 Hi, I'm Lori Pallant, founder and CEO of Simply Be Organized. I'm here to share with you on freesaloneducation.com my five tips for an organized salon. So one of the first things that I would recommend would be to color code. I'm a big color coder with all of my clients and I think if you color code calendars by your stylists or by your treatments, it helps to look at everything in a bird's eye view. I remember one of the first times I came into the salon several years ago. I looked up on that, used to have a whiteboard and he had a bunch of different stylists on with all their different appointments on throughout the day and I just asked as an occupational hazard, well, what's the methodology behind the color coding? And my stylist at times just said, well, whatever dry erase marker we pick up at the time is what we fill in. And I said, well, wouldn't it make more sense to just designate a specific color for each stylist that way you could just know that you come in and everybody that's marked up in blue is stylist A and everyone that's red is stylist B. And it seems pretty simple and it really truly is but it's something that a lot of people overlook. And just to be able to kind of group your stuff by category is helpful to you as a stylist and also as a salon owner to see who's busy, who's not busy, where we have gaps throughout the day. So I think it's a real quick, easy and inexpensive fix to help streamline and make your space more organized. Another tip that I think is really helpful which hopefully a lot of you do already is to schedule your clients that have their next visit before they leave the salon. This serves two purposes. Obviously from keeping your book fall moving forward is very important as any business owner knows but it also helps to keep people on a schedule and a routine and as an organizer my life is based on routine. So knowing that a month from now or six weeks from now I already have my appointment booked in the calendar makes my life as a customer easy and it also makes your life as a business owner much less hectic than you don't feel reactive and you're more in a proactive position to get business in on an ongoing basis. In terms of the product side and the back end of the business I think having an organized space to function when you're busy is critical and so I think your mission control whether it's your color bar or in the back in your storage area you wanna corral all of your items when bins and label them. Obviously I'm a big fan of labeling things you can label them just with regular labels or by color coding again in terms of shampoo, color products, conditioners, what have you but to use inexpensive easy to use, easy to clean storage bins is helpful to just keep all of your items together and a lot of the smaller tubes that you have whether they're samples or just smaller color tubes I recommend using smaller bins so that they don't get lost in an abyss a lot of times people think bigger is better that's not always the case. If you find a small clear like a loose site bin that's almost no bigger than a shoe box and you can put those little small sample tubes in there it makes it a lot easier to dig through and find them and then also it's easier when you need to check like expiration dates of things as you cycle them in and out it just makes it much easier for you to stay efficient. In terms of maximizing space I think that that's really important for a salon when somebody walks into the space they want to feel calm and open and so making use of as much vertical wall space as possible is really key and you can even make use of the ceilings I know Matt's done a great job with his dryers coming suspended down from the ceiling but anytime that you can use any type of a bar to hold different types of tools or even in the back you can use for brooms that you're constantly using anything to get it off the floor and have your floor space easy to sweep and clean is really important and there's a lot of inexpensive different apparatus that you can use that don't have to cost a fortune or be difficult to install. So just keep that in mind if you're looking for storage for your salon or furniture for your salon I would definitely look to have stuff that has multi-purpose so if you're looking for a bench for as a seating area for example I would find something with storage underneath either a couple of drawers or pullouts where you can store extra products for your clients or extra supplies I'm just really again maximizing the most of your space because you want to keep it as clean and open looking as possible just to give you that visual feeling of calm and then finally I think a great thing and this is really beneficial with the holidays coming up is to put together gift baskets and it can work all year round but I think storage is a really big issue for people at home of what to do with their products and I think a lot of products get lost and as a salon owner you want your clients to invest in good products because you believe in them and I think that they should be used and not get lost jumbled in their own mix of their bathroom or whatnot so I think if you as a salon owner can take the guest workout and put together a gift basket in something that the people can come home and repurpose the storage container in their own home it makes it really user friendly for them and they don't have to think about it and I think what you want to do is really think of yourself more than just a service business but as a solution based business and you're providing a solution for your clients they're stressed out you want them to feel their best and you don't want them to have to spend two hours at home but if you can put together a kit of products for them that's going to be able to enable them to make themselves look and feel good in 30 minutes who wouldn't invest in that and I think it's a way for you to obviously you know add revenue to your salon and also provide a really viable solution to your clients that will keep them coming back so those are five tips that I think that you can use in your own salon and also in your life to try to help make your day more organized and hopefully more productive I hope you found these tips useful for more organizing tips visit my website at www.simplytheletterborganized.com or like us on Facebook at Simply Be Organized thanks so much and happy organizing