The skills required to be self-employed for 3 decades – Part 2

When someone reminds me that our clients are 30 years old it type of doesn't feel like anything to use me because I am far too young to have a 30-year-old anything and i am certainly no wiser than the next lady and that i did not set out to be self-employed to begin with. Roy had dreamt up Cape York Motorcycles when he was a kid and he was going to do it. I was just the channel to assist in the creation of his vision and I reserve the right to continue to decide things i will be when I grow up.

Back when I was a kid,
hairdressing, I learned a lot of invaluable business lessons that I had taken
for granted, I didn't have any business education but I had a multitude of
small wisdoms from the salon that designed a major impact on our business and set
it up for strength and sustainability.

My first manager had a customer card system in place for all clients and we would obtain the card out for every engagement with this client. The card held all of the magic on it! We'd record all the basic details along with the client's style and colour choices obviously but we also had the partner's name, kids’ names, where they had their last holiday and just how they take their coffee or if they prefer a glass of wine stay with us. Yep, those were the great ole days. Every member of employees would read the card before speaking with the client, then it's easy to say, “Mrs. Client would you still have white and one? Would you like a coffee?” Then the next employee would ask about the kids by name.

Our clients felt pretty
bloody special plus they certainly were not going to go to the unknown salon
down the street again. We've moved them in to the friend zone and we've
made a client for life.

Now what do you do with that card after the client leaves? You schedule it for a follow-up, you make a note and you give Mrs. Client a well-timed call to make sure everything is as she wanted and find out if she'd like to make another appointment and also you tell her when it's due. Not to mention Mr. Client should be well recovered from that little biopsy or they should be back from that vacation at that time so there is plenty to chat about- etc. etc. You get the picture.

I didn't know when we started our male-dominated tourism business these methods were pretty specific to female hairdressing. I'd certainly not seen any of them on the dodgy jobs I'd done while I was travelling and so I just adapted these to what I was doing in our business and our clients responded in precisely the same manner.

You'll know when you've mastered this skill because you'll be spending your days with friends everywhere. What you practise is what you feel.