The conversation between Sue Davies and JM Chalayer offers a deep dive into the challenges and opportunities faced by solo beauty professionals working in the salon industry. With JENA as the podcast's first official sponsor, JM outlines the app's mission to simplify the day to day running of a beauty business. The discussion highlights the importance of a seamless client journey, from the initial discovery of services to the booking process and follow-up communications. Sue emphasises how JENA's all-in-one platform addresses many of the daily frustrations, helping professionals to manage bookings, payments, and online presence effectively without the drama and tech knowledge needed to manage multiple systems.

JM shares his insights on the growing freelance world, noting how the pandemic has accelerated the shift towards independent and solo work in the beauty industry. Sue and JM explore the significance of understanding client needs, the psychological factors that influence client decisions, and the power of feedback in maintaining service standards. They advocate for a proactive approach to client engagement, and suggest that beauty professionals should actively seek feedback to grow and learn about their business. This episode serves as a valuable resource for anyone in the beauty industry, illustrating that through technology, personalised service, and a focus on the client experience, professionals can not only thrive but also build lasting relationships with their clients.

Takeaways:

• JENA's all-in-one app simplifies the client journey for solo beauty professionals.
• Building a personal brand is necessary for solo professionals to attract clients.
• Engaging with clients through Google My Business enhances visibility and trust in your brand.
• Mistakes in business should be viewed as learning opportunities for continuous improvement.
• Having a clear Call To Action (CTA) on your website can significantly boost bookings.
• The importance of community in the beauty industry cannot be overstated for support.

Companies/People mentioned in this episode:

• JENA
• Le Salon
• Phenix Suites
• The Salon Inspector

Chapters:

• 00:03 - Introduction to Inspiring Salon Professionals
• 03:57 - The Journey to Freelance Freedom
• 19:46 - The Future of Salon Business Models
• 28:23 - Building Community in Business
• 31:01 - Creating Community Through Social Media
• 44:47 - Transitioning to JENA: Empowering Solo Business Owners
• 48:48 - The Importance of Online Presence for Businesses
• 01:02:40 - Understanding Client Journey and Experience
• 01:04:55 - Understanding Client Journeys and Effective Call To Action
• 01:14:19 - The Learning Opportunity of Mistakes
• 01:18:30 - The Evolution of Customer Experience

Welcome to Inspiring Salon Professionals, the podcast that allows every therapist, now tech and stylist, to level up, build their career and reach for their dreams.

Each episode will be looking at a different area of the industry and along the way I'll be chatting with salon owners, industry leaders and experts who will be sharing their stories on how they achieved their goals, made their successes, all to inspire you in your business and career. I'm Sue Davies, your host, award winning salon owner and industry professional. Welcome to Inspiring Salon Professionals.

Hello and welcome to this episode of Inspiring Salon Professionals, the podcast that's helping you grow your careers and your businesses. And today, not only have I got a great guest, but alongside that, an exciting announcement.

You may already have seen the announcement on the Facebook group if you are there, if you aren't, do pop over to the Facebook group.

All the links are in the show notes and if you've seen it already, you will know that there's something massive has happened for the podcast and that is that last week I announced in the group that we are, or I am welcoming our first official sponsor onto the podcast.

Something's been brewing for a while and it's been something I've been working towards and I am delighted to announce that our first official sponsor is is Jenna. And today the founder of JENA and the CEO are is coming onto the. Is coming onto the podcast. So exciting stuff.

His name is JM Chalayer and he is an inspiring entrepreneur.

He's been around for a long time, he's got some amazing credentials and he is revolutionising the world of hair, beauty and wellness professionals through this wonderful app, Jenna. It is a booking system, but it's also got some additional bits that a lot of other booking systems don't have.

It's in its infancy and it's still growing, but I've seen it around a little bit and was having a conversation and it just seemed our mission statements kind of align and everything I do is about helping businesses grow their visibility and their client journey and their experience and helping people understand business a little bit more, especially when I'm interviewing on the podcast and stuff. So much of that is just about bringing in new information to the audience.

And so it kind of just was, as the conversation was going on with one of his team, it was like, you know, do you think you might want to be a sponsor for the podcast?

Anyway, JM and I are going to be talking about that a little bit during the podcast, but just a little bit of background about him and we will go into this with J as well.

So, as always, I'll give you a little bit of a heads up on who they are, what they do, and then in the interview we will just go over how they got to be, who they are, where they are and where they're at.

So JM is the founder of JENA, and JENA is an all in one operating system designed to make life easier for solopreneur beauty and hair professionals.

I was just signing myself up yesterday and going through their onboarding process, which was so easy and so helpful, especially if you're not a techie person. They can really, really help guide, guide you through the processes and it really isn't difficult.

It also helps you with marketing and it even creates a professional website for you. And we'll go into all of that when I'm chatting with jm. So it's on one seamless platform and I think that's the really helpful thing with this.

And this is one of the reasons that I kind of wanted to partner with them. So JM's mission is to empower independent beauty professionals to grow their businesses quickly and effortlessly using cutting edge technology.

And yes, it's in its growth phase and yes, there's things that, that they're still working on, but you know, it's going to be an exciting journey and if I was you, I'd get on early so that you're in it because it's going to be great. Anyway, JM's journey didn't start there.

And before JENA, he co founded and grew Le Salon, a premium at home beauty service that became one of London's leading service providers and generated over one and a half million dollars in revenue. So he kind of knows our industry quite well. Through this experience, JM gained firsthand insights into the challenges that we face as solopreneurs.

And this kind of inspired his vision for Jenna. And he is a Forbes 30 under 30 honoree for retail and e commerce. And he has a background in as a strategy consultant at Oliver Wyman.

He studied at London Business School and at ESSEC, and he is also fluent in five languages. I probably won't be testing that because my language skills are not great.

I'm limited to kind of like, hola, Bonjour, alv, and that's probably about it, but he even speaks Vietnamese as well. I can't wait to have a chat with him.

We had a bit of a chat last week and we were like, no, we need to stop this because this needs to be on the podcast. So I'm hoping we can kind of regenerate the same conversation we had last week. And I'm sure we will. So I will see you on the other side.

And next up, you would have already heard this. If you've listened to last week's episode, you would have already heard this. And coming next is Jenna's sponsors message.

I'll see you on the other side. Are you a solo beauty professional struggling to juggle everything from the endless client organizing, no shows, double bookings?

Or maybe find the thought of a website and building and maintaining it a little overwhelming? If this sounds familiar, there's a solution built just for you, Jenna.

Jenna is an all in one app designed to make life easier for solo beauty pros just like you and me. It takes care of your bookings, payments, and even builds professional website site for you. And best of all, no tech skills needed.

No more client late night messaging, hidden fees, or constant stress.

If you're ready to simplify your business and get your time back, check out JENA today, find the link in the show notes and see how Jenna can transform the way you work. So welcome, JM and welcome to Inspiring Salon Professionals.

And this is an exciting episode because as I've just been saying in the introduction, this is the first episode that you've been on and is also the one where we get to kind of share the wonderful news that we are working in partnership together with you as sponsor and me as a podcaster.

And Jenna are going to be the first official sponsor of Inspiring Salon Professionals, which is really exciting for me and I hope is really exciting for Jenna and for you.

Yes, it is. Thank you. I'm so excited to be here and very excited to sponsor the podcast.

When we first got in touch, I started listening to a few of the episodes and I really liked the content.

I felt like they were really in line with kind of our mission to empower professionals in the beauty space to be more independent, to grow their revenue, become have more sustainable businesses. So I think this is. We're very much aligned to what we're going to do. So I'm very excited about that.

It is, and I think it's one of the things that I've been saying as well is that, that I know when I was talking to someone of your team members and as we were going through the first conversation, we were talking about something entirely. I can't even remember what we were talking about now. It might just be about you coming on as a podcast, as a guest. I can't think what it was.

And I halfway through I was like, hang on a minute, like we really align here and there's so many things that you're doing that and the outcome you want for your customers and the outcome I want for my listeners.

And it just kind of all works and it kind of all blends together as like, you know, we just want people to be, have the best businesses they can with the easiest, like halfway with the least resistance. And that's kind of it, isn't it really? And that's what exactly my understanding of what Jenna brings.

And everybody, I'm gonna just apologize to all the listeners now because I've got my dogs with me today and, and they're being an absolute pain. So if you're on video, you're going to get to see the dogs a little bit.

And if you're listening, I just apologize because there might just be random noises and stuff. So. But if you're used to being on the podcast, you know that this may happen sometimes if I have the dogs near me.

So anyway, let's have a little talk first of all, and I've given, I have done a little bit of an introduction of you, jm but if you can just share with me like the journey that you've been on work wise kind of thing and through your career that's kind of brought you to be the founder and CEO of Jenna.

Yeah, very happy to share. So I mean, we were talking about this a little bit before. I have a very international background.

I mean my name very French, so I did grow up in, in France, but I, I was from a little bit over, all over the place. I was born in Canada, I lived in Germany, in Switzerland, in Argentina and then in London.

