Why Kim Bennett Horvath Ditched Pen and Paper for SolaGenius

Kim Bennett Horvath loves working behind the chair. For her, making clients feel beautiful is a magical and powerful experience. Her passion has taken her on an amazing, prolific 25-year long journey through the beauty industry. Not only was she first person to ever sign a lease with Sola, where she serves as the Culture Ambassador, but she is also a Senior National Educator for Paul Mitchell.

What’s the secret behind Kim’s long-lasting success? Her passion for her clients. Kim calls herself a professional with a “servant’s heart,” meaning she’s always striving to perfect her clients’ experiences. Aside from her incredible talent, she’s always known that the client experience – keeping track of appointments, preferences, payments and more – is everything.

As her client list grew, Kim realized that her paper book couldn’t keep up with all of the things that she could do to offer the ideal client experience.

Kim knew it was time to tap the power of technology. She knew how important it was to find the perfect technology solution and knew making the switch was a risk. She was looking for a service that: 

• Understood her needs as an independent salon owner 
• Maintained her personal interactions with her clients
• Kept her in control of her business
• Was incredibly easy to use

While testing out three different platforms, Kim found that the technologies were more geared for a traditional salon rather than a boutique salon. Kim ended up going back to her paper book each time, because none of the solutions were as efficient.

Eventually, Kim found the perfect solution in SolaGenius, an all-in-one business management solution made specially for Sola professionals in collaboration with GlossGenius. Calling it a revelation, she says that “their whole culture and mission is to make something for an independent salon owner. It’s not just for online booking, it’s also here to assist me in running my business.”

In SolaGenius, Kim saw the potential to grow and her improve her business. She says, “It's everything to me. It's really helped me be the better version of myself."

For her, these were the key benefits of using the app:

• Having a digital assistant makes her more accessible to her clients. Not only can she easily book clients anywhere, anytime in seconds, she can also automate appointment reminders and receipts that are sent to clients.

• Tools to help her grow her clientele. After switching to the app, Kim has grown her client number at an incredible rate -- quadrupling the amount of new clientele that sign up for an appointment each month.

• Her clients loved the switch. Her clients LOVE getting to interact with her online booking site. Some of her clients even called her know how excited they were that she made the switch, because booking appointments was so fun. One of her clients even booked appointments all the way to the end of the year because she enjoyed the easy booking experience so much.

Kim’s ability to use technology to consistently adapt and improve her business makes her a true #boss. For those still using a paper book, switching to an online platform can seem daunting, like it was for Kim. 

We’ve talked to Kim and other stylists who have switched to SolaGenius -- and we’ve heard most of the common worries and concerns:

1. “I’M AFRAID THAT I WON’T BE ABLE TO CONTROL WHAT TIMES CLIENTS BOOK WITH ME I CAN ADD ALL OF MY APPOINTMENTS REALLY EASILY TO MY PAPER BOOK OR PERSONAL CALENDAR RIGHT NOW!”

As an independent business owner, complete control over your schedule is important! That’s why SolaGenius offers numerous settings that give you even more control with online bookings: 

You choose how clients book you:

Kim loved that she was able to maintain full control over how clients booked her. Within her settings, she can can turn online booking on or off at any time.

You choose when clients book you:

Kim has full control over when clients book her, since she controls her available hours completely.

She can also control how far in advance people can book online, and the amount of time her clients are booked for. She loves that she can add processing time to services and be able to double book clients. That’s how she’s winning at maximizing efficiency!

And finally, family matters to Kim. Which is why when it came time to blocking personal time off during her normal business hours, Kim feels much more organized with the calendar features of SolaGenius.

You choose which clients book you:

Maintaining full control over her time was important, and Kim loves that she can approve or deny every appointment request. 

2. “I’M AFRAID THAT SWITCHING WILL MAKE IT HARDER TO KEEP UP MY RELATIONSHIPS WITH MY CLIENTS. WHAT IF THE SYSTEM MESSES UP AND SENDS MY CLIENTS AN INCORRECT MESSAGE? I’LL GET BLAMED FOR IT.”

In Kim’s experience, switching has actually made it easier to keep up with relationships and focus on higher-value interactions. The app took care of all notifications for her, and she customized which ones she wanted sent out to clients.  For Kim, this helped her further relationships and make sure that no client falls through the cracks, which helped her actually increase her bookings. #boss.

