Stag: F*%ked up… but fixed it!
As part of our ‘F*%ked up… but fixed it!’ series here on the HUB, we’re asking salon and barber shop owners to get real with us about a mistake they’ve made in their business and the steps they took to secure a solution. This month we got the lowdown from Murray McRae and Bridget Honan, owners of the award-winning salon, Stag in Edinburgh – this is what they had to share with us…
THE F*%K-UP
We have made a lot of mistakes, but the one that sticks out in my mind is when we almost bankrupted the business by attempting to buy a premises that was way too big, way too soon! There was a commercial premises that came up on the market close to our first shop. It was ridiculously big and fire damaged, so it needed a lot of work and money put into it. We were blinded by a couple of things, but one of the main ones was that we knew a competitor was looking at it too. We went quite far down the line of purchasing it, but fortunately around the same time we decided to try out using a business coach. The coach essentially said if we went through with this, he wouldn’t work with us because it was such a stupid decision, and we were definitely going to lose our business.
THE FIX
We learnt a lot out of that experience. Firstly, focus on your own thing and ignore what your competitors are doing; they’re kind of irrelevant and you have the best knowledge of your exact situation. Secondly, when looking for units, imagine your perfect premises –what does it look like, what neighbourhood is it in, is it south facing, how big are the windows, what’s the square footage, etc? Then, go and find that unit. Don’t make your dreams fit into a shop, find a shop that fits your dreams. Finally, this almost massive mistake led us to working with a business coach, which completely changed the way we saw our business and helped us so much in the long term.