Episode 86Run Your Salon like an Accountantwith Amy Carter

Amy Carter is the owner of one of Indiana’s top salons, but she isn’t a beauty service provider. She is not licensed to do hair, nails or esthetics – but she has found success by approaching salon ownership from an accountant’s point of view.

Amy Carter is the Founder of Empowering You Consulting – helping salons and spas across the nation every day to expand their client base, increase profits, operate more efficiently, train a team of leaders, and gain personal satisfaction from their professional endeavors. Amy owns and operates Solaris Aveda Salon in Evansville Indiana, ranked in the top 200 fastest-growing salons by Salon Today. Solaris has been named as an Honoree in Salon Today 200 for the years 2018-2022. 

Amy knows what it takes to reinvent a business and train a leadership team that is invested in long-term success. This is the story of how Amy started her unlikely career – not as an accountant, but as an entrepreneur in the face of great difficulties. She has overcome obstacles like bad business partners, bankruptcy, a lack of systems and the merging of mindsets to create her business. These lessons are being featured on The Business of You to inspire us to rise above the impossible – and allow ourselves to grow.

A rough start in business

Amy’s story is a welcome reminder that great success sometimes begins with failure. 

After college, Amy longed to start a small business. With her degree in accounting, she bought a salon – realizing after the ink was dry that the business was bankrupt. She was panicked. Her business partner cleaned out the bank accounts, left the employees unpaid and skipped town overnight, leaving 22-year-old Amy to clean up the mess. She made the difficult decision to build a new building and reopen the business after receiving 24-hour notice to vacate the mall. 18 years later, the business is still open. 

Amy could have let that mistake dictate the rest of her life. But rather than being hard on herself, she humbled herself instead – committing to a lifelong journey learning to be better at business. 

Now, Amy understands what she missed the first time. As an accountant, she looked back through the books and the issues were clear. Realizing that they had been paying too much rent and the profit was so low, Amy vowed to approach her salon business like an accountant from now on.

Structure in an unstructured business

When Amy asked one of her employees to clock in and clock out, it felt as though she was asking for her first born child. Met with resistance while implementing systems and processes, Amy realized that she needed to learn to speak her employees’ language.

To Amy, structure and systems were like breathing. They felt normal and natural. But to her creative and relaxed staff, her rules felt like a prison. Amy had to change their tune. After explaining that the systems were in place to protect their legal rights, Amy felt exasperated. 

Finally, she had an aha moment. She motivated her employees to follow processes in order to free up their time, take on more clients, get paid more and receive payment on time with no issues. Her communication worked – and many of her previous employees still work with her to this day. 

Your business grows with you

When asked about her personal and professional growth, Amy laughs. She admits that she wasn’t the leader she is today, early in her business. 

Since Amy started her business at just 22 years old, she didn’t have the life experience to approach her employees with empathy and understanding. But now, she sings a different tune. She is nationally recognized as a leader of salon and spa owners, teaching them to think less like frazzled service providers and more like smart savvy entrepreneurs. 

Your personal growth will be reflected in your business. Enjoy this funny, frank and inspiring conversation on The Business of You!

Quotes

“I was like – if I’m going to do this type of business again, I’ve got to do it differently. And that’s when I hired a consulting company.”

“I had a personal mission that I wanted to have a debt-free company. Because to me, in a small business, when we have debt, it really does tie us in as owners. There’s not a lot of freedom. So for me, freedom and flexibility look like being completely debt-free.”

“It became about running it like a business, not as a job. A lot of times in the beauty industry, really, any service-based business, typically the owners are heavy technicians. Being a non-technician, I wasn’t constantly doing services. But you know what the tricky part of it was? How do you take beauty and business plus employees, and merge them together? It was really challenging, putting this structure in place so that they can thrive – because they were so resistant to it.”

“I realized that there were owners just like me that thought that their dream was the most amazing vision dream ever…turned straight up nightmare. Like, the math just doesn’t work in this industry.”

“I finally figured out some secret ingredients to get my employees to really be on board with it. Ultimately, those systems are for them. When I was able to figure out some of the secret sauces, so to speak, about this industry, I was like, I know those people are just like me. If I can support them in creating a life that they love and a business that they love and maybe a paycheck that they deserve, then we’re onto something!”

“It takes so much resilience to be able to not only have a brick and mortar, but then to learn how to have a remote company, have a remote team.”

“I’m only really good at this because I really sucked at it. I’ll be honest. I didn’t get here because it was easy. I didn’t take the easy path. I actually was an asshole. I couldn’t understand why people just wouldn’t just do their job. My businesses grew up with me. I took on a lot of personal development in my twenties, and then in my thirties, I really took on leadership development because that had to happen.”

Links mentioned in this episode:

Podcast Resources

Visit Amy’s website at http://www.empoweringyouconsulting.com 

Follow Amy on facebook at https://www.facebook.com/amy.laura.carter 

Connect directly with Amy on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/amycartereyc/

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