3 Steps to Revive a Struggling Business

Good morning, happy Monday. Today we're going to talk about and make profitable a struggling business, um, and I'm going to let you in on all of that today. I'm going to take you a little bit behind the scenes of the purchase of my new business that I purchased this year. I don't know if some of you know about it, so I'm going to talk to you about it And it's very different from what we do as far as subscription boxes. But I've learned so much from this business. And if you've been struggling, if you've been not profitable, if there has been, you know, I feel like once I show you this, I know some of you are going to relate so well, but maybe you're having no engagement, you're having little luck on the socials. I'm going to show you how I took this business that has not been profitable in over 3 years, and I made it profitable in the last few months. And, um, I got strategic about it. And I think that if you've been struggling at all in your business lately, um, I want you to listen. And even though this business is in a different industry, I want you to listen on what I looked at and then how I strategically revived this business. Maybe your business feels a little stale right now. Maybe you have launched it but not been very successful. Maybe you need a little bit of momentum or revive in what you're doing right now. And so I want you to just sit back and listen to the steps that I took with this business. I'm going to explain to you what this business is, what condition I got the business in, and where we're at now, literally just a few months later. So are y'all ready for this this morning? I'm glad you're here because I was sick last Monday, so I wasn't able to join us last Monday. It's that lingering, like, cold thing. And I think it's been because, you know, weather's been up and down, and I was on a cruise with, you know, 4,000 people in close contact with more people than I'm in close contact with my whole year. But I'm recovering. It's still in my head a little bit, but I feel great and I'm here and I want to talk about it because as we go into this new year, it's a new year, it's a new month. I always look at these things as a fresh perspective and I want you to really take a look at your business in a fresh perspective this, this week, this week, this month, this year. Whatever we were doing in 2024 that wasn't working, we're gonna stop doing that and we're gonna do something fresh. Okay? And so that's why I want— I thought it would be very timely to talk about what I've done with this other business, because you see my subscription box business, it's, it's going well. We have thousands of subscribers. It's like clockwork. We're just doing all the things. But you've never seen me take a struggling business and really strategically change that. And so if you're in a position where you're struggling with your business, I think this would be a great thing for you to listen to, and it's gonna help motivate you even though it's in a different industry, all right? Good morning, I'm so happy to see everybody here over on YouTube and Facebook. Good morning, Vontina. Hey, Antoinette. Good morning, Andrea. Good morning, Mimi. Good morning, Cameron. Good morning, Jen. Hey, Amy, good to see you here. Everybody. Um, I did have a great time on my trip. Um, it was a wonderful destination Christmas that I've never done before. I highly, highly recommend just getting away, um, and having experiences instead of gifts. So, okay. Bar franchise back in the spring. So I purchased it in May, and it is a local franchise here in my town, and it is a blow dry bar. Okay, and so you guys know on Monday mornings I go get my hair done at the blow dry bar. I've been going to the blow dry bar for about 4 or 5 years now, um, all the time, every week. And so when I saw it was for sale, I had questions. And so as I met with the previous owner and I ran through the numbers, I saw that it had not been profitable. It had not been profitable really since COVID So a little longer than 3 years, because when COVID hit, it really shut down the business and it never really got traction after that. And so I looked at the numbers, I looked at the clientele, I looked at the business as a whole. And I knew that all I needed to— all it really needed was some marketing. And I'm really great at marketing, so I felt like this would be an opportunity for me to take the business and give it some marketing love and see if I could revive it. And the cost for purchasing the business was not expensive, so it was, it was an investment. And I also looked at this investment as something that could produce revenue for me on a monthly basis, in— like I am for Framed, like I am for Launch Your Box. So for me, it was a long-term play. It's like an investment property. You buy the property, you fix it up, and hopefully it generates income for you. And that's really what the goal was with this. But all it needed was marketing. I don't want to be a property manager. I'm great at marketing. So I purchased the business. It's called Primp and Blow, and I purchased the local franchise. And first, the first thing that I did, and I want you to really kind of— if you're taking notes today and you're thinking, my business has been struggling, I want to figure out what I can do to make my business better. The first thing that I really needed to do, and I was able to do this because I was new to the business, But I really tried to identify who is the ideal customer of this business, okay? And I'm gonna show you a couple things here. Let me share my screen so that you can get a good understanding of what I