Battle Of Puebla

Cinco de Mayo (Spanish for “fifth of May”) is a celebration held on May 5. It is celebrated nationwide in the United States and regionally in Mexico, primarily in the state of Puebla,^[1][2][3][4] where the holiday is called El Día de la Batalla de Puebla (English: The Day of the Battle of Puebla).^[5][6][7] The date is observed in the United States as a celebration of Mexican heritage and pride,^[8] and to commemorate the cause of freedom and democracy during the first years of the American Civil War.^[9][10] In the state of Puebla, the date is observed to commemorate the Mexican army‘s unlikely victory over French forces at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862, under the leadership of General Ignacio Zaragoza Seguín.^[2][11] Contrary to widespread popular belief, Cinco de Mayo is not Mexico’s Independence Day—the most important national patriotic holiday in Mexico—which is actually celebrated on September 16.^[2][12]

Source:  Wikipedia

But what the blog and I have failed to do is tell you more about the two men who make it all possible: Chris Murphy and Javier Herrera.

First, I think I should warn you: if you’re looking for juicy gossip or drama, you won’t find it here. Sorry. Second, I think you should also know that I am no longer an active employee of MFX (though it still feels like it most of the time, as you can probably tell since I can’t seem to shake that “we” mentality). Previously, I worked as Guest Care Coordinator at the Circle C location, but left on excellent terms to pursue other areas of my “career” (if I’m even able to call it that yet!). I’m still fortunate enough to contribute to the blog though. This is important for you to know, because you can take what I’m about to say for exactly what it is: honest and without strings.

And the truth is that I have never met two people who are more perfect to own and operate a business together. Professionally speaking, they make a great team; where one may have weakness, the other has strength. Chris spends a lot of his time with Guest Care and Management focusing on client care, marketing and business coordination. Javier spends much of his time with the stylist team, helping them to harness and improve their skills in order to ensure that they are not only providing excellent services, but also a comfortable and enjoyable client experience.

Chris is infectious. His energy and passion for the salon, its clients and his team is literally contagious. I dare you to try to be in a bad mood when he’s around. It won’t work. He’s always got ideas and ways of how to elevate the salon and its team to the next level, and he provides the encouragement it takes to get there.

Javier is hilarious. A little shy, but once he gets you laughing, you won’t stop. More than funny, he’s talented. He really knows what he’s talking about. And he’s not one to keep a secret to himself – he shares all of his tips with his team members, making each stylist the best they can be, professionally and individually.

Next time you’re in the salon, see for yourself. See Chris as he interacts with other clients. Watch when Javier provides support for the stylists. It won’t take you long to understand how the culture of MFX is a direct result of their efforts and passion. And you’ll understand that even though they might not get the recognition and blog-space that they deserve, we wouldn’t get very far without them!

Chris, left, and Javier, right (with our beautiful Aveda rep. Dina in the center) all decked out at our Oscars Themed holiday party.

1. Staff turnover was high, very high.
2. We barely had any operational systems.
3. Everything we did was inconsistent – Training, Service, Staff Competencies, you name it. (Go to Yelp! and look at our reviews back in 2006 and compare to reviews from 2008 going forward. We were all over the place.)
4. Centralized control with little staff empowerment and engagement.
5. Team members (including leadership) pulling the company in different directions by hidden agendas, etc..
6. Lack of team engagement and motivation.

As the company continued to grow, everything was changing.  It was a different time for the company.  What worked when we were a smaller company, just didn’t work anymore.  Not only did we have challenges in just one location, but now two!  And then there was the physical separation between team members working in two different locations.  Over time, we cleaned up our systems, we focused on our training program, and improved communication between locations and amongst team members.  But still, we were missing something.  Something just wasn’t right.  It didn’t feel right.

