Today on the More Cheese Less Whiskers podcast we're talking with Justiss Boyer from North Carolina

She's right in the middle of the research triangle area, an emerging area where she's opened up a new hairstyling salon doing cuts and colors for professional women.

This was a really great conversation about understanding who your clients are, what they really want, and knowing that who it is you're trying to attract. Then we talked about a strategy for attracting and keeping those people. 

She does a really great job of keeping people once they come in, with around an 85% conversion rate into ongoing clients. When we did the math we found out they're worth a lot of money over the lifetime of a client, and we talked about a very useful strategy I've used in a lot of different situations to kickstart and bring in new clients in her before unit.

You're going to really enjoy this episode.

Show Links:
ProfitActivatorScore.com
BreakthroughDNA.com
EmailMastery.com

Want to be a guest on the show? Simply follow the 'Be a Guest' link on the left & I'll be in touch.

Download a free copy of the Breakthrough DNA book all about the 8 Profit Activators we talk about here on More Cheese, Less Whiskers...

 

Transcript - More Cheese Less Whiskers 159

Dean: Hello?

Justiss: Hello.

Dean: Hi, it's Dean. How do I pronounce your name?

Justiss: Justiss.

Dean: Justiss, okay, great. Well, I am super excited, I know I read a little bit about what you've got going on but I'd love to hear everything from you and then we've got a whole hour to go where we can go.

Justiss: Awesome.

Dean: So what's the Justiss story here?

Justiss: Well, the Justiss story could probably take the whole hour so I'll try and do in the bridge version of it.

Dean: Okay.

Justiss: Been wanted to been a business owner, entrepreneur my entire life and I worked for a few startups when I was in high school, I actually grew up in Florida.

Dean: Oh wow.

Justiss: Yeah, so I worked for Florida Online, which was Florida's first internet company and that really sparked my interest in building something like that from the ground up. So I've always had my hands in little things to try. So I decided not to go to college after high school, took a different route, went to the military and when I was in the military, still been interested in doing other little businesses and I would try things here and there. Fast forward a few years I was married with a baby and I was getting out of the military and I had a really good background, I was still in IT, in programming and network so I was able to get jobs with like Harley Davidson and their corporate office, Army Corps of engineers. And eventually I ended up as a sub-contractor at NASA back in Florida.

Dean: Wow.

Justiss: And it's a company, yeah. I was with United Space Alliance and I was with them for almost six years, and then the shuttle program ended. And when that happened we were also going through the housing crash, the bubble had propped at that point.

Dean: Yes.

Justiss: Yep. So my husband who was from another country and was waiting for some of his credentials to get, this is husband number two, by the way. Yeah, waiting for his credentials from his degrees to get translated over here was working at, I don't know if you've ever heard of Kaiser Universities, as an adjunct-

Dean: I have, so yes.

Justiss: Yep. And he got laid off, I got laid off and we lost our house in Titusville, which is like my story's the same as probably 10,000 other people on that thing.

Dean: Absolutely.

Justiss: Yeah. So we moved north in Florida and my husband was able to find a job and I thought, well, I've got some free time before I was going through my layoff, I want to check out this beauty industry because I liked beauty, I always wanted to get into it, I was kind of into fashion and beauty when I was younger. So I took a couple of classes at a technical college in northern Florida and I fell in love with it and decided after that, that I would try and run my own mobile spa. And I didn't do that and I didn't do good because we were in transition to move in North Carolina.

Yep. So fast forward, we've moved from North Carolina and I'm licensed in Florida but I'm not in North Carolina, so I took a few years, my son was now in the eighth grade and my husband was a teacher at the school that we had put him in. And I took a few years to kind of be the mom and the stay at home wife and get us settled. When everybody was sort of fine, everybody had their friends, we knew where things were, I decided to go back to school and get my full on cosmetology license in the state of North Carolina.

Dean: All right, perfect.

Justiss: With the intention of eventually opening up my own space. So while I was in school, I went to community college, so it was like an 18 months program. I took as many business courses as I cut outside of the course, I was already in for my license, I talked to a lot of people, I started following a lot of people and I learned about I love marketing with you and your cohorts.

Dean: Nice, beautiful.

