve. For this, we need to be working on our businesses, not just in them! We need to put as much importance into the business itself as we do on our technical skills.

This year, we advise that you start to look at and reflect on your business pain points and start to create an impactful game plan for change. We’ve seen how much the world is now dependent on technology to function to keep businesses running from home, our children educated and to keep in touch with our loved ones. But are you using this to your advantage in your business? Are you really selling yourself online?

Beauty Boss HQ

If you did a quick Google search of ‘business courses’, you would find yourself not only overwhelmed with choice, that perhaps none were quite targeted to the needs of the beauty industry, or delivered by some who even knows what a ‘full set’ is. Beauty Boss HQ is led by me; I’ve owned a salon, become a distributor and education provider and have a real and genuine passion for helping women in the industry thrive. My success took me to Marbella and back and I want to facilitate change in others so they can achieve the same freedom and opportunities I have.

As well as encouraging you to reach your full potential and switch things up, we are too. We practice what we preach, and the result of that is the Beauty Boss Academy.

This is your one-stop-shop for the business side of beauty! We offer our own tailored marketing and business courses, created with you in mind, in the form of our Success Kits – these are actionable, attainable and achievable mini-courses delivered straight to you monthly, available only through the Academy.

We break things down into digestible modules that deliver exactly what you need to know to succeed efficiently. We know that owning a beauty business means you don’t often get time to sit at a computer and study, but the amazing thing about the Beauty Boss Academy is that we have an app! So you can grab our content on the go; on your commute to work, on your lunch break, in the queue at the shop or as part of your evening wind down in bed.

Beauty Boss HQ makes business education fun and positive. You’ll be joining others in your industry with the same goals and aspirations as yourself, where we can all get to know each other on our Beauty Boss Community on Facebook, connect on Instagram and collab on content! Some of you just need a little push, we challenge you for more, we know you’re 100% capable of reaching your goals and beyond and we can get you there.

Business pain points

We’ve realised that the biggest pain point for many businesses in the industry is social media and the lack of a presence in the social space, or even having an online space at all. There is such a huge importance put on upskilling and services and getting the latest in nail and beauty tech, and we find that the business side of it all is left out in the cold and neglected. You’re taught how to make money but not how to make money, really.

As a well trained nail tech, you’ve got the skills, services and treatments down, but you need a bit of guidance in attracting more clients and increasing client expenditure. The aim is to drive profit margins in the absolute most efficient way possible, so you need to use what you have and use it well – plus it won’t cost you a thing but time! Social media is the best tool in your arsenal to fill up the appointment book, and it’s all about honing your process and creating a smooth user experience.

Picture this; you’re looking for a nail tech in your area and come across 10 on Instagram, would you go with the business profile with a clean and beautiful aesthetic, all the information you could need about their services, staff and opening hours… or the one with no content, a pretty low-quality profile picture and no info on what you do, offer or stand for?

First impressions are everything in the digital space, so put always be prepared to put your best foot forward. If you want to be seen as high-quality, then show you’re high-quality.

At Beauty Boss HQ, we emphasise the importance of your Virtual Salon Window -– this is your online business facade and it needs to pack a punch if you want to stand out in an already saturated industry! Take advantage of the tools Instagram offers such as Stories and Highlights. By showing up as much as possible in your IG Stories, with a click they can become educational highlights without any extra work, your profile will look incredible and your presence will grow. Create an individual highlight for your services, before and after pics of treatments, client testimonials, opening hours, and behind the scenes of your business.

The key is to make the decision for your potential and returning clients, show them how incredible your art is, how talented your staff are, how much they care and how much you care about your business; find what makes you marginally different from Becky down the street and make it a ‘heck yeh’ when it comes to choosing whose business they’re going to invest in. By taking the time to beautifully curate your profile into a Virtual Salon Window with carefully thought out content, succinct and consistent design elements, and all of the possible questions answered, you will put yourself miles ahead of the competition. Check out our previous Scratch article here for a more in-depth look into establishing your online presence.

Let’s put upskilling services on the shelf temporarily and focus on the root of it all; our business.

Ready to make money moves and generate more revenue via the online space? Invest in yourself and the future of your business by joining the Beauty Boss Academy! Become part of a community of other passionate and driven women that won’t be settling for mediocre and want to thrive in 2021; it’s time for greatness.

Action plan

Join the Beauty Boss Community on Facebook for guidance on the small changes in your mindset you need that will lead to huge changes in your life, how to manifest and achieve your goals (and ultimately make more money) in 2021, and how to adapt your mindset for every eventuality.

This is just the first step in your journey to success in 2021, invest your time in yourself and your business and the rest will follow.

Join the Beauty Boss Community on Facebook and Instagram.

www.beautybosshq.com