Being a Zappos fan, well, I should say a Zappos fan and a Tony Hsieh fan, I happened to notice somewhere (either on his blog or on the Zappos site) that he was a fan of this book called Tribal Leadership.  Understanding that Zappos had built their incredibly successful organization around culture, values and purpose, I decided to buy the book and read it.  Even at that point, I still didn’t realize that our culture was our biggest problem.  Then, after I finished the first chapter, it hit me.  I realized that this was what we were missing at Maximum FX. That something that just wasn’t right?  That something that didn’t feel right?  That was our culture speaking to us. While we needed to do all of those other things to improve the organization, it was crystal clear to me and Javier that the one thing that we needed most, was a better company culture.  Talk about an enlightening experience.  To this day, I still confess that reading Tribal Leadership is the only book that has made me physically sick to my stomach.  After learning about the different stages of culture and the descriptions of each, I couldn’t help but think to myself, that’s us, that’s Maximum FX.

Immediately, we began to formulate a strategy and focus to build a better culture.  It wasn’t easy (it still isn’t). In fact, it was very painful both emotionally and financially, but today looking back over the last three years, it was worth it.  Both Javier and I agree that the shift in our  culture literally carried us through the recession while other salons and spas in town went out of business. Here’s what we did.  I have pictures to prove it!

Without going into much detail about the philosophy of Tribal Leadership, let’s just say that much of the book is written around understanding the different stages of culture, the need for shared-values and company purpose.  At this time we didn’t have any company values really to speak of and we certainly didn’t have a company purpose.

1) We decided to close the company for an entire day and bring both teams from each location under one roof for a “company summit”. We did this on a Wednesday.  It was super expensive to do, but worth it.  Can you really put a price on your company culture?

2) We spent the entire day identifying our shared-values.  Yes, it took the entire day.  We could have probably taken two days to do this. One of the important elements of Tribal Leadership is this idea of shared-values.  Finding out what values are important to each individual team member and then learning which of those values overlap or is shared by other team members is key.  It’s those values that are shared that eventually make up your core values. The advantage is that once you understand your team’s shared values, you can better manage problems, individuals, issues and make decisions that are in alignment with the entire team’s core value system.  Sounds airy-fairy, but it works.  I promise you it does.

We took the team through a simple exercise, asking each of them to write a list of answers to this one question, “What’s important to you?”.  It could have been something important to them at work, or outside of work.  We were interested in knowing their answers because behind the answers lay the values that were most important to them.  For example, if someone said money, then that most likely meant that Financial Security was important to them.  If someone said, family, then Relationships were important to them.  If someone said, education, then Learning was important to them.

We narrowed our list of shared values down to ten and these are what we came up with:

Learning
Trust
Teamwork
Success
Creativity
Fun
Happiness
Relationships
Flexibility
Service

After we came up with our list, we split into smaller groups and asked them to expand on each of the values by writing a description next to each explaining why we believe these to be our shared values.  After they did this, we brought everyone back together.  One by one, we put each value up on an overhead projector along with the description, and together the group changed and modified each value description until we got it just right.  Here’s what we came up with:

Learning – We believe through constant learning we gain inspiration and excitement which promotes confidence and growth. Education keeps us moving forward to success.
Trust – We believe trust in our company builds secure relationships within our team and our guests. Trust promotes ownership, accountability, stability, confidence and happiness.
Teamwork – We believe teamwork is a united effort supporting individual strengths while achieving group goals.
Success – We believe success is growing personally and professionally in a positive environment.
Creativity – We believe creativity fosters our passion and individuality; continuously inspiring ourselves and others.
Fun – We believe in having humor, laughter and fun in our daily work.
Happiness – We believe that happiness is bringing joy, harmony, and compassion to our personal and professional lives.
Relationships – We believe that relationships are built on respect and trust, allowing for a loyal support system and a sense of family.
Flexibility – We believe that flexibility is vital to the needs of our guests and our team, fostering an environment of caring and understanding.
Service – We believe that “above and beyond” service builds strong relationships and a connection with our guests. It creates a caring atmosphere and gives us the opportunity to make someone’s day.

One thing that is important to note is that this exercise must be done as a team. An owner or manager can’t simply come up with a list of values and expect the team to live by them. Culture just doesn’t work that way. If you want your team to live the company values, they MUST come up with them together, with you.

