I’ve been sitting at home with a lot of FOMO while scrolling through my IG feed. I’m a super productive person. Like, my superpower is not sleeping. I have about five extra hours in my day just from not sleeping and missing meals.
So when I’m sitting around envious of what others are “accomplishing” during their quarantine I know that something is seriously off with me. That’s when I realized that not only am I being bombarded on social media (looking at you IG!) by DOING DOING DOING!!! But also that I was just on red alert amounts of stress that had my brain spinning its wheel unable to focus on tasks. (hi, this paragraph took me ten minutes to write.)
When this happens I throw it out to the Skinfessional community (I recommend you all do the same!) to see if I’m all alone. I wasn’t and I didn’t feel as bad being all messed up in a group was WAY better than being messed up alone… I discovered that lots of people were having the same sense of fear and overwhelm I was. Who would have thunk it?
How quarantine is triggering you. Give yourself space and love.
Doing Nothing is Hard
That’s when I decided that I needed to get proactive about doing nothing, but it proved harder than expected because I felt all this peer pressure to be doing. To combat this, schedule even more time away from social media and away from the tech of my life. I could read, watch tv, cook, hang with my cats, exercise, anything that didn’t require me to be online. But nothing else.
I already schedule an hour as soon as I wake up to be offline and one at night, but I needed more. If you’ve listened to other episodes we talk about this (here and here). I’m not tied to my phone or tech but this was surprisingly hard to do for more time! Exercise classes are online. Recipes – online. And as soon as I would get online I wanted to check on what everyone else was doing and since I wasn’t in my studio I became obsessed with how my peers were holding up and what they were up to in a way I hadn’t since Yelp was brand spanking new. It was a vicious cycle! The only way out was to just cut myself 100% off for longer stretches.
It was like a diet of the mind with an hourly caloric intake of triggering media. Slowly I realized that I didn’t need to DO as much. I could settle down and be okay with relaxing, and this let me open myself up to doing again.
Do You Already Have Stuff?
If you feel like you are in a place to DO take a look at what you already have sitting around. I know I had a bunch of half finished courses, updated classes that I needed to take again, and stuff I had kinda half-assed when I took them the first time. Alex and I dig deep about all this, but if you come away from reading this and never listen I want to make sure you know that before you start investing in the new and shiny and get all overwhelmed, be sure to look at what was once new and shiny. It might be just what you need. Also, remember the point of this episode. Doing nothing might be the most productive thing for you right now!
In this episode of Skinfessional we talk about our own struggles with setting boundaries, saying no, and essentially lay our souls bare as we discuss our mistakes and failures so you can hopefully avoid all of them!
It was hard to launch this episode since we recorded it way back in January when we didn’t see the world with Covid-19 in it. Still, as Alex and I have been looking through the canned eps, this one popped out as super relevant to the here and now.
In this new reality, customer care is going to change. The need for gloves, masks, constant cleaning, maybe white everything makes a comeback to show how clean everything is? I’m not 100% sure what the future aesthetic will be, but I do know that there is still going to be a need to set boundaries and make sure we are ditching user clients.
So what exactly is a user client? Well they are those clients you don’t want to see. They suck up your time and give you nothing back in return. They are the client you see on your book and groan about. Time suck. Unappreciative. Maybe very nice people, but ones you don’t want in your office not respecting you or your time.
Taking responsibility for these people in your life is the first step to getting rid of them. Set boundaries and know that it’s okay to say “No” to them! Even better say no without saying the word no at all, and just hedge them out of your life and off your book quietly.
It’s day 14 of quarantine and how has your life changed? For Alex, not much has except that we are all living in her world now – and she’s here to help spread her wisdom and spark joy in working from home (or even just sitting around in it if that’s you!)
Alex has been working from home for nine years and in this episode explains her tips and tricks for transitioning from working on people in a salon/spa setting to working from home. Cybil who has had a successful solo skincare studio for the past decade hasn’t been able to work on a human in three weeks. Alex is doing better than ever, Cybil is trying to keep her sh*t together. In this episode, we talk about how important routine, a daily schedule is, movement, and our own struggles and successes while sorting through the feelings of learning to be an employee in our home offices. Join us and get real solutions you can use to help plan your own days productively and hopefully profitably through quarantine!
Unlike Alex, I don’t freaking work from home so I’m stressing because this ain’t no vacation! I work on humans in a studio and COVID is breaking my business and draining my bank account. Yeah I’m hustling with all the online sales and digital stuff I’m trying the alternative things, but I am not making what I was before and my bills are still the same, so let’s talk strategy on what we can do about it.