I think like I really settled in London very nicely because it's so international. So I didn't feel out of place compared to any other place where you are because you always feel a bit like the outsider.

And I think in London I really felt like, wow, there's so many people like me. So I really felt home very quickly. And that's where I started my first business, which was Le Salon and it was an at home beauty service.

So we essentially kind of had professionals that were going to people's homes in London and we grew that business to like millions in revenue. But ultimately like with COVID it became quite difficult to run and we found Aquara. So we sold that business and then we moved on.

But through that experience, what I've seen is I've seen the transformation of the beauty industry.

When we started, it was about 10, 20% of professionals were working in freelance and when we started Jenna, which was earlier this year, we're now talking about 70% of professionals were working freelance. So there's this massive shift happening and changing in the way we work.

And I think this is something that is really exciting and I feel very passionate about this.

The reason why I started Le Salon in the first place is to create this opportunity for beauty professionals, nail technicians, to allow them to work independently and around their own kind of personal commitments, especially like kind of mums.

I felt that a lot of the professionals were women and they were mothers and they found it difficult to continue their career in a salon setup which had like very fixed kind of working schedule. And we wanted to allow them that freedom.

And I think like what's happening now in the space with a lot of people moving freelance, having home salons like you have sue, or having becoming mobile or renting a chair a couple of days and doing something else the other days, I think is really exciting because it gives professionals that kind of freedom of running the business the way they want. It obviously comes with challenges and I'm sure we're going to talk about that. Absolutely.

But I think that changes is really something that's exciting, I think, for the industry and will give power back to the professionals.

Yeah.

And I think as well, I think one of the things that has come out of COVID particularly, like you were saying, pre Covid, the numbers of freelancers was very much lower than it is now.

And I think, you know, that transition happened a lot and I think people had a bit of a wake up call that they could have a lot of reinvention of themselves and I think that is what's still ongoing now and people. And it's a really. So I find it a really unusual thing because having I've.

I've kind of been through the process, I've done mobile, I've had a home salon, I've had a commercial premises salon. And then I've come back to being like a home salon again. Started it, stopped it, just started it again this year.

So I've kind of gone through quite a lot and I used to do loads of pamper events, a bit, a bit like LA Salon, but like independently. So I've gone through kind of every thing. I've rented space as well. Literally there isn't any kind of setup, I think that I haven't had.

I've had employed staff, I've had self employed staff. I've had people rent space from me. I've had. I've kind of, yeah, lived all of It. But the one thing that I think is interesting when you're own.

When you're on your own and there is no support team around you, is that all of it lands in your lap.

And even if you've got a salon and you're the salon owner, there's people around you that you can kind of delegate things to and you can offload some things too. But now the expectation on us as a solo professional is that you literally have to be able to do everything.

And I think that's kind of where Jenna comes in, isn't it?

Because it just, you know, like, so, I mean, it isn't, you know, many booking systems take pressure off, but I think the thing I like with Jenna is that it gives you a website which for so many solos and so many people new to industry or that haven't had any office experience whatever, that's such a daunting task and an expensive task.

Yes.

So just that little bit, to me is like a win. Massive.

Yes. No, completely. I think, like, you're right. Like, the main challenge when you set out on your own is you have to run everything yourself.

And it's not just doing nails. Like, maybe when you're employed, you're used to showing up, having kind of a schedule, doing nails and then going back home and you get paid.

And that's kind of an easy, easy input marks schedule.

Because that way you can focus on probably what you love doing, because that's why you started doing nails or started doing hair or started doing any service that you like doing it. So having a whole day just doing that is great. But running your business means that you now have to find customers, so market your business.

You have to manage your schedule, you have to make sure you take payments to your accounts.

So, you know, so many different things that you have to think about that you probably didn't have to think about when you were employed in a salon if you had that experience. And that's what we would.

Jenna, we try to kind of help you with instead of having to kind of duct tape a bunch of tools together, because as you said, there's like, the website is one thing to promote yourself. Then you have your booking system and you have to connect with it. Sometimes you take another payment system.

Then you have also, like a CRM where you have to manage your consultation forms, your customer data. And all these systems don't really talk to each other. So bringing them together is quite a lot of work.

So it ends up being, yeah, quite a lot of admin to do it what we try to do is remove that admin and create one single app where you have all the things that you need as a solo business owner, because that's what we, we work with, we work with solo business owners because we believe that that's the future.

It is. And I mean, in one way it's really.

And I've had the conversation a couple of different, which I think you've listened to one of the episodes with Steph Stephenson and we were having a conversation around the concern for salon owners, of the future of salons. And I don't know where it's going to end.

I think there's always going to be a need for that because people like going to a salon and people like having that community experience and all that kind of thing.

But I do think that choice to a degree is being taken away from the public because us as professionals are going well, actually, we don't really want that model anymore.

And we want to work on our own, on our own pace and with our own set of boundaries and our own set of rules, because we can, and therefore you now have to either go and have that, you know, the last, the last echelons of salon life on the high street where you can find them, or you come to me and you have like a much more personal one on one experience. And it isn't, for some people, that isn't going to be it. And they're still going to seek out that salon.

But for most professionals, I mean, I don't know that many professionals now that are really choosing to go and take a salon. Although I have just, I've just been speaking to a friend and she's, she's, I think she's about to go for it, which I'm really proud of her.

But I'm also, I was sort of talking to her like, are you sure this is what you want to do? Are you really sure? Are you watching what's happening out there? And it's. But you know, I kind of get it.

She's a really good friend of mine, I've known her for years and she still wants to go for it. She wants to have that experience.

And I, I think, you know, I, I really think salons will always exist.

Yeah.

Because people will always want to go somewhere with an experience. And also I think a lot of professionals enjoy working in salons.

There's, there's something nice about like leaving work, you know, when you leave work and go back home. Like, I think that kind of separation is, is very healthy. But I think what's happening. And I've seen it with my hairdresser.

So I'm going to this, this hairdresser in clerk and well, Ricky and the way they've structured their business is super interesting. They, they have like a big space which looks like a salon, but everybody in there is independent.

They rent a chair, they rent a room on certain days and they kind of rotate when, whenever they work. And I think that's, that's a really interesting setup. I'm seeing like a lot of salons becoming more like co Working space. A little bit like.

Isn't it like hot seating?

Exactly, exactly. And they, and they go from place to place and they are able to reach different audiences in different places.

And that's actually, I think, a very interesting model because it does give you, it makes it very easy for you to start.

First of all, like, you know, setting up a salon, like taking up rents for like, you know, I don't know, three years and not being able to break from it and needing to make it work is a very different deal than I'm going to rent this chair for a day and see if I can make it work. Yeah.

And I think that's something I'm seeing across a lot of different businesses, is that starting your business is now becoming a lot less capital intensive. It requires a lot less capital to start the business.

But what that means is it's easier to start a business but it's harder to differentiate yourself because there's a lot of businesses out there that are doing the same thing.

And I think that's why, like kind of having a website, I think, you know, because you've done a lot of websites, having a website with SEO, making sure you send out on social media, making sure you have a place to book, which is why it's part of. Jenna, is really important for you because that's how you're going to get more business.

Absolutely. And it's interesting.

One of the things I said to my friend yesterday was, you know, what you need to be looking, you know, if you're going to, if you're going to go down this route, you know, you've. Whatever you do, you have to make sure you've got your rent covered before you do anything else.

That's the first thing you've got to make sure you've got.

And we were talking about different models and I was saying to this a contact that I got through doing the magazine over the last year, lovely lady by the name of Janie Tung, who's in hair industry and she is the UK agent, I would say, is the right word for Phoenix Suites. And so she's got this wonderful business where she helps people set up suites of like, which is very, very big in America, the huge.

In America, Phoenix Suites. And she's kind of bringing it to the uk. And I think that is the actual model that you're just saying is literally you have. It's.

It is a salon suite where, you know, all it is is co workers. And I think. I think it's actually nice because you still get that really nice thing. One of the things that Steph was saying that we kind of.

That we kind of miss when we're working on our own is that kind of that peer approval of like, the hair you've just done or the nails you've just done, and you kind of miss that kind of nod of like, yeah, that's a good set or that's a nice color or whatever. You kind of miss all that bit. And I think, you know, those co working environments are going to be great as.

As they start to develop because I think, you know, we. There's been a massive problem with hidden employment and all that kind of stuff when it comes to renting space. And I think now that's.

That's going to be the only way you can do it clearly and compliantly as well. It's got to be.

Exactly.

But one of the other things as well is. Oh, no, hang on. It was. What was I going to say? The. About the sweets thing? No, go. Who knows?

What I was going to say is, I think like, there's, like, there's this business that is called. That's called Hunt Collective and they're kind of the first ones who restarted this kind of co working space vibe.

They had like a split pace in clerk and.

Well, and that was really taking off and I think, like, they've pioneered a bit that concept and I think this concept now is really kind of being rolled out across the UK across, like, different locations. And I think it's honestly, like, I'm really excited about this. Yeah, I think this is the future. I think this is.

