Starting A Spa Business Strategies

How much time, if at all, have you invested evaluating the moments of happiness your clients and your staff have experienced in your spa? And have you ever analyzed how much your clients happiness or unhappiness was a direct consequence of your staff’s and your own emotional state? I may be wrong but most likely you haven’t spent one minute for such an evaluation and one reason, why not, is the simple fact that you only have a very vague idea of what the ‘Happiness Factor’ actually is.

No worries, I did not know neither until recently, when I found by chance an article in the Harvard Business Review with the title ‘The Value of Happiness’ and how it is linked with business success and employee well-being. The article summarizes the latest research and findings in this highly fascinating matter, as do we not all seek nothing less than happiness in our lives? Unfortunately, we are pretty ignorant with regards to this matter or have at best rather simple ideas what makes us happy . Someone who knows a lot more about it is Harvard psychology professor Daniel Gilbert who wrote not so long ago a very interesting and entertaining book called ‘Stumbling on Happiness‘, which I can wholeheartedly recommend.

In this post, I am going to summarize the latest findings from the above mentioned article and how you could make your spa business benefit from it. The happiness researchers studies revealed the following:

• Against common believe, not those long awaited, intense events like a new romantic partner or cruising in a brand-new sports car give us long term happiness but rather the frequent, comparatively small happy moments during our normal life.

• When challenged with achievable goals, employees are more productive and creative than when put under a lot of performance pressure (making them anxious about their jobs), what some managers say is necessary for high productivity

• We posess an amazing ability to „synthesize“ our happiness when experiencing unwanted circumstances (discovering unexpected positive features!), which is not necessarily inferior to the ‘real’ and expected happiness, when reaching self-imposed or other goals or achievements. This ‘synthetic happiness’ has nothing to do with fooling yourself.

• Happiness comes mainly from a focused mind, while mind-wandering (happens on average +/- 50% in our working time!) reduces it and lowers at the same time our productivity.

So how can we make use of all these research findings to improve the image and bottom line of our spa business? One answer with regards to our clients is very obvious:

Create as many happy moments to your clients as possible during their stay!

As those will be remembered, will give your spa an excellent word-of-mouth promotion and create customer loyalty. You may say, what is so new about it? I have known that all along! But now you know based on scientific studies that it is not good enough to have from time to time a fantastic and costly promotional event (opening, jubilaeum, etc.) as those will be forgotten in a few weeks time. The findings teach us that it is far more effective to create for our customers many small moments of happiness during their stay as those will sum up to a lasting impression, which will result in more frequent visits and improve your spa’s profitability.

So what happy moments can we give the spa client? They can begin with a friendly and personal reception on arrival, where staff knows exactly everything about the booking as well as the client’s preferences, and where a tea or coffee is served. More happy moments are to follow, when her or his favorite therapist is doing the treatment diligently, the room is at the right temperature and the preferred music is playing in the background. Happy moments should conclude the visit, when the client receives a little gift, e.g. a sample of a cosmetic product, a little chocolate, perhaps a 5 or 10 dollar voucher for the next visit and a quick chat with the owner who shows interest how the treatment was experiencd and then wishes a nice day.

Now what about the staff’s happiness and productivity? The research is pretty clear about the matter. Challenge them with ambitious but achievable goals and monitor their success (or failure). Such a goal could be for a therapist to become the No 1 (favorite) therapist for 20 clients in the next three months (from perhaps 10 right now) and/or increase her retail sales by 20% in such period. You will find many more measurable targets of that kind for your staff.

Teach your staff to stay focused on what they are doing during a treatment and that they leave their personal issues for later. In other words, teach them to minimize mind-wandering, as this is not only detrimental to the treatment quality but, according to the findings, at the same time reduces their own level of happiness. This is worth trying and in their own interest.

Don’t be afraid to tell them clearly if things are not done professionally but tell them in a constructive manner, not hurting their self-esteem. They are capable to ‘synthesize their happiness’, when they understand that the owner wants them to progress to become a better therapist. The concept is simple: a better therapist is more successful and success is correlated strongly with happy feelings about ourselves and the world around us. And this definitely will increase the number of happy moments in your therapist’s life too, so that her mind is less day-dreaming about the knight in shining armour to save her from her unhappy therapist life.

If you feel like contributing to the happiness research, you should have a look at the website trackyourhappiness, the first of a worldwide, real-time happiness data collection project.

And finally, I invite you to download a free eBook from Tony Tsieh, the CEO of Zappos (bought by Amazon for 1.2 billion USD) and author of ‘Delivering Happiness“, a well respected book about profits, passion and purpose in business and life. The 36 p eBook (click on the image)

is an excerpt of the above said hardcopy. In the eBook you will find a statement, which is very relevant – in particular for spa owners:

„People may not exactly remember what you did or what you said

but they will always remember how you made them feel“

Happiness cannot exist without unhappiness. They are the two sides of one medal. A deeper knowledge of the happiness issue  increases the chances that we can make our own small contribution to a happier world.  The spa is a wonderful platform for such a contribution!

