Feeling unconfident? Try these tips for staying motivated at the salon

For salons and spas, every workday begins with a number of tasks needed to be fulfilled - checking stock levels, ordering necessary supplies, reviewing appointments for the day and planning any marketing activities. As your day picks up speed, you stay focused on keeping clients looking and feeling great - and then it hits you. You finish doing a customer’s hair, they instantly fall in love with it and applaud you for your work - you take a step back and look over the final result, only to feel disesteemed by it.

It may come as a surprise to most beauty specialists, but you are not alone when dealing with this issue. Experts from every corner of the hair and beauty industry run into this lack of self-confidence. This may result from a low level of self-esteem, envy towards other beauty specialists in your field and even self-competition. Instead of letting these factors bring you down, take back control and be proud of your work with the help of our tips!

Focus on the positive

Feeling a lack of satisfaction with one’s work does not occur overnight and low self-esteem may be a possible culprit. A drop in it could be caused by personal troubles or issues at the salon. All it takes is for a dissatisfied client or two who leave a negative review of your business to bring your confidence down. Although other clients love your work, you may not be able to notice this. Emotions, including negative ones, are contagious, and if your staff and customers see your dissatisfaction, over time they may start feeling uneasy.

Instead of allowing your low self-esteem to have you depreciate your work, fight it! Focus on what makes you the happiest - be it spending time with friends, traveling or binge watching a number of TV series. If needed, take some time off to clear your mind of negative vibes - this is perfect to help you to stay motivated at work! Most importantly - do not forget about your satisfied customers, and keep in mind that if you have a loyal customer base, then you must be doing something right! Rewarding customers for their loyalty is another great way to cheer yourself up as well. Your Booksy system lets you enable regular discounts and assign free amount vouchers to appreciate your most loyal regulars - your clients will rush to the salon, and their smiling faces will definitely warm your heart!

Be aspired and inspire!

Competition can be found on every street corner, and this, as a result, may make you feel claustrophobic, stressed and even envious at times. Salons and spas try to overshadow their rivals with low prices, complementary products and even one of a kind services - oftentimes, they succeed in making them feel less confident about their work, which eventually may lead to envy. Naturally, most salon staff look up their competition’s social media pages for inspiration and ideas, however, this may leave you feeling unconfident about your own work. Even though your clients are head over heels for your transformations, you have a mental image of your competition’s work that you constantly try to beat.

Envy blinds many stylists, beauticians and therapists from seeing their own successes, which is not the best way to motivate employees. Instead of having them compare their work to competition, have them enroll in additional courses, which will help them and you overcome uncertainties and improve credibility. Additionally, sharing work and following your industry’s influencers on social media pages is beneficial, and Instagram is perfect for this! Make sure to tag your posts appropriately and ask the community for any feedback and ideas on how you can make your work really stand out! Best of all, industry influencers, such as Guy Tang, may take notice of your work and like your photo - and there is no better confidence booster than that!

You vs. You

Self-competition helps you focus on achieving goals that you have set for yourself, instead of competing with someone else. Learning how to create the perfect fall themed balayage, mastering chrome nail polish application and any other number of new services is usually what you can expect to see from a self-competitive specialist. But what happens if you set the bar too high for yourself? You spend at least 2 hours working on full foil highlights for a customer, only to be displeased with the end result. You may begin to see issues that do not exist, such as the colors not being mixed well, not enough foils applied to the hair, or the level 10 looks more like a 9.75. This may cause stress on the typical perfectionist salon employee, who feels as though the bar is well out of their reach, resulting in a lack of confidence in themselves and their work.

If you have a staff member who is constantly battling with him or herself, giving them some time off would be recommended. Working under a significant amount of pressure negatively impacts your team, and coffee or lunch break will not always resolve this. Additionally, acknowledging your staff’s hard work is another great way of boosting confidence and bringing down self-competition to safer levels. In your Booksy account, follow staff work time reports and sales, and tag their referrals - the staff member with the highest number will receive an employee of the month award. They will love that you value their work, which will increase their confidence, while lowering their competitiveness.