This is going to make it a lot easier for hairdressers, nail techs, beauty pros to work on their own terms whenever they want. Yeah. And be able to make more money, hopefully from there, from their craft.

It's like. That's what I was going to say was, because all that keeps coming into my head is. And I'm sure you're aware of him.

I can't remember the Guy's name now, is it Adam who had WeWork?

Oh yeah, I'm human.

Yeah, yeah, that's him. And if anyone watching, if you haven't seen We Work, it's on, I think it's on one of the streaming channels and it's this Apple tv. Is it on Apple?

And it's Anne Hathaway and I can't remember the actors name. I have. My memory for things is dreadful at the moment, but it's a really fascinating insight into co working and it's a really good series anyway.

But I do think that that kind of model is something that we could look at as an industry.

And then things like Jenna, where you know, each of those individuals within that business or within that business space has all of their own booking systems and like literally, I mean one of the things I loved when I was talking to Bella yesterday was literally I could now use my iPhone as a payment system. I mean, what's that about?

Yes.

Yeah.

So I think like that's, that's really like the beautiful thing. Like I'm sure like when you started out like having a point of sale, a POS was it was a big machine. Like it was a big device.

You had like your card readers. Like. Yeah. And this cost a lot of money. Like it's.

Yeah, absolutely. I used to probably spend, I don't know, 20 pounds a month just on rent in it. And then all of the fees and everything that went along.

Exactly. And then also like sometimes you have to buy that device. Initially that was also pricey. So all this tech had like a very high cost to it.

And now I think what's beautiful with all iPhones and Android phones, like we can have everything on there. I mean, obviously it's a little bit addictive and that's another topic.

But because it's so powerful, you can, you can really get everything that you need to run your business on there and even more. And good example, card payments. You can take contactless car payments with your phone and that's something you can do on Renault.

Yes, I was just.

Because I kind of read it and I thought, oh yeah, that, you know, it would just be, you know, that you've got, you still got to link it up to something. But no, you can actually just go, here's my phone. Put your phone on it. Paid.

Exactly.

Yeah. Obviously up to contactless limits, but well.

Not with Apple Pay. So if you use Apple Pay.

Oh yeah, there's no limits.

So it's only with the car that there's a limit.

Yeah. So, yeah, but I know, yeah, so it is.

So there's, there's so many different things on there and there's so many elements to Jenna that are just a wonderful. But I'll tell you one of the things that I was, I really liked that I think Bella sent me afterwards and I'm. And actually be interesting.

I'm sure this is something that you make publicly available is the list of things you're working on.

Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we have an update. Like a public roadmap.

Like a Trello board.

Yes, exactly. A Trello board, exactly. It's a Trello board where we put features so that our users can vote on them.

Yeah, because what we, so what I really believe in is like technology is a tool and I have, you know, I've worked in this industry for like 10 years, so I have some ideas of what I think would work. But ultimately our customers are the ones doing the job. So I think they're the best suitor to tell us what they need for their business.

So what we do is we have this public board where they can vote, but also we also do like long form interviews with them.

So I speak with customers usually like for an hour, half an hour, an hour, really go through their journey, go through how they got to Jenna, how they use Jenna. And I think that allows us to get like a really deep insight.

And I don't know if you noticed like when you start using Jenna, but we've tried to make it very simple, very intuitive in the way it works.

And look, there's a lot of things I still want to improve, but I think like already now you can feel that we've put a lot of work into making this like as easy as possible to use. Because I found that when I was using some other systems that were a little bit bigger, that were designed for salons, they were complicated.

I struggled to use them. And I'm like very used to using. I'm very tech savvy. Like I run, I run tech businesses for 10 years and I found that difficult.

So I'm thinking like all customers who are, some of them are not tech savvy. Some of them have dyslexia. I mean, this is not easy. So that's why a lot of them have still are still using pen and paper to run their business.

And obviously they don't have all the efficiencies that we get with tech, but it's easier for them to wrap their head, heads around it. And I get that it is, I.

Think as well like one of the things that came across that I think I actually I mentioned in my announcement video is that one of the things I really like about Jenna is one of the booking system I used to use, which I won't go into names and stuff today, but booking system I used to use this on, I loved.

One of the reasons I stayed with them for so long was it didn't matter whether there was the odd niggle or whatever, but it was because it felt like a community and it felt homely and it felt quite family. Not like, you know, family, kids, orientated, but it felt like you were all kind of connected and we were all part of that family.

And so everybody that used that system, you could like, you know, we used to have a Facebook group and we'd all sort of chit chat in there and it was really, really supportive. And I think that the feel I get from Jenna is that it has this kind of community feel.

And it may be because you're the beginning of your journey and you're not, you know, you're not the, the hugest booking system in the world yet, but, but it feels very connected and you know, just like the onboarding yesterday with Bella.

And you know, obviously I'm going through the same onboarding that anybody else would be going through because I'm, I am going to move my, my bit, my home selling business over to it and so I'm going through that same onboarding and it felt easy and obviously and I am relatively, you know, I'm probably not quite as tech savvy as you, J.M.

but I am, I'm fairly able and I just, when I was going through, I just thought, you know, this is the way that Bella explains it just makes it so it's literally just click and drag and just do this and drop a photo and there's just. Is so uncomplicated.

And I think that, you know, every booking system and I have gone through quite a few, especially since I've left my salon behind and I've had my home salon a couple of times. I've gone through three or four in the last couple of years in my last couple of experiences and it's.

And this time I went through three before I settled on the one I've got at the moment. And pre.

And last year when I, when I opened, I probably went through about the same because I kept starting them and just going, oh, actually this isn't working and it's just overcomplicated. Or they just don't, they don't Quite do enough or they don't do the bits that I need.

Everything just literally drops into places you go through the onboarding. It's mad and like, yeah, you've got go and do some work. Not going to get away, you know, you're not going to get away with doing it.

But it's just simple.

And I think, yeah, that's really what we aim for.

And I'll be very interested in hearing a little bit more about your experiences with the other systems that they were not doing because I think like, obviously as a, when you build a technological business, like there's a trade off, like how much option do you give and how much do you control the experience? Because obviously the more you control, the easier it is to use. And I think the good comparison will be like Apple versus Android.

Android is much more open, there's a lot more you can do with it, a lot more you can customize. But as a result it is a little bit more complicated, a little more fiddly and can be a bit more buggy because there's a lot more options.

Whereas Apple is a more controlled experience. I mean, now they've opened it up a little bit more. But especially in the early days, it was very limited what you could do inside an iPhone.

And that meant that the experience was very streamlined, it was very easy to use. So we've taken kind of that side. And I think to your point around community, like, I'm huge, I'm all about community.

Like, that's something that I feel very passionate about and that's how we are building Jenna. Like there's a WhatsApp group that is very supportive.

So our users who have kind of don't know how to do something, they will just put something in there and sometimes I don't even have time to respond. Someone else is already on it and helping them fix their problem.

And I think that's something that I, I feel strongly about because community is what makes you stronger.

When you're part of a strong community, you get, it gives you the strength to go through the rough times and to, you know, celebrate the wins, but also have support when you're, when you're down. And that just helps you get through life. I think.

Like, I remember I was listening to, it was a podcast or something like this and they were, they were telling, it was telling something like when you found the people your tribe, like what you do is you try to do life with them. And I think that's what I think about communities.

Like you're doing life with the people who like the same thing as you, who do the same thing as you.

And that's why like, yes, maybe we're not like kind of the biggest system out there yet, but even when we are the biggest system, we will still be very big around community. And that's how we are building, Jenna.

Because I think that community thing, if people feel part of it, then when others are having difficulty, then they'll help me something.

Isn't it that like you said, the tribe thing, like a whole village, you know, it takes a village to raise a child and it will take that community as people come into it. And I know I've been experiencing this myself. I've started running a little while ago and.

And I'm part of a massive group on Facebook that all kind of get everybody through because everyone's runs a different. And it's no different.

Doesn't, you know, whatever analogy you want to use, there's always that time when you're new to doing something and you need to support and you need help and you need guidance and you need someone to pick you up when it feels difficult and, and all of that.

And I think if you've got that kind of community support and interesting that you're doing it on WhatsApp as well because I mean, so many of these places, I suppose we're probably, you know, a little bit old school and are still on Facebook, aren't they?

And it's like, I mean, Facebook group is a great. I love Facebook groups. I think it's a great. That's one of the best features on Facebook.

And you know what, Facebook, you know, maybe has like a bad brand name because it's a bit old, but it's a great product.

Yeah.

Like there's no like Facebook.

Yeah. I, I live my life. My. All of my stuff is Facebook. Facebook and LinkedIn are my platforms.

I'm not, I'm not great on Instagram and Instagram doesn't have. And I think why I don't like Instagram is there's no community. There isn't.

It's a lot less about community, about yourself and like promoting yourself out there. So it's very helpful in a lot of ways, like, especially for the beauty industry. That is a very visual.

