Everything you and your employees need to know about protecting your client details in time for the launch of GDPR 2018

I am hoping that you are already aware of the new and updated law coming into effect on May 25th 2018. I am also hopeful that you are already considering the changes you and your salon may need to make in order to comply with the new regulations. However, if you’re not, we’re here to help and want to make it as easy as possible for you and your staff… so take a seat, a notebook and a large coffee; you’ll need it!

So, before I go full speed ahead, you’ll need to come to terms with the definition of the GDPR and what it actually means.

The General Data Protection Regulation May 25th 2018

The GDPR (commonly referred to as the New Data Protection act) works within the EU to give consumers a high level of control over their personal data and how it is used.

Everything that applied to the DPR still applies to the GDPR yet the GDPR holds stricter regulations and privacy policies – not to worry, we have a breakdown of the changes and a structure of how you can start preparing now.

Staff

One thing you should begin doing now is informing your staff. You as a Salon owner will

be responsible for all of your client’s information and if any factors of the GDPR are preached by you or your staff it’ll be you facing the consequences such as 4% of your annual turnover fine… money that could potentially be an investment into bettering your Salon! 

From May 25th and onwards, when your staff collect any personal information off of their clients, whether its online or in person, there are 4 important rules they need to follow. Firstly, the employee must reveal the salons identity, the reason for collecting the data, what the data will be used for and who will have access to it. This gives the client confidence when exposing their data as they are giving it to a well trusted business who conform to the GDPR. 

Disposing of data

In the event of having to dispose of any client data, the GDPR requires you to prove that the disposal was controlled. For example, if the data stored is IT based, make sure you have a well-trained IT team to properly dispose of the data ensuring that they cannot be recovered. Alternatively, if your data is paper based there is the option to hire a shredding company who will securely shred the data for you and hand you a certificate to prove the data has been shredded. Never heard of a paper shredding company before? Take a look at these: https://www.shredall.co.uk/shredding?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIsOaY3JHc1gIVqbftCh0gcgwxEAAYBCAAEgLVyfD_BwE

Engagement with 3rd parties

The involvement of 3rd parties such as Payroll, software providers (like us at Salon Tracker!), solicitors and HR companies is still permitted, providing you have informed your clients of this and they have agreed to it by signing something like a terms and conditions box to keep you covered.

The meaning and importance of consent

Consent must be freely given without any pressure applied by the presenter, it must also be unambiguous and specific without any misunderstood concepts.

Pre-ticked boxes are a definite NO go when it comes to the GDPR. The client needs to personally tick the box themselves and should be allowed to take as much time as they need. Your client is also allowed access to their personal information at all times and they are also entitled to altering any inaccuracies, erasing any information and objecting to direct marketing.

So, if your salon require consent when recording client details, be sure to regularly review the way that your staff seek, obtain and record the consent given. And if changes do need to be made… start doing them now rather than later!

Holding client information

In order to hold any information on your clients, as a business (especially the owner), you are given a responsibility that you must abide by. 

1) Firstly, protect client’s details at all costs. Only release information to the sole client that holds it and this should be security measured with things like codes, fingerprints and facial recognition.

2) Hold the information only for the purpose you told the client it was for. The information must be properly deleted once it expires (see disposing of data above).

3) Finally, make sure you are fully aware of the ins and outs of the data protection law. Do your research, educate your staff and take strict precautions when dealing with client data. Your clients rely on you.

Yes, all of this is a lot to take in, especially whilst trying to be a successful salon owner.

But if you start taking steps now, the thought of May 25th 2018 won’t make your skin explode with cringing Goosebumps because you’ll be ready for it and so will your Salon!

Still feeling a little lost? Visit https://blog.datasalon.com/2017/07/17/getting-ready-for-the-gdpr/ to help you get more of an idea.

Salon Tracker x

Ways to improve your social media!

We’re now in a world where people are constantly checking their social media pages, so if you don’t already have social media accounts for your salon, well you’re missing out! The best thing about social media is that its FREE, yes you read that correctly, free! Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are the three main social media platforms with over 2.8 billion active monthly users combined, so why not use them to your advantage! Maybe you already have accounts but they aren’t really working out for you? Well fear not, I’m going to give you our best tips so that you can improve your social media and make it worth your time.