was dealing with and how I changed it, okay? So let me pull this up. I think it's right here, okay. Okay, so this is my, this is my Facebook page for the blow dry bar. Now, this was the company's ideal customer, okay? This was the previous owner's ideal customer. All of their marketing was this overdone glam look, okay? And so the hair is pretty normal, but the makeup's really— she's in a sequin dress. All of the most of the marketing done for this business was just overly done. There were a lot of photographer shoots that they shared on their page, which were great, but they're just hair and makeup and overly done. And I really— with somebody like me, like, like Tamara saying in the chat, someone like me, but even I had to peel that back a little bit because I can afford to go get my hair done. All the time. Not everybody can afford to do that. So my ideal customer was someone that is an everyday person that would like to treat themselves to getting their hair done. Okay, how could I get this everyday person to come to my salon and get a blowout once a week, once a month, twice a month? This wasn't it. All the graphics, all the social media was sharing was event style makeup and hair. So, okay, if I went to a New Year's Eve party, I might go book a blowout, right? But that's going to happen once a year. If I did a photo shoot, I might go book makeup and hair. That's going to happen once a year. I needed to turn this from people seeing it as an event thing to do as more of an everything to do, like everyday day thing to do. Like, how could I, how can I build the routine of like getting your nails done? You do that every 2 or 3 weeks. How could I build this in? I need to take, I need to strip back this overdone, perfectly polished graphics and marketing. So the first thing I needed to do was rebrand who my ideal customer was. It's not the lady in this picture. I had to look at the age of my customers. I had to look at the lifestyle of my customers, and I had to really pull back. These were middle-aged women that were working. A lot of them would come before work or after work or on their lunch break, and that was my ideal customer. And yes, we would do events like proms and photo shoots and weddings and things like that, but I needed to focus on my everyday ideal customer. So when you think about who your ideal customer is. Do you have a good handle on that? Do you think you know who it is, or do you, do you really know who it is? And I want you to really dig into that. And you can do that on social media. You can look and see who your subscribers are. If they're commenting on your posts, go look at who they follow, go look at what their interests are. And that's a really great way for us to get a handle on who our ideal customer is so that when we start marketing, when we start rebranding, we know exactly who we're marketing for. So this, this beautiful person was not my ideal customer. I needed the average woman, not this glam model in my picture. I needed the average woman to be my ideal customer. Okay, the other thing that I realized, I'm around town and people been a volunteer in the community for a long time, so a lot of people know me. A lot of people knew that I purchased this business. Color. And I was like, we don't do cuts and colors, we're a blow dry bar. Well, what's a blow dry bar? People didn't know what a blowout was. And it was something that was so common to me because I had been getting them for years that I didn't even realize people didn't know what we did. So when you think about your business, we're so close to it. Do we have an understanding of what— do people really know what we're selling? Baffles me that people don't know what a subscription box is. Okay, so when I'm out and about, maybe getting my nails done, or I'm at the grocery store, I'm at Walgreens or whatever, and people are like, I was— okay, so that was a light bulb for me. I needed to educate I need them to understand what we do because they think we're a full-service salon, and if they already have a full-service salon they go to, they have no reason to even look my direction. A blowout— for the— I see Chelsea in the chat says, I don't even know what a blowout is. A blowout is a luxurious double shampoo So we're doing 2 shampoos on your hair. You're getting a scalp massage with that double shampoo. You're getting a conditioning treatment in the shampoo bowl. And then our stylist will then blow out your hair using a round brush. And if you would like a hot tool, I get a hot tool that gives my curls. You can add a hot tool to your blowout. But people didn't know that it was a thing for you to just go get your hair washed by— actually will last you for days. So here's a little transparency. I don't ever wash my hair at home. I didn't before I owned the Blow Dry Bar, and I don't now. I get them twice a week and I never wash my hair at home. I get a blowout on Mondays and I get a blowout on Thursdays, and I save all the time by not blow drying my hair, not styling my hair. The blowout lasts. You'll, you'll see it when I'm live tomorrow and Wednesday. I've got the same blowout. It's not today. It's real volumized because it's the first day. But those are the benefits of a blowout. Number 1, my audience didn't know what a blowout was, and then my audience didn't understand what the benefits of a blowout are. I can go sit in a chair, answer emails for an hour, get my hair done, and I don't have to touch it for days. And so that is a benefit to a busy working woman, right? It saves me so much time, effort, and energy, and I look good for days. So one, I had to educate my audience on what we actually did