Last week, I had a long chat with Jennifer. Jennifer lives in Florida and she loves to sell hair. It has been her dream for a very long time, but she never found the time to start. Jennifer is a young mother of a sweet daughter, and being a single mum is not easy.

Working too hard for the money

Jennifer works in a local warehouse, where a lot of people from her town have found a job. It was not easy to get a job in the warehouse. The standards were high, you had to work fast, and you were not allowed to make mistakes. One mistake and you are out. The money was little, and despite her hard work, not enough to pay all the bills. And she could never pay for herself if she goes out with her friends. To make enough money she had to accept night shifts. She did not like this, because this means she had to bring her daughter for the night to some friends she trusted.

Boss was eating away her energy

It was frustrating her, that even she worked very hard, she would never have enough money. Her boss really liked being a boss, but not in a positive sense. No encouraging or a kind word, not even a good morning. He only spoke to her if he had something to complain about, never a nice talk. To little orders picked, or not sealed well enough. This really made her feel down, and at moments like that she felt more like a machine than a human being. She always felt the energy leaving her.

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Dream to sell hair

On her way home, in the bus, she was always looking at the hair of the other woman. For everyone she had a styling advice in her mind. That girl would look great with a bun, or that woman should go natural, or the girl sitting next to her would look awesome with some extensions. It gave her energy and kept her going. It was her dream to sell hair and to stop working for a boss. She wanted to launch her own salon or hair store.

Life sentence

But when she got home and picked up her little daughter, she was too tired to work on her dream. She really needed her rest, and this kept her far away from analysing the market, testing hair and launching her own store. It started to frighten her, would this job stop her from starting a new life? Would this job be her prison, and would she have a life sentence with that awful boss?

Turning point

This view of the future really scared her, and she contacted me to see what was possible. How she could turn her dream into reality and get out of that imaginary prison.
The start was with finding energy, she could not afford to work less hours, or to care for her daughter, but the time in between could be used more efficient. We agreed she would start to allocate at least 30 minutes a day to work on her hair business. This is not much time, but now she could focus 3,5 hours a week, working on her dream thus was a great source of energy.

Steps

She started to write down all the steps:
– needed to find and nurture leads, people who might be interested to buy from her;
– to purchase the hair from wholesale companies;
– the logistics of getting the hair from the supplier all the way to the customer;
– the marketing and maintenance of the social media and webstore

She started to write down every step of one of these activities, using an excel sheet. And every next manual activity followed the previous one.

For example, for finding leads

1. Post weekly on social media
2. Contact everyone who comments on post or sent DM
3. Obtain whatsapp number of these leads for swift contact
4. Start the conversation to understand more better their needs
5. Inform them about hair offer

Create energy for free

This preparation did not cost her money, but it did several positive things. It helped her to understand and fine tune the hair business, thus saving time and money and it gave her energy.
She did not write down all steps in detail. This would keep her away from the most essential activities. She needed to have a clear overview, from start to end of the steps within a certain activity. Even without having her business up and running, Jennifer was able to write down the process.

Write down the business activity to get happy clients

Her aim was to learn the activities needed to run a successful hair business, and to make the process as efficient as possible. Efficient, meaning with the fastest time to market. The quicker your clients would receive the information, the price, the order confirmation and hair they ordered the higher the customer satisfaction would be. And a high customer satisfaction, means happy and loyal clients.

Writing down the process helped Jenifer to start her hair business in 30 minutes a day. She worked on it every day of the week, but she was able to work on it more efficient every day.

Without investing any dollar, she was able to create the framework of her business and once this was ready she was able to use these process steps to launch and grow her business.

Launch your own business

Have you already written down all activities of your hair business? If not, contact me to help you design your own efficient business.