The Daly Coach is all about sharing the GOOD NEWS in franchising. And my longtime friend and colleague Heather McPherson, Brand Director of Look Good Brands, joined me to share all sorts of good news about how the Deka Lash brand pivoted, grew, and positioned themselves for massive success… all during the 2020 pandemic.
Heather shares candidly about Deka Lash’s response in the early days of Covid-19:
“We’re in the lash and brow space, but we are much more of a technology company that meets beauty. And what I mean by that: collectively, we were closed for about six weeks across the system, and then it depended upon the state, the municipality, the counties… But those franchise owners were like, “Well, what do I do?” We put together a playbook to support our owners. Here’s exactly how you close if you have to. Here’s exactly how you open. And here’s a wonderful marketing rollout to let people know, ‘hey, come on! We’re ready. We’re coming back!’ It was really about supporting our owners. We’re very much a founder-driven organization, so we lifted up and hugged our people and got them PPP loans and forgiveness on their locations. But when it was time, we rolled out our very first app. It has an AI feature, chat features… It literally checks you into the studio when you drive up. Touchless entry. That turned out to be a real big deal!”
Some people think that beauty brands are only owned by women. Heather busts the myth:
“I get a lot of gentlemen that are our candidates and they are, like, ‘I didn’t wake up wanting to own a lash business!’ We always laugh because, the thing is, you take the widget out… every man knows a woman, a wife, a sister, an aunt, and they see how much money we spend on all this stuff. And then we say, ‘Oh, by the way, we have all the systems and processes where you can see everything from afar. It’s a measurable membership model.’ And they’re like, ‘Ohhhhhh…..’
We do have a lot of power couples. And normally one or the other is still working. And the other one’s kind of managing the studio, managing their team. But it’s not always husbands and wives–we’ve got two guys that are finance guys and they wanted to diversify their portfolio. They CRUSH it. I love those guys.”
On what she’s most proud that Deka Lash accomplished in 2020:
“I think it’s the fact that innovation never stopped, we didn’t stop innovating. While we were loving on our people and caring for them, not charging royalties, giving them those hugs, we were all working on our new product rollouts, new service rollouts, technology. We started building AI in 2020. They kept the eyes on the prize and then coming into 2021 they’re like, ‘How can we love on our people more? Oh here’s an idea! How about we have our employees get a benefit per quarter as we watch the average unit volume increase and increase and increase.’ So they put benchmarks out there. Q1? Crushed it. Employees got a little bonus! Q2? Killed those numbers, too! We’ve made more in this business than we ever have in our short four and a half, almost five years. And it continues to grow. I think that’s the perfect connection. It’s like win/win. Love on your people. Everybody wins! I’m so proud.”
The Daly Coach frequently talks about the secrets to a successful validation process, and Heather corroborates based on her experience:
“Isn’t it true that those that trust the franchisor from the very beginning see the results so much faster than those might question all the time? But the other thing that I recognize, [at Deka Lash], those top third, they’re transparent. They’re joining a relationship, building a relationship of trust and understanding that the franchisor has already been there, done that. You gotta be vulnerable, right? You have to be willing to tell the franchisor, ‘Okay, I’m really good at this, I’m not so good at that,’ so you can work together to be successful. I think it’s that transparency.”
Would you like a personal introduction to Heather McPherson to learn more about Deka Lash and the other Look Good Brands? I’d be honored to make that connection for you. Please e-mail me directly using the contact link below, or leave a question or comment.
And if you got some great information and insight from this conversation with Heather McPherson, please like the video and subscribe to my channel!