Diary of my first successful business

[tafy]

I am not providing the service myself. I am marketing it

Tell us more, cold calls, direct mail, walk in?

Whats working well and what doesnt?

 

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[Roland]

I started creating a flyer and walking accross my city during several days to distribute them. Conversion rate: less than 1%. This is what worked less for me.
I also tried paid advertising on Facebook. This earned me a few likes but no customer.

What worked best so far has been to advertise in facebook groups and on gumtree. This brought us about 75% of our customers.

The other 25% come from a company we signed up with which is marketing one of our services. They find customers for us and take a 40% commission on the service.

 

[Roland]

And I am not sure if it is worth mentionning here but I am monetizing any skill I have. Anything that can make me a few extra quid for my project I do it. I have sold everything I didn't need in my flat, then as I am pretty good at manual works, I have been fixing and servicing a classic van someone is using here to sell coffee and then I am also working in construction as a joiner, painter, sparky, carpenter, labourer... Anything thats needs to be done quickly I am on it. 18 hours a day.
In parallel, i am negotiating a longer term job which will have the big advantage to bring me more money more easily. Now the business is launched as mobile I want to open a fixed location as well and for that I need regular income, hence this job. The big downside of it is that it will take most of my daily time and I will have to play catch up every night but
1- this is not confirmed yet
2- if it happens, I will be travelling quite a lot so should have time during flights and connections to work on all that.

All in all, it is not easy but I am not too worried because so far everything has resolved itself on its own. I just have had to put the hard work and the rest follows more or less smoothly.

If there are more questions don't hesitate to ask. It is a lot of small things I do so I don't really know what you can find useful and what not.

 

[pfalcomer]

Just wanted to say I had a look at your FB page and your website, congratulations buddy on getting out there and doing something!
That's mile and miles ahead of others that ask and don't do.
"Jump and the net will appear"

 

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[nomeus]

Hey, great progress!

was browsing you website and you have a broken "read more" link http://www.randrexperience.com/training.html right at the bottom of "Our technique" section on the home page.

 

[tafy]

Took a look on your site Roland and I dont understand what you are actually offering, i mean its seems like you offer salon services but you have no location? and no mention of how you deliver this service?

You only call of action is to call you, but for what?

 

[nomeus]

Took a look on your site Roland and I dont understand what you are actually offering, i mean its seems like you offer salon services but you have no location? and no mention of how you deliver this service?

You only call of action is to call you, but for what?

This is exactly what I thought!

 

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[Roland]

Thank you all for your comments.
I have already received the same sort of comments from several people I asked to have a look at the website so this is definitely something I will have a look at as soon as possible. This being said, I didn't get any booking from the website or any other support I created. The only booking I got were from advertising.
I am not saying I will not fix these problems, I will and as soon as I can but I deliberately chose to focus on other more urgent aspects for the moment.

 

[Kamil G]

Hi Roland,

I apreciate Your stubborn attitiude.

As to Your website, If i were in Your shoes i would redo home page. It is to much text there and not enough Your services presentation. It is good to use home page like a advertise to bring attention If someone want to know some details, then he can focus on text. Also You should pay attention how much You use "best" on Your description. For example: We are so convinced that our service is the best that we won't charge you if this is not the least painful waxing treatment or the best massage you have ever received. Also it is something new for me when owner or director is placed in Staff section when he is not connected with services which clients are interested in. Website for Your business is very important, so do not underestimate it's potential.

Waiting for Your next update....

 

[Roland]

Another month is over so time to see the results and progress:

December revenues: £ 39
January revenues: £ 109
February revenues: £ 248
March revenues: £ 2385
April revenues: £ 2171

Slightly less than March with a big gap in the bookings during the period around Easter.
Another reason why it didn't grow better this month is that I have taken on a new job to make money to prepare the next step of the plan and so, I have had less time to find customers. The good thing though is that I have been travelling a lot which gives me some time during flights, connexions etc to work on all that.

For the past two weeks, we have seen the bookings coming in again so I just have to push in the right direction hopefully.
Also I have started to improve the website as per the comments I received from you all and I have also put some focus on social media (facebook and Twitter only for the moment)

As far as the next step is concerned, we need to open a fixed location. We have already started looking into that but it might take us a couple of month before we can afford to do it so for the time being we prepare everything, estimate the different costs and try to get as prepared as possible for when the moment comes.

That's all for the moment. Have a nice weekend.

 

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[jessup]

I hope you didnt spend much on that website. If this is what people are happy with I may consider opening my work to the marketplace here. Could knock that website out in < 20 minutes.