When you Google a salon name, the salons Facebook page will be often be one of the top results, and its where potential customers will be able to see what people think of that salon. Facebook reviews are seen as a saviour for many people, and they will often help them to make up their mind on whether they want to visit your salon or not. They can give a potential customer that extra level of trust that you’re going to do a good job and not ‘ruin their lives’. So, my top tip would be to ask your customers to leave a positive review on your page, if your page has a bucket load of 5-star reviews it could be the difference between someone visiting your salon, or going to your competitor down the street. Persuading your clients to leave you a review isn’t as easy as it sounds, maybe start by asking your most loyal customers who you can trust to leave you a positive review. The last thing you want is potential customers seeing a bad review on your social media page, so we recommend that if someone does leave a bad review, you immediately reply quickly and positively, even apologising when they are in the wrong. This will often lead to them deleting their review, or even posting a new, more positive one, and even if they leave it be, potential customers will be able to see that you have at least attempted to resolve the issue.

I know it can be hard finding the time to post on your social media pages, especially when you’re a salon owner.  But there’s no need to panic, there are plenty of websites out there with a sole purpose of helping you, well not just you but you get what I mean. A great online scheduler, that’s once again free, is ‘Hootsuite’. Hootsuite is the perfect way for your business to plan ahead with your social media, anytime you have a free hour or even a few minutes you can schedule some posts that will then automatically post on the date and time that you want. It’s important that you plan your content, and make sure that you’re not only keeping your customers up-to-date with the latest salon news and offers, but you are also posting more personal and relatable posts. Social media however is the best place for you to be posting any offers or deals that you are currently giving out. Your customers or any potential customers will be able to just view your social media pages and immediately see that you are offering these deals without physically having to visit your salon. You need to be using these platforms to show your best work off to the world, so why not ask your customer if you can take a quick picture of their latest hair style, or set of nails, and then post it on your social media. Instagram probably first sprung to mind when I mentioned posting pictures, and obviously it’s a great platform to use, as people will go to your Instagram expecting to see pictures of your work, but make sure you don’t shy away from posting them across all of your platforms. If potential customers can see the great work that you have been doing, then this could, again, be the deciding factor in whether they visit your salon, so why not give it a go?

Hashtags can be both brilliant and off-putting, all depending on how you choose to use them. Although hashtags allow you to reach out to a wider audience, which is great, if you use them incorrectly it can take away from the message you’re trying to send out. Twitter was the original start-up for hashtags, paving the way for them to be added to almost every social media site, you can even search for them on Google. On Twitter, using hashtags can improve engagement by 2x, but using over two hashtags can actually reduce engagement by 17%, so be wary of going overboard, especially with the newly introduced 280-character limit. Hashtags haven’t quite got going on Facebook, so I wouldn’t really recommend using them, it turns out posts without hashtags tend to do better than posts with hashtags. With Instagram using 11+ hashtags is the way to increase your interactions, although you may want to add them in the comments or separate them slightly from your caption, as users may assume they are spam and you, again, don’t want to avert them from reading the caption. All in all, as long as you use hashtags correctly, they can only bring more engagement and interaction to your social media counts, but over or under use them, and they will be pointless.

Although all of the platforms I have mentioned above are free, there are some methods that you can use that will cost, but it’s an extremely low cost for the money that it might bring into your salon. If you didn’t know already, Facebook bought Instagram in 2012, and through these platforms you can create adverts for as low as $1. You can tailor your ads so that they are only reaching people that you think will be intrigued by what you have to offer, so you might want to add a location field to it so that only people in your local area will see it on their timeline. You might as well test it out with a low budget and see if it works for your salon, maybe give out an incentive like a £5 voucher for new customers. Then ask the customer to show you the advert in store to receive the discount, this will allow you to see how much reach the advert has had and if it’s worth sending out more in the future.

You can find plenty more tips and tricks for improving your salons social media on the internet, but these are just a few of our tops tips, we hope that they can help you out in way!

Salon Tracker

Autumn Marketing Tricks by Salon Tracker Software

We’re back in autumn already! We can’t believe it, official 3 month Christmas countdown. In fact, 3 months today we’ll all be well untruly in our element, pressies opened and nicely stuffed from 3 days of festive binge-eating!

So, what can you be doing at the salon this autumn to ensure that your peak-season is a successful one? There are lots of events that you can take advantage of throughout the next couple of months and in the lead up to Christmas, like Halloween, Bonfire night and Black Friday! And also a couple of Charity events, which are great for fund-raising money for a good cause but also, raising brand awareness & great projection for you! For example, you’ve got ThinkPink in October for Breast Cancer awareness & Movember for attentiveness to men’s health!