Everybody knows spas and salons as service provider for body massages. facials and relaxation. Some places offer extra, specialized services like reflexology, body scrubs, reiki up to wrinkle treatments with laser and botox. Only larger spa resorts and Wellness/Health Centers began at the outgoing 20^th century extending their service menu by introducing dietary consultation, fitness training and spiritual education Eastern style like meditation, yoga, and tai-chi.

Although this situation has not changed in principle, there are still three developments in the last decade, which the existing and future owner of the smaller spa or salon should  take advantage of for growing his/her business : the exponential growth of world wide web users, the financial crisis and the seemingly unstoppable increase of an overweight and obese population.

The last listed point is the main subject of this post. We will deal with it in more depth after commenting briefly on point 1 and 2.

1.   Regular internet usage of Western populations has increased in recent years to 80 or more percent and therefore should be a must for every business owner to reach and communicate with his/her target market. Newsletters and regular information exchange via email marketing, facilitated by user friendly autoresponder software, is one of the key elements to access prospects and secure the loyalty of existing customers.

2.   The collapse of the banking system three years ago has substantially increased job insecurity and led to thousands of job losses. People’s trust in the stability and growth potential of European as well as American economies has further diminished and reached a frightening but very understandable low level. This should signal an entrepreneurial mind to rely in the future more on his/her own capabilities instead of remaining dependent on government and companies in a weak and further weakening economic climate. Therefore becoming self-employed may be the best option in these times. It is obvious that in such an environment finding staff is not a bottleneck one should expect . And good staff always has been the success factor No 1 in a spa or salon business.

This scenario then leads us to the third point, the dramatically increasing percentage of overweight and fat people in our societies. As nobody expects a reverse development in the years ahead – in spite of all the flamboyant promises of the multi-billion diet industry -, there is a good opportunity for spas and salons to provide nutritional and lifestyle consulting services.. What is truly exciting about such service is the potential customer base, being significantly larger than 50 percent of the population (both sexes, kids included) in your area, way above the number of people who could become customers of your spa’s beauty services.

With such gigantic customer base waiting for a real solution – not marketing hype! – to their weight problem, often having experienced a lot of disappointments in the past, one needs to answer the question:

“How can your institute gain credibility in the weight/fat loss industry and compete successfully with the offline and online marketing power of diet corporations like weight watchers and Co”

The simplicity of the answer may surprise many of you: by advising your clients a few elementary weight loss principles, which are not at the core, in general nowhere even mentioned in corporate diet advertising for a very simple reason: such principles being applied would endanger, on the longer run even wipe out their existence.

The principles can be summarized in the following seven points:

1.   A lasting healthy body weight can only be achieved by acquiring a healthy life style, not merely by diet, shakes or tablets.

2.   The energy (kcal) supplied to the body (input) must on average not exceed the energy spent (output) (“Energy conservation law“).

3.   Applying principle 2 allows everbody full control over the daily food consumption (caloric input) by balancing it with energy spending * physical activities (variable)

     * The daily metabolic output is here considered constant

4.   A rise in metabolic output is possible medium to long term by regular strength training (muscle buildup).

5.   A healthy eating pattern must be adopted, where key components are

• reducing the sugar intake (60 g daily max, population average is over 100 g)
• a healthy protein – carb balance (about 1:1)
• consuming mainly low glycemic index carbohydrates
• selecting only “good” fats, avoiding saturated and trans fats

6   Motivational incentives for a life style change need to be found, recognized and internalized.

7.   Setting of an ambitious goal, a realistic step-by-step plan for it’s achievement in combination with a progress control and reward system.

If you, the spa owner, is interested in this subject, you will find ways of acquiring the necessary know-how and (ideally) practicing, what you have learned and teach your clientele (“walk the talk”). I did and you can too.

If for whatever reason you do not want or you can’t, e.g. for time reasons, provide such service , you certainly can look for a nutritionist, who will be joining your spa, perhaps first as a consultant and possibly later, with increasing customer demand, as a staff member.

Last but not least, I wholeheartedly can recommend one of the best and most successful programs for understanding healthy nutrition and effective weight loss, matching to a large extend the above listed principles, The Diet Solution Program . It is comprehensive, professional and practical and can be downloaded and started instantly.

