The Business X-Ray — Aurelia Nail & Spa

Prepared for Danny T., Owner, August 2026, by Norton Lam

A good shop that forgets its customers after the first visit.

The work is good, the ticket is healthy, and the business is profitable. But seven in ten customers never return, the schedule ignores when people actually come in, and there is only five weeks of cash in the bank. All three are fixable this quarter for $29 a month.

The one thing to remember

Bring back the customers you already have before spending a dollar finding new ones.

$386K
Revenue, last 12 months
72%
Customers who never came back (a problem)
9%
Profit margin (a strength)
5 weeks
Cash cushion (watch this)

Do these three things first

  1. Email the 1,461 customers who stopped coming

    $15,219

    They already know you. One email is worth about $15,000.

    Who: Owner | When: This month | From the Marketing review

  2. Start a weekly $1,100 transfer to savings

    8 weeks of cushion

    Eight weeks of cash by March means payroll never lands on your card again.

    Who: Owner | When: This month | From the Finance review

  3. Move one Tuesday shift to Saturday

    $9,400 a year

    Saturday turns people away while Tuesday chairs sit empty.

    Who: Owner | When: Next schedule | From the Operations review

Each executive's review

Open a review to see the evidence behind its grade. Each one works offline and prints cleanly.

Marketing — Chief Marketing Officer

Retention is the whole problem.

Open the marketing reviewPrintable PDF
Finance — Chief Financial Officer

Profitable, but running on five weeks of cash.

Open the finance reviewPrintable PDF
Operations — Chief Operating Officer

Chairs are full on Saturdays and half-empty on Tuesdays.

Open the operations reviewPrintable PDF

What's working

  • The work itself. Customers who come back do so quickly. Service quality is not the problem.
  • Profitability. A 9% margin is respectable for a salon this size.
  • Clean data. Every sale runs through the POS, so these findings rest on measurement, not memory.

What's holding you back

  • No follow-up. Nothing reaches a customer after the first visit.
  • Thin cash. Two months this year, payroll went on a personal card.
  • A flat schedule. The same staffing every weekday whatever the demand.

Try your own numbers

Each calculator opens on the report's numbers. Move the sliders to see what changes.

Files to keep