So we’ve separated out a few little ideas that are relevant throughout this season to help you to kick-start your promotional strategies - just to ensure that you get that nice Christmas ROI for some little well-deserved treats!


Offers & Up-selling

We’ve said time and time again, the discounted sale is not always the winner, or the right way to go for your brand reputation. OK, so we’re not going to lie that it’s great when you see an offer online or on social media showcasing a big % discount, whether this be retail or maybe a restaurant?

However, how many of us are guilty of seeing a shared status about a particular promo code, and thinking ‘great, I’ll head down there if it’s (x) % off!’ But, once the business is back to full price, if you’re not already a regular customer you find yourself never visiting there again unless there’s another offer on. We’re deffo guilty!

What you definitely don’t want to be is ‘the brand that discounts’. As once you get renowned for doing this, it’s sometimes very hard to steer clear of that image and get value from your full price services again in the future.

Instead, we recommend you up-sell! Offer little add-ons to your clients already existing full price purchase. Sometimes, the extra product can actually seem a lot more generous than a discount and in the long run, it generally offers more value to the customer in terms of service. Plus, by offering an extra mini-treatment or product, you may actually be helping to market those to the client for a potential future purchase. A little something to think about.

So, a few potential offers that you could use throughout autumn are:

- Book your Halloween treatment with us and receive a FREE (chosen retail product)

- Sparkle this bonfire night, head down to (salon name) and receive a complimentary (chosen mini gift) with each treatment purchased

- Countdown to Christmas, book your December salon treatments early to receive a complimentary (chosen mini-treatment)
- Rebook today’s treatment to receive (chosen gift/voucher)

Make sure however that whatever it is that you are offering as a freebie here, it is still cost effective to you. The last thing you want is to sell yourself short in terms of profit, just to save face of not discounting. Make sure you plan out the figures beforehand.


Charitable Events & Friend/Family Packages/Event Gifts


October and November are renowned for their Cancer-research & Macmillan events, the most popular being ThinkPink for Breast Cancer and Movember for prostate Cancer & Men’s health. You however also have Children in Need in November too, so plenty of events that you could use to raise money for a good cause and to also hopefully increase your client base in doing so. The beauty here is, charity events can also tie-in with non-charitable events, so for example you could do a ‘bring-a-friend’ to your ThinkPink event? This way, it means that you have fresh-faces arriving at the salon to get some mini treatments, in the hope that they then return in the future. And in the meanwhile, you are raising a ton of money for Cancer research - brilliant! Also, if you associate your business with charities, this makes your brand much more recognisable and appreciated by onlookers who can see that you get involved in fundraising. A few ideas for you to try out are:

- ThinkPink, with a friend! Head down to the salon for mini treatments and (X) % off retail products. £(X) entry and all profits go to Cancer Research UK.

- Calling all guys who want to get involved in some fundraising for a good cause! It’s Movember, donate £(X) on our JustGiving page and send us a selfie or your best Movember-tash be entered in to our prize draw. Winner receives (chosen gift) and all entry donations go to Prostate Cancer UK.

- It’s Children in Need, so we’re running a friends & family week to get involved! Book a family package with us and save (X) % off the usual single-treatment prices, plus free compliments on your arrival! All profits made & donations go to Children in need UK.

For the above ideas, between you and your team, come up with the little mini-treatments and the services that you’d like to use for your family packages and spread the word via social media, email or text! Obviously, these are just little ideas to get you started. We encourage you to introduce your own event ideas too, as then they are even more personable to your salon-brand.


The Salon Atmosphere


Salon Décor is one of the biggest influencers in your client journey, especially around peak season! It’s so true, that atmosphere and ambience help to make a sale. If throughout October and Christmas, you dress the salon in all things pumpkin, tinsel and trees – the likelihood is that you will instantly make your clients feel festive and without realising, this will uplift theirs and your mood. And we all know, Happy Customers = Happy Shopping! A simple and easy way to increase your seasonal sales. Complimentary freebies are also crucial here. (And no we don’t mean give away a load of free treatments) but just a couple of little refreshments will do, for example:

-Tea, coffee, fizz/prosecco? Even theme your coffees, get a little pumpkin spice syrup in-house!

