Making Things Happen

Good Customer Service Leads to Personal
Satisfaction in Synergy Owner Teresa Knight

by Heidi Thomas

If Teresa Knight were a contestant on the old game show “What’s My Line?” probably no one would guess that she owns a beauty salon.

“I’m such as tomboy — the last thing I want to do is my hair and makeup,” the Synergy Salon proprietress laughs. “This may be the most bizarre business for me to end up owning.”

But being a goal-oriented person, Knight had dreamed of owning her own business since she was young. Her background is in business, taking classes and workshops in accounting and becoming a self-taught entrepreneur. Originally from Whatcom County, she has worked in various office-management positions, including doctors’ offices, and her last job was managing 70 men in an industrial painting company.

“That was a lot different from managing 15 women and two men,” she says, referring to her present position. “I love this job. It’s not just about beauty. It’s about self-esteem, building relationships with customers and always learning something new.”

Knight was friends with a hairdresser who worked at the former Northwest Hair Company & More on Riverside Drive in Mount Vernon. When the owners retired six years ago, she and her friend bought the shop. After a year, the friend decided to leave, and Knight then bought her out. Renamed Synergy Salon, the business has grown from three employees to 17 and averages about 60 clients a day. She employs eight hairdressers, three nail technicians, two massage therapists (and is about to hire another), one esthetician, one full-time reception (and about to hire another part-time), and someone who does permanent cosmetics.

“It’s ever-evolving,” Knight notes. “We keep adding services, products and training. This is a great business. I never get bored. I love it.” Although she’s not a stylist or esthetician herself, she says she does everything from receptionist work and bookkeeping to making coffee and unplugging toilets.

 

Working together

The word synergy is often used synonymously with cooperation or teamwork. And teamwork is what sets Knight’s salon apart. While booth rental for stylists is more common in the industry and more lucrative for the salon owner these days, she’s foremost concerned about customer service and believes that’s accomplished through her staff’s teamwork.

“The team enjoys working with each other, and we get to know all our clients on a one-to-one basis,” she states. “Everybody greets customers, introduces themselves, gets them a cup of coffee and makes them feel comfortable while they’re waiting. So many salons you go into, nobody talks to you until the stylist comes to get you. We have clients who stop in just to say ‘hi,’ to hang out and visit.”

“My passion is people. I love the interaction, and I get my personal satisfaction from that,” Knight declares. She defines her most important role in the business as dealing with and developing relationships with her employees and her customers.

Knight also firmly believes in ongoing education for her staff and brings in trainers for workshops as well as attending outside shows and seminars.

Here’s Knight’s advice for anyone considering going into business:

1. Research the field you’re going into. Know as much about it as you can.

2. Have sufficient capital behind you to get started and some savings to live on—don’t borrow money to get started.

3. Have a passion for the type of business you’re going into, as well as the basic enthusiasm of owning your own business. “You’re going to have to be dedicated to it, working 40 to 70 hours a week,” she emphasizes. “You’re going to have to deal with employees, paperwork and vendors, as well as customers.”

4. Marketing. Every business is different, but atmosphere is important for referrals as well as location. When Knight had her new Synergy Salon sign put up, she noticed a big jump in business. People came in saying they’d never noticed a salon there before. Knight also belongs to a variety of community and business groups, such as the Mount Vernon Chamber of Commerce, LEADS, Skagit Women in Business and Northwest Special Events. She also encourages her employees to join these groups.

5. Set goals. “You can get stagnant in anything,” she points out. “You have to continually have different projects going, always improving yourself, your business and your employees, and on-going education provides motivation.”

 

Goal-oriented proprietress

Knight’s short-term goals are to keep her employees happy and to provide great service to customers. “Things that benefit me (such as education) benefit my employees and, in turn, benefit the customer,” she says. Her long-term goal is to develop a more holistic environment within the salon. She’s in the thinking stages right now, but believes that it’s the “inside person who makes you happy, that you create your attitude from within. Yes, it (the business) is beauty — hair and nails,” she admits, “but it’s also helping others feel better about themselves. When someone comes into the salon in a bad mood and leaves feeling good, that satisfies me that we’ve made a difference in someone’s life that day.

“The thing that keeps me going is doing a good job,” she adds. “I’m very proud of the team, that people want to come back and that they want to refer others to us. I’m a very goal-oriented person, but not in a materialist way. It’s not that I have x number of employees and that translates into x amount of profit. I’m still putting nearly all the money back into the business at this point.”

Knight does look forward to a time when she can work less and travel more. “I look forward to the future,” she declares. “I like getting older, getting more mature and enjoying things more. I have so many different interests, I never know what I’ll be doing next.”

She also loves kids and older people and envisions herself working or volunteering with those age groups in some aspect, perhaps becoming a Big Sister.

Her philosophy is to “work hard, play hard,” and the “What’s My Line?” panel probably also would not guess that the diminutive Knight is a “dare devil” who loves “anything outdoors” — backpacking in Australia, hang gliding, skiing and traveling to exotic places. In addition to Australia, she’s been to Ecuador, Costa Rica, Guam, St. Thomas, Puerto Rico and Palau, a Micronesian island. She has plans to travel to India in September 2002 and her next goal after that is to go to Greece.

Although she has no children of her own, she took over rearing her ex-husband’s two siblings when she was 20 and now has three “grandsons” at her tender age of 36.

Teresa Knight loves a challenge. “You can’t just sit back and let things happen,” she observes. “You have to make them happen.”