Justiss: And I was like, "Wow, what is this? I've never heard I just thought I needed to throw up a sign and print some business cards." And so when I left beauty school and I was licensed, I worked for myself as what's called a boost inter where you work in somebody else's salon but you're not their employee, you just rent the space and the time there and I did it, yeah. So I did that because a little salon had opened in my little village town, I live right outside of a really cool place called Saxapahaw which if anybody ever gets the opportunity to go, it's famous for its one little one mile radius that it is, because of what it represents in the state of North Carolina.

Dean: And what is that again? I don't heard of it.

Justiss: Yeah, Saxapahaw.

Dean: Saxapahaw, okay.

Justiss: It's phonetically spelled the same way Saxapahaw.

Dean: Okay.

Justiss: And so at one point was native land of the Saxapahaw Indians, and it is right on a river basin, the Haw river, and it's famous. Well at one point it was a cotton mill back in the civil war period and had been owned by Hanes and another company where they manufactured T-shirts and you know, clothing, any type of cotton clothing. And then eventually, of course, a lot of people, a lot of corporations moved to China and this space became open and this little town grew from being a mill town to this kind of cool hipster organic really neat, locally sourced place.

Dean: Wow.

Justiss: Yeah, it's really cool, so it's like a little village called Saxapahaw but it's also kind of this state of being as well, people resonate. And people who have been there will know exactly what I'm talking about but during the-

Dean: What is the population? Just so I get a sense, what's the population?

Justiss: Yeah, so tiny, it may have grown now but let's say between 500 residents and maybe 750.

Dean: Oh wow, tiny.

Justiss: Yeah, it's very tiny, but it is in a big county.

Dean: I got you.

Justiss: Yeah, and we're experiencing growth, so there's more housing developments, it's a huge agricultural area over here.

Dean: Okay.

Justiss: Yeah. And during the summer months, like there's a ballroom that host concerts, they've had Hank Williams Jr. Marianne Williams has been here before. Yeah, a lot of bigger names have been here and Aimee Mann has been here and then they have little acts that have been here. And then during the summer they have free concerts series, so there could be upwards of 2000 people that come to hang out for the weekend in this little-.

Dean: Got it.

Justiss: So going back to my original story, there is a salon that opened that fit the aesthetic of Saxapahaw and it is literally down the poor door from where the charter school is that my son was at and my husband worked at. So it just made sense for me to work there because I had like seven minutes to drive to work, it was very, very close to me. So then I started to slowly build my education, my base, my marketing just for myself and after being there for 18 months and I did fairly well, I saw a growth but not something I could say, I replaced my salary with. I knew that I needed more training and so I sought out - so I could kind of learn what do they do and how did they run their business and what is it like to work for corporation.

I did that for six weeks and then I was recruited by an independent salon about 30 minutes from where I live and I worked for her for 18 months. And again all along planning to open a business, just kind of watching to see what the market was going to do, where the spaces, things are growing. Then my father had a stroke and he was not, like it was as minor as a stroke can be. He's 95% back to his regular self. But yes, it was a great recovery for him, it was three months recovery. So it was perfect.

However, that really kind of started to get at me a little bit and I felt like not only do I need a business to support my family, I need a business to support my lifestyle and my lifestyle, if my parents or my dad and my step mom are aging, needs to be, I need to be more accessible because I'm six hours from them. And yeah, that really got me to start thinking about opening my own space and getting into a position where it becomes a passive place for me, I can run it, and I can see it grow and maybe I can open a few more and make sure that if my family who need me, I'm available. My son, it would be 21, he's in college, my parents are aging, I'm getting older as I don't want to, we're all sort of growing up.

So everybody's got their needs, so that's where I am today. I found a space in a town 25 minutes from where I am called Mebane, and it is right in between Greensboro, North Carolina and Durham Chapel Hill. So it is experiencing an incredible amount of growth, something like 5,000 new residences are being built, new roadways are being built and schools are being built.

Dean: That's great, and they're kind of new stylist.

Justiss: Exactly. And there are a lot of salons for the smaller area but they're full of booth renters, so that's not the model that I want and I don't think it's a sustainable model from my experience anyway. So we're just about finished being done with all of the... I mean, I'm taking clients at the moment but we're just about like ready because the building was purchased, then the new owners are renovating everything to make it this kind of like an office complex. So it's been exciting and people have been excited about the salon being where it's at before.