because they didn't understand. So I need you to think about, does your audience actually know what you sell? Does your audience actually know what's in your subscription box? And so that's what I need you to figure out first. How can we educate about what we do and what we sell? And then how can we educate on the benefits of what we do and what we sell. Okay, those were— that, that's step number 1. I just had to re-identify the entire business because the owner, the previous owner, was so close to it and just in this rut that people didn't actually know what we did. Okay, now step number 2, they had the worst inconsistent social media strategy. Okay, they would post when someone— when a photographer did a photo shoot and tagged them, they would share it. When corporate sent some of those overglam graphics out, they would share it. Very little in between. So there was not consistent social media. So that was the first thing that I put in place. Now, I bought the blow dryer was crazy. I did nothing. July was equally as crazy. I did nothing. I really started to dig into this business in August. And let me tell you why it took a few months— because I was challenged by the tech of this business, um, and I had to figure out the tech before I could really dig into the business. They use a booking system I'm not familiar with. They use a marketing email system I'm not familiar with. They use a texting system that I'm not familiar with. And so I had to just literally stop what I was doing for a whole day and dig into the software and the tech part of the business. And if you're sitting there thinking, that's what's holding me back, you need to make time to dig into the business and you need to make time to learn the tech of the business. I couldn't do anything without understanding the tech. Okay, so I needed to get this consistent social media strategy. I'm going to pull back my Facebook page back up. I have a Facebook and Instagram page and it was dead. And I'm going to show you that. Raise your hand in the chat. I'm getting such little engagement on social media. Raise your hand. Put a little hand emoji in there. Same. This might surprise you because I'm going to share what happened to the business. Over the last few months, but I'm going to show you how very little engagement, because I think it's important for you to see that it's normal for you to not have a lot of engagement. It's normal, and I'm going to show you that. And we can still be successful. We can still be consistent without seeing a ton of engagement and results. But it's normal. And I, I want you to understand that it happens to the best of us. Okay. So I'm going to pull back up here. So you're going to see more of my— this is today's post. You're going to see more of my But I wanna just show you how little engagement, 1 like, no likes, no likes, no likes, 2 likes, 1 comment, 2 shares, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, 2 hearts, nothing, Not a thing. Nope. Still nothing. One, one heart here. Does this feel like your social media? Let me know in the chat if this feels like your social media. Okay, here's my ladies at the salon. I've got lots of engagement here because remember why? It's the connection factor. People are connection. Okay, so here's my ladies in their new Primp and Blow gear that I made them for Christmas. Um, again, there's one share here, no likes. Does this feel like your social media? One heart. Mandy Lee says yes. Susan says this looks familiar. Yeah, feeling it. Okay, so I thought, okay, and I'm doing everything I know how to do, right? Like, I got before and afters. I got some engagement posts. I got like some booking posts. Um, I'm trying to switch up— like, this was a bride that we did hair and makeup for. I, I like— I'm trying all the things, right? And so, um, yeah, I'm just not making that traction. Oh, here's Sarah. Remember when I said I don't want to be the face of this business? I don't want to be the face of this business, right? Here I am being the face of the business and I got 32 likes, 4 comments, and 1 share. People need to feel connected to you. And that's what the other posts are missing, right? And so when I show up like this, people are like, oh, that's Sarah. I know Sarah. I like that. I love that they're commenting and I have comments for the first time. Here's this one. Thanks so very much. I got mine. Love this place. I need that validation on socials for other people to see, but nothing I was doing was drawing that out. But you know what? I was being consistent. One post a day. That was my goal. One post a day, every single day. And every Monday I go in And I schedule my posts and I give a variety of things, a variety of, you know, I'm educating them on what a blowout is in my post because I know that's important. So continue to educate. The promotion we were doing in December, the bride, I'm sharing different looks, I'm sharing blowouts. I'm sharing just everything that I can think of. I have new stylists so that we're training, sharing the schedule. Oh, I'm available at 11. Let me go get my hair done. I'm just sharing everything that I can, right? No engagement. But that's not bothering me because I'm making sales. They're not engaging, but I'm being booked. And so when I realize I'm not getting much engagement here, I decide to start an ad campaign, $10 a day. And I have ran an ad consistently since the beginning of August till now. I have an ad campaign going, um, $10 a day. So I want you to ask yourself, if I could make my business visible with $10 a day would I do it? It's $300 a month. Put it in your advertising budget and let's start to make some