Where do I begin with my beauty startup? How do I find a good team to get me going?

I used to own a hair salon in San Antonio. It was the official salon of the Spurs and voted best salon in SA two years in a row. The main thing is like Jonathan Gorman said, you have to have a great management system for clients. A system that offers rewards, call backs, reminders, and sends out specials. Use social media to grow the business and make sure you can be found on Google search engines. Offer a lot of services and make sure that all of your stylists are great. You have to keep payroll percentage at the right percentage or else you will run out of cash flow. Be unique, different and edgy. Have a business plan as well to guide you through. I do business consulting for these exact types of businesses and can help you set up everything if you would like. Just contact me via MosaicHub. I don't charge much and it will be worth it in the end to have everything laid out correctly before you open.

With a Beauty Salon you are going to have significant turnover. It just happens. Whether its because there are flakes that cut good hair or because the best always get lured away by other salons, its a fact of life.

The shops that I've seen grow the fastest have the best client relationship management system. They make sure that everyone (I mean everyone) that goes into the shop is entered into the system with their phone numbers, birthday and addresses. That way when someone leaves, you can immediately call the client and give them a coupon or incentive to work with another stylist instead of losing their business to your former employee/contractor.

Also you need to make sure that you set everyone up as a 1099 contractor - and that means they have to be responsible for their own equipment. See a local CPA for assistance.

Figure out what skills you need and find the best to fit the positions. Your not the best at everything so write down what you are and aren't good at. Hire A+ people who are better than you and you will make a great team that's more likely to be successful. The most important thing is that they share your passion for the business. With that, they will do anything to make the start up successful.

I assume you mean a beauty salon? Or are you talking about developing a line of beauty products? It's not clear which. In any case, you need to study the market and see what others are doing in the same field. If you want to be successful you have to demonstrate to prospective customers that you have something that is faster, better, or cheaper than others doing something similar. If you don't have a viable "value proposition" I wouldn't do it. Once you have proven that you are doing something different or unique then you can start looking for the right people to help you get going. Here again, it's not clear as to what kind of "right people" you are referring to - those that can work for you to make it happen, or those who will give you some money to get going? In either case, no one is going to help unless you can convince then that you have a winning value proposition. Good luck.

There are a number of ways to approach this.

Although "team" could mean anything, I'll assume you mean stylists, estheticians, etc.

You could go to local beauty schools and seek graduates. You can offer graduates entry level pay, they don't come with bad habits picked up at other salons and you have a wide selection of prospects.

You could also search for prospects that already have a following if you want a faster start. You might run into some operational friction but you wouldn't be starting from scratch.

Look for a team that has its finger on the pulse of the industry. You want them to know what the current trends are, where the fastest growth is and a strong product knowledge.

I hope that helps. Good luck.

One of the resources available to you is the Small Business Development Center network. If you go to http://www.asbdc-us.org you can find the organization representing your area. They provide free one-on-one counseling to entrepreneurs. They will make sure that you start with a business plan that identifies the characteristics of the management team you should be looking for. If you are in pre-startup mode you should start with a feasibility study/plan to determine the feasibility of your particular enterprise.

Take heed to what everyone else has said also. Once you identify what you need in a team, you have to find them.

Are we talking beauty salon? And by team do you mean stylists or a team of people to help you get started such as a coach, lawyer, accountant, etc?

Hi Imani, do you have a team for the startup or are you looking for partners ? Linkedin is a good platform for business development . Do you have a business plan ? you need to acquire some knowledge in small business - marketing, sales, pr, social media, logistics and money handling (income, expenses,purchase).

i wish you success
avigail

you need to start with yourself and a hypothesis of your business model and your value proposition ,customer ,distribution,what are your revenue streams,and the costs involved in the product , customer creation and distribution.

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