Resilience is a skill that all salon owners must master to survive the COVID-19 pandemic, explains business consultant Liz McKeon

Resilience is our ability to adapt and bounce back when things don’t go as planned. Resilient people acknowledge the situation, learn from their mistakes and then move forward, rather than wallowing or dwelling on failures. Resilience is the key to your business surviving during and following the COVID-19 pandemic. There are three elements that are essential to resilience.

1. Challenge: People who have a high level of resilience will see a difficulty as a challenge, preferring to see their failures and mistakes as lessons to be learned, which leads to opportunities for further growth. 

2. Commitment: Resilient people are committed to achieving their salon business goals and enjoying the entire scope of their lives. They commit to business, hobbies, friends and family – everything they care about. 

3. (Personal) Control: Resilient people recognise the benefits of spending their time and energy focusing on situations and events that they have control over. They tend to feel empowered and confident because they put their efforts where they expect to get the best results and outcomes. Whereas, those with little resilience are more inclined to spend time worrying about events they perceive not to have any control over and end up feeling lost and powerless. Subsequently, taking any action to improve a situation seems pointless.

To improve resilience, learning to change thought patterns is vital. How we look at adversity and stressful situations really does affect how we succeed. This is the number one reason that developing a resilient mindset is so important for business success. Running a successful salon business means dealing with challenges on a daily basis.

1. Learn to relax.
2. Practice feeling optimistic and having positive thoughts on a daily basis.
3. Consciously change the way you think about negative experiences.
4. Take the lessons from mistakes and failures.
5. Your reaction is always up to you: Be proactive about your goals and choose your responses.
6. Avoid blowing events out of proportion and maintain perspective.
7. Align your values with your salon goals.
8. Be flexible and understand that things change and even the best made plans may need to be shelved.

Resilient people, no matter what the setback, never see themselves as victims. Instead, they have a positive outlook for the future and a desire to achieve clearly defined salon goals.

Resilient people remain empathetic to their peers without wasting time worrying about what others think about them and this is the recipe for salon business success.

Interestingly, how we explain setbacks to ourselves is also important for building resilience. For example, start to see the effects of disappointing events as temporary and not permanent. You should also stop blaming yourself when things go wrong. Instead, start to see circumstances or other people as the cause. Try not to let failures and setbacks affect unrelated areas of your life.

Failing and making mistakes is an inevitable part of being a salon business owner. Being resilient will allow you to bounce back, learn from the lessons and move on to bigger and better experiences. In other words, resilience will give you the power to overcome setbacks.

Liz McKeon is a business coach who specialises in the hair industry. For details about business seminars and industry workshops go to www.lizmckeon.com.