14 posts

Running a service business better.

Scheduling, capacity, pricing and the cost of software — written for the businesses your customers come to, not for enterprise buyers.

Massage therapy

The 90-minute problem: what a mis-timed massage schedule actually costs

A massage calendar that treats every service as the same length quietly loses a full session a day. Here is the arithmetic, and what to change.

Hair salon

Processing time and the myth of the fully booked salon

A salon can be fully booked on paper and half idle in practice. The culprit is usually color processing time, and how the calendar models it.

Nail salon

Walk-ins are not chaos. They are capacity you cannot see.

Most nail salons treat walk-ins as interruptions to the appointment book. Modelled properly they are the most profitable hour of the day.

Day spa

Why spa packages break schedules, and how to book them as one sequence

A spa package is several services, rooms and providers that must line up back to back. Booked one appointment at a time, it usually does not.

Auto repair

The repair order is the bottleneck, not the bay

Most shops think they are constrained by lifts. Usually they are constrained by how long it takes to get an estimate approved.

Auto detailing

Stop pricing detailing by the hour. Start pricing it by the vehicle.

Hourly detailing pricing punishes speed and misprices large vehicles. Package-and-size pricing fixes both, and fixes the schedule too.

Personal training

The session block problem: where trainers quietly lose money

Training is sold in blocks and delivered one hour at a time. The gap between those two facts is where the margin goes.

Yoga studio

Class capacity and passes: the two numbers studios get wrong

A studio sells places in a room. Get capacity and pass balances wrong and you either turn away money or give it away.

Photography

The deposit is the booking

A date held without a deposit is not a booking, it is a hope. For photographers this is the single highest-leverage change available.

Pet grooming

Book by the dog, not by the hour

A double-coated large breed and a puppy trim are not the same appointment. Grooming schedules that pretend otherwise run two hours late by noon.

The cost of software

Running the business

The back office is the real bottleneck: the case for part-time and gig bookkeeping

Most small service businesses do not need a full-time bookkeeper. They need eight competent hours a week, and the market for that is finally forming.

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