traction. People weren't even seeing this. Like, let's just look at how much the reach is on this. When I look at insights, uh, so I have a membership over here because I love recurring revenue. I have a blowout member to make an intro membership for the person that wants to come one time a month just to get them a single week. And if I can get people— and this is how I came— I started doing the two a month and then I realized I want to come every week instead of just twice a month. So I started coming every week and then I— the business. Okay, so I wanted to incentivize people. I needed to make my offer a no-brainer. So I decided to adjust the pricing of the memberships. So a blowout in our shop is $50. If expense, you're really getting it for, for $15 cheaper. Well, if I want to come twice a month, I'm going to make that a better deal. So I'm going to give you a blowout for $40 a month and a free hot tool. And if you're an addict and you get it 4 times a month, I'm going to give your blowout to you for $35 a blowout plus a free hot tool. So I adjusted this. I started running an ad. I thought, okay, I'm just going to explode this membership thinking it was going to be like my subscription box, right? Crickets. I started running ads. I got a couple members, but it was really crickets because people did not know what a blowout was. So this was August. So I said, okay, I'm going to take this ad campaign down to be a member and I'm going to run an ad campaign that just explains what a blowout is. All my graphics were about somebody getting their hair washed. I talked about the luxurious double wash, the scalp massage, the blowout. Like I talked about the benefits, I talked about what a blowout is, and I talked about how you could treat yourself. Okay, and so I ran a whole ad campaign end of August through the beginning of October all about what is a blowout. And I had like 5 different ads in this ad campaign, different graphics. A couple of them had me in it because I knew that worked, and then a couple had just blowout heads from where we had done someone's hair. And that was another thing, my stylist had to then take pictures almost regularly. So I had something to share on social media that was the everyday person instead of these gorgeous models from corporate. So I started running that campaign and I had one full-time stylist and one part-time stylist in August, and I have 5 stylists now because our books are so full. I went from 19 members to 54 members from August to December with no launch, just awareness, just getting ads. November, I had my very first profitable month at the salon. It was, it was $1,700. That's how much profit I made. But y'all, this business has not made a profit since 2019. That's a big deal. And so what I am sharing with you today is that even if you're struggling, if you've not been profitable, if you're not getting any engagement on your social media, we can still have a great business. We can still revive our business. Okay. And so I want to talk about those 3 ways that I did it. And I really wanted to take you step by step so you could really understand that this business is a lot like most of y'all's, right? This business is a lot like how you're feeling right now. I'm not making a profit. I don't have cash in the bank. I am getting no engagement on my social medias. But what made a difference for me was, was 3 things. Okay, so let me go back over them and talk about that third one for you. Number 1, I had to re-identify my ideal customer and I had to retrain them on what I actually sold. So I want you to really pull back the curtain and take a look at this. I was talking to a business friend of mine on Friday and she said, could you just look at my sales page because I don't know what I'm missing. And I took a look at her sales page and I instantly knew what she was missing. And I was like, I don't see any language here on if I'm a beginner, I could do this too. And she's like, you're right. I said, this all looks expert level to me, and as a beginner, I would not sign up for your thing. Maybe we need somebody else to look at our page. Maybe we need somebody else to look at our messaging that's not so close to our business. And we have so much community here that we can reach out to each other and say, hey, Take a look at my sales page and see what I'm missing. Take a look at my branding and see what's missing. Okay, so identify your ideal customer, and that might be re-identifying. If we've identified our ideal customer 5 years ago, that may have changed now. A lot of the world has changed in the last 5 years, so maybe it's time to take a closer look at who our ideal customer is, and let's start to educate them on what we do and what we sell. Okay, now number 2 was I had to get a consistent social media strategy, both organically and paid ads. And so for me, one post a day. You saw it, I showed you every day, every day I'm posting. I don't care if anybody likes it or not, checking it off my list. Every day I'm posting, I'm putting content out there. Okay. And I'm constantly running an ad for the business in some capacity for $10 a day or more. It might be a promotion like I had a Black Friday promotion. I had a December member appreciation month. But other than that, I'm educating people on what a blowout is. Okay, so make sure that you have— and this is the most basic social strategy you could have. One post a day and have an ad running nonstop for awareness. Okay. And then the third thing that I did was I focused on the recurring revenue because that's been proven to me over and over in my other businesses, right? When we look at Framed, the subscription, the