Dean: Oh, that's great. Okay, you bought the building or you're leasing in the building?

Justiss: I'm leasing in the building. I lease in the middle-

Dean: In the building okay.

Justiss: ... of a sale. Yeah because I really wanted a space and I was hoping that the new landlords would be interested in keeping tenants and fortunately they were.

Dean: I got you.

Justiss: Yeah.

Dean: Okay, good. Do you have a good location? Like are you happy with everything that you would look for in that location in terms of accessible? It'd be easy to find all of that?

Justiss: Yes. I'm very happy, it's on a very busy road, it's near a community center where a lot of people go and take their kids for soccer practice or community events. And the building has been there for 20 plus years, so people are already familiar with the location as well.

Dean: Okay, cool. So, and do you have room to expand or is it a space for you and how many styles could you have in your space?

Justiss: So I'm licensed for three stylists and we just hired a massage therapist, so she has her own treatment room and so I have an opportunity for four staff total.

Dean: Okay. That's great. So I was going to ask if you offer other services aside from the hair service.

Justiss: Yeah, so what I did initially, I kind of took on everything besides the massage therapy because I didn't know what the market would want and so I just decided to offer everything and start taking away things that no one was asking for, which ended created a lot of burnout for me. So I stopped all of that, I took it all off my menu and I just focused on hair services. And so I use part of my IT business analyst background and I just started testing things. So when I brought my massage therapist on she was a client of mine who had been referred to me and we were just having conversation and I asked her if she would want to come in and trial, because I wanted to see what the response would be from her clients and from mine. And that was how I was going to make the decision whether or not that would be a good opportunity for both of us, and-

Dean: - like you're both winning from that. Yeah.

Justiss: Exactly. And I think there has to be the money, it has to be there because one, I need to pay her and two, it needs to be a viable, something that people will miss if it's not there anymore. So we're the only salon that offers massage therapy in the salon in our town. So we got a great response and her clients are happy and my clients are happy. So she starts at the end of the month.

Dean: Okay, good, so you've got that handled. Now, you're part of the shame about this model of course is the recurring nature of it, you've got so many, people are constantly getting their paradigm. So you have the opportunity to build primarily after unit business is ultimately where you get to, right?

Justiss: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dean: That you have recurring clients that just come and come and come. And how many people is that for you? What would be a full practice for you or a full a roster?

Justiss:For me personally or for the salon?

Dean: Well, for you, because you're really going to be the, you have to be sort of the first of this, right? You have to be kind of the foundation of it as you're building unless you're going to build it so that you're going to not be in the stylist role and be in the business owner role, but it sounds like you're in both right now.

Justiss: I am in both right now and my goal is to focus on building the other stylist look while I just keep my core clients and then slowly kind of facing my newer clients out, I mean my older one. So this month I have a 60 and I think to my dashboard so I've seen a few and I'm about to say few. So my book is I have 60 clients, which is on average, that's pretty much what my month looks like.

Dean: Yeah, and is that like you're happy at that level? So it's not so much about growing your personal book, but to grow the stylist, do you have another stylist already or?

Justiss: I just hired a part time stylist she's going to work Saturdays and our goal is to build her book every and then add another day and keep filling up her time.

Dean: I got you. And what's your strategy for that? Is she coming from another place with some established clientele or she's brand new? How is it going to?

Justiss: She does have some clients that she's seen, she's been a stay at home mom off and on for a few years. So her clients are friends and family which are totally fine just to get her working. What my strategy is, like I have a Facebook ad going out where we're offering so many dollars' worth of services for another set, so like $300 for $99. And it's a special, like back to school thing with a free kid's haircut. That is specifically to build her book, that is what we're focusing on. I have on my website, I have a first time visitor $20 off gift card option, which I actually got from an idea off of your conversation about your girlfriend Luba. And on her website she offers that as well, I just don't offer a book, I think that she offers a book and you get it with the...

Dean: She does that too. The thing on the Facebook ads what's been a hundred percent building her business is offering a gift card, so she offers $100 gift card on for microblading and she's generated, we were just talking about it last night, we had I love marketing meetup group in Winter Haven here last night. And we were looking at the at the thing, so she's generated over the life of this now, so this year she's generated, 2,559 downloads of the gift card for an average of $2.46 cents each. But she's shown this ad and has been seen by everybody in Winter Haven.

