Five lessons in business from Vidal Sassoon

 

Like many I have been saddened by the death of Vidal Sassoon this week. Vidal Sassoon transformed hairstyling and with it the hairdressing business, I think there are a number of business lessons we can draw from him.

Vidal Sassoon (left) on June 6 in Barcelona together with Figaro Claus Niedermaier at the Global Salon Business Awards ceremony. Photo posted here with permission of Claus Niedermaier (see German entry on Sassoon). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When Vidal Sassoon started out in the sixties it was normal for women to have their weekly shampoo and set at the hairdressers with the finished result being achieved with lots of backcombing and lacquer. It was like wearing a birds nest! Vidal took a radically different approach which depended upon the excellence of the cut and the rest is history. So what are the lessons we can learn from him?

1. Dare to be different. Too many people set up ‘copycat’ businesses which makes it near impossible to identify and communicate a USP (unique selling proposition) or point of difference. Why would people come to you if you are no different from the established business? The difference then usually becomes price which means you are working harder for less return. Vidal Sassoon looked at his industry and thought there was a better way. He freed women from the weekly visit to the hairdresser and in doing so reflected the mood of the times where women were beginning to spread their wings and seek new freedoms. How do you differentiate your business from your competitors?
2. Create a buzz. Back in the sixties Vidal Sassoon was very high profile with lots of media coverage and celebrity endorsement. That positioned a ‘Sassoon cut’ as the ‘must have’ hairstyle. These days we don’t have to rely on press coverage to create a buzz as we can create one for ourselves on social media. Is there a buzz around your business or are you keeping too low a profile?
3. Develop your brand. Vidal Sassoon grew his business through a chain of salons which stretched far beyond the shores of Britain. He wrote books to build his name and developed a range of hair care products to maximise the returns on his brand by generating other income streams. What additional income streams would fit with your brand?
4. Adapt with the times. Vidal Sassoon shook up the hairdressing sector and many businesses struggled to adapt. Suddenly their business models no longer worked. Women ceased coming in for their weekly shampoo and set and regular perms and instead demanded sharp cuts that they could maintain at home. Out went the hooded hairdriers and in came the handheld blow driers. Are you adapting to changes in your market for instance the move online or developments in technology?
5. Keep your skills up to date. Training was a big part of the Vidal Sassoon business. Hairdressers had to learn a new way of doing things to keep up. When Vidal Sassoon was building his business computers were in their infancy and the Internet was light years away. Now hairdressers are reminding clients of their appointments by text message or email, they are using computers for customer records and managing accounts online. All demanding a new set of skills. Change is inevitable and inexorable, the only way to keep up is to embrace lifelong learning. What new skills have you learned recently? How do you ensure your knowledge is kept up to date?

Thank you Vidal for liberating women from the tyranny of the backcomb and for showing us all how to look at doing business in a radically different way. RIP.

Who has inspired you in business? What lessons have you drawn from Vidal Sassoon? Why not share your views here?

Where are you heading?

Dr. Martin Luther King had a vision although he called it a dream.

Several things this morning have prompted me to think about tips for business start ups. In almost 21 years in business I have loads (I must get around to writing that book!) but the one thing I wish someone had said to me when I started out would be to have a long term vision.

What kind of business do you want to run? Do you want a micro business that will stay small and locally focused? Do you want a business that will employ lots of people? How long do you want to be a major player in the business? Do you aspire to global domination?

Understanding where you are heading will allow you to plan a route to get there, to take decisions in line with your ultimate goal and to take incremental steps in the right direction.

Your present circumstances may mean that it will take you years to achieve your ultimate vision. You might be starting a business because you can’t get a job and lack of cash may limit your choices. You could be starting out in order to work around your family in which case you may need the children to grow up before you can really achieve your vision. You may be running a business to make extra cash alongside a full time job in the hope that one day you’ll be able to make it a full time enterprise. It really doesn’t matter what circumstances you are in now but having a long term vision will allow you to develop a strategy and an implementation plan to get there in the timescale of your choosing.

When I started my business I had short term goals which I achieved. However my goals were all to do with the amount of work I wanted to do and the income I wanted to make. These goals led me to saying yes to anything that was interesting, legal and profitable. The result is that I have my fingers in many pies, have a wide skill set and an offer which can be difficult to explain or understand. Had I had a clearer idea of where I was heading I should have said no to some offers and had a more strategic view of the opportunities I was looking for. I now have a vision for the future of my business but the habit of saying yes to anything interesting is a hard one to give up and I need to be more ruthless in the pursuit of my ultimate goal. I have two more years before my youngest child should leave school so that is two years to get really focused on my direction and to learn to say no to those things that are not in line with that vision. Wish me luck.

