Color Geek.... Numbers Geek...

So, as you can tell, I've been busy...busy enough not to post. I'm one of those anal retentive people who track their progress every month. It's something I picked up from my days in retail and constant report reading. I actually have a ledger that I keep track of everything in...how many clients, how many of them are new to the salon, how many request me, what they have done, how much everything cost, and how they tipped me (as in cash or credit, not lousy or great...Uncle Sam needs to know these things)..oh, yeah, how much they spent on retail, too. I actually keep track in a day planner, then transfer it to my ledger later on...because I can't remember diddly-squat!! I have last year's figures, I've made sales goals for myself, both in services and in retail, and track my progress. Then, I go into work, dig up the same information on the computer to see if everybody matches...it doesn't always...I miss writing things down, and ultimately go by what's entered into the computer. When I create my goals for next year, I take this year's amount, and add 10% to it. 10% seems like a lot, sometimes, but a double digit increase is always a good thing!!! Ginger doesn't know that I do this. It's not like it's a covert secret, or anything. I just haven't bothered to tell her. I like knowing what I did last year, what I'm supposed to be doing this year. It's helpful. Do I always make my goals?? No. What it points out to me (and I knew this already) is that I'm lousy at selling retail. I should be, since I have clients that tell me "I will make the effort to save the $5 do get the "good" shampoo at the grocery store!". I can't help myself, I cringe. I get where money comes into play. But, dear God in heaven...that stuff is full of WAX, silicone, and other various floor strippers. Sigh. It's an on-going battle that I don't always want to engage in. Truly, we need more samples to give out to clients so they can experience what good products do for their hair. The trick with that is Ginger won't spend the money. A separate battle. One of my other projects is making hair swatches and experimenting with color, both at home and at work. (Yes, I have Ginger's permission to do this). When we get a client who is cutting off a fair amount (3 inches or more) of hair, I swoop in, save it, bring it home, fire up the glue gun and make swatches to experiment on. For me, this is fun. When I was in school, we had a color project and needed to collect various types of hair: color treated, permed, various percentages of grey, virgin, that sort of thing. Then, we got to try all the various types of color (temporary, permanent, semi & demi, bleach) on these types of hair. For me, the color geek, this is fun. One of the things I did to collect the hair was purchase some on Ebay. There's a guy who owns a salon (isn't a hairdresser) who sells the hair. People buy it to make dolls with real hair, weaves, extensions, wigs, etc. Why am I telling you this?? Well, I contacted him the other day, asking if we could make a deal so I could score some more hair. Nice guy that he is, he's sending me hair, free. All I have to do is recommend him when I hear about people looking for hair to make doll wigs, etc. SUH-WEET!!!