 

[Roland]

I hope you didnt spend much on that website. If this is what people are happy with I may consider opening my work to the marketplace here. Could knock that website out in < 20 minutes.

What's your point here? Telling me how bad I am or how good you are?
Wait for a few days and go back to have a look at my website

 

[ClaytonAlbright]

It's great to read about your progress but I'm a little confused on your business model. Are you charging per lead and pay for performance? How does that work? Why do you need a physical location if your not the one doing the work or is it just so your clients can visit you?

 

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[Roland]

Sorry if that was confusing. The pay per lead model was at the beginning of the project. So I started creating the website but after a few months I realized that I wasn't able to take it off the ground. But in parallel, I was helping my wife (she is a beauty therapist) starting her own business and finding customers. I thought that if she wanted to really get something interesting in this activity, she had to do something different from all the other salons so after a while I got an idea for a new technique which could enable us to reduce the pain associated with hair removal treatments and got in touch with several experts in this area to confirm it. This took us to end of November last year then we started testing our new technique with some of our customers. That was the easy phase because you can imagine someone going to a salon for a waxing, nervous because they know it hurts and the beauty therapist tells them: if you want I have a new technique that can help you feel less pain, do you want me to try it on you? What do you think their response was? So the test was done quickly in December and we figured out that in the worst cases, we were able to reduce our customers' pain by 50% and even sometimes, they didn' feel any paiin at all. But then, I couldn't afford to open a salon so we started working mobile. I bought a car to my wife and she was delivering the services to th customers while I was doing the marketing and business organisation. It took off quite nicely in January and we doubled or triple our turnover everymonth after that but because we are working mobile, we spend a lot of time going from one point to another and this time is not chargeable because the service would be too expensive so basically we found out that it was the good time to open our salon. The only problem was that I quit my day job in october last year to work full time on this project and without a permanent contract, you cannot take a rent here so I had to find another job. Which I did one month ago, we found a good location last weekend and now I have to finish this message quickly because I have to go and sign the paperwork for our first salon.
The good thing is that with the salary I have, I can afford to paymy bills and the rent for the salon even if it doesn't make any money so the idea is to refurbish this salon and start make it work, then with the benefit of it I will do the same with another one and so on. Sounds nice in therory but now I have to figure out if the reality will be this simple. So far it has proven to be a good model and people are starting to know us around here so hopefully I am not too far from the truth.
I have to go now but if you have more questions don't hesitate to ask

Have a good weekend

 

[tafy]

Whats the exit plan then Roland? Sounds like you should really go ALL IN on branding and location then open a few more key locations in nearby cities/locations then go for money raising or franchise route.

 

[Roland]

There is no clear exit plan at the moment or in other words there are different exits plans but it is far too early to know which one it will be. For the moment I go step by step and everythin is self funded because I haven't been in this country for long enough to ask for a loan or even a credit card.
So for the moment I am opening this first one and then with the benefit of it I want to open a second one and so on.
What I am not sure about yet is if I go fir franchises ir if I open them as my own. I need to learn more about the differences between the two.

 

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[tafy]

Your first one needs to be crazy successful, if its just making ok money it will be your one and only business. Hopefully you have signed up a prime position, and have plans for it to really stand out in terms of design. Design can be cheap but still super cool, but takes imagination. Good luck man.

 

[Roland]

Beleive me When I tell you I am not doing all that to be an average salon. If it doesn't work it will be because I missed something I didn't know about but everything I am doing I am 200% into it.
The location we have is good and the project for the refurbishment as well. Now as I am travelling abroad every week, the time I have to work physically in the shop is limited at the moment but we will only be able to enter the location at the beginning of June and hopefully the rythm of my travels should slow down a little so fingers crossed everything should keep going well.

 

[tafy]

Cool, will look forward to the cool pics coming soon

 

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[Roland]

Today is 1st of June. It is an important milestone for my business but before I explain why, let me present you the results for the month of May:

For memory, this is what I made the months before:

December revenues: £ 39
January revenues: £ 109
February revenues: £ 248
March revenues: £ 2385
April revenues: £ 2171

And this is what I made this month:

May revenues: £ 4220

I manage to double the revenues again this month and this leads me to the important milestone I was talking about at the beginning of the post: today I am getting the keys of my first salon! The paperwork has been done a few weeks ago and today is the start of the refurbishing. All the materials have already been ordered and I organized the deliveries to be done today as soon as I got the keys. I also manage to not have to travel abroad for my day job in the coming weeks so that I can work on the refurbishment every night which is good as well.
I will do the refurbishment myself for three reasons. The first and main one is because I can't afford to pay someone to do it. The second one is because I can, I have worked in construction since I was 14 so I know how to do it. And the last reason is because I am the most motivated person on the planet with regard to this project so I will work better and quicker than anybody who would do it for an hourly salary.