If you need help to develop a vision for your business get in touch. Helping you to grow your business is entirely in line with my ultimate goal and I would love your views on some of my plans. I look forward to hearing from you.

Why not use the comment button to share your vision?

A lesson from Cath Kidston

This week I had the pleasure of meeting Cath Kidston, founder of the shops in her name. What a lovely and impressive lady. Cath shared some of her business experiences with members of Hounslow Chamber of Commerce and their guests. One particular lesson really resonated with me and that was what she called the ‘F Word’; no it’s not the word you might be thinking!

The ‘F’ that Cath was talking about was ‘Founder’ and the lesson was that the Founder needs to make sure that they get out of the way of the business’ development. That is so true and so difficult.

For the owners of many small businesses the business is their baby, they feed it, nurture it, deal with its tantrums, celebrate its successes but they don’t always know when to let it go. Many of us setting up in business have to do everything ourselves because we can’t afford to pay for help. But we are not great at everything and that can have a detrimental effect on the business. I know that for me, and many of my clients, the lack of time to do everything is also a challenge and can have a negative impact on our businesses.

Cath Kidston brought in people to help her. Perhaps most significantly she brought in a Managing Director to run the business leaving her free to concentrate on design. She played to her strengths and her passion and her business has soared to new heights.

What is your strength and your passion? Are you playing to those or are you spending too much time on things that someone else could do better? Are you holding back your business’ development by holding on to too much? What could you let go of to create the space for your business to fly?

There are lots of other self employed people out there who might be able to take some of the pressure and help you to get more done. Why not experiment with delegating some tasks that you find boring or unrewarding or time consuming? Maybe you could use an virtual assistant for some of your admin tasks, a book keeper to keep on top of your finances, a copywriter to write your newsletters. If you can’t afford to pay for help why not trade services or time with someone who can help, I’m exchanging some business planning/marketing help with my diet coach. If you can’t trade work skills what about offering childcare? If you need help with business planning and can’t afford a coach or business adviser why not pair up with another small business owner to support and challenge each other?

I’m off to recruit a cleaner as my first step to creating some space and order in my life. Let me know how you get on delegating some your tasks.

Outstanding performance

I am immensely proud to chair the Governing Body of Montpelier Primary School in Ealing, West London. The school has just been graded outstanding under the new Ofsted (The Office for Standards in Education) framework, a feat considered by many to be almost impossible. There are some lessons for business in our journey so please read on.

The school was long overdue an inspection but when it came we had two working days notice. Paperwork was examined, data dissected, every teacher had at least one lesson observed, the pupils were questioned, the parents asked for opinions, the headteacher and I were both interviewed and the middle managers grilled to within an inch of their lives. The process was rigorous and exhausting but in the end we got the result we had planned for.

The outstanding grading was not achieved overnight. It has taken us nine years. The journey started with the resignation of the former Headteacher. She left behind a good school but the Governing Body was convinced the school could be a great deal better. We wanted it to be the best school in Ealing, at least, and we knew that we needed the right Head to make that happen. So what are the lessons for business:

• Know where you are heading. Develop and share a clear vision for your business. What will you have achieved in 10 years time?
• Build the right team. No-one can do everything. Recognise your strengths, develop the talent within your organisation and bring in the skills and expertise to plug the gaps. Work as a team. Have fun together.
• Raise the bar. Set high standards. Lead by example. Praise where it is due. Support and challenge those who are struggling. Be prepared to let people go if they can’t or won’t embrace your standards. Be consistent and fair.
• Take calculated risks. If they don’t pay off the first time learn the lessons and have another go.
• Get out of your comfort zone. Coasting ultimately will cost you business. Challenge yourself and your colleagues and you will be amazed at what you can achieve.
• Borrow good ideas. Look around you, where are other people having success, how can you apply those lessons in your business?
• Understand your numbers. Where are your profits coming from? Who are your most profitable customers? What are the returns on your investments? What is under-performing? Then make a plan to improve the areas of weakness.
• Seek advice and constructive criticism. It is all too easy to get too close to ourselves and our own businesses to recognise where there is scope for improvement. A business adviser or coach can help you think constructively about the areas for development and then assist you in implementing a plan of improvement. If you need help to get started email me.
• Invest in resources. Be clear about what will help you achieve your goals whether that is people, knowledge, skills, equipment or software. Look for ways to make the investment affordable. Could you lease equipment? What about getting ‘virtual’ help from a self employed specialist?
• Believe. Believe in your ability to achieve your goals. Make sure you have a support network to prop you up when you wobble (as you inevitably will). Use positive affirmations e.g. I can do…, I can achieve…

Most of us in business will never have to face the rigours of an Ofsted inspection but it might help us if we did. At Montpelier we have a clear idea of what we are trying to achieve but also understand how we will be judged (although those goalposts do move regularly!). We have been prepared for an inspection for about three years. Would your business stand up to inspection? If you are running a food business could you get a 5 star score on door if the food inspectors showed up this afternoon? Would your financial records stand up to scrutiny by the tax inspectors?

