Building a Business That Runs Without You
I'm Tiffany Nadolny, your host of the Spa Business Building Podcast. I'm a licensed esthetician, massage therapist, and solopreneur in My Day Spa. With nearly two decades of experience in the beauty and wellness industry, I've learned a few things about building a career and maintaining longevity.
Outside of the treatment room, I'm a wife, mom, to the human and fluffy kind, plant enthusiast and book lover. Join me while I share my experiences and insight on attracting clients, maintaining and building a thriving business while achieving work-life balance. So whether you're a new solo spa boss or seasoned, this podcast is for you.
Could your wellness or beauty business run without you? Could you step away from your business for a week to take a vacation? What if you were to get sick or hurt, or someone in your family is sick or hurt and you need to care for them?
Could your business run smoothly while you step away? And I understand the difficulty of being a solo preneur and wearing all the hats and having so many tasks complete. But think of this, if you could set up a process for those tasks to get done without having to spend so much time on them each day or each week, if you could free up so much time for yourself to do other tasks that bring you more money, would you want that for yourself and your business?
Today, I'm sharing my processes of automation that have saved me so much time in my business. So the first process that I set up for myself and my business is online booking. When I first started out in business, I was just using pen and paper, and people had to call to schedule with me.
But I switched to an online platform, and now I very rarely take appointments over the phone unless it's absolutely needed. There are some guests who just are not savvy on the computer and they do need to schedule over the phone. But the reason that I have guests schedule online is because I require that they complete their intake forms online, and they must also enter their credit card information.
And in the past, I've messed up, or really it's just kind of hard to hear them over the phone, and I've messed up the email information, and they didn't get the confirmation, or I put in the wrong number, or the wrong credit card information. So to just skip all of that hassle, I require them to enter it online, and book the appointment online. And it just frees up so much time for myself.
So if you're not in the position to hire a receptionist, online booking makes it so convenient. And I use Acuity, but there are so many options out there. There's Vergara, Jane, Fresha, Massage Book, Gloss Genius, Boulevard, MindBody, just to name a few.
And you really need to find one that works for you and your needs and your price point. A lot of booking systems have more than just the scheduling. They also have email automations, which moves into the next system that I have automated, and that is my emails.
So I have a CRM, which is a customer relations management system, and it manages my emails. But I also have automated emails through my scheduling system, and I will explain why I have two. So first, my scheduling system automates my confirmation emails and my reminder emails, which is very important.
And this is one thing to look for when you are looking into a booking system. But here are some of the emails that you should be and could be automating in your system to really make your life so much more easier. So the confirmation emails, mine also has text, reminder emails and text.
I also send an email to my guests to prepare them for their appointment. So I explain the do's and don'ts before their services. If they're getting a skincare appointment, then I will explain not to exfoliate, not to wax, all of those things.
But you can include that as well as specific instructions for how they need to arrive, where you are located, things like that. I think it just really puts that personal touch of customer service on their visit, so they can get that e-mail and say, wow, they've really laid it out for me, they really explained it. The next e-mail is an after care instructions.
So I like to remind my guests how to care for their skin, after a wax, after skincare, after massage, and you can do the same as well. Find a system that sends out reminders to schedule. So Acuity allows me to set up different e-mails in different increments or days after their appointment.
So I have a reminder to schedule if they haven't scheduled, which I am always asking them to rebook their appointment, their next appointment while they're with me. So make sure that you are doing that. But sometimes guests can't always reschedule because they don't know their schedule that far in advance.
So I send an e-mail every 30, 60, and 90 days asking them to reschedule. Now, another really big one that you will want to have set up or automated is an e-mail asking for a review. You can also send this in the text message if you have a system that provides that option.
So you will want to provide the link and offer them an incentive. Now, not always an incentive. Just asking them for that review alone can be enough, but sometimes people need a little push.
So I like to offer 15% off their next service, and all they have to do is screenshot that review and text it to me to receive the discount at their next appointment. Now, in my last episode, I talked about collecting e-mails. So if you are collecting e-mails, you should also have an automated welcome e-mail sequence.
So this is for potential customers. If you are collecting e-mails from potential customers, not customers who have scheduled appointments. Now, I use Flodesk, and this is where the separate e-mail system comes in.
I use Flodesk for these types of e-mail automations outside of my reminders, my aftercare, my confirmations. Now, I am grabbing e-mails from customers on my website through a pop-up, and when they put in their e-mail confirmation, then they will automatically receive a welcome e-mail. And this is the sequence.
So I capture e-mails from potential clients through Flodesk, and I send them that e-mail with an offer that they signed up for. So you can automate this as well. It makes things so much easier.
So the next thing that you should be automating in your business is social media scheduling. Batch creating your content and scheduling to go out will save you so much time. I take one day to plan, create and schedule a week or two worth of content for social media.
Just set it and forget it. And it makes it so much easier. So there are plenty of different platforms.
You can use Meta Business Suite to schedule and automate all of those social media posts to go out. There's also Later Social. There are a few others, but you can find something that works for your budget and your needs.
But when you are batch creating and repurposing your content and you can just put it out and not have to think about it, it's going to free up so much more time for you because I don't know how many times I've been like, oh my gosh, I totally forgot to post something today. I don't know what to post. You have a plan and you've already scheduled it to go out.
It just takes that stress out of your life. So another thing that you can automate, and this is kind of social media related, is automated messages through social media. So if you are getting tons of DMs on your business page asking the same questions like, where are you located?
What are your prices? What services do you offer? You can automate these frequently asked questions so that when someone sends you that question, it gives them the answer directly automated to them.
You don't even have to worry about it. So you can set that up under your Meta Business Suite settings. It's under automation, so go give that a try.
It's super easy. It's going to save you so much time and make life easier for you. So there you have it.
I'm going to go back over those four automations to save you time in your business and build a business for you that runs in the background so you can take time to do the things that you want to do or things that you need to do that are going to really put your business forward and elevate your business. So online booking, automated emails, social media scheduling and automated messages on social media. I'm actually going to go back to that, the automated messages on sort of social media so you can also use a paid program like many chats to automate engagement.
So you can put a post up that says comment this word and we'll send you a link. So this is a great way to also capture emails that you're going to automate, but you can do a paid version where you are automating the engagement to get more engagement. And then also the free version with the meta business suite where you can kind of automate those frequently asked questions.
So there you have it. Four ways to build a business that runs without you. I hope this episode helps you to find more time and less stress in your business.
If you enjoyed this episode, I invite you to leave a review because your reviews help me get found by more people and help my business grow as well. I also wanted to tell you about my brand new membership that I have launching very, very soon, the Solo Spa Bosses Society. I'm really excited about this.
And this membership brings together Solo Beauty and Wellness Professionals. It gives them a place of support and guidance to run and grow their businesses. There will be weekly coaching calls, on-demand library for training, social media content ideas, a library of downloadable graphics and templates.
Now, you won't find this kind of support anywhere else. And if you want to know more, you'd like to sign up for the waitlist, I will leave the link in the show notes. I am doing a founding members pricing, and that is only to those who sign up on this waitlist.
So make sure that you go and sign up for that. So that's it, my friend. Until next time, stay inspired, stay fabulous, and happy business building.
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