Yeah, very visual.

Like those. I've. I have professionals on Jenna who are doing extremely well from social media. They're posting every day, multiple times a day.

The work that they're doing, they're doing amazing work. And just by doing that consistently, they're able to be Fully booked very, very quickly.

So I think like that's, that's a tool, like, it's extremely powerful. But I think for community, as you said, Instagram is not like the community tool.

I think Facebook is a much more community driven tool and WhatsApp is a more direct community tool. It's more like kind of exclusive.

It's quite hard as a solo worker to kind of create a community. And that's something that really you can only at the moment is probably the only place you can do it is Facebook.

Unless you start your own platform and you want to have.

I mean, I think, I think to create communities. I mean that's a good question actually. How do you create community as a solo business owner?

And I think like for me there are already tools out there like that they're using every day. I think if you want to create a close knit community, you can use obviously Facebook, as you said, you do a Facebook group.

But I think one tool that really works perfectly well is WhatsApp. Everybody's using WhatsApp. They all know WhatsApp. And there's now this community function on WhatsApp. So you can create a community yourself.

And in that community you can have groups and subgroups. So what I would do, I was a solo business owner. I would have an Instagram TikTok where I post my work, I publish my work on a regular basis.

And then to engage with my customers, I would have a WhatsApp group where I have one broadcasting channel to start with, a private broadcasting channel. And I would broadcast to my customers.

That way if I want them to interact with each other, I would create a separate channel inside that group where they can chat to each other and create that community. But I think to start with, having like a broadcasting channel is extreme. It's sufficient.

Like what you want to do is you want to be able to publish some offers, you want to send things out to your community and they can respond to that in the comments. They can like, so they can put like some emojis to the, to the post or respond in the comments. And that's already like a very, very direct, isn't it?

And I think this is one of the problems with, you know, with any of the social media platforms really is that they're all based on algorithms that might not work for you that day or for your clients that day.

And you know, I mean, I know especially, yeah, it is, you know, I mean, I've, I've just seen something on my Facebook this morning that someone's obviously posted Trying to, you know, boost whatever it was they were trying to boost at the time. And I've seen it for the first time something like nine days later, which isn't helpful if it's time sensitive.

No. And that's how, I mean, TikTok is completely different. But I think like Instagram is.

They only, I think, promote your post to like, I think it's 10% of your followers and then it's new accounts. So I think, like, it's really important to remember that, like, even if people follow you on Instagram, they don't get all your content.

I mean, stories is a different story. Stories, they will probably get more quickly, especially if you. If they're being watched.

So that's why it's important to do stories, because stories will go more directly to your followers.

But all the reels that you're doing, they are not distributed to everyone because also, like, people are less and less on their feed down the Explore tab. They're doing this and that. It's being served to them directly.

Changing. It's changing so much, isn't it?

And I know, you know, over the years, it's like whenever I get memories and stuff come up on Facebook now and I look at it and just think, like, what were you posting? You know, I look back, it's just been like, I think it's just been. What's it been, 13 years since I opened my salon.

And so, like, I opened myself on mid November. So this time of the year I get loads of like, memories of like, oh, this is the week of the salon, or whatever.

And honestly, some of the stuff I was posting, I look back at it and just like, it's just embarrassing, but I think it just kind of shows that, you know, I mean, obviously it's 13 years ago and Facebook was still very early in its development really, and especially as like any kind of advertising or marketing tool. You know, we had these pages, but you didn't really know quite what to do with them. So you just posted anything really.

And, and yeah, I look back now and just, you know, not that, not that I'm like the Facebook expert anyway. I'm, I'm not a social media expert.

I kind of get, I get by on it and I know how to do some stuff and other stuff I don't know how to do and I just go, someone help me. But I do look at it and just, you know, you. It's so fast moving now. You know, you, what you do one week won't work. A month later sometimes will It.

And I think if you've got something, you know, and that's where again, we come back to like the usefulness of having a website attached to your business is that you own what's on there. You can put whatever images you want on there.

And it's one of the things we were discussing on this call last night was that on Facebook you get a cover image and a profile image and you know, and your feed, if people see it, whereas on a website, you know, like, we can, you know, on your, on the general website, we can put what photos we want on there, can't we? And it just, and it's. You control, you control the message you're putting out.

Yeah, I think, I think that's a really important point you're making here, which is like when you, when you want to run your business, you want to control your brand. And that's, that's for every brand. This is true for every product.

And I agree, like when you put things on Instagram, even Facebook, TikTok as well, what gets seen, you don't decide who gets to see that. Even if people follow you, they don't always see it.

So to be able to control that, yes, having a website is really important because we talk about SEO, which is search engine optimization. That means that what people see on Google kind of shows up and you know, people will tell you, yes, I mean, Google is important.

But then, you know, I'm now looking at, you know, ChatGPT for my research or perplexity, like all these AI tools, but I think the thing to keep in mind is that those tools use the same kind of models than Google to surface information. So if you're good at SEO on Google, the likelihood that you're also good and your results going to show on ChatGPT is also very high.

So I think that's, it's a good way to really own that brand that, you know, kind of messaging are you putting out there.

And the other thing that we were talking about, creating a WhatsApp community, which is much more direct, helps you retain that kind of direct directness with your customers.

If you think about it like if you depend on the algorithm for your customers to see your message while you're dependent on something else, but if you have their phone numbers and you can message them directly, nobody can take that away from you.

But I think that's a nice thing, is because you can, you control what goes out. And although people may not read it at the time, they've always got that history.

They can go back and, and see what it was that you said two days ago when they were too busy to pick it up. Whereas on Facebook it's harder to do that if it was a story. It's disappeared.

And I think that that whole WhatsApp thing is something that we probably, I don't know, maybe because I'm just a bit of an old dinosaur really. It hasn't. I have looked at it and then I got, I did get a bit like, oh, I don't really know what I want to do with that.

Maybe you need to write a blog all about what to do with WhatsApp.

Yeah, I mean, honestly, it's very simple. I can do that. I mean we could definitely like an episode on this.

If you want to say like you mentioned like with Google and the SEO and stuff and I think that you know, as solo business owners and especially there's a, there's a term that's kind of come about that quite a few people I know have used in recent times is that people have become kind of accidental business own owners and, and I think that probably a lot of the solopreneurs have, they've kind of fallen into it because it, they don't want to work for somebody else.

And I think they've sort of fallen into it and we see it across forums all the time where, oh, you know, I'm going to work from home and I like, now what do I do?

I just, they just don't, they don't understand the legalities of it and you know, they think it's, you know, you're just gonna go to someone's house or you're just gonna set up in your garden. There's a lot of justs go around with that kind of, with that kind of setup.

And I think people don't always get the full picture of what their responsibilities are and what they actually need to do to set that business up. And one of those things is not understanding things like Google my business like Google business profile because people don't see it.

And if you've got a Google business profile with the website, like the link to your Jenna website, you know that direct contact into you and your message is so important and it is, it is so important. It makes a huge difference Profile so much. And also now, have you seen Apple business profile?

I only discovered this the other day and I was like, yeah, I think we'll be where I've not been doing the salon where I had it all shut down for a while. And it, that started in the, in the gap was like oh, a bit complicated to set up. I have to say it was quite annoying.

Photo Apple business couldn't get the right photo. Size didn't matter what I did, everything I did was I didn't like that photo. That's got too many words on that hasn't got enough. Oh yeah.

So it was a bit to and fro but I got there in the end because I will persevere. Clearly not with WhatsApp but I persevered with Apple. But it's all like, it's all about the Maps, isn't it?

And like when you go on Google Maps or Apple Maps, there you are.

It is, it is. And I think like that's so important because I what I see so many professionals as you said, like incidental business owners.

So what, what they do is they will like they were thinking okay, how do I get customers? And they get locked in into long contracts by I mean I've just yesterday I had a call with this poor lady who was locked into a contract with Yale.

It was like £200amonth. I'm for the website and I was like oh my God, like that's like just a rip off because they're not going to bring you anything.

So I think like I don't have.

A good history with yale.com when I have my salon and I got stuck.

Yeah, you get stuck. It's expensive, you can't get out of it. The other thing is also people who are like on marketplaces like Fresher tweet.

Well I mean they bring you, they bring you business but what they do is they then take a cut from it. And the problem with the marketplace is that their incentive is to get you to get that commission. So they need to get you new customers.

So what that means is they try to promote when once your customer has gone through that to you they'll try to promote that customer like other businesses. So they get their commission on the first customer with other businesses.

So again you don't own your, the platform owns the customer relationship, not you.

And that's I think where having a really strong website, having as you said, Apple Maps, Google Maps, make sure you have that direct relationship with your customers is so key because that's how you're going to grow it. And you know when you're an incendiary incidental business owner sometimes you don't think about this.

You say a customer is a customer but actually you need to think about your profit margins. I mean the most important thing is how much money you make in your pocket.

And that's like after deducting obviously all the fees that you're paying and all the supplies, the electricity, the bills, like that's what you end up paying.

