Mastery and Mission; Mimosa Salon Suites and the path to love
douglas hauptman • October 27, 2024
Mastery and Mission; Mimosa Salon Suites and the path to love!
Mastery and Mission; Mimosa Salon Suites and the path to love!
Here is my chapter in the Best Selling book E-Myth Evolution!
I was talking to my chiropractor like he was my therapist.
As he twisted and cracked and released, I poured out my business woes. I was starting to buckle under the weight of my responsibilities, and it was all palpable, there in the back of my neck. He pounded on my shoulders. “You’re all locked up,” he said.
I had recently opened the doors on my most recent business venture: Mimosa Salon Suites. 10,000 square feet of office space in Conyers, Georgia that had been converted into individual salon suites to be rented by beauty professionals. The goal of the business was to provide a landing pad and a place to grow for lower income business owners, primarily black women, most of them in their mid-twenties to mid-forties.
Our occupancy was full, we were doing well and growing, but I was single-handedly managing every aspect of the business. It felt to me like everything in the company relied on me. When I tried to outsource it was ineffective, because no one seemed to care as much as I did or perform to my standards. I wasn’t sure what to do, but I knew if something didn’t change, I wouldn’t be able to sustain.
My chiropractor looked at me and my hiked-up shoulders, and he presented me with a gift. “Here,” he said. “Read this.”
He handed me his phone. On it was a book, Awakening the Entrepreneur Within: How Ordinary People Can Create Extraordinary Companies, by Michael Gerber.
I left his office, my back feeling much better, and ordered the book as soon as I returned home.
I should back up for a moment and tell you that I’ve always been an entrepreneur. I started at the age of seven, with a lemonade stand on the corner of 35th and MacArthur Boulevard in Oakland, California where I grew up. I chose 35th and MacArthur because it was on one of the busiest corners, across the street from a bus stop. Even at seven I knew a thing or two about supply and demand.
I grew up, and in my early adulthood I caught the wave of the technology boom of the 1980s. I ran a company that sold microprocessors and semiconductors to some of the biggest computer manufacturers of the day. It was good business, but not great for my soul, and was eventually pulled out from underneath me in a hostile takeover.
From there, I moved into marketing, and then to real estate which is where I germinated and eventually built the idea that became Mimosa Salon Suites. I was no beginner, and I’d done plenty of things right, but it wasn’t until I read Awakening that I realized how much I was still doing wrong.
I had built a business on my own faltering back. I hadn’t yet created the systems or innovations that would allow me to step out from under all the daily tasks and truly begin to grow.
I’ve always been a reader, and a self-taught man, so I began to implement Michael Gerber’s lessons immediately. E-Myth had changed my mind set in a single reading, but it was just the beginning of a larger shift. Like any transformative book or set of ideas, it was a catalyst rather than an endpoint. I went on the read E-Myth Mastery; The Seven Essential Disciplines for Building a World-Class Company, next. Others followed.
What I understood right away is that I would need to learn and become an expert in all the different areas of my business. The Seven Essential Disciplines became a blueprint for how I could begin to have true mastery over this thing that I was building. I did what I always do: I began. I put one foot in front of the other. The spirit that kept me hawking cups of lemonade when I was seven was the same spirit that I brought to growing my business:
“I’m not sure if this is going to work, but I’m going to give it a try.”
It’s the song of the self-made person. It doesn’t matter if you’re the smartest or the fastest, if you can stay the course and stick it out, even when things get tough, you’re going to go the distance. I dug in. I started studying and researching and learning. I read every other E-Myth book I could get my hands on, as well as many other books on the areas I needed to grow into. As I progressed, I found two key lessons to be the most pivotal in taking my business from one 10,000 square foot location to three locations making almost $1,000,000 a year in revenue.
Lesson One
I needed to have a mission far larger than the success of the business, and after working through the exercises in Part One of E-Myth Mastery I came up with our mission statement “One Million Square Feet of Hope!”
I’m no stranger to missions. When I was young and on the heady cutting-edge of personal computers, I tasted a kind of financial success I’d never known before. I had tens of millions of dollars in contracts, and I was living the high life, in every sense of the word. Though it had its thrills, there was an emptiness to what I was doing. I, and everyone around me, was motivated entirely by the almighty dollar. I was rich, but I wasn’t sleeping well at night.
I understood, without anyone ever telling me, that the road I was on might lead me to a vast fortune, but it wouldn’t take my soul anywhere but down. It was when I left that world, and started building websites as a contractor that the first seeds of mission were planted.
I still remember the church service I went to, just months before I started Mimosa Salon Suites. I was making in the high six-figures at the time, and the sermon was about how those of us with wealth needed to find ways to give back. It hit me hard. After leaving the world of big tech, I had encountered my spiritual self and developed a deeply personal relationship with God. I understood how much of the health and goodness of my current life was due to that union, so I took the sermon seriously: I was supposed to be a good steward, using what I’d been given to make the world a better place.
I sat in the pew and made the decision. I would find a way to do something sustainable, that would provide a service to people in the world who needed help and support. Reading E-Myth, all those many years later, reminded me of the importance of my original mission.
The goal of your business can’t be the profit. If it is, you’ll lose sight of what matters and quite possibly who you are and what you stand for.
The goal of your business must be the community you’ll serve, the changes you will bring, and the hearts you plan to set aflame.