A lesson from Fortnum and Mason

Did you see the press coverage of the Queen, and the Duchesses of Cornwall and Cambridge visiting Fortnum and Mason’s on March 1st? You can’t buy publicity like that but with a bit of planning and creativity you can increase your chance of getting it.

The spotlight will be on Britain in general, and London in particular, this year as we celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and the Olympics and Paralympics. This creates enormous opportunities for businesses to gain media coverage as the Press will be looking for good news stories linked to these events. Fortnum’s have shown us the way, so what can we learn from them?

The Queen, the Duchess of Cornwall and the Duchess of Cambridge visit Fortnum and Mason to celebrate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. Image by Getty Images via @daylife

To celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Fortnum’s have renamed their restaurant ‘The Diamond Jubilee Tea Salon’ and will be sending a commemorative tin of tea and biscuits to soldiers serving abroad over the Jubilee weekend. The store invited the Queen and the Duchesses for a tour of the store and to tea with service personnel during which they were shown the commemorative tins and a number of other products. The TV and newspapers were then full of the story.

Fortnum’s made a very clear link between their products and services and the Diamond Jubilee so all the publicity increases the public’s awareness of their offer. What could you do with your products and services to celebrate the Jubilee? For example:

• a catering company might host a Diamond Jubilee party for elderly people living alone,
• a cleaning company might decide to clean up a local eyesore,
• a decorating company might donate their services to refurbish a community centre,
• a photographer might put on a special exhibition of images reflecting the 60 years of the Queen’s reign,
• a pet care company might walk a corgi for free for 60 days!

Of course there’s no point in doing something if people don’t hear about it so make sure to send out press releases, share the news with your customers and prospects, post details and photos on social media and publicise your efforts at networking events. You might not be able to get the Queen or a member of the Royal Family to attend your event (although there is no harm in trying!) but you could invite your local mayor, MP or a celebrity.

Photos of suits presenting cheques are boring so try to find an idea that is newsworthy and photogenic to stand a much better chance of media coverage. The Jubilee weekend is only three months away so it is time to start planning. I’m off to think about what the Training Pack is going to do but if you want some help get in touch here.

Does your copy make sense?

I seem to have spent much of this week trying to decipher other people’s communication. I’ve had students submit assignments that have little connection with English grammar and been sent marketing materials full of acronyms and meaningless slogans. Sometimes we get too close to our own ideas to see wood for the trees.

The art of communication is all about being understood in the manner in which we intended. When writing we have to think about our audience. What do they know already? What will interest them? What else will they be doing when they get our missive? How much effort will they be prepared to invest in understanding our copy? We live life on the run and few of us have the time or inclination to interpret communication which is not clear, so here are a few tips for business communications:

• Give your target a reason to read your message. An engaging, benefit laden headline will help.
• Keep it simple. Use language that your audience will understand without having to think too hard.
• Avoid acronyms and abbreviations
• Don’t assume that your reader has prior knowledge and understanding
• Posing and then answering questions can help your audience relate to your message. This is a trick to engage the brain actively.
• Keep one, or at most two, thoughts per paragraph
• If you are using Word check the readability of your prose (on the spelling & grammar button)
• If you can, write a draft, put it to one side and go back and read it with a fresh pair of eyes before you send it. Alternatively get someone else, preferably not an expert, to read it.

We all need to remember that we are writing to be understood, not to impress. Our communication should have a purpose and our readers should understand that purpose without too much effort. Do yours?

 

 

How to confuse a brand!

Every Christmas I buy a box or two of Matchmakers chocolates as a treat. If you’re not familiar with them Matchmakers are long, narrow strips of dark chocolate with various flavourings, my favourites are mint and orange. I’ve always considered them to be quite a sophisticated option for serving after a dinner party and to adults so I was somewhat crestfallen when I went to buy my Matchmakers this year.

Gone was the fairly tasteful, understated box. This was what I got instead:

Brand confusion

So we have three brands promoted, Nestle, Quality Street and Matchmakers. Nestle I get, it is the company which makes Matchmakers but why Quality Street? Quality Street is a brand of wrapped chocolates in different shapes and colours; many have flavoured centres. In my view Quality Street is an alternative to Heroes and Celebrations. So why Quality Street and Matchmakers?

According to Wikipedia (and I can’t find any information on the Nestle website) Matchmakers were made a part of the Quality Street brand in 2008 in order to appeal to 15-35 year olds. I must be very odd! Quality Street is a brand I associate with my grandparents and my kids, who fall into the target age bracket, have never asked for Quality Street. I assume that a company as large and sophisticated as Nestle will have done its homework but do young people really buy Quality Street and will they then buy Matchmakers because of the link? Where is the synergy in the brands?