Pension, sick pay.

Because this is so many things that when people have kind of just fallen into being a solo salon professional, they don't always think about those things, that perhaps they would have had an employed role like their pension and their sick pay and all those kinds of things. And you've got to get your pricing right. Sample.

Exactly. Exactly. So I think, like, that's something that is really important.

But I really, I'm really excited that there's so many incidental business owners, because what that means is there's more business owners.

And I think as a country and as a community, first of all, I think the community is going to become a lot smarter the more people become business owners because they're going to start thinking about, okay, this is a business, I need to make money from this. This is not just an art. And you know, that's a very important part of that business.

But making sure that that makes sufficient money to sustain yourself, your family and also your dreams, I think is extremely important. Yeah, so, yeah, so it's exciting, but it does come with challenges.

Yeah.

And I think as well, one of the nice things with, with Jenna, especially at the moment, is that like the pricing of it means that you haven't got, you know, you, you can reduce your overheads quite massively because that, because everything is under that one umbrella.

And it is a very, it's a really, really good point because otherwise, you know, I was saying, you know, when I had, when I had my salon, which is a key phrase that I use a lot on here, you know, and I had my, my POS system, you know, I had that and my booking system and then I probably, I can't remember now some of the stuff I used to pay out for, but there was a lot. And you know, you've got your merchant account and all of those things all start hitting in.

So what, you know, you end up like your, your cost of service is actually really has to take account of an awful lot and your profit margin dips because, you know, just for argument's sake, I was probably paying out and it is going.

I mean, I sold my salon three years ago, but when I sold, I probably was spending out at least 60 to 80 pounds a month just on the bare minimum to be able to function, doing some of the stuff. In fact, probably more than that because of the website Costs and so on. But yeah, and that's, that's all included.

It's probably near £100amonth I was paying out just, just to be able to take money and get people through my door.

Yeah. And I think, yeah, that's, that's what's really nice about Jenna. That is one subscription.

Yeah.

And also everything's included, so we don't. There's no hidden fees, there's no, like, kind of things are going to hit you by surprise.

You know where you stand, that's how much you're going to pay and that's kind of it. There's obviously transaction fees like every payment system, but that's, that's really, that's really it.

It's just clear and transparent.

Exactly. And I think that's really important. That's really important for me that, you know, as a business, you, we, we never are in the position.

And I always say this to people who are like asking to try Jenna or do things. I don't, I never want to be in a position where you, you're not happy, you want to cancel or something happens.

And I can tell you, like, no, that was in the small print or you didn't read properly or something like this. It has to be so clear that, you know, there's never a doubt about what we're doing.

Yeah, absolutely. So what do you think?

So what do you think it is that, that if you could sort of like sum it up, is what Jenna does that the other booking systems doesn't?

I mean, obviously we've discussed quite a lot of the features and benefits, but is there something that you think really does because you're still fairly new into your journey with this. So what do you think is going to, in the longer term, set you apart?

I think that what really sets us apart is that we are building a product, an app that's designed for solo business owners.

Compared to like all the other tools out there that are made for, usually for salon, so they are a bit more complex, they might be a bit more expensive, they will have some kind of marketplace to drive your traffic and so on. We, our true goal is to work with self employed and empower self employed and empower them to run their business.

So it's going to always stand as, you know, make a stand apart. Is, is that, is that the tools that we build, they're built for you.

And that's why we, that's also why we charge you instead of doing like a cut on customers we bring. Because by charging you, it creates this kind of relationship, like you're paying me, so I have to deliver on my promise to you, not to anybody else.

So I think that's what really kind of will set us apart. And the suite of tools that you'll be getting as a solo business owners on Jenna is going to increase.

Like we will work hand in hand with you to add features that will work and that would allow you to like really kind of grow it sustainably and be successful at what you want to do.

Going through your Instagram earlier and I was seeing you've got videos and stuff on there from some of your solopreneurs already.

Yeah, we have people who transition from all sorts of systems. So I think like the most common will be people transitioning from Fresher.

Yeah.

So I think they are. A lot of people start with Fresher because it's free, that's the tool I'm going to use.

Then they realize that first of all they get hit by new client fees quite a lot.

Then they also realize that when they have to send SMS reminders or things like this, MSMS plus, it starts like kind of really adding up and they get like kind of a bill at the end of the month that they didn't expect. So kind of hidden fees and also like kind of fresh, like your fresher page will be like a fresher branded page.

So they're looking to upgrade their business and then they will come to us because they will be able to get their own website with their own branding and their own booking system, which I think is really kind of makes a big difference. So there's switching that way. There's customers that are switching also from Wix, the website builder, so they will have a website.

But the struggle that they have is that they find that it's quite complicated to create and maintain.

So sometimes, I mean, most of the time what we see is that you have professionals who have used someone to create a website paying like a few hundred pounds to get or sometimes £1,000 to get the website up and running. But then they're not able to keep it up to date with new services. Updating pictures and then you have an output out of date website online.

Yeah. Which is never good.

Really Never good? No, it's not good. This is lost revenue. So what we do is we then help them migrate to us.

So we set up their website and then they can connect to our booking system, which is a bit more designed for beauty. Our books are more designed for beauty than maybe wixes is because Wix is for like kind of any business.

So this is the other type of people who switching from. I mean there are people switching from like some other smaller systems, but these are kind of the main big ones that you will have heard of.

And the last use case we have is people who either like kind of are setting up from their new businesses and that's kind of great for them because they get everything in one place or they will move from pen and paper because what they're finding is that they are overwhelmed with back and forth. They always message their customers, message them all the time. Customers expect an answer very quickly. So they will message you on WhatsApp.

If you haven't replied within 20 minutes, they will text you or email you. So you start like getting hit from every different angle.

Those 6 o'clock in the morning ones are always so nice.

Oh yeah, they are. And then you have to reply and then they spend the evenings.

So essentially to get their evenings back, what I will do is they will, they will move to us.

So yeah, so I think like the main reasons are like kind of looking professional with the website side of things so that it's always up to date, always nice, easy to maintain, build their business, build their brand.

So they move away from a marketplace system that kind of takes away their customers and takes the cuts, what they do and then get their things back by avoiding that kind of back and forth and be able to schedule automatically.

Yeah, I just think that the whole website thing, it's really interesting because the conversation this live I was on last night was really around branding and visibility and I really do think that there's a reluctance amongst many solo workers to connect with a website because.

Because they believe it costs a lot of money and they believe it's very difficult to do and they don't see that it's going to bring them anything because they've got Instagram or they've got Tick Tock or whatever, social media, but people aren't, you know, when, like for me, and maybe because, and this is an interesting point actually is that people that are my age, I'm 57, like, and I. My first point of call isn't Instagram. When I'm looking for something, my first port of call is Google. It's where I always go.

And one of my previous guests who's just about to go out, she.

We were talking around my age group and the women in the industry that are my age group and our clients that are my age group and we've got one of the biggest amounts of disposable income that's ever been for women of our age. And we are an amazing demographic to try and get into your business.

And we look at Google because that's generally what, you know, we'll go on Facebook but it isn't the first place I look. I naturally will always go to Google. Look, look where they are on Google Maps. Are they nearby? Are they someone I want? What do they look like?

What does their business look like? Have they got enough stars? Because that is important. Doesn't have to be five stars, but it's always important. Yeah.

And that website element is so, so important to somebody like me.

And if you want to, I mean for me, if you want to start in business now, doesn't matter what age you are, whether you're 18, whether you're 20, 30, 40, you want to be targeting massively women over 50 women have got lots and lots of money to spend.

Yeah.

55 and 60 that have now got good pensions because they're the last ones that have got a final salary pension. So they're, they've retired on like 40 grand, 50 grand a year with no mortgages. You know, they've got, they've got expendable money. So target them.

And the way to. Sorry, I've got an F. I've got a F35 flying over. I live very close to RAF Lake.

Of course. Of course.

Yes, I know. So I've just got a bit of an unusual one as well today. Bit of a weird one anyway, so.

Yeah, but we, we will go to Google as our, probably our first port of call and probably mostly, I don't know would over 40, I don't know.

I'm not quite sure what the demographics main choices are but I know nearly everybody that's in my social group will go to Google and so if you have a website available or even a very high ranking Facebook page, you might come up. But you've, I think like hard with the social.

You're completely right, you're completely right. I mean I'm 38, so I'm also looking at Google before I do anything and I think like a lot of people like even younger than me will still do that.

So I think Even like above 30 will still look at Google.

I don't know about like kind of younger generations if they're like, I know like a lot of them are like searching on TikTok straight away or Instagram straight away. Which is, which is also fair enough. I think it's a great way to.

I'm also doing that but I think that once you want to pull the trigger, like being able to read reviews from people who've said something, I mean the easiest way to do that is to go on Google. Yeah. Which is why I think having a good my business profile with reviews is important.

And sometimes like you're like, oh, I want to have only five star. But you know what? Sometimes actually the kind of one or two stars are the good reviews to have.

