There is usually one part of your business you avoid looking at. The numbers, the ads, the software, the thing you pay someone else to handle. You are not avoiding it because you are lazy. You are avoiding it because you do not understand it, and it has been easier to hope than to learn.

That gap is where most owners get stuck. Not in the work they are brilliant at. In the bit they handed over and never checked.

Simone from Apotecari has nine years of this behind her. Staff who left and set up down the road. A house on the line to fund something she had no business running. Agencies on big monthly retainers doing work she had no way of judging. The turn came when she admitted she was the weakest link in her own business, and then did something about it. She is more profitable now than she was when she was paying other people to do all of it.

What we cover

• The highs and lows of nine years in business, said out loud
• Why every industry loses people to the person they trained, not just salons
• What it actually feels like to put your own house on the line
• The part of the business you have been avoiding, and what that avoidance is costing
• Why you should never hand over something you do not understand yet
• Knowing enough to ask the right questions, without becoming the expert
• Building the skill inside your team instead of renting it every month
• Where the growth came from once she stopped guessing

You do not have to know how to do it. You do have to know what good looks like.

Frequently asked questions

Should salon owners outsource their marketing?

Yes, once you understand the basics of what you are handing over. Plenty of Australian salon owners pay a monthly retainer for a long time before anyone checks whether the work is bringing people through the door.

How do you know if the person doing your marketing is any good?

You have to know enough to ask a real question and understand the answer. If you cannot tell the difference between a good month and a bad one, you cannot manage the relationship.

What do you do when a staff member leaves and opens up nearby?

It happens in every industry, and it is not a sign you did something wrong. Some people are there to build with you and some are there to build off you, and you rarely know which until they go.

Mentioned in this episode:

https://www.salonrising.com

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She's like, "I don't know which one."

Mm. Like could you not have gone to a different suburb- Mm. Yeah ... or even a different freaking state. Mm. Um, so there was that. And actually multiple times there was that.

Kim from Boho said, "Some people aren't there to build with you, they're there- Build ... to build off you."

and all of the things- Yeah ... get really messy.

So yeah, there's, there's those kind of betrayals. When I started the business, I didn't have enough money to fund the business. I had to mortgage my house. Thank God I had my house to mortgage, and I had some equity in it so that I could do that. But that scared the shit out of me. Mm. Yeah. W- one of my personal values, after all of these years of self-discovery, is financial security.

Mm. And so for me to take out several hundred thousand dollars out of my mortgage and put it into a business I had no business running, to be honest, um, that was, that scared the living shit out of me. I paid that back in a year- Mm. Wow ... but, yes. But it was, it was really, really scary.

Because people think they wanna do stuff like this, but they're not willing to risk it for the biscuit. Take the hit. Yeah. Yeah. Like, you've gotta actually, yeah- Yeah ... take the hit and be- Yeah ... okay with the fact that if this fails, it fails, but you tried it. Do you

to be honest. Like, I, I knew that whatever it took, if I had to work 24/7, that's what I would do- And you need to have that hustle ... to make this business work. Yeah.

you know, having to recover that. There were also moments where it taught me so much. So for example, I, I come from the, the world of tech- e- everything technical. Yeah. I know the ins and outs of how my product works, how it's made the way it is, why it's made the way it is. Like, you ask me any technical question about my product or about my brand, I am fine to answer it.

You ask me about digital marketing, ask me about ads or website or whatever, and I would look at you, staring. I would stare blankly. Eyes would glaze over. Yeah. Mm. So about three and a half years ago now, so essentially I've always hired people. I've hired people either as internal marketing resource, or I've hired agencies.

About three years ago, I had an agency looking after our paid ads, an agency looking after our organics and kind of general marketing- The lady who, it was a very, very small agency looking after our ads, she decided that she wanted to go away to Europe for six weeks, didn't tell me. I found out while she was already over there.

I don't care whether you go on holidays, can you just freaking tell me- Yeah ... so that we can plan, right? She didn't. I woke up at 6:00 o'clock in the morning, like I always do. I picked up my phone, checked it, and there were a bunch of Facebook messages basically saying, "Don't click the link. It's spam." And I was like, "What fucking link and spa- like, what is going on here?"

I clicked the link. It took me to a female fashion brand. I then discovered that my agency accidentally put the wrong URL in our ad. And so I'm at my computer, like one of those little-

Which one has the wrong URL? I don't know." Like, I don't even, I, I was lucky to even be able to get into my ad account, let alone know what levers to pull to fix this issue.