She went to the 15-mile radius of her salon, just ladies or her studio. And what's the most important thing about it is that the list of people that she's built, that 2,500 people, she sends out a weekly email to that list and every week year she sends that out, she's constantly booked that people are, they're not ready right then when they download the gift card maybe to come and get their brows done. But they are over time continuing to book every time she sends out the email people booked for any of the services that she offers. So she does the whole flagship model of sending a weekly educational email and adding her super signature at the bottom whenever you're ready, here's four ways we can help you.

And she offers an eyebrow architecture style where she'll get the right shape for people. She'll do microblading, she does brow Henna or eyelash lift, and that she's got people who are doing those services with her now because she's really into training people how to do microblading and how to do brow Henna. And so the idea though of offering a gift card as a way for people to express their interest in something, even if they don't intend to do it right now, like part of the thing where people are running ads, the challenge that I often see is that they're trying to convince people to do something now because of the ad. So when I hear things like, get 20% off until September 3rd or whatever where you're trying to put out an incentive and make it compelling so that people take action now, what your missing out on what you're leaving on the table is the people who they want to do what it is you do.

They may want to get microbladed or they may want to get their hair colored or they may want to do one of your surfaces, but they are not ready right now. If they see your ad that is trying to convince them to do something now they don't respond, but if you're offering a gift card, a gift card is something that somebody can use as a expression of future interest in something, right? And now what you've done is you've turned an invisible prospect into a visible prospect.

So now you've got somebody's email address and you can continue to market to them for free, right? Because now every week you can send out emails to them, you can engage in a dialogue with them, you've got an asset that even when you stop advertising you've got this pool of people, these 2600 people that she can send out an email to and she'll do things like when she's recording a video program, she'll send out and email and saying, "I need two models for this video that video program shooting." And people will book in those times. So I would encourage you to start building your list of all of your target audience, who is it that you have identified as your ideal, your target audience?

Justiss: The women that I have been attracting because I'm an older hairstylist, it has been professional women who I can say like that they make a certain amount but they probably make between 75 and 150 a year. These are higher levels women, they work either in the university level, they are their own business owner, entrepreneurs, and they're not necessarily looking for a - fifth experience there, I think that they're looking for somebody who can talk to them without sounding like they made up a bunch of words.

Dean: Right, exactly. And they're not-

Justiss: And can't necessarily have a... I'm sorry, go ahead.

Dean: Yeah, they're not going to get pink hair and they're not going to probably get the hombre or any of these. They want professional looking, natural-looking hair and keeping their color, stopping gray or keeping it conditioned, all of that. They want healthy, professional, youthful, not young, not that trendy. What you full looking natural, beautiful hair. That's a really viable target audience which you can identify on Facebook and Instagram. I mean, you can certainly go by age and right now you can, you can go by age, you can go by interests, profession, whatever and geography certainly.

So it would be a value to you if every one of those women within a 10-mile radius of your salon was on your list, right?

Justiss: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dean: If you had all of those people on your email, that would be a valuable thing.

Justiss: Yeah, I would love that.

Dean: Is your salon, how would you say, are you looking at the design of your salon as a tool of your business or how would you rate the design and environment?

Justiss: Well, so in my future of the salon, I am hoping that the design of it, it sort of matches what my clients are looking for. We're not overly girly, we're very minimalistic, we're not too busy. But we're also accommodating and in the future we're going to be going desk-less so no one will be at a desk the whole time, sort of taking things. It will have like our interns, our cosmetologists students who are trying to get more hours when they come in or our lower level stylist, they'll be what I'll call a runner where they are more like concierge and they're making sure our clients are comfortable and happy and they're taking care of them.

And it kind of like when you walk into an Apple store and someone was there to greet you and get you checked in and then talk to you about what's happening and then make sure that you know where you're supposed to go and where everything is. And I don't want to create any sort of stress because my clients are already stressed enough, I don't want them to not know where they're supposed to sit or where the bathroom is or that they even have to ask for a drink someone has already brought them something.

So, my motto that I try and, or the culture I'm trying to build up that we're inclusive but we're also trying to create an experience that means you are coming in to speak to a professional and you don't need to worry about anything, we will take care of that for you.