Because what I find myself doing is I look at the five star and obviously like five stars was like great, great, great. So you're like, okay, cool. So there's a lot of people who like this. I like that, that's good.

But I also want to see what people who don't like it have to say about it because sometimes they say something. What are the responses exactly and what are the responses? So you're in full control, like actually embrace the bad reviews.

I mean obviously you don't want to have like only bad reviews, but if you have a few bad reviews, like embrace them, reply to them politely. Make sure like you try to solve that problem for that user.

Because that's going to be something that is really going to stand out when someone looks at your profile.

Yeah.

And also like usually what people see is that when the review is unfair, unfairly bad. Like a user knows like we see this and we're like, yeah, this is, this is bs. Like I don't believe this use.

This user is just like upset because they didn't get what they wanted or they've been a bad customer. People know this. So I think like, yeah, I say.

I had one on my salon. You can still go and see it on Gorgeous Nano Beauty Emporium.

And this guy, he'd come to us for a massage and one of my more junior members of staff did massage. He was a really good masseur, so I know he would have had a good treatment.

And he was a quite a large gentleman and she had to work quite hard because it was. He was a big man and. But he was happy. He paid. He gave her a tip. He was very happy.

He, I think he might have come back and had another one, I can't remember. But something like two years later he gave us a review on Google of. It was the first ever non 5 star review I had and I was mortified.

And he gave us a three star review and he literally wrote expensive.

There you go.

And that was it.

That was it. And I think when someone killed me.

But he, he knew, he entered into a contract with us knowing what it cost he paid us without complaining. He tipped it, like, excuse me.

Exactly. And I think that you're always going to get those reviews. Like, that's just the nature of Internet. Like there's some polls out there. Yeah.

Yes, it does impact your rating, but.

Yeah.

What I would say, though, is that it makes it more real. Real. Like if you have a five star with like hundreds of reviews, people think that you've only asked your friends.

Yeah.

But 4.7, 4.8 or even like 4.4 is a great review because you're like, oh, so this is a real business. Some people didn't like it, some people liked it. This is like what life is about. Is everybody.

We are. Yeah. We aren't everybody's cup of tea.

Exactly.

Definitely not. Yeah.

Then you go in and then you reply. And if you reply nicely, people like, oh, this is a good business owner. That's a business owner who cares about their customers.

They're trying to make the right thing and that's how you stand out.

That's it. And I did with that guy.

And I just went back, I can't remember, because the thing is, I have to be careful because obviously it's written down what I said, but I think I went back and said along the lines of, you know, I'm really sorry that, you know, that you feel like this a couple of years after the treatment. However, you know, please feel free, you know, to come back and, you know, come and visit us again.

And I'm sure we, you know, we can do something and add some value for you if, you know, you feel you've been missed, you know, you've been. It's been misrepresented. But, you know, I thought you understood what the cost was.

I mean, I wasn't rude to him or anything, but I just sort of made it very clear for any future readers that I taken on board what he said. But they also, this guy's like, he came two years ago. This is the truth of the matter. And why is he. It just is always clearly stuck in my head.

It really bugged me.

I get it. Let me look. I think, like, the real.

The real challenge as a business owner, and I guess that's one of the challenges when you start your own business. Right. It's all those things you will take personally because it's your business, is your thing, people will like. It really hits you.

And the bad reviews hit you 10 times harder than the good reviews. So you might have had like 500 good reviews, but you remember that bad.

Review we had Two. There was two that we had and both of them were responded to very politely with good business sense and everything, because.

And I think that's the thing as well, is it, you know, and I think a very big key for anyone that's working solo, because it is you and you are your brand and you are the business and you are the service that's given, is that when someone then knocks it, it's really, really, it feels very personal.

And even though, you know, like, one of there's two complaints, one was about something I did and one was about my team member or the cost, the cost that I'd set. And it is, and it does, and it does feel personal.

No matter how much I, you know, I try and step away from that kind of personal side of it, it's me that's made those decisions and it's me that's done those things and therefore it's me that, you know, the. But the buck stops with. And, and so it is quite difficult. But quickly though, one thing it does, because I haven't noticed this yet with Jenna.

Do you have reviews possible on Jenna? Can they.

Yes, it is.

I mean, it's not, it's not directly a review, so we don't collect reviews as reviews, but we have a forms feature or you can do consultation forms, you can do aftercare forms, or you can do review forms. So you can create your own review form and then request that your customers send it back to you.

It's not going to be displayed on your website or anywhere. Because what I believe this is, my belief is that the reviews, the place for your reviews is your Google My business profile.

That's the only place you should be collecting reviews.

You should not be collecting reviews on Jenna, you should not be collecting reviews anywhere else, because that means that those reviews are stuck there. And where they really add value to your business is on your Google My business profile.

Because if you link your website to it, then your website, website will also get the power of those reviews pushed into them.

Yeah.

So my recommendation to everyone who runs a business is collect your reviews on Google My business. So it's highly visible and you can always collect them as well with Jenna through our form.

And what you can then do is like when you see a good one, you can ask your customer, can you please post this on Google so you curate a little bit those reviews because you are going to get.

I mean, this is my view that you might get the odds, bad one, because someone's going to be upset and they'll post it but if you have a lot more good reviews to offset it because you've created them then it's going to be a non problem.

Yeah, and I think as well is that, and even if you're collecting them on a phone because I mean I quite often, especially if I'm, if I've been doing a new service and it's something that I'm kind of using models for or anything like that over the years is I'll send out, I mean like nowadays I just send them a Google form or a jot form. Can you please flow us out and would you care to share your thoughts and can I use these thoughts on social media please?

Because it's social proof, isn't it? And I think that's one of the big things that like Google my Google my business does or you Google Google business profile is it?

I can't remember what they're calling it now. They changed it, didn't they?

Yeah, they changed it. I think it's like, yeah, you're right, I think it's Google business profiles or like it's your Google Maps profile or something like that.

But I think you know, the thing with those is like they are up there but it's nice sometimes to be able to, to pull those words out and use them as social proof so that you can put them on your socials and, and you know, I know there's a, there's a school of thought of even just screenshot in your Google page so that people can see it and using that as social proof.

And I think, you know, one of the things that, that is really important particularly when you're on your own is that you know, people want to see what, because they've got to connect only with you and they can't connect with anybody else.

And there's no team, there's nobody else, there's no receptionist, there's you know, no junior who's going to be washing their hair while you know, you're finishing somebody else's hair, you know, hair blow dry or whatever. And so I think you know, they need to connect with you on a very direct level and anything you can do to give them confidence in you.

Because I think so much of it, this is all like the sort of building rapport, isn't it? And, and getting your clients to connect with you in a, in a way that makes them feel comfortable.

So when you walk into their home or they walk into your home that everything that a lot of those eyes are dotted already and they're, they're Kind of feeling comfortable because they know enough about you.

Yes, I agree. I mean, look, we're doing personal services.

Yeah.

So it's all about being very personal. So anything you can do to actually add that level of personality, that level of authenticity is important. And I mean, I think what you.

What you bring up is there's one thing that I always recommend professionals to do is show your face, show who you are, talk about you. Because people really love the story behind the professional. Yeah. And some professionals are bit shy. They don't want to kind of show their face.

And I get that. You know, like, it's on the Internet. It's like it's very public.

But ultimately showing your face is, you know, just put yourself in the shoes of your customer.

They can assess. Yeah.

But also, like, would you want to book someone you don't know and go to their home that feels. You never know what you're going to get?

So actually putting yourself out there is going to only help your business because people are going to see you. It's like, that's why I'm also, like, being very public about, like, what we're doing and being present on social media.

It's more so that people can get a vibe. It's like a vibe check. It's like, who is this person? What are they building? What are they saying? Do I like what they're saying?

Like, that's the story they're telling.

And this is part of the reason the dogs are always with me, because they're like. They're like, literally attached to my side most of the day. So they tend to turn up to different things with me.

This is part of who you are. And I think who I am really important to show.

And I've given up trying to tell them to get down. It's like, no, I've got one wedge behind my back.

It's all good.

They're part. They're part. You know, they are. Love them. They are kind of part of my brand now.

And because I do, and I go for forest walks every day, so I'm always posting me in the forest with the dogs. And it's, you know, and it's part. It's part of me and it's part of my business and it's part of everything I do.

Fortunately, they can't talk, but otherwise I'd be out of a job. But.

But one of the things I was going to say is, as well, is because the thing that I specialize in is like, client journey and client experience, and I want to Kind of focus finally probably on that is that, you know, this.

For me, client journey and client experience is what kind of, you know, if you get the Venn diagram of both of them, in the middle of that is success and, and loyalty and all of those things. When you get all of those, when you get those two, like the client journey right.

The client experiences what you are providing in the right way and if you get your client journey wrong, then something doesn't quite fit and the pieces of the puzzle don't quite come together and then they might come to you once and they disappear and they'll probably never tell you why because they don't come back. Yeah.