Apart from that, I am officially hiring my wife as of today. She is a big part of the business because although all the marketing is done by me, once I have brought the customers in, she has to deliver a world class service so that they book again. So far this has proven to be the best strategy as her services are very appreciated so the way forward is now to grow the customer base thanks to the fixed location (we already have people waiting for us to open and more than I would have expected) and then using her as a trainer to get other people to deliver our services in her way. Then I will use the benefits of this location to open a second one and start again.

On the online side, I have spend some time on my website. I am still not fully happy with the design of it but I now have integrated a "book online" feature which will be very helpful when we open the salon. I have also created a Twitter account to complement the Facebook one and will keep developping them in the coming weeks. I take advantage of that to share the links here. If you want to like/share/get me some likes, that would be much appreciated.

www.facebook.com/rrexperience
www.twitter.com/randrexperience

I will probably not have time to give too much news here before the end of the month but I will definitely post progress of the refurbishment and other activities on facebook and twitter so don't hesitate to like and follow us to stay up to date

And to finish on a different note, I have had the opportunity to meet former World boxing champion Glenn Catley yesterday and although I am not into boxing at all, this has been a very interesting chat for me. I discovered someone who has had the same struggles to reach his goals as I have and who has manage to reach them by doing the same thing as I am doing so it was very comforting for me to see that yes although a lot of people call me stubborn or tell me that I should lower my goals or just give up because "this is not for people like me", the way I am dealing with my life at the moment has proven to give fruits so I just have to keep pushing until I get where I want to be.

That's all for the moment. As I said, I don't think I will have time to update this thread before the end of the month. I will try to answer the questions if there is any but I will definitely share my progress on facebook and Twitter so don't hesitate to have a look there to stay up to date.

 

[wazboy]

Great progress and good job on May's success! Just a quick question, how are you managing this with a full time job now? are you planning to leave to continue 100% of your focus on this?

 

[Roland]

I am only working for my day job from about 7 in the morning to about 7 at night. But as it is an office job, I still can make phone calls during my breaks etc... Also, I am travelling a lot so I have plenty of time during flights, connections, nights in hotels ... To work on what I need to do. Then all the rest of the time is for my business.
I usually work as much as I can until I really need to sleep then I stop.
I will leave it at some stage but not just now because the only reason I took this job on was to be able to have more income to invest in the business.

 

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[tafy]

Sounds cool, did you do much research on the location for your first salon?

Did you check out the footfall, how many cars pass the road, access to parking? size of the building etc

 

[Roland]

I did research on the location obviously. It is situated on the main road in town. Not too big but enough to have 3-4 people working without any problem. It has also a bus stop with 6 lines stopping just in front and is closed to the hospital (nurses are a good part of the customers) and a university. The closest competitors is about a mile away and not delivering the same level of services so we are not stepping on each other's grounds completely. And just next door are three or four hairdressers with no beauty services so I will go and talk to them soon as well to offer them a deal.

 

[tafy]

It's a great idea to see other similar businesses in the same place but with a different niche, shows that there are customers there

Sounds like the location is good, now you need to get some nurses to post some discount vouchers on the nurse staff wall, and go around the hairdressers

Keep us updated with renovation pics

 

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[Roland]

I will not have time to share pics everywhere so I will focus on Facebook and Twitter pages as this also serves our customers so if tou want to see how we are doing, have a look at pur social medias

 

[Roland]

For those of you who asked me for pictures. See below how it was when I got the shop on Monday last week and how it is (or was on Saturday night).

Before:


After:



Tired but happy:


This is about 50 hours worth of work in addition to my day job and most of it on my own.

 

[Kingmaker]

This is about 50 hours worth of work in addition to my day job and most of it on my own.

Keep grinding brother, hard work pays off.

 

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[Roland]

A few more pictures after two weeks of work.
I now have two rooms which I can open up in one if needed. Since yesterday, they are now ready to receive the furniture and I started building a third room at the back of the shop. Hopefully in two or three weeks I should be able to open it. And all that has been for less than £ 3000 (without counting my time obviously).

 

[tafy]

Did you think more about hiring staff?