-Halloween themed sweets, cupcakes, biscuits, anything festive-styled!

- Xmas favourites like Quality sweets, roses, miniature heroes…you get the idea.

So there’s just a few of our little ideas to get you off to an amazing, autumnal start! It’s also great to get involved with charitable and celebratory events at the salon, and this applies all year-round, not just in peak season. Events such as these are extra fun for you & your team, and can really help to boost morale during busy times. Use your autumn marketing to even get your employees together for a little team-building session. Go somewhere nice as a team for some food/an activity and use the night to brainstorm some ideas. A great way to give all of your staff members’ inclusion in some planning, to ensure that their voices are heard and that they feel respected within the company. Another motto that they always say…valued staff members = valuable service for your business, and essentially to the end consumer!


Happy planning!


Salon Tracker x

Why Trade shows are great for every Salon

We have attended Professional Beauty North for quite some years now and it’s always a pleasure to return to Manchester Central to meet new people. As a business, whether you are just there to visit or if you are exhibiting, it is a great place to network and find out about the latest products and treatments. Especially for salon owners, trade shows are great opportunities to purchase new equipment and gather inspiration for the salon. However, if you have ever attended a show you know how busy these can get. Businesses try to talk to you about their products and services and try to offer you the latest deals. It is easy to lose focus on what exactly you need and why you came to the show in the first place.

One of the best pieces of advice we can give you is: come prepared!

Download the event show guide or go on the events website. There you can look at the list of exhibitors and work out which stands you want to visit prior to the event. There is nothing worse than turning up to a busy event hall, with no idea where companies are located within the exhibition and then running around frantically to find them! Many companies also offer appointments you can take advantage of. So if you are interested in a new machine or product try get in contact with the business before the event to schedule a session with them. This will help with the buying decision and gives you an opportunity to ask all your questions.

'Shows are great for discounts and testers. Take advantage of any discount and exclusive offers!'

If you own a business, are about to open one or even if you have a favourite brand to stock up on, then these places are perfect for you. Why? Because often at trade shows you have the advantage to get discounted rates on most items. Especially if you’re on the lookout for new products, equipment or anything else. Now will be the perfect time to get them. Most products and businesses at trade shows offer VAT free items and services, meaning you already save 20% on your overall purchase. On top of that are most exhibitors willing to negotiate little extras on top of that. All you have to do is ask. 

It is therefore important to know what you want.

Most people come to a trade show roughly knowing what they want. Before signing up to an event, it is useful to go through your salon with an action plan in mind. Are there things that need to be replaced? Would you like to learn about a new treatment and sign staff member up for courses? No matter what it is, take some time aside to think about your business and if there is anything to improve that you can potentially get at the trade show. Exhibitors are experts in their field and it’s a great way to get more info, test products without committing to them straight away.

As visitors, you can easily get overwhelmed with all the stands at the show, so make sure you get out the events brochure for a better overview. We have said it before that the best thing prior to a trade show is preparation and it’s true, otherwise you might waste your money on products you don’t really need just because the sales person talked you into it. Therefore, collect all relevant information whilst you are there. Take brochures, business cards and goody bags that will help you to gather information. Don’t get pressured to make a decision straight away. To companies you are a potential customer and they will be happy to wait a few days for you to decide if it will guarantee them a sale.

Grow your network!

As much as you visit a trade show to find resources that will be beneficial to your brand, don’t forget that this is a perfect opportunity to target vendors that may be interested in your company too! All people that attend beauty trade shows are interested in the sector and there is no better way than to hand out your own business cards and build a relationship with potential prospects. Trade shows are such sociable events that you should be prepared to do a bit of brand-promoting whilst you’re there.

Overall, trade shows are a great annual event you should visit to invest in your business and to work on your salon goals. It can be easy to lose focus and business goals when bombarded with information that does not even seem relevant to you. The trick is, no matter if you are a visitor or an exhibitor to keep a clear head and to know exactly what you are trying to achieve from the show. If you are attending this year, why not pop by and say hello. We are located at stand E84 From Sunday to Monday, 9-5pm. 