I wasn’t just renting salon space; I was helping people become entrepreneurs. With that in mind, I began to focus on all the ways in which we could support our tenants so that if they wanted to, they could grow into business owners themselves. Today, every new tenant in any of our Salon Suites locations gets a free copy of Awakening the Entrepreneur Within. We’ve created online courses about business development that we offer free of charge to our tenants. Instead of trying to trap people in a lease, we have a seven-day cancellation policy. We also offer a three-week break from rent for maternity leave, one week for bereavement, and prorated rent for any kind of hospital stay. We’re one of the only in our industry with these kinds of policies in place.
If our mission was pure profit, we would act like ninety-nine percent of the other landlords out there and hold tenants captive until they finally managed to squeak out of their grasp. This kind of predatory practice, at its core, just isn’t good for business.
It turns out that being compassionate, and just doing the right thing, is.
The men and women who rent from us are fiercely independent and quite motivated. They’re sick of being gouged renting a chair at a larger salon, where they have no freedom, and no right to the profits of any products that they sell. They want something that they can call their own, and that’s what we provide for them. In most cases, when one of our tenants leave, it’s because they are starting their own salon or shop.
Most landlords hate the move out notice from a tenant, but for me it’s cause for celebration. Many of these people have become an extension of my family. I’ve coached them when they’ve asked, supported their aspirations in whatever way I can, and watching them walk out the door toward their own business venture fills me with pride. Not that I did any of it, mind you, it’s all their own drive and determination that got them there—but it always feels like an honor to have provided them with a place to start.
And, because our practices are built on compassionate, support, and growth; there’s always another tenant ready to fill their spot.
Lesson Two
Awakening will get your mind set in the right direction, and Mastery will set you on the path to growth. As I began to learn about all the disparate areas of the business, simultaneous to building our mission, it became clear that understanding the ins and outs of the business was the only way out of the trap of “doing it all myself.” I taught myself sales and marketing and operations. I learned the needs and pain points of our tenants. I figured out what was missing, and then found the people and processes to fill those gaps.
The results of this work were undeniable. We went from $200,000 in revenue to $950,000 in revenue over several years, maintaining a healthy fifty percent margin with the eighty-two units we run at 100% occupancy. Because of the systems now in place, we have our eye on big growth by way of franchising.
Because of my tech background, I understood that we had to leverage technology in every way we could to create systems and processes that work. For time and project management we use Basecamp. For surveys we use SurveyMonkey. For social media planning and scheduling we use Hootsuite. Most recently, we’ve begun adopting the AI strategies from AI marketing platform, deal.ai. You can’t have a true enterprise if you don’t have enterprise systems in place.
I also made sure that we had a built-in innovation loop in place. That means that innovation is an active, trackable part of the systems of the company. We aren’t just maintaining the status quo, we are constantly evolving so that at any given point in time, we are at least a step or two ahead of our peers and competitors. The COVID 19 pandemic was a great example of this. By February of 2020, I saw the writing on the wall. I was one of the first business owners in Atlanta to write the initial medical protocols for the pandemic. These later got woven into the state policy. I understood that it was our job to create an environment where people both felt safe and were safe. We accomplished it, and because of that planning and innovating, Mimosa Salon Suites were able to stay open throughout most of the entire pandemic.
These are just some of the ways in which building true mastery will help you survive. Very few businesses do. Creating a business plan that reflects your values and building your own deep understanding of your organization and its systems, will separate you as a survivor, rather than just another flash-in-the-pan.
As I learned and stretched, I documented every part of the business we were building. At this point, many years into this learning, I am confident that if I disappeared tomorrow my business could run successfully without me. That’s how ingrained and teachable every process is. I’ve also created a succession plan, and the youngest of my four children, my daughter Mali, is set to learn the business and one day take over. To my great pride and joy.
This groundwork also supports our next step, franchising Mimosa Salon Suites. My “One Million Square Feet of Hope,” dream is to see a Salon Suites in every city in the country—wherever there is need—so that aspiring salon owners can have a place to build their own future. I’ve seen the impact we’ve had on the community here in East Metro Atlanta, and I know the need is deep and far-reaching.
As we execute our franchise plan and wait for the ideal economic timing (another lesson of mastery), I’m busy growing and coaching. I’ve realized that I, as the face of the business, am an integral part of its continued success. A system of my own. So, I have prioritized my health and well-being, to grow right along with the business. I believe that by building my own brand, I can reach beyond my tenants and colleagues, to touch the hearts of other business owners and entrepreneurs. Especially those of my own generation. Because getting older doesn’t have to mean sitting in a chair on your porch, watching the world go by. Aging is not what it once was. I’m sixty-three years old, and I have no plans to slow down anytime soon.
Michael Gerber, now eighty-seven himself, often gets asked if he’s going to retire. His answer is always no. Why would he? If he’s taught us anything, it’s that when you’re building something great, living your dream, and aligned with a mission larger than yourself, there is no need to stop. If you’re lit up with what you’re doing, all you want to do is keep it going.
As I get older, my mission comes into even sharper focus.
I’m here to build bridges for aspiring entrepreneurs. I’m here to encourage and to coach and create opportunities. But more than anything, I’m here to love. To find grace and compassion and forgiveness wherever it lives.
So many of us look to our differences instead of what we have in common. Creating Mimosa Salon Suites has shown me how alike we all really are, and though I may not have known it at the time, it was love that motivated the creation of Mimosa Salon Suites from the very beginning, and love that will keep it going, growing, and innovating.
Once you find that—the love that powers your goals—then you know you’re on the right path.
Read more inspirational stories from 11 other entrepreneurs!
Thanks for reading.
Coach Doug's Blog
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