If you’re a barber or stylist, are you analyzing your mid-year numbers? Meaning, are you evaluating the health of your business? Do you know how well you are doing? From January 1^st through July 1^st, this marks the half -way point of every year. So July 1^st is the best time to calculate and look at your mid-year numbers to see if you’re doing well, not as expected or exceeding expectations.

Year to Date Revenue

One thing to note is that barbers tend to have different business ebbs and flows than stylists. If you’re a barber, it’s realistic to expect that your year-to-date (YTD) revenue is 50% of your total year revenue. This is because barber businesses tend to be more consistent throughout the year.

However, if you’re a stylist, it is likely that the first half of the year revenue is less than 50% of your total year revenue because a bulk of your business comes in the second half of the year due to back-to-school and the holiday season. But it could also be that you’re busy in the first half of the year due to wedding season. So depending on what you specialize in, whether it’s hair color, wedding hair or just everyday hair your revenue throughout the year is different from other stylists.

Now that you’ve calculated your first half of the year revenue, double that number. Does that number look good to you? This is what you would potentially make for the year. For barbers, this should be a relatively accurate evaluation. And for stylists, adjust that number according to your busy times of the year. If you’re not happy with this number it’s time to start thinking of what you need to do to get those numbers up.

Rate of Occupancy

The other way to evaluate the health of your business is to calculate your rate of occupancy (ROO). This is the total capacity/total number of haircuts you did.

So for example, if you can do 2 haircuts/hour, work 10 hours/day and 5 days/week that means you do 100 haircuts/week. If you actually did 75 haircuts, your rate of occupancy is 75%.

Another example, if you can do 2 haircuts/hour, work 8 hours/day and 5 days/week that’s 80 haircuts/week. If you actually did 60 haircuts, your rate of occupancy is 75%.

You can calculate your ROO for any given week. So to analyze your most recent numbers, calculate your ROO for each of the last 6 weeks. Then add them up and divide by 6. This will give you an average ROO. This is a true and accurate representation of the health of your business.

For comparative purposes, do this for the last 6 weeks of the year or at any time of the year and it will give you real time data. The goal is to always increase your ROO because the more you are occupied, the more money you are making and the more in-demand you are.

Retail

The third part of evaluating the health of your business is retail dollars. If you’re not selling product, then this doesn’t apply to you. But if you are, look at the revenue coming in from retail sales. If your retail dollars are growing, this is a good sign of having a higher revenue for the remainder of the year. However, if it’s declining, then you will need to take a look at how to increase it. Of course, evaluate your busy seasons and take that into consideration.

Evaluating your mid-year numbers is important to get a pulse of your business. Keep a running record of your revenue, ROO and retail revenue from year to year. Then, you can evaluate these numbers on an even larger scale to see where you’re headed. You can watch a video featuring Ivan Zoot as he discusses this topic. Watch here.