What goals are achievable and attainable for your business? What are the best tools to use to help you begin to set and stick to your goals? How do you maintain your goals throughout the year? Below, beauty platform creator and entrepreneur Dana Fountain (@msdana4hair) answers all these questions and more.
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It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the prospect of goal setting and creating resolutions for the new year.
What goals are achievable and attainable for your business? What are the best tools to use to help you begin to set and stick to your goals? How do you maintain your goals throughout the year? Below, beauty platform creator and entrepreneur Dana Fountain (@msdana4hair) answers all these questions and more.
Beauty Launchpad (BLP): What is your process for setting and creating business resolutions for the new year?
Dana Fountain (DF): I love doing goals and business forecasting every year. During Q4 (around this time of year), I start to wrap up all my data from the year and lay out my projections for next year. Then, I can make educated decisions on how the new year should differ from the year before. Watching growth and tracking it is so exciting to me. It’s empowering and really makes me feel like I’m in the driver seat instead of the back seat of my business.
BLP: What is some advice you have for stylists who are looking to start setting their business resolutions for the new year?
DF: Really get serious about bookkeeping and financial literacy. There are now more independent artists than ever, and many of them work and live out of the same pot. Really understanding profit, loss and what to pay yourself is crucial to being successful and reaching your career and revenue goals.
BLP: What advice do you have for making sure you stick to your resolutions throughout the year?
DF: Follow your financial forecasting model, and hold yourself accountable for the things you set out to do. If you say “I’m going to work 4 days a week and make XX amount of revenue a week,” you should know on a week to week basis where you are in reference to your goals. It’s an easy to follow road map if you sit down and do it or get help to do it!
BLP: What are some must-have tools/resources you recommend for stylists wanting to invest in maintaining their resolutions?
DF: Some kind of book keeping process. Whether you use a notebook and pen, a note in your phone, a spreadsheet, your booking apps tools or quickbooks, you have to keep track of your income to grow. Period. I use time blocking in my calendar to work on the other parts of my business when I’m not seeing clients. I use my iPhone calendar with multiple shared calendars linked to mine for appointments, meetings, to-do items that I want done each day and personal things like date nights, kids off of school days and dedicated family time. My calendar is really detailed, and it keeps me moving forward towards my goals. I use group chats in What’s App with my team to maintain a community chat, so we all feel supported and can share opportunities and gigs. I also love the app Microsoft To Do to keep track of tasks. I keep really organized notes in my notes app on my iPhone that is under all types of folders – That keeps my creativity growing, and I take notes every time I get an idea. For social media management, I use Planoly to map out my posts for all my social channels. Once a week, my assistant and I sit down to source content, write captions and organize my feed along with a calendar to align with the events we have coming up! It also tells you what time of day to post according to your audience! Lastly, a great mentor or coach that you can check in with from time to time to hold you accountable and also be able to strategize your growth! I have both!
