You're maxed out, turning clients away, and thinking about hiring someone. STOP. Hiring at the wrong time, for the wrong reasons, nearly broke Phil's own business. Don't make the same costly mistake. In this episode, Phil Jackson shares his essential green lights and red flags to ensure you hire correctly, profitably, and sustainably for your salon. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ THE THREE GREEN LIGHTS TO HIRE: * **80-85% Utilisation Rule:** You must be consistently booked at 80-85% (or above) for at least three months, including quieter periods. If you're not, you have a demand problem, not a capacity problem. * **Raise Your Prices First:** Before hiring, increase your prices by 10-20%. If your diary remains full, your business is strong. If it empties, hiring won't fix a pricing issue. * **Delegate Low-Value Tasks:** If over 20% of your week is spent on admin, laundry, or stock, consider outsourcing first. This frees your time for profitable client work without adding a full-time wage. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ THE THREE RED FLAGS TO AVOID: * **Inconsistent Bookings:** If your diary is up and down, never consistently above 70%, you have a marketing or pricing problem. Hiring will just make quiet weeks more expensive. * **Can't Afford the FULL Cost:** An employee's real cost is 1.25 to 1.5 times their wage (NI, pension, training, product, insurance). Have three months of this full cost saved in a separate buffer account. * **No Written Systems:** If your salon runs on chaos with no documented processes for opening, consultations, or services, you can't hire. You'll spend all your time micromanaging and training will be impossible. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ MAKE YOUR FIRST HIRE THE RIGHT HIRE: * Don't try to replace yourself with a senior therapist or stylist initially; it's too risky and expensive. * Consider a part-time salon assistant or apprentice. Someone who can handle admin, cleaning, stock, and shampooing, freeing you up to see more clients. * Prioritise someone trainable, eager, and who buys into your vision, not just a friend. * Conduct a practical full-day trial before making an offer. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ YOUR ESSENTIAL PRE-HIRING HOMEWORK: * **Document Everything:** Create written processes (or record videos) for all repeatable tasks: opening, closing, phone calls, payments. Store them in a Google Drive folder. * **Build Your Financial Buffer:** A non-negotiable three months of the employee's full cost saved in a separate account. * **Clear Job Description:** Specify exact role, responsibilities, hours, and pay to protect both you and your new hire. * **90-Day Onboarding Plan:** Detail day one, week one, and what they should master by month one, two, and three. Non-negotiable weekly check-ins. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📊 RESOURCES: Build your financial foundations before you hire! Grab Phil's 10 Minute Money Fix: https://10minutemoneyfix.com ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 💬 WORK WITH ME: 1:1 Coaching: https://buildyoursalon.com ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🎧 LISTEN: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BuildYourSalon Spotify: https://go.philjackson.me/Spotify Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3MZp6jP
