Cleo Vane
Practical analysis for salon owners who want a healthier business, a clearer operation and fewer expensive guesses.
You are standing at the front desk on a Tuesday morning with the appointment book open, looking at a 22% rebooking rate and a stylist who has run fifteen minutes behind on every client since August.
Read articleEvery salon owner has the daydream. You hand over the keys on a Friday evening, tell the team you will see them in thirty days, and drive away toward an uninterrupted beach where nobody asks you where the extra foils are kept.
Read articleShe is holding her purse against her ribs with one elbow, her card is hovering two inches above the terminal, and her eyes have locked onto line four of the itemized receipt.
Read articleIt usually starts on a Sunday night with a direct message. A blurry bathroom selfie taken in fluorescent vanity light: banded orange roots, murky olivebrown midlengths, and jetblack ends that look suspiciously solid.
Read articleWalking a prospective commercial space with a broker is a masterclass in distraction. He will point out the exposed brick, the high ceilings, and the floortoceiling storefront windows that let in all that lovely afternoon sun.
Read articleIt is 3:30 on a Saturday in midDecember. The salon floor sounds like an airport runway: four blow dryers screaming on high, the backbar smelling like bleach and warm shampoo, foils rustling at station three, and the frontdesk phone chirping for the ninth time in twenty minutes.
Read articleAt 8:45 on a Saturday morning, your appointment book is solid through 6:00 PM. Six stylists, full doublebookings, toners timed down to the minute, and wash basins cycling every quarter hour.
Read articleFriday morning, 6:45 AM. The phone on your nightstand buzzes with a booking app notification.
Read articleBack in 2004, I paid an attorney twelve hundred dollars to draft what I thought was an ironclad employment agreement.
Read articleIt is 2:30 on a Saturday. Every chair is full, the backbar smells like developer and warm shampoo, and your top colorist sets down a pair of fivehundreddollar shears, looks at her right hand like it belongs to a stranger, and shakes it out.
Read articleIt is 4:15 on a Saturday afternoon, and you are on your fourth bowl of lightener.
Read articleFriday at 6:45 PM. The last blowout walks out into the evening, the smell of 20volume developer and Barbicide is hanging in the air, and you're standing in front of eight heavy hydraulic styling chairs bolted to the floorboards.
Read articleYou are sitting in your parked car outside a vacant storefront with a fortypage commercial lease balanced on the steering wheel, sweating through your collar. You have a yellow highlighter in your hand, and you keep circling the same number on page three: $34 per square foot.
Read articleYou are standing by the front desk with a clipboard or an iPad, looking at the empty stations in the halflight.
Read articleYou know the moment. A client opens the front door, the chime rings, and whoever is standing behind the reception desk immediately develops a profound, urgent fascination with their screen.
Read articleWhen an owner tells me they want to open a second location, the reason is almost always the same: Saturday is jammed, the waitlist is three weeks out, and the checking account looks healthy for the first time in five years. It feels like momentum.
Read articleIt is 9:15 on a Wednesday morning, you are halfway through mixing twentyfive grams of 6N with twentyvolume developer in the back dispensary, and your phone starts vibrating against your thigh like an angry wasp.
Read articleEvery salon owner knows that specific cold drop in the stomach around 4:45 on a Saturday afternoon.
Read articleIt's 9:30 on a Sunday night. You're looking at the digital book for Tuesday morning, and there is the name.
Read articleIf you open your salon software on a Monday morning, it will probably tell you everything is fine.
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