A day or two back I was listening to a conversation about a couple of hairdressers who had recently moved premises and as a result of that move, they dropped their prices.
Not by a few pounds, but by tens of pounds.
One service was now £30 whereas before it was around £50.
I believe the reason for this large drop in prices is because of ‘chair rental’ prices.
Many hairdressers are self-employed and rent a chair in a salon. Different salon owners charge different prices.
These two hairdressers were now renting a chair(s) in a beauty salon where the owner was obviously charging a lot less rent for the chair.
This might be down to the actual rental cost of the building.
Where the girls had previously rented chairs, the salon owner was paying around £1,200 per month for her large unit.
I know this to be true because that salon has since packed up and the unit is back on the market with a monthly rental price of £1,200.
The unit itself was a large spacious unit in a converted Victorian engineering factory… but it wasn’t on the high street, it was in a very quiet area of the town.
There were was no parking outside either thanks to a yellow line running along the road which leads to a large and busy engineering park.
You could risk parking on the yellow line if you wished but the area is a hot spot for parking wardens. You were highly likely to find your treatment doubling in price if you did risk it.
Basically, that unit is not in a prominent area where it can be seen or visited by a lot of people easily. There was very little passing footfall.
It isn’t far from the town centre, but £1,200 is a lot of money for most people to find each and every month… let alone for a unit which is not in the best location.
I was a little taken back at that price.
I know that people will pay a small fortune to have beauty treatments and their hair styled, but you really need a lot of customers to cover a rental price of £1,200.
Let’s not forget that there are other costs to consider too such as electricity, water, heating, gas, insurances, any business rates, and staffing.
The rent alone for that ‘off the beaten track in a quiet part of the town’ unit is £14,400 for the year.
That’s a lot.
It could quite easily become a business killer.
Compare that to a website which can cost as little as £150 for two years (possibly less), a website which can make sales on autopilot 24 hours of each day generating a passive income for you.
£150 over two years is the equivalent to paying just £6.25 per month.
I know that everyone is different, and people want to open up businesses which they are passionate about and good at, but you have to ask yourself…
Why are you doing it?
What are your reasons for starting the business?
What is the main motivation for starting your own business?
If you strip away a lot of the reasons a person ‘thinks’ why they want to start a specific business, you will find that the ultimate motivation is simply to make money.
People start businesses simply to make money.
They choose specific businesses based on what they know and what they can do.
People are right to do something that they can do well and with ease… most of the time.
The problem is that while cutting hair may be easy for a trained hairdresser, running a salon is a different beast altogether.
Being paid £50 to cut and style hair is great… but it’s not great when you have to find £1,200 for rent, £250 for electricity, water and gas, £20 for insurances, £50 for phone and internet each and every month.
Plus you need to find money to have flyers and cards printed to be handed out to people. A salon in a quiet part of town which does not get seen by many passersby will need to spend money on advertising.
Yes, thanks to social media they can do a lot of local advertising for free, but they will still need to spend some money on attracting new clients and customers.
I imagine the salon in question was looking at a yearly running cost close to £20,000 before any profits were made.
If the owner was simply looking for a way to make money… there are a lot more, easier and cheaper ways to do it.
As I mentioned earlier, a website can cost as little as £150 for two years.
That is an incredible price.
Two years paying £1,200 rent comes to £28,800.
That’s £28,650 more than the price of a basic website.
Stick a few products on that website priced at £50 or more, you can quite easily earn more in a month than what a hairdresser makes without having to work loads of hours.
Some people like what they do because they meet the public and they can enjoy a chat and a giggle with clients, you won’t get that with a website.
But you can get a whole lot more freedom… if you do it right that is.
For me, the benefits of a website based business are:
- Incredibly cheap to start. There is little pressure to find a stack of money each month to cover costs.
- The returns can far outweigh the costs. Both financial and the costs to your time.
- Work can be outsourced to other people without needing to pay a monthly wage or a pension.
- Money can be made 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year no matter what you are personally doing.
- You can run an online business from anywhere in the world at whatever time suits you best.
I’ve mentioned many times that having an email list is a great way to make money.
Many email services will allow you to build a small email list for free.
Aweber allows you to build one email list of 501 subscribers before you need to start paying.
Having a website selling digital products 24 hours a day and an email list of 501 will make you money.
An online business can be completely freeing.
If you would like to start your own online business which can make you money on autopilot you need to check out:
www.The30DayTo30KChallenge.com
Kind Regards
John Harrison
PS… Now imagine what you could achieve with an online business if you invested the same amount of money that salon was paying in rent for a couple of months.
For £2,400 invested over two years you could have several decent digital products, a growing email list and possibly a system in place to drive potential customers to your website on autopilot.
For £28,800 you would have a six figure a year business… but do you know what?
You can start for free and you can grow it at your leisure for free too.
It’s completely up to you.
Here’s that link again: