Hey spa owners, a new business year is just around the corner! And that this is your official notice that your 2020 spa business planning day needs to be put in the calendar asap.

To support your strategic and creative process, I want to share the itinerary & tools you'll need to map out stellar growth for next year for your spa business because I know goals are always easier to create than they are to implement.

Here’s a brief outline of how you want to organize your 2020 strategic planning!

Spa Business Planning Day Itinerary

1. Analysis of growth & initiatives from 2017, 2018 & 2019 – When you are trying to create goals, the most important thing you need to know is WHERE YOU ARE NOW. You want to look for growth, declining or flatlining patterns of your numbers. It’s one thing to “think” a pattern is happening, it’s quite another to see the numbers.

For example, you feel like you’re selling a lot of retail and considering adding another line - but when looking at your service to retail ratio metrics, you see you’re only at 25% with the line you have. Eureka! There is loads of room to leverage your current retail investment before spending money on bringing in another line!

You need factual data (reports) + emotional data to make wise decisions.

For your planning day, please pull these reports from your CRM (client management system like Booker, Mindbody, Meevo2, Rosy, ect). For those of you using general POS systems, you will not be able to access all of these reports because they’re not set up for the salon/spa industry.

• Sales Reports

  • Service

  • Retail

  • Combined

• K.P.I's (Key Performance Indicators)

  • Productivity

  • Retail to Sales Ratio

  • Pre-booking Ratio

  • Average Ticket

  • Average Service ticket

  • Average Retail Ticket

  • Average Combined Ticket

  • Client Retention

What are you doing well? What needs to be improved?

2. Create a 2019 SWOT - Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats -  Generally, if you’re not sure where you need to start for creating change in your company, complete a SWOT for the following categories:

• Clients

• Staff

• Sales

• Services

• Retail

• Time

• Leadership

3. Determine your three year goals – You need the big picture to decide what you need to do in 2020 to get to the three year goal.

4. Determine 2020 goals in those categories – Are you going to be taking on new growth initiatives such as hiring new team members, bringing in a new product line or taking some training? Or are you going to spend the next year creating systems for your business and optimizing what you have?

5. PRIORITIZE your goals/categories – You don't have all the time in the world, and some of you still need to be in the spa managing your team. If you don't prioritize and try to do everything at once, you will end up getting burnt out, and none of it will get done.

Spa Planning Critical Error:
You take on more than you have time for. Plan for ONE new major growth initiative every six months so you have time to implement fully.

6. Break down each category goal & determine how you'll know you're successful – This could be an actual sales number you want to reach, or it could just be feeling more relaxed in your business or stronger in your leadership.

7. Break down each goal into action steps needed – The easiest way to create action steps is to reverse engineer the system. If you are hiring a new team member, what steps will you need to go through before you get to the point of hiring that person.

8. Determine the risks & resources you'll need for success at each stage + how/when you'll need them: people, time and money

Be reasonable!!

Apply a timeline, due dates & accountability – This is where I recommend using and esty bestie or another business best friend or even publicly saying what your goals are so that you have some way of holding yourself accountable.

Always assume that any new growth initiative is going to take you twice as long as you think it will!

Document the plan using a Project Management tool - Using a project management tool such as Asana.com will help with smooth team communication & implementation.

Work in 3-month "sprints" 12-Week Year style – In the book "The 12 Week Year" by Brian Moran & Michael Lennington, breaking up your year into quarters helps to keep the year more interesting. Plus it feels like there is more energy in the plan when you start getting into the second, third and especially the fourth quarter when things really start to drag.

Book monthly/quarterly meetings with yourself - You want to do this to ensure the plan is on track and course-correct as needed.

 Spa Strategic Planning Supplies

In order for your spa strategic planning day to be efficient, you’ll want to prepare your supplies ahead of time so you’re not wasting time looking for things you realize you need the day of. Here is my recommended list of items to have on hand:

• A whiteboard or Post It Paper Easel for mapping out your 2020 big picture

• SWOT worksheets. 

• A yearly calendar. Block out your vacations, training dates & conferences you want to go to and events & offers you want to create. The calendar will allow you to map out how many hours you want to work each day, week, month so that you are still earning what you want with all the time off you want to take. It also gives you a big-picture view of what your year is going to look like. Here’s one to download.

• Lots of scrap paper

• Sticky notes in different colors. This helps to when you need to map out a process, content calendar, sales funnel or email sequence.

• Markers (different colors make planning fun & easy to organize!)

• Wifi & computer for research

Strategic Planning Breaks & Self-care

When you’re committing to a planning day/retreat, part of that is about honoring your agreement with yourself and making your needs a priority. Your spa business is your creation, and if you're burned out and not taking care of yourself, it's not possible to think clearly for a strategic planning day.

Self-care is a habit that you need to weave into as a spa business owner. It’s part of your leadership and “walking the talk” to your clients. If you’re feeling particularly tired or burnt out, ratchet that self-care up into Radical Self-Care. Radical self-care means you are being very careful about your energetic, personal & emotional boundaries as well as making sure you are “filling your cup”.

At your 2020 spa planning day, make sure you have planned for:

• Frequency breaks

  • Get outdoors/be physical. Go for a walk or ride to clear the cobwebs that collect after a day of heavy thinking!

  • Self care breaks before, during & after. Book a spa treatment for yourself (not at your spa!), a float, have healthy but yummy food available and lots of water or herbal tea.

If you want 2020 to be totally amped up for you, you have to adopt new leadership habits - and having a planning day is one of those leadership habits, health and wellness is a leadership habit.

Planning is Better Together!

Don't want to do your 2020 planning alone? This fall I'm offering a limited number of private Half Day Planning sessions with me. I'll help you set goals, review your metrics and make a plan for strong, sustainable growth for your spa business next year.

Here's what you get at our Half Day Strategy session...

•  3 hr Strategy Call & call recording

• 1 x 2020 Strategy & Implementation Map

• Access to my spa system support documents/templates (not including handbooks/manuals)

• Access to my professional connections

• Unlimited email/text support

• Bonus: Bring your Spa Manager to the call!

If you are interested in this offer, please reach out to me. This offer is filling fast - I only have a few spots left!