recurring revenue is 75% of my yearly revenue for Framed. How do I get that? How do I get that for Crimp and Blow, right? For Launch Your Box, that number's even higher. I don't know what that number is. It's probably 90-something percent of my revenue for Launch Your Box is recurring. Now all I need to do was focus on the recurring revenue in this business, and now I went from $19 members to 54 members from August to December. And that has made 30% of my revenue for the shop is recurring now, and it's from levels of $45 to $140 a month. Okay, and so my goal is to double that in 2025, and I don't have to jump through hoops, and I don't have to go stand on the median with a sandwich board saying, come get a blowout. Okay, I can be very strategic with the way I'm marketing. I'm building an email list, I'm consistently posting even though I'm not getting any engagement, and I'm running a very inexpensive ad campaign consistently, and I'm building up clientele. They're coming in for one blowout, and I'm training the ladies at the salon to educate them on being a member, how that benefits them. We have to make our offer a no-brainer. If your subscription offer is not a no-brainer, there's no reason for me to subscribe. There's a reason for them to be a member at the salon because they get their blowout cheaper. So when they go to check out for their one blowout and my staff says, hey, do you want to get $15 off today and be a member? And you can get a blowout every month for $45 instead of the $60 you're about to pay, sure, I'd love to treat myself. So no matter where your business is, if your business has been flailing or up and down for the last 3 or 4 years, it doesn't take long to dig in and start to remarket, rebrand, have a marketing strategy, and focus on what you want to grow. I knew I wanted the recurring revenue to grow. So I have focused on the membership since day one of buying that business. And if we're not focused on our subscription yet, we're wanting our subscription to grow. We're not making it visible. You've got to make it the main thing in your business for it to be the main thing in your business. And if it's not the main thing in your business right now, you have to start treating it like the main thing in your business so it will become the main thing in your business. There's not one week that goes by that people don't know we have a membership. There's not anyone that comes in that salon and checks out as a one-time customer that does not know we have a membership, because I've retrained them to understand it's the main thing in our business. It's paying our rent at that building every month. It's paying their paychecks. That's how we're able to keep growing. And my books are consistently full with 5 stylists now. And that's what I needed to be profitable. This 1 full-time and 1 part-time person was never going to make me profitable because my fixed expenses were too large. I had to double the business. Excuse me. So I want to encourage you today. I want to encourage you to take a step back from the everyday. It's a new month, it's a new year, it's a fresh start. And I want you to really dig in to these 3 things. They're simple things, um, and really make a change in your business. You're the only one that can change the trajectory of your business. Um, and that it doesn't take a lot. It doesn't take a lot. I started this in August, August, September, October. By November, I had my first profitable month when they hadn't had one in years. Okay, and all it took was for me to just step back and look at things differently. And I want you to do that with your businesses. We've got some great training in Launch Your Box this month about rebranding. It's a whole new branding module with multiple lessons. It's going to drop on Wednesday, and I really just want you to look at your brand. If you've been in business a long time like me, it might be time for a fresh rebrand. It might be time for a new box. It might be time for a new logo. It might be time for something that makes makes sense for your business. Sometimes we just have to create the buzz. And, you know, I laugh every time I see this commercial, but it makes me talk about it every single time. This Taco Bell commercial, they're selling chicken nuggets, okay? Like, Taco Bell does not need to be selling chicken nuggets, but you can only, you can only revamp the tacos so many times, and now they're selling chicken nuggets breaded in tortilla chips. And so I'm just— every— I laugh. I'm like, who's buying chicken nuggets at Taco Bell? Probably nobody. But it's something fresh. It's something new. It's something visible. And when you look at McDonald's and you look at like all these, you know, businesses that focus on the one thing, they have to be creative and they have to think about ways to make— create buzz because they're selling the same dang taco over and over again. We're selling the same box over and over again. How can we generate buzz that could be from a rebrand in our business? And if we've not taken a look at our logo, if we've not taken a look at our packaging, if we've not taken a look at our website, we've not taken a look at our marketing, it's time to do that. And we've got a great new module in Launch Your Box this month. So a little longer Monday Momentum than I anticipated, but I think it's necessary. And I appreciate you guys joining me this morning. And I want you, I want you to really take these 3 things and look at your business differently as we start the new year. All right. Let's have a great week and I'll talk to you guys soon. Thanks for joining me this morning. Have a good day.