Dean: So I love that. So you already picture the difference and part of that by excluding in some ways trying to be a trendy salon or tried to be something that doesn't say exactly appeal to your target audience, you end up missing out. And I think that your focus knowing that the clearer you can know who those people are, the better. And it's an interesting thing, how many of these women would there be in Arabia? So how big is the town that you're in?

Justiss: Well, I don't know specifically how big the town is, I do know within a five-mile radius there are close to 5000-7000 people by five miles. And then the more you go outside of that radius, it become more spread out because people own larger pieces of land. So there's multiple suburbs and then like I have an acre, my neighbors is 50 to 70 feet away from me. So it could be close to 50 the further you go out, but 50,000. Yeah.

And a lot of the people that live in our area work in the Research Triangle park near RU or the university or Beijing.

Dean: So they can get their hair done in their hometown in there and go to work and all that.

Justiss: Exactly.

Dean: So I think you're not trying to like draw people to come out to you from the other places, but you're looking to serve the people that are where you are, that working in those other places. Those are the ones, right?

Justiss: Yes. Yeah. We would like to stay within our community definitely. Going outside never heard but I'm not looking -  definitely.

Dean: Right. Okay, so I think that for sure the Facebook strategy would be the first line here, and what's been your experience so far with the Facebook ads? Tell me what you've been advertising them and what's been happening.

Justiss: Well, when I first started using Facebook about three years ago, I had hired a guy to do it for me. And he ran an ad that was kind of like the same thing that I'm doing now when you buy this, you're getting this, this money thing for free in addition to that and that did very, very well. I was able to basically make back all of the money I spent and then some on the hide and some of those clients are still my clients so that was really my... And then I tried based on some information I was getting from another group of stylists I tried messenger ads, which did not work very well. I spent a lot of money and got zero bookings off of it.

And now I'm working with a company who are running my ads for me and they're also telling me that the messenger ads they're seeing are working better, but because they're working on it and I'm not doing it, they're able to sort of track and tweak or I can't do it. So I've already said to them, if within two weeks I'm getting zero bookings, like I don't care if it's just one booking, I just want to see action, they weren't going to switch to the form because I feel like if I can at least just get people to give me their information and not feel like they have to book with me.

Dean: That's exactly the most important thing. How many people do you have on an email list right now? How many prospects would you have?

Justiss: I currently have 315 of current and previous clients.

Dean: Okay.

Justiss: Or anybody that's find out for anything.

Dean: Okay, so we would separate those in terms of breaking down the distinction between your before unit, your during unit and your after unit. So we want to think about the before unit as a supplier to your during unit, they are supplying new clients to your during unit where you're going to take them through your experience and they're going to have an amazing, excuse me, an amazing interaction with you and hopefully continue into your after unit where you'll continue to serve them again and again and again. That's really what we're looking for here. So to drive the front end of this it would be a valuable thing to have a list of people like where you definitely want to, you want to identify who these ladies are because if you've got a way to reach them by email, that's a valuable thing.

So you start to think about how can you offer value to them? What would be a reason that somebody would, especially at that level, so they're probably most people are pretty much settled into who their spouse is, if they're a professional like that who's at that stage of their life that it's not, she probably not out trying a bunch of not going around to new places all the time. So what would be something that would beyond the mind of that person that would be a reason that they might come and try you?

Justiss: So I've been asking my new clients who have found me like why did they come and see me? And the three reasons has been they aren't happy with their current silos, that they are constantly getting the cancellations at their current salon are too high. So they're being cancelled on not the other way round.

Dean: Oh boy.

Justiss: Yeah, or they're new to the area and they found us online. So those have been the three biggest reasons.

Dean: Okay. So there's a couple of things that you can do certainly is even just introducing the fact that you are there and a gift card, a gift card has been my go to thing in terms of a lead generator, especially when you've got an opportunity that your service is, if there's something that you can do for free even better but if it's something like that is a very expensive thing, then you can offer a gift card of a denomination. Now when you look at it, what percentage of the people who you work with would just come one time and don't come back versus the ones who come one time and you convert them into ongoing clients?

Justiss: I would say of the new clients that have been coming to me, it's been about 15% are not returning.

Dean: So you're converting 85% of them are coming back again?

Justiss: Yeah, correct. And I believe that it's because of the type of client that they are and not that they've gotten a bad service.