By applying many of the DSP teachings in combination with a few of my own adjustments, I lost 8 kg within 3 weeks without starving and reached my ideal weight (176 pounds/80 kg at 6’2”/1,89 m) again, the first time after 35 years (!) . I still have it half a year later as the program has changed my eating mindset, food shopping habits and stopped my cravings for sweets and chocolate. This and the fact that I always liked aerobic exercising (how lucky I am!) allows me to enjoy plenty of calories on various occasions without being shocked by the figures on my scale afterwards.

Believe me,living a healthy lifestyle – and that can be done at any age! – makes living a real pleasure. Help your clientele to discover the magic and they will be yours forever.  The Mediterranean diet can be a key component in this discovery voyage. You can download the excellent 351 p eBook The Mediterranean Diet as my bonus, when subscribing to my free e-course “The 7 Spa Success Strategies”.

Starting a spa or salon business is exiting but at the same time a tremendous challenge to handle so many essential requirements  and not drowning in hundreds of demands coming to you from all sides. It is very easy not to see the wood any more standing amongst all those trees shielding you from the light and blocking your way forward.

To stay in this picture, every tree you are facing or are cutting will cost you money, which can become an expensive learning curve.  Getting help at that early stage from someone, who has gone through all of this, means improving your bottom line right from the beginning, even more so in the future by setting the course right to reach your goal: a profitable health and beauty business.

Here come my tips for starting a spa business, which I recommend to study and follow carefully in order to avoid the mistakes, which has cost me thousands of dollars and a lot of time.

1.  Don’t compromise with the interior fixtures as once it is done, it will be very difficult – if not impossible – and expensive to change. Rather spend a few dollars more, so that you (and your clients) are happy for a long time.

2.  Select carefully your equipment and negotiate prices.  Especially in a weak economy, suppliers are keen for your order, a fact you can take advantage of and which will save you a lot of money  Look for well-maintained 2nd hand equipment, if you have a tight budget. It can be as good as new for half price or less.

3.  Don’t forget to implement the three basic, often neclected facilities: kitchenette for preparing drinks and snacks (often forgotten in salons), a staff rest room, and sufficient storage space (towels, products,….). It is very frustrating later if those are improvised last minute or unavailable.

4.  Select your skin care range less as per your personal liking but rather from an economic and clients point of view.  Look at issues like completeness including samples (!), retail affordability for the majority of your clients, and good customer service. Before deciding, ask other (local) users (spa/salon owners) about their satisfaction with the supplier.  Don’t forget, you may get a worldwide brand but with bad local management having a lousy service mentality!

5.  Starting a spa business means beginning your marketing well in advance of your planned opening date, otherwise you and your staff can play monopoly all day. The absolute minimum is 3 months, even better 6 months ahead.  Create a buzz, even if your place is or looks like a construction site at that moment.  Image is key nowadays! (> Our eBook gives you dozens of ideas how to create that buzz!)

6.  Select your most valuable asset, your staff, not last minute in a rush. How good the applicants CV may look, ask the people, who employed them before, for their opinion.  Some girls are masters in acting like Hollywood starlets! Just believe in hard, objective facts, not words and appearance.

7.  Try, if ever possible, to get all staff first on a probation contract for 3 months.  Make sure (or enforce) that you can dismiss them for all relevant reasons. A wrong selection and a permanent contract is bad news. Worse news I can see only in having no clients at all.

8.  Put in place a strict control mechanism for your staff right from the beginning.  Once you allow them privileges and are generous with punctuality, treatment time and product spending, it will be difficult, if not impossible to correct their habits later.  And even worse, staff will expand on those “luxuries” seeing that they do get away with it. Here you are risking the future of your business!

9.  Look early for someone (manager), whom you can trust to run the business for you for at least a week or two. There can always be a reason that you are unable to run the show (sickness, family matters, business travel etc).  If there is nobody with that quality, it can mean a substantial financial drop in that period and worse – significant image damage.

10.  Last but not least, have no illusions: you are in not for a 8 to 5 job and there will be no holidays for quite some time to come.  Make sure that you have the full support of your family and enough financial backing as the cash flow projections are nearly always much too optimistic. Yours will hardly be the exception to the rule!

I hope these starting-a spa-business-tips will help you to focus on the core matters in order to get your spa or salon flying very soon.  Many more ideas and advices you will find in the eBook

Spa Success Strategies

, which summarizes my way into the Top 20 destination spas in the world as voted by the readers of Conde Nast Traveller, which was an exciting but nevertheless a costly and often nerve wrecking experience. There was not much guidance from anybody in the early days of holistic health spas.

I encourage to subscribe to our mini e-course “The Seven Success Strategies for Spas & Salons” on the right sidebar, which is obviously free of charge.  The course summarizes the key strategies of the above said eBook.