3) The last thing we did was identify our company purpose. We asked the team to answer this question, “Why does Maximum FX exist? In service of what?”. We went around and around, including deep philosophical and profound reasons until we all decided on something quite simple and straightforward. After about two hours of deliberating we came up with our company purpose and here it is:

“Make Everyone’s Day”

That’s it!  We all agreed that not only making our clients’ day was our purpose, but also making each other’s day as well. We do this each day by helping each other every day.  It could be collaborating on a project together or something as simple as shampooing a guest to help a team member stay on schedule.  Whatever the reason, we always remind each other to make someone’s day.

After our one-day company summit, we slowly began to shift our culture by holding each other accountable to the values and purpose that we all created together. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and the same goes for company culture.  Along the way, we had some team members get off the bus.  It became clear that they were not aligned with our vision, our values and our purpose. So we actually experienced even more turnover before things got better.

As I mentioned earlier, building a stronger culture literally carried us through the recession.   Shortly after our culture began to shift, the recession hit.  Business slowed and things got tight, really tight.  Even when we thought that conditions would never improve, we banded together, hunkered down and worked through it.  We brainstormed together on ways to increase productivity, we collaborated on projects to ensure that clients were given the best care regardless of who on the team saw them.  Everything we did was driven by our values and core purpose.  We hired and we fired based on our core values.  We were (and still are) aligned like we had never been before. Most importantly, we were there for each other when we needed each other the most.

It’s taken us a good four years to really see the impact that Tribal Leadership has made on our business and it sure has paid off. By all means, we are not perfect. And we still have a lot of work to do. But in the last year, we have had the lowest staff turnover in seven years (87% staff retention), double digit sales growth, double digit profit, and the best (and most consistent) customer service satisfaction scores we’ve ever seen. Just visit Yelp! , DemandForce (Circle C) and DemandForce (Soco) reviews to see for yourself.

Your turn: What have you done to improve your company’s culture? Could you be needing a little dose of Tribal Leadership? Leave me a comment below, I would like to know.

At MaximumFX we understand all too well how frustrating it can be when you call for an appointment the same day and can’t get in. Heck, sometimes it’s several days or even weeks depending on your stylist and service needs. “Can’t they just squeeze me in?” you wonder. We know you don’t necessarily see what goes on behind the scenes, so we thought we’d give you peek “behind the curtain”!

Our team arrives to work 10 minutes before their first scheduled appointment for a quick briefing. We call these mini-meetings “huddles”. The purpose of our huddles is to allow our team members to review daily goals, communicate strategies and promotions and development their plan of action for the day in general. Then it’s time for the fun to begin. Instantly you hear the sounds of laughing, water running, phones ringing and blow dryers whirring! Believe it or not, it takes a lot to orchestrate a typical day in the salon. Our guest care team is busy answering phones, booking appointments and taking care of you and their salon team while our designers are making you look fabulous.

Each stylist averages 30-45 min per service/per client/per day. That’s a lot of clients! Here’s a peek of our appointment book on a typical day in the salon.

Do you see all that orange? Those are all clients who pre-booked their next appointment before they left the salon on their last visit.  Believe it or not, we have clients who are booked out for the rest of the year! As you can see, that leaves us with very limited availability. In order to accommodate as many clients as possible, we “book tight” leaving little to no room between appointments. Most gaps are only 15 minutes, so you can see how running even 5-10 minutes late can have a dramatic effect on the day and why it doesn’t allow us the opportunity to squeeze you in.

So while our Guest Care Coordinators are highly skilled at moving and manipulating books, the truth is there’s no benefit for both you and your beloved stylist and/or colorist when trying to squeeze you in.   It forces us to compromise in a bad way. For the investment you’re making, we end up rushing you in and out, cutting corners, and most of all stressed out.  That’s just not fair to you.   Our front desk and designers will do everything imaginable to get you in without compromising our core value of Service.  They truly are magicians at manipulating our books to make things work.   (As part of their interview, we measure how good they are at playing Tetris, just kidding)

The best option if you don’t have a schedule that’s as flexible as you’d like is to set up your next appointment with our Guest Care team during your visit to the salon. This guarantees you have your pick of time and day. We would rather be at the mercy of your schedule, instead of the other way around.   We’re always happy to help!

Your turn:  Was this article helpful?   Please let us know your thoughts by commenting below.