First Make a Financial Plan of ACTION!
Get your financial house in order. I know it’s stressful. No one wants to do this. Looking at our bills and knowing how the sausage is made is scary and time consuming, but if you don’t know you can’t fix stuff! So lets do this!
Get your last three months of bank and credit card statements out. Find all the stuff that comes out monthly. You’ll be surprised what they are. Oh yeah that $2.99 for online storage, that $5.99 for marketing app do you even still use that??? $25 Starbucks auto reload etc. Whole Foods seems to be a weekly visit of $349 (eek!)
Put the info in three columns: Finite, Need, Wants. You can use a program like Mint or Quick Books or a spreadsheet to do this. I’m old school and just use paper because it’s just faster for me so I don’t get bogged down in tech. You do you people. Just get this done and get it done NOW.
Finite – This is all the stuff that comes out monthly that you HAVE TO PAY. Like you have zero choices about. Mortgage. Rent. Car Payment. Credit Cards Minimums that never change and you can’t change them (though we will circle around to this in a second!)
Need – This column is obvious needs like groceries, gas, utilities, advertising.
Wants – These are things that are optional but we like such as Netflix, starbucks, that olive oil of the month club, gym membership.
So now that we have our columns let’s talk about them.
Finite Can be changed
We are living in a world where you can ask to reduce costs on these finite things. Call you credit card companies and request reduced APR. Ask to waive late fees if you have them. Defer loans. Request a freeze on your rent or rent forgiveness for a month. What about a reduction of rent for one month? If you don’t ask you can’t receive so ASK! At the end of this article I have a script I use to ask for stuff. ASK! Many companies already have COVID policies in place.
Needs Change As You Get Broker
I was once told by a good friend that “The things you need change as you get broker.” Truer words were never spoken. I want you to imagine that this pandemic keeps you out of work for a year. Seriously do this. What comes off your needs list? How do you move things around and rethink what you “need” when you are down to $100 in your bank account? I just dropped all my marketing and advertising.
I stopped all my autoship supplies etc. I’m making plans for a business siege and the ammunition is savings and customer care because at the end of the day we don’t know how long we are going to be out of work. We don’t know if our customers are going to feel safe coming back to us. And worst of all, we don’t know if COVID will have rolling waves that will put us out of work again. So plan now for the just in cases. It’s how my business has weathered hard times.
Strip Back Those Wants NOW
I’m all for living for the now and the little pleasures. But refer to my note on Needs above. If you can’t even pay for your Needs can you even have wants? Well yeah you can, but strip them waaaaaay back. You want to drink wine – heck yay! Two Buck Chuck or something like it is your new drink of choice. You love the Starbucks? Me too….I now am making all my boba at home. Eat out a lot? Well if you go out for those $1 tacos that seems awesome. See how you can give yourself the small pleasures but still strip back anything unnecessary.
To be honest, it’s actually the stuff we get lazy about canceling or doing away with because they seem so small. It’s just too annoying to figure out how to cancel that $2 subscription for that monthly app or researching how to get all our info to sync onto one server instead of paying for 4 systems. Maybe you have subscriptions to Netflix AND Hulu AND Stars AND… why not have just Amazon for now until you’ve watched everything possible then switch? Or Use the local library streaming service which is free with your library card??? Once again, $100 left in your bank account. Get to reading those books, or spend more time starting that digital business…
Get a Side Hustle
Speaking of digital businesses, you need to think about a side hustle. The world is changed forever. We need to adapt as business owners. Think about your future strategy. What does your future business model look like?
The Script I Use When Asking for Help
You can use this script to reduce payments, waive fees, defer payments, reduce your credit cards monthly APR (always a good bet no matter what), or just ask what they are doing to assist COVID business owners struggling if you aren’t getting the thing you are asking for. Here is a script I use.
first blank = your name
second blank = companies name
third blank = length of time with company even if vague
fourth blank = what you are asking to do ie waive fee, reduce payment, etc
YOU: Hello. My name is ____________________ and I’ve been a good customer of __________________ for _____________. As you know with the COVID crisis people are struggling. I am one of them. I was hoping you could help me ______________________ . Is that something you have the authority to help me with?
Customer Service Rep: No. (or if YES have this same conversation as if it was a supervisor)
YOU: In that case, could I please speak with someone who can?
CSR: Just a moment.
SUPERVISOR: Hello?
YOU: Hi as I said to the last representative, my name is ____________________ and I’ve been a good customer of __________________ for _____________. As you know with the COVID crisis people are struggling. I am one of them. I was hoping you could help me ______________________.
