What do I stress about, as a business owner? Well, lots of stuff actually. I stress about whether or not we are busy on any given day, I stress if my staff is perturbed for some reason, I stress about whether or not I will be able to open another location in 2009, I stress about the font on our business cards, the growth of the foliage in the front of the shop, the minute accumulation of dust on the display shelves…well, you get the idea. I stress about it all. But what I really stress about, what really causes me to lose sleep at night, is what our clients think about the Urban Waxx experience. Do they love us? Are we living up to our motto, “It’s the best wax you’ll ever have. Seriously.” Those are pretty high standards to aspire to. Are we doing what I set out to do one year ago?
Unfortunately, there are times when a client will leave us and not be 100% thrilled over the moon pumped about us. That sucks. Plain and simple. It’s awful. As a business owner, the worst thing for me is to think that a client has walked into
Urban Waxx, had a service, paid good money, and then walked out without being completely in love with us. Call me delusional, but that is what I expect. Anything less, to me, feels like a failure.
As a public entity, we are, of course, up for public scrutiny. We open ourselves up to feedback, both good and bad. Which is why online review websites, like
Citysearch and
Yelp are so incredibly powerful. I know firsthand how many people walk through our doors because of what people say on these websites. When we receive glowing reviews, it feels amazing. It is an incredible validation of what we try to do every day. But when we receive reviews where a client is unhappy, well, it’s traumatizing. Am I being melodramatic? Well, maybe. But it does feel bad.
I suppose Urban Waxx is filled with pleasers. My team, whom I love deeply and feel fiercely protective of, all want nothing more than to come in, have some laughs, give fabulous services, and share the love. We all take what we do so seriously, so when we feel that someone is unhappy, even on a small scale, it seems shocking. But I feel, as an Esthetician and as the owner, that any criticism that we receive is constructive. So often in life, when people are dissatisfied in something, they won’t address it directly. Instead, they will tell 100 friends and never patronize that particular establishment again. We depend on our client’s satisfaction. If we have no clients, then we have no Urban Waxx. I am grateful for that every day. Ideally, an unhappy client will let us know they are not satisfied before they leave the shop, so we can fix the problem tout suite. But, that usually isn’t the case.
That is why we value reviews so much. The fact that our clients take the time to sit down and write about their experience with us, whether good, bad or indifferent, is really a gift. Those reviews let us know what we are doing great, and what we need to work on.
It doesn’t mean I’m not going to stress about them, though! I’ll always stress!