If you’re still thinking about it but haven’t signed up, click on the link to register for tickets. https://registration.n200.com/survey/364r05ev8wm44?actioncode=NTWO000123RTD&partner-contact=2qth72wjsj7nu

Salon Tracker x

Feature of the Month - Filtered Marketing

It’s that time again! Our latest feature of the month is filtered marketing, and how you can use it to benefit your salon. Our customers often contact us asking for help sending out their latest campaign, mainly just because they want to make sure they’re doing it right. With the world becoming more and more digital, it’s important that you as salon owners use this to your advantage, and it can be done directly from our Salon Tracker Software.

One of the most obvious advantages to marketing would be that you can target certain customers and audiences. With our built-in sophisticated marketing suite, you can send SMS messages, emails and letters to your clients, however the SMS feature is the most useful to salons with around 98% of SMS messages being opened, making it the perfect way for you to reach out to your clients. Although it may be a thing of the past, you can also send letters and emails to your customers, our marketing suite does all the work for you, all you have to do is send them out.

Salon Tracker comes with 8 pre-filtered campaigns, a custom campaign and 20 marketing filters, however even with the pre-filtered campaigns you can still edit and change them to how you would like. Perhaps you want to try and attract customers who haven’t visited your salon for a while, the system will track customer spend and highlight the customers that haven’t had an appointment for a while. An example of how the pre-filtered campaign would look is:

Hi <<Forename>>

You are missed! All appointments booked before [ENTER DATE] will receive [ENTER DISCOUNT] discount.

<<CompanyName>> <<CompanyTel>> T&Cs Apply

A great way to make use our marketing suite would be by planning ahead and using our schedule feature. For example, if you are going on holiday, but you want to send out an SMS marketing campaign, you can plan it before and make sure that it will send even if you are away. Another great way that you can use our marketing feature would be to make sure that you are organised and prepared for any offers or deals that you will be doing. Say you are wanting to send a bank holiday campaign you would use our custom campaign feature; two pre-filtered campaigns can already be found on the software for a Summer sale and a January sale. An example of a campaign SMS message that you might want to send for a bank holiday deal could be:

Hi <<Forename>>

We are offering a free [ENTER VALUE] voucher with every booking made this week, which will be redeemable on bank holiday Monday!

<<CompanyName>> <<CompanyTel>> T&Cs Apply

After sending a marketing campaign you might want to see if and how it has effected your sales, with our reports feature our software will do the math for you. You can use the Sales by Hour report to see which times you might want to use the marketing features to help increase sales, for instance when you’re having a quiet period, and you just want to send out a little incentive to bring in some customers.

If you would like any more information on our filtered marketing or any of our software features, don’t hesitate to head over to www.salontracker.co.uk or call our office on 0113 350 8230 to book your software demo, our support team is available Monday-Friday from 9am – 5pm.

You can also trial salon tracker free of charge for a 2-week period, and we will also give you 50 free texts so you can test the marketing feature for yourself!

Salon Tracker

Tips for Salon Owners when Hiring Staff

‘Without a goal you can’t score’. - Casey Neistat

Finding and hiring the right staff for your salon can be a tiring challenge that sometimes just can’t be avoided. A shortage of skilled candidates in the industry will make it even harder to find the right person and the last thing you want to do is take on someone, you’re not quite sure about just because you need more staff. Nevertheless, we don’t want you to dismiss new possibilities altogether and with the right tips and tricks you can find the right new people for your business. To make things easier we have compiled a few useful tips from beginning to end, concentrating on what to look out for when hiring.


Know what you want

When advertising for a new position, be clear on what the position is about but also what qualifications you are looking for. If you define what sort of person you are looking for early on, it will make it easier later on to spot key indicators for those requirements on the candidates CV. Once sorted, you can write a job description and advertise them through social media, your website and even a local newspaper.

A CV reveals plenty already

Review candidates carefully, before inviting them for an interview. If you have a trusted colleague or manager that can assist with a second opinion then certainly take advantage of this. You want to look out for any red flags that are already noticeable in someones CV.

First, is the CV looking professional and spell checked? A CV full of spelling mistakes looks unprofessional and comes across as lazy. Do you really want to employ someone who couldn’t even make the effort to double check their work and make it look as nice as possible? As a salon owner, your priority is to make clients feel comfortable and cared for. A badly written CV might point towards a lack of motivation and perfection.

Secondly, look out for any job-hopping or gaps within a candidates CV. Without an explanation, this might point towards them having trouble integrating themselves within a salon culture or lack of motivation to work in general.