Dean: Right.

Justiss: They're always extremely happy with their colored the, I think that our environment is not what they're looking for.

Dean: I got it. Just got to find the right people. So I look at this as, what would you say is the, I don't think in terms of the lifetime value, but let's say the annual value of one new client, like your ideal client, what you're talking about?

Justiss: Okay, so if my ideal client were to get a color and cut every, let's say every six weeks and they would be bringing in $117 every time they would come in, I'd say they come eight times a year. So 930, 950.

Dean: Right, okay. And so what is your cost on that, $117, what is your actual physical cost for someone?

Justiss: Do you mean what does it cost me to provide a service on them?

Dean: Yes, exactly. Not your overhead, not your time, the color and the I guess that would really be it, the color of whatever materials, the hard cost of offering somebody a new haircut.

Justiss: It would probably cost me $15 product.

Dean: Yeah. And if you were to say like in your calendar right now, how much extra capacity do you have? Like how close to capacity are you for where you want to be?

Justiss: Well, I would really like to get my new girl, so I'd like to-

Dean: How far from capacity would she be?

Justiss: Her current status, if we're talking hours, she is 32 hours open for the month. Now, I put hat 100% capacity right now.

Dean: Okay, and so the way I think about this, because we do this with so many things, you can try it on and see if it fits, but one of the things... It sounds like a very similar business to the mosquito authority, which is one of the clients that I work with. And the thing that drives the growth, what we do is offer people a free mosquito treatment which is $79 thing that the cost is very similar $15 or $20 for hard costs to do it. But the annual value is very similar to what you're talking about here, right?

Justiss: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dean: And what you get out of this is somebody who gets to come, everybody's sort of skeptical about something the first time. You want to make sure everything's right before you do something, but if you were to experiment with something like that where maybe you offer it as, just so many of them kind of thing. Because the great thing about Facebook is you can turn it on and off kind of thing. But if you offered somebody a $100 gift card or you offered something like that where they could come in, get a cut and the style and if it's $117 or whatever, you'd cover your actual hard costs because they would pay that or whatever.

But you've got somebody now with an 80 plus percent chance that they're going to come back again and again and again. And you only have to do that once and the reason that I say that, it sounds so counterintuitive because you want to think about your advertising being profitable. But that's sort of taking an expense based approach to the advertising, where you're saying, "I want to run the ad, I want to get the money back from the ad," and you count that as a win but I look at it as a capital investment in getting this portfolio of prospects that are going to then turn into new clients.

If you invited somebody to come in for a free cut and color and experience for you and it costs you $15, but they come back and bring you $900 over every year, it's a good investment. And what I've always found is that sometimes that's the least expensive way to do it. It's far less expensive to get the result for somebody than it is to convince them to give you money to get the result. It would be very difficult to only spend $15 to get somebody to give you $117. You know what I mean?

Justiss: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dean: But the great news is, is that you've got that hundred plus dollar difference there is you've got that to play with because that's your big margin on that, you know?

Justiss: Right, yeah.

Dean: And so as an investment of that into getting new people, if you did that for 10 people and eight of them came back every year, I mean just continued to come back that, that would be a really good investment of $150. You have 10 of your ideal clients come in.

Justiss: Absolutely, yeah.

Dean: So that's what I would look at maybe is the that idea of looking for that as an opportunity, grand opening. Are you just opening?

Justiss: Well, I mean, yeah, we're fairly new since March.

Dean: Yeah, that's great. And by the way, we've been doing the grand openings thing with the gift card for almost a year. So yeah, it's still-

Justiss: Early on.

Dean: Right, exactly. But I mean, you know, she read it, she started out in one space and then she moved to a bigger space next door, she re-did the whole thing. So there's all these everything around it. But I think that would be a great thing and I think I would start to experiment with that, because the great thing about it is with Facebook you can run an ad and just put $10 or $20 on the ad and just kind of leak it out there and see dip your toe in the water kind of thing but I don't think philosophically you would be opposed to that, are you?

Justiss: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dean: Because you look at it and especially for your new stylist, it's an investment for that. Do you pay your stylists by the hour? How was your situation set up that you're not just renting space to that?

Justiss: So she gets paid hourly or commission, whatever is higher. So she makes her commission and she gets paid commission on that profit.