I bought the Matchmakers and duly served them to my guests on New Year’s Eve. I only served them because our guests are great friends and we know each other very well. We were all agreed that the packaging was awful and none of us could see the point of confusing the brand with Quality Street. We also thought that the packaging took the brand down market and would alienate its regular customers.

What do you think? Do you know if the link between Quality Street and Matchmakers has worked for either brand? I’d love to hear your take on this topic, please click the comment button.

Get organised for 2012? Show me how.

I’ve just received an email from a major supplier; nothing new there then! This one had an enticing headline ‘Get organised for 2012′. So far so good. The headline was likely to generate a good open rate as plenty of us will have determined to be more organised this year and will be looking for miracle cures to help us achieve our goals.

The email offered a number of click through boxes each offering a different type of deal so I clicked on a few. These took me to the company’s catalogue. In some cases there was a price written in red but the regular price was not shown. I’m left wondering if there is any deal to be had or whether the offers are non-existent. What a mistake!

If this email was meant to tempt me into spending money, which it surely was, it failed. I was intrigued to know what products would help me get organised for 2012; my question was unanswered.  I would have liked to know what products were discounted by 50%, I didn’t want to plough my way through a whole catalogue.

If we apply the marketeers’ mantra of AIDA here, the email attracted my attention and interest but failed to deliver on desire or action. It did not speak to me beyond the headline. How different it would have been if there had been a short letter highlighting some of the products which would help me to be organised with a few buy now special deals that I just wouldn’t want to miss. Each of those products and deals could have been backed up with a click to page to give me the information to convert my interest into desire and action.

One of the actions I’m taking to allow me to gain control in 2012 is to reduce the number of emails I get. I am looking at every new email and asking how it adds value to my business or my life, if it doesn’t I am unsubscribing. This is one company who will be losing me as a subscriber. With one email it has gone from having my attention and interest to losing the opportunity to market me forever.

So next time you send an email marketing message make sure you have a headline that will encourage your target audience to open it and then deliver what they are looking for.

• Make it easy for them.
• Speak their language.
• Sell the personalised benefits.
• Make the comparisons.
• Give them a deadline.

If you would like some help putting your message together drop me an email to glenda.shawley@thetrainingpack.co.uk

Good luck with getting organised and winning more business in 2012.

Reuse and recycle Christmas decorations

Every year we bring out the Christmas decorations collected over the years but my hairdressers had a whole new take on the idea of reusing and recycling.

How many cups of coffee have they served to make these creative displays?

Used milk cartons and a dollop of imagination make a creative Christmas display

A creative use for empty coffee wrappers.

Don’t knock the success of others; learn from it.

Some people astound me! In the last week I have heard four separate stories of business owners knocking the success of others. These owners are jealous of the success of owners doing better than themselves whether that be in turnover, media coverage or business development.

Envy is a destructive emotion. It wastes our time and energy. Instead of being jealous we should look for the lessons we can learn from those who are more successful than we are. What are those owners doing that we are not? Perhaps they are trading different hours, working harder, undertaking marketing campaigns, networking, using the latest technology etc.

One of the stories I heard was of a retailer complaining that the Internet had stolen his business, asked if he was on the Internet his answer was, ‘No, wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole’. How ridiculous! The Internet has opened every business to a global market, it has created multi-millionaires, it has provided our existing customers with a new, more flexible way to do business with us, it has allowed us to communicate more effectively and for less money than traditional marketing. Frankly if a retailer is not going to touch the Internet they don’t deserve to have a business.

Another story was of a PR consultant complaining about the media coverage one business owner is currently enjoying and moaning that this was at the expense of other local business owners. Rubbish! I suspect that other business owners had done nothing to promote their businesses to the media. It isn’t difficult to get our local paper to write about us, there are at least two opportunities in every edition. The journalists look for ‘subjects’ on Twitter most weeks. It wouldn’t take a lot of effort to secure a good few column inches. If I can do it so can anyone else.

Twitter post leads to an article in our local paper

The next time you find yourself listening to the green-eyed monster, or even becoming one,  stop and ask some questions. What can we learn from this other person’s success? Do they have any contacts they would be prepared to share? What are they doing that I could copy or even improve (taking care not to break intellectual property laws)?

Is it time to take a fresh look at your business? Sometimes an outsider can help you see the wood for the trees so if you would like some help click here to send me an email or use the comment button to get in touch. By all accounts 2012 is going to be a challenging year but we have to remember that our customers will still be spending money on things that are important to them, we just have to make sure our offer meets their needs and that we make sure they know about it.