Warning signs during the interview

Once you’ve picked a few candidates you’re happy with, you want to invite them for an interview. The interviews go well and you hire new staff. However, a few weeks into the job, and you’re already regretting taking them on. Not only are they always late, but also are rude to your clients and can’t seem to get integrated with the team.

We advise you to carry out phone interviews before inviting them for an actual face-to face. This way, you’re not wasting your time on candidates who don’t really want to be there anyway. During a phone call, you can usually find out all the necessary things.


Interview Body language 

Experts say that it takes just 7 seconds to make that first impression. If a candidate sits unmotivated in front of you, can’t make eye contact and seems nervous around people then you might want to worry about it. In the end a salon is a customer facing business that will interact with people. A person who doesn’t seem confident enough around people will find it hard to work with clients on a daily basis. Moreover, clients themselves want to feel confident about choosing you, and it might reflect badly on your business if you have a nervous staff member with no customer service skills.


Late Comers 

Candidates who arrive late, without a call, text or any explanation should raise your suspicion. Interviews are important and it is unprofessional to arrive late for no reason. It might point to poorly time keeping once they’re employed, which will have a bad impact on your clients.

Unmotivated Behaviour

If they’re keen to work for you, they want to impress you. Therefore, a warning signal will be if a candidate seems to portray a lack of motivation towards the job and your salon. Has the candidate read the job description and know exactly what is asked of him/her? Have they looked up your salon on Facebook and on your website and know what services you offer? If they answer is no then I wouldn’t bother with theses types of people. 

Nor do they have any questions about the job itself, such as training and expectations.

These types of candidates are looking for a job but are not too bothered about the kind of job, as long as their monthly pay check is secure. 

As always, if you have any questions or would like to talk to one of our team members about this post then please feel free to get in contact with us, our number is 0113 350-8230.



Salon Tracker x

Your Sunday Night Regime to ensure you start the Working Week off well!

We all know the feeling - Monday-morning dread. We’ve all felt it at some point in time, the ‘I need 3 large lattes before I can function’ mode, whether this be when we were at uni, going through exams or starting the busy working week. (And if you haven’t ever felt it, then kudos to ya!)

Anyhow, if you’re feeling slumped first thing on a morning, this sometimes means that your day may not be as productive as it perhaps could be. But, having said that, just a few simple changes to your Sunday night routine, diet and sleep pattern can all have a huge impact on your mentality for the start of the working week. If this sounds like it may benefit you, read on…

If you have a busy weekend, packed with partying, trips out or physical activity, this can have a large strain on your body and so in order to re-energise, you need to ensure that you give your body that little bit of Sunday night TLC that it needs. Equally, if you do absolutely nothing one weekend (I’m talking the couch potato, slouched in front of the television watching endless box-sets and eating junk food kinda vibe) this can also have a negative effect on the start of your working week if you don’t snap out of sleep-mode beforehand. Of course, we all love a party. Equally we also all love a lounging day, however it’s all about everything in moderation and ensuring that we get back in to the motivational frame of mind ready to attack that Monday morning!

So, what are my recommendations? If you’ve had a couple of late nights Friday, Sat and had a pretty busy Sunday, you need to make sure that you relax for at least an hour or 2 on the Sunday night prior to going to sleep. Reason being, if you don’t unwind before going to bed, this can actually interfere with your sleep and be responsible for your restless night.

And by relaxing, this is not sitting on the couch scrolling endlessly through social media, as this can also affect your mind frame! We all know the Sunday afternoon ‘let’s compare ourselves to our Instagram idols’ social media kind of habit. Not only does this take up time where you should be focusing on yourself to uplift from the busy weekend, it can also affect your mind frame as you give yourself a hard time, stressing that ‘your hair’s not as nice as hers, you don’t have a thigh gap - and gosh, you better get squatting.’ This equally has a negative impact on your mind frame as you’re not giving your thoughts a break and then these feelings can again hinder your sleep and affect how you wake up in the morning.

Now you’re probably thinking, don’t sit on Instagram for 2 hours? Well what am I going to do? We all spend SO much time on social media, sometimes it’s actually quite refreshing to put the phone down and instead of focusing on lots of other people (that the majority of the time you don’t actually know in person), instead, use that time to focus on yourself.