And they don't have an incentive to tell you why. I mean, people who give you feedback, that's a gift. It's rare is.

And I think so for me, you know, systems like Jenna kind of, you know, you're so important in that client journey because if, you know, with the, with the website, you know, the client journey to me is find, firstly, how they're going to find you, where are they going to find you. Secondly, how easy are you to connect with? Thirdly, when they do connect, is it a good experience?

And if it isn't, if you haven't got those first three things, you're going to have a problem and.

Exactly. And also like connect. I think the other thing is book. How are they going to book you?

I see so many websites so that are obviously not from Jenna, but website where the call to action is contact me when they have a booking system and I'm like, how is that helpful? Like you have a website, you've paid.

Hundreds of obstacle in the way.

Exactly. There's another step now. So me as a user, I'm like, oh, do I really want to like, message?

And then they have to hear back, what is this going to work? I need something now. And then they'll move on because right now, you know, we are overwhelmed with choice.

So I think like, what I always tell, you know, users is like, as you said, think about the journey, but make it easy for users. Put a book now button right at the beginning, right at the end, everywhere, so that they can always find it when they start liking what they see.

Yeah. I think one of the things that I always encourage people to do and I've just been doing it because I do a thing.

I don't know if you come across this in my world yet, but I do a thing called the Salon Inspector where I go and do digital mystery shops of people's businesses.

And one of the things that you see regularly when you start looking at that kind of stuff is that people don't always have their pricing on the website. And that whole. And it just made me think of it with the contact me.

Because if you haven't got your prices on and you're asking them to contact you, they then may feel quite awkward about the fact that they don't know how much it costs.

And people do get awkward around this stuff if, you know, if they've got to ask how much something costs, the chances are they're going to feel they can't afford it. And so, you know, take all of, you've got to take all of that anxiety away from them and you know, and it's fine.

If you charge 60 pound for a set of gel nails, then you charge 60 pound for a set of gel nails and the right clients will find you. If you charge 30 pound for a set of gel nails, then the clients that want to pay £30 will find you. And you shouldn't be ashamed of what you price.

And I think it's one of the key things that people kind of forget on a lot of websites and even some of the big websites that I look at, I just like, wow, why are you not giving.

Just give them everything so they can make an informed decision so that you get a warm lead coming to you, you get someone that wants to connect with you. Don't lose the time wasters.

Yeah, I mean I think like there's a very, very simple, like I have three steps that you want to show, you want to showcase like who you are, what you do, that's the first thing. So make it visual, make it easy to understand.

Number two, talk about what services you provide, how much they cost, what do you do and then three, how do I buy this? And make it easy for them to buy. These are three simple things that you want to have on every kind of touch points that you have.

So if it's on social media, make sure you have a nice profile picture, you have a few kind of highlight stories about who you are, your service, your terms and conditions. And then obviously like all the store, all the kind of posts underneath, like your reels kind of highlighting that as well, plus a link to book.

Here you go. So that's your conversion. Same thing on TikTok, same thing on your Google My business profile. The same rule applies, it's just a different design.

Yeah, this is it, isn't it?

I mean and all it is ultimately what you want to be doing, everything you're doing is pushing that person to have a positive view of you so that when they see the call to action, the button that's here, that they press it and they book. And they don't choose one of the other six salons that they've just looked at.

Exactly. Right.

Because you, you know, and the, the key to it is standing out and looking different and, and making sure that you, you present yourself in the best possible way you can.

Yeah. And also, like, let me share, like, a little secret.

So I think when you're like a solopreneur, sometimes you think you know what your customers want, but it's really important to actually ask them, like, how they find out about you. What is it that made them book? Was there anything in the process that would have made them jump?

Yeah.

Like, was there a moment where they thought they would just, like, not click book? Because once you have answers, those three questions, you can actually address them up, upfront on your website, on your booking flow.

And what, once you start doing that, what you'll see is that, well, those people who've been able to battle through all these different steps, well, there's some who you've lost along the way. If you remove those barriers, you'll get a lot of those people that will just start coming as well.

So you start getting a lot more customers showing up to your business, I think.

And I have to say, one of the things that I've come across many, many times over the years is I judge. I've been judging for Scratch Stars awards for years. I've judged for Professional Beauty and a couple of other smaller awards as well.

And one of the things that always shocks me when I was competing, when I was competing in award schemes and, and I was a finalist seven times across scratch, different Scratch Stars categories, and I won two. And I was finally. Yes, I was finally. Seven times. I applied probably 10 times and didn't get through a couple of times.

But every single time I got through as a finalist, I asked for feedback so that I could take the feedback, learn from it and improve. And my Salon of the Year, and I've spoken about this many times, is I asked for feedback.

Even on the one I won, I still ask for feedback because it doesn't matter whether you've just won the award, there'll always be someone that thought you could have done something better because you might, you know, you might have got 10 out of 10 from, like, two of the judges, but one judge might have given you only 6 out of 10. And what's in that 4 out of 10 is really important.

And so that if that whole feedback thing, and I think we quite often get quite frightened of being criticized and frightened of what someone might say and how you've been judged and whether they think you've done something terrible or, you know, all that. All of that kind of mindset stuff.

And if you just ask your clients for feedback, you know, if it was, you know, if there's a way of establishing whether that contact me button, rather than having a book here button, did they think, oh, do I really want to? Do I have to do that? And if you.

Once you've got that feedback, then you can change the call to action and also even just understand what a call to action is. I mean, it's just, you know, there's.

There's so many layers that, you know, you and I are talking about that we know because we've been in doing this for a long time and, you know, but if you're new, knowing what a call to action is, is probably, is like, over your head. You just. It's like, what. What are they talking about?

But, you know, but, but, you know, I mean, basically just to sort of spell out, call to action is just something that asks people to connect with you or to make the booking or to do anything, and you're asking them to make a transactional step towards you, basically.

Yeah. So, yeah, the contract is essentially the action you want them to take.

Yeah.

And so it might be signing up to, I don't know, like, you know, for a lot of us, we might be signing up to a top 10 tips free guide or something like that.

And it's like, yes, a lead magnet or like a newsletter or, you know, booking your service.

Yeah. And so, yeah, all it is is just asking someone to say yes, really, to whatever it is that you're offering.

Exactly.

And I think that's why, like, you know, we've also limited a little bit what you can do with your website on Jenna, because we've made sure the call to action is book now. So book you. And it's always visible.

Yeah.

Because I've seen so many professionals, like, go and create beautiful website. They're sublime. Very, very nice, magnificent. But there's no call to action.

Yeah.

They don't bring you anything. So we've created something that, you know, has the call to action embedded to it, so you don't even need to think about it.

Those websites have been designed to convert.

That's it. And that's the most important thing, isn't it?

Is like, you know, you, you need those people to convert so that you get the money in your bank account and not in Joe Blog's bank account. That's, you know, in the next street or doing the next mobile service. You know, they need, they need to be booking you. But anyway, we're gonna end.

That's what you want.

JM on your favorite quote. Because it's something I'm trying to bring in, this I'm trying to do. I always, I always do different questions at the end of.

Yes, yes.

So this year I'm doing favorite quotes and you got, you gave me quite a few. It was like, oh, so the one I thought I like quite a few of them because I.

Which one is it the one that you like the most? I don't remember exactly the one, the.

One that really kind of hit me today was a mistake repeated more than once is a decision.

Yes.

From Paulo Kalo.

Yes.

And, and I've, I've, I've read one of his books. I might have read two of his books. But he's an amazing, I don't know, what is he, like a philosopher? I don't even know what he's.

Author.

Yeah, author. It's just an amazing man. But what is it about that quote that kind of resonates with you?

I think like for me it's really about failure is accepted. Like, don't beat yourself up if you're making a mistake. We all do mistakes, especially when we start something new.

So I think what I love, and I think that's actually something I've really resonated with the English culture is like, I think here mistakes are seen as learning experience, you know, especially as children, as learning opportunities.

Like I have, I have a three year old daughter and I can see that is really what is kind of taught to the kids here, which is like a mistake is a learning opportunity. This is very different in France. Like a mistake, you punish the mistake.

Even now. Because I think when I was a kid it was very much like that. But now we might, we've grown a lot.

Yes, exactly. And I think like in France it's maybe they, I mean, look, I haven't been. My child is not growing up in France.

So I don't know, but I still feel that's a little bit more the culture than. And continental Europe is a bit more like that. So I think that's really. I like that.

And that's why I like this quote because I think like you can make, you can make mistakes, but you have to learn from your mistakes. If you don't learn from your mistakes, that's a decision that. Then there's no excuse. Once you do it twice, three times.

Like you've decided that this is the path you're going to go down. Yeah.

You're going back for the pain.

Exactly. You've decided like you, you go back to the mistake you've decided.

And all of us, you know, there. I don't think there's a single person that's been in business for more than a month that hasn't made a mistake.

Yes.

And I have made a lot over the years.

I mean, same. Same as me. Like, I've run like. Like this is my second business. Like, I made so many mistakes. I still make mistakes now. Yeah, it's not a problem.