I just turned everything off. I emailed her, and I said, "You, whatever you do today, it's that you're fixing this ad account." And so at that point, I was like, "I have just realized I am my business's weakest link."

if I don't understand how, what, how it's working? And so actually, the biggest unlock- Beyond anything was that I taught myself. I taught myself ads, I rebuilt our website on Shopify. Took me a year, but I did it. Mm. Um, There is nothing from a digital perspective that I now don't know about my business.

to learning something little each day. Yeah.

But you do have to have a fundamental understanding- Mm ... of something that you're entrusting to somebody else- Totally ... when it comes to your business. Your

yeah. I, I guess I have a touch of ADD, where I like the shiny objects, and so I, I like new things. And I am super curious, I love learning. And so for me that was amazing. But what it also showed me was, I went into the ads that previous agencies had run, and we were getting okay results. But I would go into those ad setups and go, "They are just running a traffic ad.

They're not even running a conversion ad." So it's, it's all well and good to get eyeballs on your site, but if those people have no intention of buying from you- Mm. Yeah ... then that is wasted money. Yeah. And so the number of ads that I saw that were set up in a way that was going to make their metrics look better, to me, because I didn't know the right questions to ask-

That."

It's like, "Doesn't matter, the bookings have gone up."

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yes. Mm. Whereas we don't have that opportunity. I mean, we can see things from, uh, like, from an analytical perspective to see where the traffic is being brought in from, but the reality is as well that because people are now all over social media, all over Google, whatever- Yeah ... so they're being targeted by your ads multiple times.

Mm. And so, yeah, I, I guess our analytics start to become really muddy because Google is telling us that they got, got us the sale, and so- Yeah ... is Facebook, and so is TikTok, and okay, well, which is actually real, whereas you guys can have the conversation. Mm. Yes. Marilyn from TikTok might've seen your other posts maybe 10 times- Mm

but only remembered the TikTok post- Mm ... because of whatever might've related to her in some- Mm ... in some deeper way.

It's like, "Oh, so then did you book?" "No. But then I saw this pop up." "Oh, well, then did you book?" "No. But then I saw the..." And you know, it's like- Yeah ... "Okay, so when did you book?" It's like- Yeah ... here. It's like, "Okay."

based on the opinion of one person. Yeah. Mm. So that can also be really challenging is, okay, well I've got this one piece of information, but I'm not getting that information from ev- anywhere else. Mm. So how, how do I, how do I prioritize what to do with that information, or if I do anything at all with that information?

We're doing far more revenue than ever before, even when I've been paying like- Tens of thousands of dollars each month on retainers for agencies, external agencies. I figured out we, yeah, I figured we can do it better ourselves, actually. Mm.

Having staff are also, yeah, that's also pretty challenging. Yeah, but also hugely rewarding. Yeah. You know, you see people... Our social and digital girl, she was an amazing designer, but beyond that, she didn't know about ads. We've taught her everything there is to know, and she's doing an amazing job, and she is, yeah, she has really blossomed into a digital marketing specialist, which is so amazing to be able to give people that opportunity-

because to be able to launch in the in the European market, your ingredients have to be, like, so on point- Yeah ... and so well-describ- and so well-researched, and they are, like, absolutely cutthroat. Yeah,

so we have to be pretty clear on what's in our products. Um, but you're right. And also Europe is, like, we talk about Europe being one big country, and it's really not one big country. No. Yeah. It's 52 countries. Many of them have different languages, which I don't speak. Many of them have different purchasing habits.

Many, like, salons in Norway are completely different to salons in Australia in the way they approach- Yeah ... retail or, you know, the way they recommend products.

But yeah, look, it's, it's been an immense learning curve. It's also one of the most exciting things that we've done, one of the most exciting chapters. This year we launched our, we launched our first topical product, which is a huge development based on being a supplement brand. Um, and actually, I spoke to salons in the early days who said, you know, "Will you ever launch a serum or a shampoo and conditioner?"

And at the time I said, "No, there are so many great brands out there. Why would I do a haircare range?" Yeah, we've just launched our, our elixir. Because I- there actually aren't. Yeah. Yeah. When you, like, scratch the surface, you've got all of these brands doing hair growth serums, and you look at the ingredients, the active ingredients are literally the second last ingredient on the ingredient list.

I know. That's not in there at enough of a concentration to do anything. But, you know, people see a big brand and they, yeah- Yeah ... they have trust in that brand. Mm. It's one of the reasons why I love working with stylists because there's that inherent trust kind of built into your relationship with stylists.

The mini moment's

a full podcast. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for your insights. Thank you. I really appreciate it, and we'll be back with another mini moment very soon.