Hiring Your First Spa Manager

By the time you think you might be ready to hire your first spa manager, I guarantee you're already buried in the chaos of your spa business. The reality is (and I'm sure you realize it now) you should have been planning this next step much earlier because now the hiring process feels like a panic.

Panic never leads to great decision making.

To help get you back in the strategic spa business building game and to start you and your spa manager off on the most successful path, I'm sharing three leadership tips to make the decision to hire go smoothly.

Mistake #1 -  Not Having a Clear Job Description

Unclear expectations = unclear results. Period.

If you haven't written out a detailed job description for your Spa Manager, you're setting her up to fail right out of the gates. I'm surprised at how many spas don't have detailed job descriptions and rely on "we talked about it at the beginning but..."

Do a "brain dump" on a piece of paper for all the tasks you want your new Spa Manager to handle (hint: a great way to make this list is to think about all the stuff you dislike doing or don't have time for...I'm sure you'll have quite a list!) then tidy that list up into a clear job description to post in your help wanted ad and/or recruiting page on your website. This will weed out those who don't have the skills you need, give a transparent view of what will be expected from the candidates who qualify and starts everyone off on the right foot with proper documentation. It's always easier to handle issues or misunderstanding later on if you have documentation to fall back on.

Mistake #2 - Not Paying Enough

If you want to attract great talent to your spa business, your compensation needs to be in line with the caliber of skills you want for your Spa Manager.

Don't expect a seasoned esthetician with a full clientele to move into management if she can't make a pay check bigger than the one she has now. 

More responsibility should come with more pay. Period. 

What if you can't afford to pay a great salary? Then you're not ready to hire. You most likely have financial and operational issues that need cleaning up and organizing before you should hire a spa manager.

Mistake #3 - Not Enough Communication, Delegation or Collaboration

This is a hard one for most spa owners...because y'all are a bunch of control freaks! I include myself in this, however I do call myself a recovering control freak because I was a total stress case.

Taking the step to hire a spa manager means you don't have enough time or energy for your business to run effectively but ironically, many of you don't want to let go of the reigns when you can.

Committing to short weekly meetings, monthly debriefs, quarterly business analysis and yearly planning days are critical to the growth of your spa business. NOT organizing and staying accountable to these meetings means you're leaving money on the table, time is being wasted and you're still spinning your wheels as the owner.

These meeting are precious moments of time to communicate, delegate and collaborate on the how your company is performing and what you can both do to create change.

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