The important thing is to learn from them and not do them again.

Yeah, absolutely. Just in this year, I've learned so much from my mistakes that have made me, and I now will be making a decision to not repeat them.

Exactly.

Because I think that's the thing, isn't it? Is that those, those failures give. Do they.

I mean, like, that the learning opportunity thing is huge, but I think it just gives you time, it gives you an opportunity to reflect. And I know Stephen Bartlett's got a whole theory on, like, the amount of failures you should have. And in. There's a.

There's a company in Japan, it might be. I think it's one of the car companies, and they actually have. They want. They have like a failure kind of team where they want you to fail.

Because if, as soon as you start failing, that's where the growth comes from. And because you learn. And if you, you know, not that you want to fail, fail, fail.

Especially if you're, if you're on your own trying to make money, because it can be quite depressing. But, but as you grow as a business, you know, checking those things and understanding.

Even if you take it down to social media, if you're putting posts out on Facebook, you know, if you put 30 posts out, probably only one of them is going to connect and the other 29 were failures. But you learned that you don't, you don't go back to it.

And if you learn that that hook worked or, you know, that image work or that kind of, you know, ending work. So you can see, like, in the views and the engagements.

Yeah.

And you can learn from that. Exactly. And I think it's reticence. So I think I shared with you another quote and I think that I think it might highlight, like, My way of thinking.

And it was the one from James Clear. I don't know if you're familiar with James Clear.

I am, yep.

You are, yeah. So habits, Atomic habits. Yes. I really love his writing. He has a newsletter that is really, kind of inspires me every week when he sends it.

And he says that goals are for people who care about winning once, and systems are for people who care about winning repeatedly.

Yeah.

And I think that really resonates with me because we always. We always told, like, what are your goals?

And especially now, like, we were recording this in December, in January, you're going to come up with your new New Year's resolutions, your goals for the year.

Yeah.

And if you think about it, the people who succeed, they had the same goals as the people who failed. Right. So goals is not what sets you apart. What sets you apart is how you've decided to achieve those goals.

So the systems, as you put in place, and essentially what we were talking about, about failure, that's a system. It's like every day I think about what I've done and I'm learning from it and I improve. I do 1% every day.

And I really believe in that kind of incremental accumulator. When you have compounding.

Yeah, I know what you mean. I can't think of the word either.

No, that's a word. Compounding. Compounding effect.

Accumulative.

Yeah, exactly. So when things compound, and I think that.

I really believe in that because think what's beautiful about compounding, not only for investments but also for your skills, is that at the beginning it's 1% different, doesn't make a difference. But after a year, after 10 years, the difference is massive.

And it's funny you say the 1% thing, because I actually, on this live last night, and I actually. I actually did put 1% regularly. Makes a lot of difference, because it does. And. And I think it's.

The wonderful thing with everything you're doing is that you're going to enable people to start making those 1% changes. And you don't have to do everything all at once. You can do it gradually, you can do it slowly. You don't have to go like. I know.

It's like, now, I did my onboarding yesterday and I've sent Bella over my exported client list that she's now getting sorted out for me. And when that all goes live, so it's like, you haven't got to go and do anything.

You can go and do it now or, like, you know, I'm Busy for the next couple of days, so I'll probably pick it up over the weekend and I'm just going to take my time to make sure I get it right so I don't have too many failures because it is. It's a new system, so I've got to get my head around it. But so far, so good. It all looks quite simple and easy, which is.

I know what you want it to be and, yeah, I'm looking forward to having a play with it and just sort of seeing how I can make it work.

Yeah, no, I'm glad I'm putting some.

Things on your trello board.

Yeah, please. I mean, sure.

I find I'm. I've gone through so many systems over the years and I think.

And every system's so different and they all have something that the others don't or they're missing something, you know, that someone else has that you say, oh, I wish I still had that, or whatever. But I think it's good that you're open to. Open to feedback.

And I think that's my commitment to our community. Right. And I think I'm going to say this like, live now so people, you.

Know, can hold you to it.

Down to it. Exactly. My commitment is that we will. We will do this to ourself, the 1% improvement to our product. We'll do it ourselves.

We will improve the product based on your feedback. We'll make it always a little bit better. It will be small steps. It might always be like a huge feature. It might be like a small button.

Like, remember the other day we did like a rebook button so you can rebook your customers more easily. But the intervals, the time intervals were not exactly right. People wanted three weeks. Some others wanted two weeks. So we just added a few options.

Just a new button is a 1% improvement. And we will keep doing that until the product, you know, becomes, you know, it helps more and more people, essentially.

It's never going to be perfect, but we'll do it as perfect as we can.

It might get perfect one day. You never know.

Yeah, we hope so. I mean, that's what we're striving for. But I don't believe in perfection.

I think, you know, you never get it, but the goal is to get closer and closer to it so that you deliver, like, delight to your customers. And that's what we aim for.

Wonderful. So I think we'll leave that there because I think that's a really nice point to end on. So thank you so much for coming on daeme.

And thank you so much for being the first official sponsor for the inspiring Salem Professionals podcast. It is a really wonderful step forward for the podcast and yeah, so what I'll do is we will leave this here for the moment. I will hit stop.

And I mean, let me just say thank you so much for having me. It's my, it's my honor to sponsor the podcast. Really.

I'm very excited about this partnership and yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing these episodes and the future ones.

I know. So thank you so much to JM for coming onto the podcast today.

I hope that you'll agree that much like the first couple of episodes this season, it was another value packed episode. And yes, talking a lot about Jenna, but it's because Jenna is something that really blends in with everything I'm doing around a customer journey.

Customer experience gives you that smooth transition which a lot of booking systems can do.

But I think the element of having that website as well, just if you're a solo that's worried about having a website and you don't understand how websites work, you don't get how to make it happen without spending hundreds and thousands of pounds.

Jenna's onboarding costs and stuff, you know, I mean it's just like a monthly fee and everything's included and, and I see a little bit like, and it's probably something I, it would have been good to touch on with JM at the time, but I kind of see it as like, do you remember when mobile phone started and you'd pay like fortunes to have your mobile phone and have this service then they charge you to do a bit of data or they charge you more to have a picture message or whatever.

And I think their booking systems have kind of been in that place where they started off at a reasonable cost and they've just added and added different features and benefits and then they've charged you for them.

And I think the wonderful thing with generous is that because they're starting from this place where everything's there, it enables them because they have that's kind of put into their costumes.

It's like they've been able to go to this, you know, to the booking system supermarket and go, yeah, we're going to have this, this and this and then we're only going to charge this much money for it. And, and I think it actually makes it really affordable. And if you are a solo, to me I think it's a bit of a no brainer.

You're getting so much for your dollar and so you haven't got to do it, but just have a look at it because I think it's worth it, otherwise I wouldn't be partnering with them.

And I, and I've, I've been looking, as I was saying on the announcement, I've been looking for a sponsor partner for ages and, and this has kind of just been the right thing at the right time. It. A lot and it does.

And like, you know, me and Jamie were saying, both of our outcomes and goals that we have for the people we work with are so similar. And, and so, yeah, we sit quite well together on the shelf, which is a good thing. So lots of information within that podcast episode.

So much about websites and SEO and Google and how to make it work for you. The WhatsApp group thing, oh my God, that could be a game changer for so many of us. And where I am a bit of an old dinosaur.

I use WhatsApp a lot with my family and friends, but I don't use it for business and maybe it's something I need to look into for my few clients that I do every week. But anyway, that's it for today and we've got some really interesting episodes coming up.

As I say, Rhea Lincoln is probably coming up in the next one or two. I would imagine it probably be the next one. And then I am interviewing Theresa Foddering, who's a good industry friend of mine.

We don't go back years and years and years, although we've both been in industry for probably about the same amount of time. But, yeah, but we've, since we have met, we've formed quite a solid bond and that's going to be quite an interesting one.

I think it's probably going to be the Christmas episode and I'm really looking forward to having a chat with her on here because we, we, we can sit chatting for a long time and, and we've been trying to work out what we're going to talk about because she's got some exciting stuff coming up and I've got some good stuff and that I'm doing and enjoying and I, But I think that's just going to be a bit of a free flow because, yeah, I don't know, we've, I think we're just going to put the industry to rights and there's been a lot of talk with a lot of my industry mates over the last couple of years.

It's been doing this is like what we need is just a load of us all sitting down, having a chat people need to be a fly on the wall to some of our conversations and I think the interview with Trees is going to be probably a bit like that. So I hope you tune in and don't forget.

And I've now this is on a new podcast platform so I hopefully by the time this goes out I'll actually know how that works because I've only just been loading up onto it for the last episode and I'll know what it looks like more.

That is all for this week and and I'm really hoping that some of the new stuff I've got coming up with the new guests and stuff that are coming is going to keep you coming back. And thank you so much for your time. Thank you for listening and I will see you on the next episode. Bye for now.

Thank you for listening to inspiring Salon professionals.

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