Choose to send clients email, text messages or both from you. The grunt work gets done automatically, with different notifications that can be sent out via email or text.

You can control various notifications sent out, such as:

• Confirmations: text/email clients 72 hrs before a scheduled appointment asking them to confirm appointments. Great for reducing no-shows and last minute cancellations!

• Reminders: text/email clients 24 hrs before a scheduled appointment reminding them of the appointment. Great for stepping up the professionalism of your business with a timely reminder for clients!

• Follow-ups: email clients a pretty thank you note with your letterhead after appointments. Great for showing clients you care with that extra special touch.

• Cancellations: email/text clients if you cancel an appointment with them.

With these, you’ll decrease the amount of time that you sit around waiting for a no-show client again and increase the amount of time that you spend making clients look GORGEOUS. (Just for fun: You know how Starbucks gives customers free drinks on their birthdays...why not do the same? The app keeps track of all of your client’s birthdays and can automatically wish your clients Happy Birthday and offer them a promo if you turn on the birthday notification option.)

3. “I DON’T HAVE TIME TO SWITCH AND LEARN A NEW PLATFORM. I’M SO BUSY.”

For Kim, switching was easy because of how intuitive the app was. Even though she wasn’t super tech-savvy, she felt that she was able to understand how the app worked very quickly -- like it was made for her. When she does have questions, GlossGenius’s customer experience team has always been there for her. Kim believes that she has never seen this level of customer service before. “GlossGenius has a servant’s heart -- they really go above and beyond -- they want to set up every customer to win.”

On top of the easy switch, Kim knew that it would ultimately save her so much time in the future. The app helps make running a business faster and easier, so you can spend your time making people look and feel beautiful.

• Spend ZERO time trying to find a better service to process client payments: The app makes managing payments SO easy. Not only does it offer the lowest processing payment fees in the industry, but you can also accept any payment without any additional hardware and receive automatic next business day transfers!
• Spend ZERO time transferring client info: You can get personal help transferring your info and switching services, even if you’re using pen & paper at no cost. Just ask your Sola manager about the White Glove Service!
• Spend ZERO time transferring calendar info: You can immediately sync your calendars via the two-way sync option...great for use with your personal calendar, like Outlook, Google or iCal. It’s also great for sharing with family members or another professional in your studio.
• Spend ZERO time tracking inventory: When you add products to your checkout tickets, quantity counts are automatically kept track of! 
• Spend ZERO time worrying about marketing yourself. Create and control effective marketing and promos for your clients with text marketing. You can reach out to clients and get them to book appointments way faster. Read more about how one stylist got $1500+ worth of bookings in less than an hour with our texting feature.
• 4. “I’M JUST STARTING OUT SO I DON’T HAVE A LOT OF MONEY TO SPARE. I DON’T KNOW IF I WANT TO PAY FOR A SERVICE. WOULDN’T IT BE EASIER TO JUST DO IT MYSELF?”

To Kim, switching to SolaGenius was a no-brainer, because it was a small investment on a huge return. She always values everything on what it looks like for a half-hour haircut. After calculating, she realized that it would only take three or four haircuts to pay for a year’s worth of SolaGenius. Two hours of a single day to pay for a whole year. For her, that was absolutely worth it.

On top of that, Kim saw that the app was paying for itself -- when she sent out a text marketing campaign for the first time and got over $1700 in bookings in less than two hours! 

The app also makes it a priority to provide professionals with tools so they can best understand all of their analytics.

• On the dashboard, you can view your $ amount booked today, revenue earned today, revenue YTD, and ticket average right at your fingertips in the application dashboard.

• For even more information about your financials, access detailed reports of your gross and net sales, your appointment history, your retail sales history, and your sales tax history for any time period.

• The amount of time you’ll save and the boost in your business’s branding and professionalism will grow your client base with organic referrals. In addition, the app offers marketing tools that can fuel your business growth.

For those who are on the fence about trying out SolaGenius, Kim says that it’s important to find the courage to overcome fear and try new experiences: "we're always afraid of change which is hysterical, because our job is to change our clients lives. We have to embrace change in our industry, you have to embrace technology if you're going to grow."

So keep calm. It’s time to run your Sola like a BOSS. Get started with SolaGenius here.