Dean: I got you.

Justiss: So she gets paid either way.

Dean: Yeah, and so you wonder, would it be you maybe have that conversation with her and see if she would be open to this as an experiment herself with this, that you explained how this works. Maybe let her listen to this or see how this actually works, but just to know that the goal is it's not to take the short-term approach of saying, "Well, if I do this, I'm losing $50 or $30 or whatever, however much money she would make from doing it."

But looking at it as I'm not doing, I don't have that time booked anyway right now. So the goal is that I'm doing that one to establish my by long-term clientele, because those 32 hours, is it a two-hour process for somebody to come get a cut and style or three hour? How long is the...?

Justiss: So cut and the color, it's about two, maybe hour and a half depending.

Dean: Two hours.

Justiss: Yeah.

Dean: So yeah, so 12 or 15 new people is all it would take for her to fill her availability, right?

Justiss: Yup, and opportunity for her to add another day as well.

Dean: Yes. And I think that just the way it goes. And I mean, my experience has been that people are often, she's not going to end up the people will fit her. There's still all of that people kind of go out of their way to be magnanimous, so they might buy some product because this reciprocity is strong, you know?

Justiss: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Dean: Yeah.

Justiss: Yes. The type of women that I have and some of my male clients even that I'm able to attract are generous and that just speaks to how we're able to treat them there and that makes me incredibly proud and happy that they want to spend time there and their money, also those things are very valuable.

Dean: I love it.

Justiss: Yes, awesome. When - run for $100 gift card, is it specific for a service or is it for anything?

Dean: Well, I mean, talk about it for microblading, but they can also do just the architecture, just the consultation on the shape and shaping them what they have right now. And that is a $99 item, so some people will come in and just get that but then they ultimately decide to get either brow henna or the microblading.

But you have to be okay with that, that's what makes the gift card so valuable, that we're not putting restrictions that we're not saying it's a hundred dollars when you spend $500. It's a real thing. I'm going to give you your first hundred dollars to spend with us here and you may find that it's that $50 would work, you know?

Justiss: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dean: Yeah, and experiment to see what happen.

Justiss: I was just curious if it was specific in the messaging that it was for this service or for your first visit kind of...?

Dean: Now, well the ad is specifically about, the wording is about microblading, that's what the wording is all about. Is microblading big in where you are?

Justiss: It is more so at medical cost and it is at salon, but I think that trend is moving into the salon and we've talked about it here.

Dean: Are you doing tinting when you do colors and stuff?

Justiss: Yes, we do, either maintenance and tinting.

Dean: So the Henna is the thing that's the new, that's the thing that's really going to come strong, it's all over Europe right now, it's just sort of making its way but it's like a non-permitted, it lasts about the six weeks that the color and the style last. So it's the fact that you get the benefit and it's easier for the styles to do because you don't have to have a tattoo license for it as well.

Justiss: Right, yeah.

Dean: Yeah, so it's all very exciting, the beauty business is strong and will remain strong.

Justiss: Oh, yeah.

Dean: You got a great niche, you've got a great audience and I would love to see how that plays out for you, if you decide to go down that path, I'd love to see how that works out.

Justiss: Absolutely, yeah. I would love to keep you in the loop as far as we grow, yeah. That'd be fantastic, and thank you so much for spending time today to talk with me about this, I appreciate that.

Dean: Awesome, it's fun. Thank you so much. I'll talk to you soon.

Justiss: All right. Bye, Dean.

Dean: Bye. And there we have it. Another great episode. Thanks for listening in. If you want to continue the conversation or go deeper in how the eight profit activators can apply to your business, two things you can do. Right now you can go to morecheeselesswhiskers.com, and you can download a copy of the More Cheese Less Whiskers book and you can listen to the back episodes of course, if you're just listening here on iTunes.

Secondly, the thing that we talk about in applying all of the eight profit activators are part of the breakthrough DNA process. And you can download a book and a scorecard and watch a video all about the Eight Profit Activators at breakthroughdna.com. And that's a great place to start the journey in applying this scientific approach to growing your business. That's really the way we think about BreakthroughDNA as an operating system that you can overlay on your existing business and immediately look for insights there.

So that's it for this week. Have a great week, and we will be back next time with another episode of More Cheese Less Whiskers.