Hi, my name is Thad Jones and as recently as last year I was the owner of a Marketing Business specializing in Web Development, Pay per click services on online SEO. Now like many of you, I am the proud owner of a Full-Service Beauty Salon which may seem like a strange transformation, I admit. Regardless, I have been in Sales and Marketing in one form or another for going on thirty years now. Dating myself further, my first Sales position was selling pagers in the early 90’s with the now out of business PageNet, which at the time was the largest Paging company in the United States. As advances in technology made paging obsolete, I began selling everything wireless including Mobile phones and eventually even cable tv and internet services. I’ve sold wholesale, service and retail alike and the last thirty years have been dedicated primarily to providing Marketing services to my clients. I’ve sold everything marketing including Print, traditional Advertising and a variety of other Marketing services over the course of my career. I’ve been employed as a Sales trainer and hired as a marketing consultant, and as any good Marketer will do to stay relevant, I’ve evolved constantly to keep up. I love the Marketing profession and as great as it has been for me, I’ve decided to slow down and try my luck on the other side of the coin by purchasing a full-service Hair Salon. Prior to my purchase I had spent the last five years immersed in Online Marketing and as I do with everything, I dived head first in to not only selling Online marketing, but truly understanding how it works to eliminate the guess work for my valued clients and for my own endeavors such as the aforementioned Salon. As a Marketer, I don’t believe in throwing darts at a dart board hoping for something to stick. It’s my job and my obligation to know what works before I sell it. I always felt it is my responsibility to educate my customers on the services I was selling so they knew what to expect before they invested in something that may have been completely foreign to them. A large portion of my clients over the years have been small business owners who had often never tried any form of advertising. and I felt it my duty to provide them with my thirty years of experience to build value not only in what I was offering, but who I was as a person and a professional Marketer. I didn’t do what I did for the quick sale. I did it because I loved the challenge of marketing my client’s products and services, and I truly wanted to see and be a part of my customers success. I took great pride in doing the right thing even when it meant turning customers away who didn’t have the resources to do the things I offered properly. I took no satisfaction in taking someone’s hard earned money to provide them with something I knew wouldn’t help them. That is why I felt it was so important to educate my clients as much as I could before allowing them to sign on the dotted line. It is with this same sense of pride and ethical morality that I am creating this blog and possible even a vlog at some point. I want to help as many Salon owners and independent Stylists and Nail Technicians understand the Marketing process from the ground up, because while there is immense value in Marketing your Salon and your services which is more of a need than a want. It has to be done right, and by done right, I mean you have to have a plan, and that plan has to include a budget that will allow you to market you and your business effectively. Don’t just spend just to spend and sometimes not spending enough is exactly that. As an entrepreneur and I understand what it feels like to watch your saving dwindle as you work to grow your business with an uncertain outcome. The old adage you need to spend money to make money only applies if you have adequate money to spend. Of course, if your Salon or independent business is at a point where you can’t afford an effective marketing budget, then I’m sorry to say it, but you may be in for a slow death. It is generally under these circumstances where I won’t take someone’s last dollar in an attempt to save my clients dream and as I said earlier, I have literally turned clients away that look to me to save their business. The services that I have sold my entire life have helped grow a wide variety of businesses, but it has to make sense and it has to be measured and it can’t be with your mortgage money. If that is where you are now, you may need to consult with a Business Advisor, consider financing or maybe even consider selling. With that said, if you are in business for yourself and you want to grow what you already have, then I believe the information I will provide can help you accomplish your goals. The entire point of this blog is to eliminate years of hard lessons learned by providing you with my thirty years of experience in what works and what doesn’t. For Salon owners, I believe it is vital for you to create a stable infrastructure and foundation for your business capable of sustaining growth before you begin marketing your Salon. If you build a Salon top heavy in sales with no legs to support the growth, then it is only a matter of time before those very sales will crush what you have built in the form of bad reviews and unhappy clients. As your revenue grows, please continue to strengthen your foundation every step of the way. Don’t over extend or grow too fast. Now of course, too fast is a relative term to your resources and different for everyone and every Salon owner or Independent Stylists, but I always implored my clients to make sure they have a plan for growth, because once they came to me, they needed to be ready to do what it takes and have the budget and the courage to make it happen. My goal for this blog is to first, introduce you to Online marketing with a series of specific blogs to help you understand the entire online marketing process. Eventually I will discuss the pros and cons of some proven traditional marketing methods, but It’s important to note. During this entire blogs series, I no longer sell marketing services and as stated, the purpose of this blog is to educate and shorten your learning curve as much as possible. I hope you will enjoy hearing what I have to teach and find it helpful and informative while building your client list. The first blog will be about “understanding what you are getting in to”.
I look forward to getting started and hope you are too. Thank you for reading. See you soon.