(Many companies have policies in place for right now so before you give a sob story give the CSR space to offer you something. If you would like something more ASK. Make a case for why you’re a good customer and how your situation warrants a better offer only if you don’t like the one they’ve given you or if you think it unfair. )
Be sure the conversation ends like this.
SUPERVISOR:Let me see what we can do for you OFFER
YOU: I appreciate your help and your time. Could you please send me an email with the details of this conversation.
SUPERVISOR: Of course.
YOU: Once again, thank you for your help and time.
Who here is reading this from quarantine and hasn’t made money working on clients in over two weeks? So let’s talk about the tools you can use and the creative ways to keep you paid during Coronavirus and the new economy because I assure you this way of life is sticking around.
In this episode, we are lucky to have Alex who has been working from home for the past five years, shares all her knowledge and skills with us! She tells us what’s worked, what’s failed, and we dish about the real tools you can use right now to start making money.
Content is king so listen to us, and then go out and start using these techniques to stay in business. There’s going to be a lot of changes coming with Covid so let’s all prepare!
Yeah so the sky is falling you all, but a good entreprenuer knows you look around and figure out what to do next. So what should you be doing with all this Covid-19 Coronavirus stuff? For many your businesses are shutting down, your clients are scared (ummm you are two probably) and you’ve been told businesses are going to fail.
Yep. Mmmmm hmmm. Yeah, I’ve heard this all before and I’ve been there. Get up, dust yourself off. Make plans and move forward. The ONE industry that’s survived all things is the beauty industry. This is your time to thrive!
If you position yourself to survive this and be the voice your clients could listen to and trust during the hard times – then you’ll make it out the other side stronger.
In this episode of Skinfessional Alex and I strategize, plot, and plan all the ways to get through this. Join us in this special live-streamed episode.
Are you planning for the future and a possible recession? Coronavirus (Covid-19), elections year stress, and crashing markets – welcome to 2020! In this episode of Skinfessional we look back at other years that have had similar themes and talk about strategies and plans of actions that WORKED to keep us in business and profitable while the world was crashing around us. Alex gets Cybil to talk about how she rebuilt her client list after a worker strike cut her revenue by 50%, how she profited during the 2008 housing crash and recession, and how she’s planning for what’s going on right now.
Does your small business really need as many clients as possible or are you sitting on a goldmine with your current clients? In this episode of Skinfessional Cybil gets crazy angry over the idea of “churning and burning” instead of nurturing and building the perfect client.
Yeah I got pissed! I was so angry when I listened to this guy who seemed to have some really good info about running a business and helping esthetician’s and salon owners grow from nothing. Then he said “forget your clients they aren’t important, worry about getting new ones.” AND I LOST IT.
Your existing clients are your bread and butter. They are your most valuable asset even if they haven’t seen you in forever, they have already spent money with you and therefore are more likely to again. Which is why Alex and I spent an entire hour discussing ways to gain new clients, keep existing ones happy, and digging into reports to make money from client retention.
This episode came about because everyone kept asking us the same questions – “What do I charge for… ” which honestly spawned a lot of conversations between Alex and me about the serious failures we have had on pricing.
PRICING IS HARD
Getting your pricing right is the key to success in business, but it can be hard. The blind anxiety and hopelessness of having to pull a number out of thin air for a new service, or the crushing weight of failure and fear when you realize you’ve priced something too low and can’t cover your costs. Yeah, we’ve been there. We feel you. We have tried and true methods of NOT being there again, but we will be honest, be totally plan on pricing crap wrong again at some point.
In this episode of Skinfessional, we talk about our successes and failures with pricing and give you solid pricing strategies that will help you find the right price for anything every time. And what we mean by that is that you will eventually get there and it won’t hurt as bad. You won’t have super, duper, fails that bankrupt you for a month. You might have little tiny moments where you go, “Gee that wasn’t right. Let’s pivot and try another price for two people and see what happens.”
We touch on all this in the episode including so much more because what we did discover was that pricing strategies touch everything in business. We talk about how to raise prices, how to beta test pricing, and how pricing seems to be woven into everything we do when dealing with people and money.
Alex and Cybil are huge Hamilton fans, which is why when Cybil said that she learned so many business lessons from the musical Hamilton Alex needed to bring the conversation to the Skinfessional fandom.
In this episode we talk about how being a solo business owner is just like being a revolutionary. It takes people with vision and guts to go out on their own and believe they can outlast their competition even in the harshest times.
We discuss how thinking like a general and sometimes needing to eat your horses is a thing. And we all agree that fighting for what you stand for isn’t always comfortable.