Instead of worrying about what you don’t have, how about you make a list of achievements that you have gained over the last few months. From these achievements, work out how you got there and what helped you along the way. I recommend then that you keep these lists and then from this, write down a few things that you hope to achieve, or develop in the near future. Then, once every month or so, get out this little box to, number 1 - remind yourself of all the amazing things that you have done, and number 2 – to also see how far you have come with your development plans.

Next, get out your favourite pampering equipment. I’m talking bath bombs, body lotions, candles, oils – the works! Create a little home-spa and take an hour out to actually just relax and unwind from all the busy-ness, away from your phone and social networks. This will most probably feel like the longest hour of your life, and it will be a good-hour at that!

Next recommendation, READ! How many of you can honestly say that you have read a book, journal, paper magazine (none digital) in the last month? It’s important to occupy your mind with things other than work, how busy your weekend has been and social media comparing etc. By doing this, you instantly divulge in to whatever you’re reading and without realising, this relaxes your mind and gives you a bit of head-space.

A slightly silly one, but, next I recommend tidying. I’m not talking the big spring clean kind of clear out. But just a short, 10-minute flit-round your room, as honestly, waking up in a messy room on a Monday morning is the instant demotivator! Your get-ready space instantly lacks organisation, appearance, space, and trust me – this can contribute to a bad start to the week. Mess = stress, and then that dreaded feeling all day that you have to go home to an untidy room when you get home. Another little tip, surround yourself with things that make you smile and give you an instant mood lift. Flowers, pictures, photos – whatever it is that can just alter your home atmosphere. Oh  and make that bed too when you leave on a Monday morning, another instant gripe when you turn up home to find an un-made crumpled sleeping arrangement!

Alternatively, if you have had a complete chiller of a TV/films weekend, then before all of the above, I would recommend fresh-air. Fresh air is the ultimate healer and clean-space for thinking and clearing the mind. Plus, as we said if you’ve spent all day cooped up at home, this can interfere with your productivity as without realising, you enter a bit of an accidental lazy-mode and can lack motivation. A short walk to break up a lazy weekend is the perfect way to snap out of the lounging, and then this also gives you a reason to be worthy of a chill! Even if you’ve had a ridiculously busy weekend, a 5 minute stroll is always good for anybody, as even small exercise releases endorphin's to improve the mind-frame!

Now, this one is dependent on personal preference, but a 30-min exercise is excellent to strengthen the body and also to relieve the mind of any built-up stress from the previous week. Whether your exercise regime is a little session in the gym, a jog around the park, a swim at the baths, or it may be that you are in to a particular sport or you follow exercise videos? Whichever this may be, the national recommendation is to exercise at least 3 days per week for 30 minutes, just to ensure that your body remains active and to improve general health.

Diet. The dreaded word. But no, we’re not talking the Atkins, 5:2, and Paleo kind of FAD’s. We’re talking overall nutrition. We all know, the weekend is our bad-influence to eat carbs-overload, lots of sugar and often a few cocktails or 2. During this time, your body is neglected and deprived of many vitamins and minerals that are important to your daily function. It’s therefore important to make sure you replace these lost vits by eating healthy snacks and a super-food meal for dinner.

Your bedtime. And we literally mean the time. Often on a weekend you may find yourself going to bed after hours and running on 6 hours sleep. Great, it’s wonderful to be busy and to hit the party/social scene with friends, family and relatives. The old saying, work-hard, play-hard, is true. However, you do need to make sure that you re-boot and get enough sleep in order to make it through the week to the next weekend. When talking to people I've heard that the average sleep each human should have is 8-8 ½ hours per night. So, depending on when your Monday morning wake-up call is, make sure that you have lights out before 11, and we’d say try and make this 10 if you can. Just to make sure you get that much-needed rest that you require.

So, let’s recap…

Your new Sunday afternoon/night regime in short:

- Put down the mobile phone/tablet for at least an hour and stop comparing yourself to media ideals!

- Have lots of Healthy snacks and nutrient-rich foods

- Make a list of current achievements and plans for your development for the future     (review every few weeks!)

- Go for a little 5 minute stroll or 30 mins exercise (dependent on your kind of weekend)

- Create a mini home-spa

- Tidy and surround yourself with positive things

- Pamper yourself – (nails, hair/face mask, body butters, and candles)

- Chill & Read (Something other than social media)

- Lights out before 11pm

Really hope you’ve enjoyed this read, and be sure to let us know if you’ve tried any of our tips and if they work to help you feel extra-energised!


Salon Tracker x