The idea of starting a spa business and owning our own health spa arose from three main motivations: to let people know about the benefits of living a healthy lifestyle, working in a truly stimulating, beautiful environment and the freedom one gets by being your own boss.  The fact that one can, if successful, earn a good income was clearly not overlooked but is indeed the most uncertain issue as it depends on a number of influences, which one can only partially or not control at all (e.g. a general economic crisis).  In contrast, the first three facts will always be part of your lifestyle as a spa owner and are there to stay! Let’s look at those a bit more in detail.

The origins and milestones of the development can be found HERE

I was lucky enough to learn healthy living from my father who inspired me after my teenage years to follow in his tracks. The mere fact that he conquered the dreaded aging with his active, high quality lifestyle far into his eighties motivated me finally to plan and implement the holistic health spa idea, together with my wife. She had experienced the opposite with her father: his untimely death in his early sixties, which was clearly linked to a much less healthy living pattern.  Teaching our guests the three pillars of good health “Optimal nutrition” – “Regular, situation adapted exercising” - “Mindful relaxation”, all based on my deeply rooted conviction – very different to acquired theoretical, literature knowledge! – of the benefits of healthy living, always gave me a feeling of making a valuable contribution to society. In the majority of cases, this feeling was amplified by happy and regularly returning guests.

Click here for exploring our eBook “Spa Success Strategies”

To live and work in a health spa is certainly a privilege, in spite of all the hard work it requires to get and keep the place in top shape.  The smell of aroma oils and the sound of spiritual music in the rooms and relaxation areas, the availability of herbal teas and light snacks and salads throughout the day, and the possibility of enjoying inhouse fitness center, sauna annd steam bath (and even a massage from time to time), which employer can compete with such an environment? Strangely enough, not all staff members did always appreciate these privileges.  Although such applies mostly to the younger ones who had not yet experienced other work places.

There is no need to say too much about the value of personal freedom, when being your own employer.  Any spa or salon of whatever size offers this freedom of making your own decisions, and it is my believe, this fact on its own is worth to create such a place, if you are attracted by health and beauty matters.  Yet freedom is inherently linked to responsibility – two different sides of the same medal! – , which one should not overlook: responsibility towards clients as well as staff.  It is very obvious that only when such responsibility is taken seriously by the owner, a spa operation can be successful in the long run as the image of the establishment is directly proportional to the responsibility practiced by the owner(s).

The chapter  “Guest Services” of the ebook is accessible here.

In conclusion, the day I knew that I would dedicate all my energy to creating my health spa vision and actively starting into my spa business was the beginning of an incredible challenge, well knowing that the rewards one day will by far exceed the blood, sweat and tears needed to make the business a success story.

If you would like to learn about the 7 strategies for a successful spa operation, we invite you to subscribe to our mini e-course on the right sidebar. As our appreciation for your interest and subscription, you will receive the spa planning and benchmarking software, which are part of our eBook “Spa Success Strategies”, completely free of charge for immediate download.

Estate agents tell you that only three issues matter when buying a real estate: location, location, location.  The reason is obvious: once you have it, this is it – no correction possible!

If you are planning to start a spa business, I would square the above said as a wrong location can be detrimental, if not disastrous to your business in the medium to long term. Why is that?  Because spa visitors today have a pretty distinct expectation about the experience  during their visit, which is detemined not only by the treatment but the whole setup, including the spa surroundings. This expectation obviously depends on the kind of spa visited and will be different for hotel, destination, day and medical spas, just to name four of the major spa types.

Therefore it is necessary to put as much diligence and intelligence into that matter as possible taking into account not only your vision of your future spa but the competition situation in your area too.  If their is an established competitor within reach of your future clients, you better think twice if you can outrank him in spite of the saying “competition is good for the business”. It’s is always safer to start from the pole position, not only in Formula 1!

But there may still be something unexpected lurking in the background. When we bought our destination spa premises after over 9 months of carefully going through the selection process, we thought we had found the golden egg and stayed in that belief, while the business was developing.

Yet, after three years, when we had a well established business and the time had come to enter into phase 2, the extension of our room offering from 14 to 25, we unexpectedly hit the wall.  We learned that the zoning regulations in our basically residential area allowed only for those 14 rooms, more would require the approval of all (!) neighbours around us, more than 12 individuals. This was a killer requirement as more than one neighbour already had uttered openly his dissatisfaction with the traffic caused by our clients. So our hopes for multiplying our income had come to an abrupt halt.

Life tends to come up with surprises, for better or for worse. In this case clearly for worse.  Yet, I can’t dismiss the thought that we could have avoided this happening, if we would have investigated this issue more thoroughly before buying the property.

I believe this real life example illustrates quite well, what I mean with applying much diligence in location and object selection. Your spa business will depend decisively on your choice. More about this topic you can find  in www.spasuccessstrategies.com.